Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank argues in a recently published message to Democrats and Progressives entitled “Why Progressives Shouldn’t Support Bernie” that active political support for Bernie Sanders is a hopeless losing cause. He contends that such efforts just distract from and weaken the inevitable presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
This argument is without merit and not persuasive. Competition in our democratic society creates strength not weakness – just as it does in our economy. Robust public discourse and political advocacy is a bedrock principle of the American System.
Reflecting further on Mr. Frank’s unusual message I believe there lays a deeper concern. I suspect the real worry of Mr. Frank and those who urge no resistance to Hillary Clinton is because any viable resistance or questioning of her candidacy may show that the “the Emperor has no clothes”. And that is to say nothing of her unprecedented political baggage and of course the unpredictable Billage factor. .
Most presidential primaries feature multiple candidacies and vigorous debate which, in the end, make the prevailing general election candidates stronger, better vetted and the public much more informed. For example, the current Republican presidential primary field features no less than 16 candidates. Why should Mr. Frank, and perhaps the Democratic Party establishment, fear one robust and energizing opposing candidate?
Believing that Progressives and Democrats will enthusiastically embrace an anointed candidate for President of the United States is a serious and cynical misreading of the underlying attraction and power of our democratic traditions. Pundits and others are surprised by the large and enthusiastic crowds Bernie Sanders is attracting – especially in contrast to the much smaller, controlled and less than exuberant audiences that’s show up for Hillary, the supposedly inevitable candidate. People are not buying Hillary’s candidacy at the visceral grass roots level – despite what the polls say about her huge lead. There is a vulnerability here that hangs in the air like the muggy heat of a hot humid summer day.
The Democratic Party has a long memory and I am sure they are remembering when Eugene McCarthy tapped into the deeper dissatisfactions of 1968 and surprised the pundits and the party establishment in the New Hampshire primary with his strong showing against President Johnson. McCarthy was an unlikely major contender for the Presidency. But what his candidacy did was to clearly show the vulnerability of President Johnson.
Just because he was a sitting President, Johnson didn’t have an automatic lock on his party’s nomination. Political activism and engagement matter and in America that can make a big difference no matter who may think they are automatically next in line. Americans don’t like being told who their inevitable leader is or who cannot or will not be their leader.
President Johnson was suddenly an unclothed Emperor. Soon after the 1968 New Hampshire primary he announced he would not run for re-election. The Johnson government was brought down by grass roots political activism.
Frankly, Democrats and Progressives should be offended at the suggestion they refrain from open political activity and discourse. Grass root activism is the animating energy and power of our democratic experiment. Active, competitive and vibrant political dialogue and campaigning is what makes us unique and is our special way of vetting and ultimately validating those we allow to govern us. Asking an American citizen to refrain from active political engagement in order to have their governance delivered to them by anointed leaders is a pathway we long ago rejected – which I suspect Barney Frank, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment will find out for themselves sometime between now and November of 2016.
LBJ was brought down by his own duplicity about Vietnam.
I disagree that Eugene McCarthy had much influence at all. The dominant player in the 1968 Democratic Party was Robert Kennedy, and he was assassinated while preparing to give his victory speech after winning the California primary. It was Mr. Kennedy’s presence in the race that rattled LBJ, together with exploding unrest in the streets. While Mr. McCarthy helped to keep the war in the headlines, he was very much benefiting from rather creating the “grassroots political activism”.
The grassroots political activism at the time was happening in the streets, on campus, and in the inner city. Hubert Humphrey, the eventual nominee, didn’t even campaign before the convention. The election was “just politics” that most of us who were getting our heads bashed in didn’t care ONE IOTA about.
In 1968, 80% of the Democratic Primary voters (all of Mr. McCarthey’s supporters and most of Mr. Kennedy’s) were opposed to the war in Vietnam. The Democratic Party nominee, Hubert Humphrey, supported the war. He was defeated by Richard Nixon (he of the “secret plan for peace), who was against the war before he was in favor it.
