What the Bosa/Kaepernick Double Standard Tells Us About The 2024 Elections

On Sunday October 27, nine days before the Presidential election, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was being interviewed  after a win against the Dallas Cowboys. As Purdy spoke to NBC sideline reporter Melissa Stark, All-Pro defensive end Nick Bosa crashed his way into the shot and, looking into the camera, pointed at his Make America Great Again hat.

Though Bosa’s interruption was surprising, it was hardly shocking. Bosa has long enjoyed peacocking around as an open Trump supporter in a world where players largely keep their political opinions to themselves.

But Bosa flaunting a polarizing political slogan on Sunday Night Football, the most watched television program in the United States, right before a presidential election, was simply a bridge too far even for the conservative, albeit controversy averse, league office. Bosa was fined $11,255 for violating the league’s uniform and equipment rules, but given that he makes $34 million a year, the 49ers faithful  probably won’t need to set up a GoFundMe,

As Bosa skulked around in a MAGA hat, his red and gold uniform brought to mind another athlete who played for the same franchise. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco quarterback, also used his NFL platform to speak out for a cause in which he believed. But he was not agitating for MAGA policy initiatives such as a violent mass deportation program or the right to shoot protestors or second-class citizenship for women. He was kneeling for an end to racial inequity and police violence.

Colin Kaepernick was part of a burgeoning movement in 2016. It was a movement tired of merely asking not to be shot. Instead, they popularized ideas such as “defunding the police” and confronting crime by giving more money to crisis intervention teams and mental health counselors. The movement Kaepernick gave symbol to imagined a world without prisons. And it scared the hell out of the Democratic Party.

Far from running toward this mass youth movement, the party sprinted in the other direction. That meant Colin Kaepernick was left adrift, his legs cut out from under him, when he started protesting. He also was without political support. As Republicans put Kaepernick’s kneeling image in brazenly racist fear-mongering ads, the Democrats either ignored him or snarked at the protest. Even the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got in on the act when she called Kaepernick’s protests “dumb and disrespectful” and said, “I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag-burning.” After the 2016 season, he was blackballed from the league. No $11,000 fines for Colin. Just the potential earnings loss of millions.

Kaepernick’s lack of a political home reflected the growing reaction to the larger movement, where open doors started to slam shut for Black Lives Matter activists. Most bills to “defund the police” stalled, and Joe Biden undermined the movement  by thundering “fund the police” in his first State of the Union address in 2022.

This story of two football players and two fates brings to mind the words of French political figure Jean-Luc Melanchon. The man that Reuters recently called “The towering firebrand of France’s hard-left” had his own take on our elections. Melanchon, who counts his political enemies in bulk, said, “The US couldn’t choose the Left: there wasn’t one. When there’s no more Left, there’s no limit on the Right. When there’s no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump’s win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.”

Melanchon is pointing out the glaring problem in our politics. People overwhelmingly feel like we are headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we do not have two parties capable of offering transformational change. We have one—and it’s a Republican party, shrugging off any principles for a shot at power. Any pieties about states’ rights, balanced budgets, and allegiance to the constitution are now just road bumps on their giddy toboggan ride toward autocracy. 

As the traditional GOP, with very few exceptions, sprints to the right, the Democrats, donning cement shoes, have awkwardly tried to follow while staying stuck in place. They were more comfortable courting that mythical creature known as “The Cheney Democrat” than putting up a political fight. Standard left ideas like Medicare For All, opposition to the criminal justice system, immigrant rights, and an arms embargo on Israel to enforce a ceasefire, were given no voice. Instead, as Melanchon said, the people were unable to choose a program in left political opposition to Trump’s because there simply wasn’t one. The Democratic Party is not built for such a battle. It’s like asking a rooster to bark.