The Democratic Party was transformed by the disaster of the 1968 convention. It was transformed precisely BECAUSE it betrayed the stance of 80% of its voters. Grassroots action IN THE STREETS brought down LBJ. The presidential election was a sideshow that few in the peace movement paid much attention to.
If there is a lesson in all this for today, in my view that lesson is that politics is a lagging, rather than leading, indicator. The learnings, if there are any, will be on the part of we voters rather than Mr. Frank, Ms. Clinton, or the Democratic Party establishment.
Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to fill the streets around EVERY campaign appearance of EVERY candidate — Republican or Democrat — with picket lines and disruptive behavior reminding them that the 99.9% is DONE with being plundered. Reminding BOTH candidates that black lives matter. Reminding BOTH candidates that our exploding police state is our most urgent “national security” issue. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are leaders whose public statements motivate and encourage us in that mission. Whatever movement happens on the part of candidates, both Republican and Democrat, will be in response to actions in the street — primary vote totals are irrelevant (as are televised “debates”, by the way).
The administrations of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama have convinced this 62 year old life-long Democrat that disruptive, rude, in-your-face street demonstrations are the ONLY way we are going to accomplish the changes we seek. We need to FORCE the lead story of every news cycle every day to be the chaos in our streets. We need to FORCE the mainstream media to report the “unprecedented” alignment of Tea Party and Occupy protesters demanding THE SAME THING of candidates, both Republicans and Democrats. We need to force the news coverage of this election season to be about THE VOTERS, not the candidates.
Sometimes you need to whack somebody upside the head with a (metaphorical) two-by-four to get their attention. THAT is what I think we voters will find out for ourselves between now and November of 2016.
This little exercise lead me to learn that the ’68 NH primary was in March, and not January. The guy was skilled at politics, and probably just recognized the writing on the wall. In relatively quick succession, Tet, McCarthy doing far better than expected, and then RFK jumping in.
A primary challenge didn’t make him weak, it revealed his weakness. If Sanders can do the same to Clinton, so much the better, because Bush/Rubio/Walker will certainly try to do the same.
I don’t sense that Clinton is weak in that way. On the one hand, the Clintons are lying liars who lie. But on the other, the Clintons fight, and might be unlikely to open “negotiations” with crazy Republicans by making unilateral concessions. (Instead, they will do something else that completely appalls some segment of the liberal electorate.)
I’ve just been rereading An American Melodrama, the account of the 1968 election by three of the U.K. journalists who’d spent the year covering it. From their timeline, it sounds as though McCarthy was in fact absolutely pivotal: Johnson’s near-loss in New Hampshire set the stage for McCarthy’s outright win in Wisconsin a couple of weeks later, and it was almost certainly Johnson’s knowledge that he was going to lose Wisconsin that prompted him to withdraw from the race only a few days before that vote. Meanwhile, Kennedy only entered the race a few days after the New Hampshire primary, and didn’t have time to mount a competitive campaign in Wisconsin; moreover, it’s hard to imagine that the surprise New Hampshire results didn’t have an impact on the Wisconsin vote. Without New Hampshire’s results, Johnson would have had much more reason to go ahead and contest Wisconsin rather than withdrawing before any votes were cast, and against a challenger who’d only just entered the race, he might even have won there.
Which isn’t to say Kennedy wouldn’t have had every bit as much of an impact if the group that recruited McCarthy had been able to convince Kennedy to do it instead; he’d been their first choice. But it does look to me as though McCarthy’s success was pivotal to LBJ’s exit, or at least to its timing.
All of which is a geeky footnote, really. Either way, grassroots action was what got the job done — up until Chicago, when it no longer mattered what actual voters wanted.
A LOT of demonstrators in Chicago as well as Clean for Gene volunteers and workers were not actual voters.
You had to be 21 to vote back then.
I knew many who were demondating back then and with the exception of Abbie Hoffman none of them were 21.
We don’t know what every voter wanted, but we know how the primaries worked out. And by definition, those results reflect the preferences of, you know, voters, regardless of whether anyone’s campaign volunteers were eligible to vote.
You may remember that in 1968, press estimates had Humphrey going into the convention with a likely majority of delegates. And yet he had not competed in any of the primaries: rather, he recruited state party figures who had run as so-called favorite sons to deliver their delegations’ votes to him. In caucus states, he similarly relied on the existing party apparatus to select loyalist delegates. And there were a lot more so-called superdelegates than there are in today’s conventions, as a percentage of the vote. These again were party operatives and officeholders for the most part, whose loyalties were to the party structure rather than to the voters in their states. The result was, again, Humphrey arriving at the nominating convention with enough votes to take the nomination if no one switched (as most of them could have under the rules then in operation).
So to the extent you could judge by what had happened in the primaries, what voters wanted wasn’t LBJ part II, The Sequel. But even that isn’t really the point, because under the rules existing at the time, what the voters might have wanted was pretty much advisory at best. The delegates weren’t bound for the most part, or for very long. They could have decided, The hell with this, we’re nominating Lyndon no matter what he said. They could have decided they didn’t like any of the declared candidates and gone for Edward Kennedy, or anyone else for that matter.
That’s the sense in which what the voters wanted didn’t matter once the delegates reached Chicago. The delegates overall were less representative of Democratic voters in their states than they were of state and national party machinery, and the regulars were Johnson/Humphrey people. The delegate math was hard for Kennedy on the day he declared, and would have stayed that way if Kennedy and McCarthy had both reached the convention and agreed to pool their votes. That’s one of the big reasons we don’t do things that way any more.
…except by his own decision. He won the NH primary, but only lost the expectations game, and I believe was a write-in candidate. His figurative heart did not appear to be in it and his literal heart was causing health concerns. I suspect if he had fought he could have survived the nomination fight as evidenced by his VP ultimately getting the nod, though who knows what might have happened if RFK hadn’t been assassinated.
I for one will exercise my franchise and otherwise participate in the process, but will not get on board with disruptive behavior. I would definitely hate to see a repeat of what happened outside the 1968 Dem convention.
I fear you greatly misread history.
Perhaps others who, like me, lived through the 1968 campaign can chime in. I think LBJ is a man whose entire career was focused on acquiring and using personal power. The suggestion that he chose to step down, rather than being forced, completely ignores the context of that decision.
I think his figurative heart and gut were very much aware of what it would take to win the nomination and what a second term would mean for a man and country that was already torn by turmoil clearly rooted in his own actions.
The Democratic Party very successfully remade itself in 1968 without the participation of those who refused to help make the needed changes yet benefited greatly after those changes were accomplished.
If we succeed in making similar changes today, I’m sure the party will similarly survive your decision to sit out.
Oh, and by the way — the true horror that should NEVER be repeated is what happened INSIDE the 1968 Democratic convention. The fact that it hasn’t happened since is a direct and positive consequence of that “disruptive behavior” that you so abhor.
Granted it was just a bit of Wikipedia, but there was it seemed at least some sense that Johnson just wasn’t really in it, which does strike me as the most logical reason why he didn’t bother to put his name on the NH ballot. He may have seen the writing on the wall, but my point was that he was not forced out at the particular point he withdrew because he won NH.
I wrote: “I think his figurative heart and gut were very much aware of what it would take to win the nomination and what a second term would mean for a man and country that was already torn by turmoil clearly rooted in his own actions.”
I suppose we have different definitions of “forced”. I can’t help but notice that admitting that the “disruptive behavior” that dominated the news and campaign played a role tends to weaken your stance against such behavior.
Whether we call it “forced” or a “change of heart”, I suggest that LBJ chose not to run because he recognized that AMERICA had turned against his war and therefore himself.
LBJ was a man who passionately cared about his reputation and his legacy. I suggest that a significant factor was his own realization that a second term would cause the disaster of his Vietnam decisions to overshadow his landmark “Great Society” program and his related personal contributions to civil rights in America.
Absent the disruptive behavior in the streets, I am quite confident that LBJ would have run for, won and served a second term. It’s hard for me to speculate about how America might have been different — I suspect it would make a FABULOUS historical novel.
The hippies sat home, we got Nixon. It’s important to work from the outside, and I don’t discount that after 1968 the party was no longer a welcome home to racists and became a welcome home to dissenters of all stripes, and this was an unqualified good thing for the party . It should return to that spirit if it has strayed from it. The changes to the primary process were essential, and even the nomination of McGovern was a good thing in terms of getting a new generation involved (many, many successful Democratic leaders including Gary Hart, the Clintons, and Robert Reich got their start on that campaign).
That said, Humphrey did break with Johnson publicly by the end of the 68′ campaign, but it was probably too late for many of you. You are three years younger than my dad and the same age as Uncle Jon who protested extensively during that time, so I will differ to you guys that the on the ground experience says one thing while my view looking back with hindsight you couldn’t have possible had says another.
I think the key lesson is, definitely work from the outside, but when you are down to two choices there is such a thing as a lesser of two evils. President Gore could’ve been a bland, possibly one term centrist, but it is certain he would’ve avoided the biggest foreign policy disaster in either of our lifetimes as far as I’m concerned, not to mention Kyoto backed by the White House and extensive progress on climate change. Remember that even in 68′ Humphrey campaigned on full employment, basic income, and single payer-far to the left of anything today’s Democrats are proposing and far more than we got under Nixon. Triple H would’ve had a Democratic congress that would’ve enacted his domestic legislation while tying his hands on Vietnam. Maybe no Khmer Rogue or Cambodia for all we know, but maybe China is still a Maoist backwater (bad for its people but maybe better for the American worker?) Outside pressure has it’s place, inside work has it’s place, and when they can converge, progressives win,
I know that we have had this discussion before, but “unqualified good thing for the party” doesn’t mean that it came without costs. This was the end of Democratic Party economic liberalism, replaced by the “social justice” type issues that have dominated since. It went from a party of the working class to a party of the urban poor and urban elites, with an empty hole in between that persists.
When people wonder why Democratic candidates ever since have trouble establishing a connection with the working class, and accordingly have trouble building support for large-scale economic liberalism projects (and must accordingly settle for warmed over Heritage Foundation health care plans), that was the cost.
Not saying the cost wasn’t worth it, just that there was a cost.
…that Vietnam was seen as Johnson’s war, I can easily imagine people who opposed it turning to Nixon, who campaigned on ending it (albeit with a “secret plan”) over Johnson’s VP. Yes, I realize that’s not quite what we got under Nixon, but sometimes it’s helpful to remember that we have 20/20 hindsight which contemporary actors lacked.
both the visceral impact of the Chicago convention and the awfulness of what happened there, and how long it took Humphrey to disassociate himself with both Johnson and Daley. He began gaining ground in the polling as soon as he managed to really break with them, but you have to remember that after Chicago he actually told a reporter that “it’s time to quit pretending that Daley did anything wrong.”
In context, that’s the equivalent of a newly-nominated contemporary Democratic candidate telling the media, “It’s time to quit pretending that the police and municipal authorities in Ferguson did anything wrong.” I have every faith that neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders would ever say any such thing; but I think you can imagine how if we somehow wound up nominating, say, Jim Webb, and he somehow said something like this, there would be voters and activists who threw up their hands and said, “This guy or Jeb Bush? Who cares? At least Jeb!!! didn’t knock Hillary off the ballot when she was clearly the voters’ preferred choice.”
All the adults I actually knew at the time who were talking about it did suck it up in the end and vote for Humphrey, but he messed up badly at the beginning of the general election campaign. A lot of what happened is on him and his team, not on allegedly-spiteful voters.
He just handed the Presidency of the United States to his brother in a giant farce.
And I doubt anyone else on BMG would react that way. But are you ready to bet that nobody else would? Because I spent a lot of time trying to convince certain of my third-party-loving sometime allies to vote for Martha Coakley after last year’s primaries, and I remember Florida with considerable bitterness; and I still wouldn’t take that bet myself.
You’re right, though: the Ferguson analogy may not be adequate to convey the atmosphere right after the Chicago convention. The poison comes wafting through the pages of the histories, even after all these years.
.. without claiming the mantle of “Hillary supporter” I can say that Barney Franks’ argument has merit and is persuasive. Hillary Clinton’s life and career are already the most examined, that is to say ‘vetted,’ in possibly the history of the Union. If she was without clothing, somebody would have noticed by now. Those who have accused her, and her husband, of nudity have, more oft than not, been found bereft of a stitch themselves. This is the furthest thing from an ‘annointing’ one can get without invoking actual gladiatorial combat.
If your argument is “Bernie Sanders is great!” then fine. That’s an affirmative case. But, from what I can see here, your argument is “Hillary Clinton is not great. Default to Bernie Sanders.” I don’t see anything but trying to cut Clinton down to make Sanders appear bigger. The truth is, if Bernie Sanders wants to beat Hillary Clinton he’s going to have to do it by actually being bigger and better than her… not by reducing her size. And if he thinks he can win because he’s got the key to cutting Hillary down to his size… we’ll he’s joining a long list of people who”ve made that attempt earlier and failed.
For competition simply for the sake of competition isn’t very productive and I think that’s the essence of Barney Franks argument. If Bernie Sanders was as big as Hillary Clinton it would be a contest of equals and we would have the robust debate you say you want. But claiming any opponent is ‘annointed’ is the wrong way to go about proving you are as big and as capable as they. And if Bernie Sanders really isn’t in the same league as Hillary Clinton, what good does it do to point this out? Complaining that the game is unequally played isn’t a smart move if you’re trying to prove you’re the equal of other players. I can claim that I should be hitting fourth in the Red Sox linueup and that Big Papi is unfairly placed their instead of me… but that’s won’t even get me a tryout in spring training. I’ve got to show that I can hit before I can make the claim. Maybe Sanders can hit. But saying Clinton can’t, or shouldn’t, is the same thing as saying he can, or will..
Frank is arguing, even if supporting Bernie is quixotic and hopeless, that it somehow hurts Hillary Clinton the eventual nominee. I disagree. It forces her to the left, forces her to engage a viable opponent and lets her harness her debating and tactical skills within a primary before a general where she will need both, and it allows a place for social democracy in our political discourse, hopefully to the extent libertarians have received thanks to the Paul’s. Not to mention it shows small donors can win campaigns. I hope he wins a few states and puts her in a panic mode so she can fight for this nomination and become a much stronger nominee.
Asking to clear the field is inviting a weak nominee in my view, and is completely antithetical to what progressives should want to see in their primary. In his bio Frank said he backed Muskie over McGovern, since Muskie was the most electable progressive. Our own Fred uses that argument a lot, and one can argue Hillary is. Most polls show either of them beating any Republican at this point, but I will concede she is more likely to do better in a real general election due to her foreign policy experience, donor network, and political apparatus.
I respect your argument that it makes little sense to back Bernie to block Clinton. I have strictly kept to a positive case for Bernie, and since I feel he is the candidate that most reflects my views, he will be getting my vote. Electability, especially in this crazy cycle, should be the last things on our mind. HRC is still an 80% likely winner, and that’s a conservative estimate. She doesn’t need my vote to push her to 80.001%, but Bernie could use it to get him over 20%, and I agree with him on 97% of the issues while agreeing with her on 70%. No reason for me not to vote my conscience in a Democratic primary.
… “Quixotic and hopeless” means Clinton will be forced to do nothing. That’s exactly and precisely what “quixotic” and “hopeless” means. And we return to the notion of competition for the sake of competition.
There’s no rules that says Hillary Clinton has to so much as acknowledge Bernie Sanders existence. Only in the instance where his campaign is clearly NOT quixotic and hopeless will she be forced to do anything. Bernie Sanders does not escape the notion that he’s tilting at windmills by describing Clinton, in any way, good or bad… Sanders has to prove that HE alone can move the needle. He can’t do that, in any way, by making comments about Clinton’s ability or inability to move the needle. He CAN do damage however by engendering resentment in the Democratic electorate… by somehow making people think they’re getting shafted because the party decides to ‘anoint” a party member of greater than twenty years service and who is the veteran of many campaigns. Barney Frank maybe right. It may be a distraction and if people get pissed at Clinton because Sanders told them too, she is weaker for not having the entire party behind her.
I don’t say this as a Clinton supporter, for I am not. Nor am I opposed to Sanders. But as political analysis goes, Barney Frank, for my money, is spot on.
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and I will never equivocate or trim my sails in singing her praises. She IS the most electable progressive in the field. Even Rubio acknowledged that she has the best qualifications and if this turns into a resume election no Republican will beat her.
I too,like my old friend Barney Frank, supported Ed Muskie in ’72. I was his coordinator at Northeastern University when most of my friends were with George McGovern. Muskie’s state chairman was a guy named Mike Dukakis.
I supported Muskie because I believed he would have ended the Vietnam War which claimed the lives of tens of thousands here including my brother Peter. And hundreds of thousands of innocent Vietnamese men, women, children and babies. The horror and injustice of that war still haunt me to this day.
I believed then that Nixon hoped McGovern would be the nominee. (NOTE: McGovern ended up winning only Massachusetts and D.C. Bumper stickers later proudly boasted : ‘Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts’). It was later revealed that Nixon most feared Ed Muskie giving rise to the infamous Canuck letter.( See dirty trickster Dick Tuck of Watergate fame.)
So Nixon continued that bloody war for five more years and my goo-goo (good government) liberal friends patted themselves on the back saying : ‘We sure taught that bastard Nixon a lesson, didn’t we ?’ I think not.
Stay strong, Hillary, and never stop fighting !
Your loyal soldier, always.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
First off, the Clinton campaign has been emphasizing a lot of rather progressive themes. It’s been sounding much more progressive than one might expect of the centrist-tempted Clintons.
I like that Senator Sanders speaks with such unabashed clarity. He brings much that is useful to our national discussion. I just think he’s really unlikely to win the Democratic nomination and — after McGovern who was also clear and straightfoward, I don’t want to see one of Nixon’s more extremist heirs running foreign policy, appointing Supreme Court nominees, and licensing coal plants.
I also harbor some dyspepsia left over from the Berwick for Governor campaign here. There was clarity too, and it seemed to raise some activists’ standards for whom they’d support so that supporting Martha Coakley was beneath them. Now having just narrowly lost a race for Governor, we Democrats get to observe a Governor unwilling to fix the MBTA and eager to slash social spending. I really wish the Berwick campaign had better prepared its followers for life after the primary election.
So yeah I’m not convinced that primary challenges are always and everywhere a good thing tactically.
To my mind, the OP could have helped himself to some by linking to Frank’s actual comments.
How can Barney Frank look at himself in the mirror? Scandalous.
Either the OP or the Editors appears to have added a link.
I am sick of coronations.
I am nauseated by corporate shills.
Attention seeking by demonstrators – which I have now seen flare up and then vanish repeatedly over a 50 year period – is something I have come to see as not just meaningless, but harmful, and a form of co-opting what could have been meaningful energy. I am old enough that I had friends on all sides of the action in 1968, watching from the windows above as pages while their friends were brutalized.
As one of those who was brutalized, I hope you will agree that “attention seeking by demonstrators” changed the Democratic Party very much for the better, even if it brought us the disaster of the Nixon presidency.
The Vietnam war was, I think, ultimately ended because the children of the rich and powerful finally started to come home in the same coffins that had carried the children of our least affluent for so long. The 1970 decision to end automatic college deferments was the final nail in the coffin of the immoral US role in that immoral war.
That decision — to end college deferments — was a direct result of “attention seeking by demonstrators”. Anti-war activists hated the draft because they hated the war. The ascendant GOP and its proponents supported ending college deferments as a way of punishing college-age anti-war activists. The correct result emerged. The 26th Amendment, granting 18 year olds the right to vote, was similarly a result of that “attention seeking by demonstrators”. Sadly, the abysmally low participation by 18-21 year old voters is an obvious symptom of the very effective co-option that followed the adoption of the 26th amendment.
I agree that we activists allowed ourselves to be co-opted in the decades that followed all this. The Kent State and Jackson State massacres greatly aided that co-option, because The Establishment demonstrated that it was perfectly willing to kill those who oppose it, and did so with the acquiescence of mainstream America. Those two massacres raised the stakes of “attention seeking behavior” high enough to very effectively destroy the movement.
In my view, a primary symptom of all this was and is our collective rejection of the disruptive tactics that were crucial to whatever gains the movement made during those years. “Black Lives Matter” is important, not only because black lives DO matter, but also because the black community recognizes that its children will be killed by government authorities whether or not they are disruptive. In my view, characterizing the courage of “Black Lives Matter” protesters as “attention seeking behavior” greatly demeans and insults the courage required for those demonstrators to take to the streets.
In my view, the Occupy movement suffered precisely because it was not disruptive enough. It, too, was in my view co-opted because that movement failed to convert the ground-swell of support — from both the left and right — into tangible political pressure on candidates of both major parties.
I much prefer Hillary Clinton over any GOP nominee. I welcome the outspoken leadership of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren because that leadership keeps income and wealth concentration in the focus of media and therefore voter attention. “Attention seeking by demonstrators” is, in my view, a crucial part of accomplishing that.
America will NOT reverse its income and wealth distribution if our next President is from the GOP. America will also not reverse its income and wealth distribution of Hillary Clinton is not forced to do so in response to pressure from the American public. A sequence of carefully choreographed “debates” and campaign ads will not help, with or without Bernie Sanders. It is turmoil in the cities, towns, and villages of America that will turn the tide — encouraged and emboldened by outspoken progressive populists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
America MUST end our obscene and evil income and wealth concentration. Hillary Clinton will do far more to accomplish that than any GOP nominee. She will ONLY do that because America demands it. America will only demand it if “attention seeking by demonstrators” keeps it fresh and current between now and the November election.
“… if Hillary Clinton is not forced to do so”, instead of “… of ..”.
At the end … “keeps it fresh and current, and dominating the mainstream media news cycle, between now and the November election”
… and he speaks the truth: While Bernie has raised issues that HRC must address, and that is a valuable contribution, the longer we take to organize behind one candidate, and raise the obscene amounts of money that will be required to win, the harder the job will be come 2016. Having lost two consecutive elections, the Koch brothers and their ilk will be on a spending frenzy this time around, a frenzy like we’ve never seen: they will throw money at the GOPer candidate, at voter suppression efforts, on a 2016 version of the Swift Boat ads that sunk John Kerry in 2004, on voter registration efforts, and this will not be limited to attacking HRC, they’re coming after state reps and state senators, too. So yeah, Barney isn’t being anti-Democratic, he’s talking the truth. We’re in for the fight of our lives, and we’d better unify soon if we’re going to win because losing the White House is one thing we must not do.
I agree with this, and with Barney Frank’s analysis.
I have one caveat, though. In my view, the “one thing we must not do” is allow our income and wealth concentration to continue and accelerate.
Winning the White House is a necessary first step. As we learned from the success of victories in 2008 and 2012, it is NOT sufficient.
litmus-test liberals who demand their candidates fight for the whole loaf and pillory those candidates for compromising when necessary to move the country forward by even negotiating to get half a loaf that is the best progress humanly possible for the greater common good.
They epitomize a philosophy that makes the perfect the enemy of the good and I must confess I have reached a point in the winter of my life that trying to reason with them is futile beyond exacerbating to the point of mental masturbation. After their momentary pleasure they have nothing to show for their wasted effort.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
This reminds me of Sen. Kennedy when he would share his biggest legislative regret.
From the Boston Globe:
Ted Kennedy, whom Nixon assumed would be his rival in the next election, made universal health care his signature issue. Kennedy proposed a single-payer, tax-based system. Nixon strongly opposed that on the grounds that it was un-American and would put all health care “under the heavy hand of the federal government.”
Instead, Nixon proposed a plan that required employers to buy private health insurance for their employees and gave subsidies to those who could not afford insurance. Nixon argued that this market-based approach would build on the strengths of the private system.
“Government has a great role to play, he said, “but we must always make sure that our doctors will be working for their patients and not for the federal government.”
No one breathed a word at the time about Nixon’s plan being unconstitutional. Instead, it faced opposition from Democrats who insisted on “single-payer.”
Over time, Kennedy realized his own plan couldn’t succeed. Opposition from the insurance companies was too great. So Kennedy dispatched his staffers to meet secretly with Nixon’s people to broker a compromise. Kennedy came close to backing Nixon’s plan, but turned away at the last minute, under pressure from the unions. Then Watergate hit and took Nixon down. Kennedy said later that walking away from that deal was one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
Fred is right. The perfect can’t be the enemy of the good or else in the end the people who suffer the most are the people we are advocating for.
I believe that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. I believe that Hillary Clinton stands head and shoulders taller than any GOP candidate. I will work hard to ensure that Hillary Clinton is elected President in 2016. I will be proud to say that I helped elect her.
I also believe that income and wealth concentration is the single largest and most immediate issue facing America in this campaign. I believe that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will make Hillary Clinton a better candidate and better President by helping to keep that issue front-and-center during and after the campaign. I similarly believe that the “Black Lives Matter” organization will make Hillary Clinton a better President by keeping the closely-related issue of rampant and uncontrolled police violence a major issue during and after the campaign.
I’m happy that you enthusiastically support Ms. Clinton. I hope you see my support for Bernie Sanders during the primary season as a way of helping Ms. Clinton be a GREAT, as well as “good” President.
If a legacy of a two-term Hillary Clinton administration is a substantive and immediate return of America’s wealth to the 99% of men and women (of ALL ethnic persuasions, of ALL gender preference, and of ALL political affiliation) who create it, then we will have won a historic victory for America.
And largely where I come down.
I want no part of a Democratic nominee who can’t survive some opposition in the primaries. Pretty sure Barney Frank knows his history, which means that he ought to remember the last three Dems to win the Presidency (Obama, Clinton and Carter) did so in arguably the most competitive primaries the party has seen over the past 40 years. Competition has been very good to the Democratic Party.
I also want no part of falling in line and singing kumbaya in service of a candidate whose only strongly held belief seems to be that she REALLY wants to be President. Hillary leaves me numb. Not saying I won’t vote for her in November, but I’m happy the opposition (and Liz Warren) is forcing her left. Bernie’s got a bit of a Don Berwick vibe. I agree with him when h talks, but he’s not going to be President. Wish Marty O’Malley was running a more aggressive campaign. Been a principled liberal and an innovative leader at both the state and city levels, but Bernie got traction as the race’s liberal agitator.
My worry is Bernie will function more like Bill Bradley, a well-meaning liberal who couldn’t force the party’s presumptive nominee into a cohesive vision for the country.
I don’t remember that campaign well, but I think I would’ve remembered that.
Yet Bradley got 3 million votes in the primaries. Bernie will do well to match him.