This post in Daily Kos makes some important points.
It has become conventional wisdom that even if you prefer Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton because he is more progressive etc., you’re wasting your vote on someone who can’t win a national election. The best rebuttals in the post to that argument are:
1. Yes, Bernie will be called a socialist if he wins the nomination. But you don’t think Hillary will also be called a socialist? And then there’s Benghazi and the email stuff etc. None of it is real, but a national election won’t be a cakewalk for her.
2. This will be an anti-establishment election. Hillary will be viewed as the establishment candidate. That could well make Bernie more electable in a national election in which every possible Republican nominee will also be painting themselves as the anti-establishment candidate.
As the post notes, it may be easier to convince the establishment and independents to vote for Bernie than to convince the activists and independents to vote for an establishment candidate.
3. Younger voters are an important bloc. I know I’ve been sensitive about posts that write off older voters and candidates. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore demographics. Millennials, who overwhelmingly support Bernie, outnumbered Baby Boomers for the first time as of last year.
This post strikes me as a strawman. I’m happy to stipulate that you’ve knocked it down, and I’m happy to stipulate that Bernie Sanders is as electable as Hillary Clinton.
What I’m far concerned about is what “President Bernie Sanders” may accomplish, in comparison to “President Hillary Clinton”. I’ve watched both candidates, as much as I’m able. I’ve watched the debates. I’ve watched the press conferences. I’ve watched Ms. Clinton be grilled by the GOP.
In my view, a hugely important question to ask in this primary is:
Which candidate will be most effective in accomplishing a Democratic agenda and in simultaneously rebuffing the relentless efforts of the GOP to impose their agenda?
When I see Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on the same stage, I see only one president. That’s why I support Hillary Clinton.
that Clinton would be more effective in accomplishing a Democratic agenda than Sanders. The same point the post makes about Clinton being seen as the establishment candidate could be made about her effectiveness should she win the election.
Look how frustrating it has been for Obama to get anything through Congress with the notable exception of the ACA. Why should it be any easier for Clinton, or easier for her than for Sanders?
I’ve watched all three under fire.
I think the GOP ran circles around a naive Barack OBama. I think that Hillary Clinton would have accomplished more in some areas and lost less in others than Barack Obama. Bernie Sanders on the debate stage looked, to me, like a deer in the headlights. I’m sorry, I just don’t think he plays in the same league. Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama throw 90MPH+ fastballs and differ in their choice of placement in the strike zone. Mr. Sanders works hard to get the ball near the plate at 80.
In answer to your last question, I’m not sure it will be “easier” for her. I think she has better political chops than either Mr. Sanders or Mr. Obama. It is very hard for most guitarists to handle the solos that Jimi Hendrix made look easy. Stevie Ray Vaughan was one who accomplished that. Lots of guitarists try — only a few succeed.
I think Ms. Clinton is to governing what SRV was to the blues. Maybe not the very best (I doubt that there will be another Jimi Hendrix, ever), but much better than another current Democrat, and much better than Barack Obama.
and Bernie to Mark Knopfler. Knopfler may not always play as fast as Clapton, but he may connect better with his audience and convey the emotion better. And politics, like music, is really about emotion.
… your analogy doesn’t work. If HRC is Eric Clapton, then Bernie Sanders is closer to Buddy Guy, ( a man whom Clapton readily admits is a much better guitarist) who doesn’t play the same type of music: Buddy Guy plays the blues… and while RocknRoll owes much to the blues it is a distinct and separate style. I think Bernie and Hillary are, for good or ill, distinctly different political animals in the same way that Clapton and Guy are distinctly different musical stylists…
They were much larger than an ordinary person’s, and his fingers were particularly long. To that add (like the great athletes) he practiced more than others. Apparently he walked around the house holding the guitar. Others have speculated the fact the he was sort of ambidextrous added to his hand skills.
Just some fun facts
Various sources report that the young Jimi Hendrix couldn’t afford a custom-made left-handed guitar, and so he taught himself to play using a regular guitar left-handed (upside down!).
This meant that he learned to play with strings reversed — the low-E on the bottom, the high-E on the top. He reversed all the fingering for all the chords and patterns. He was a guitar god.
Here are two versions of the same tune (Voodoo Chile): Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Check out this.
… that, yes, Hendrix played a right handed guitar left-handed, but he re-strung it such that the low E was at the bottom anr the high E at the top. I don’t think he “transposed” in quite the manner you assume. I don’t think, howevr, that this takes away from his prowess… in the least.
Sites like this report that he played both ways:
Meanwhile, other sites like this report that he restrung the guitar and changed the nut as you suggest.
Sounds like he did both — truly amazing.
…I turned it upside down for the opposite reason. My left hand is only semi-functional. It can strum, but I need my right hand for pressing down on the strings.
Dad got to see him play, he also saw Zeppelin at their first concert at the Garden and Janis Joplin’s last concert before she died at Harvard Stadium. I can never hope to beat that. I can say I saw the Roots before they were in Fallon, that’s about it.
Has been true for 20 years. Setting impeachment aside, Bill clobbered the 90s GOP “Contract With America” Congress, and essentially ran Newt Gingrich out of town. Obama never took it to them in the same way, for whatever reason, and the GOP Congress always had the initiative. Having watched Sec. Clinton over the years, most particularly in those Benghazi hearings last summer, make me think that she will be more effective at fighting the GOP Congress, and winning.
That doesn’t mean “easier to get things through Congress.” No one anywhere can do that. It just means that the Clintons are in campaign mode all the time, and are really good at finding the weakness of their GOP adversaries and hitting them, which is necessary if the GOP hold on Congress is to be broken before 2022.
I don’t know what st means by “effective,” but that’s what I mean. I could care less about Bernie’s position on single payer– it ain’t happening anyway. I do care more about getting an administration that is more willing and more able to fight back aggressively against the nihilist GOP right wing from Day 1.
Probably one of the better arguments for Clinton I’ve seen here. I said this before, but I think their approaches are different. Bernie is trying, and succeeding beyond my expectations, of substantially moving the Overton window on income inequality and big money in politics.
Candidates on both sides have to discuss it as a legitimate problem, and it’s one of the few problems, unlike climate change, where even the GOP is forced to admit it’s real. He had a great “I feel your pain” moment in Iowa the other day with a woman who broke down discussing her low wage life.
Where he falls short is he hasn’t confronted foreign policy problems and dealt with them in a substantial way. Obama made an effort to bone up on it day 1, working with Lugar on nuclear arms reduction and bringing on advisors like James Jones and Anthony Lake. Not to mention picking USFAC Chair Biden for Veep. Sanders hasn’t done any of that, which is why his judgment attack rings a little hollow to me. It’s just not an area where he has fluency or even interest which is a concern.
And Clinton, unlike Bernie or Obama will be ready to wage successful partisan warfare on the GOP on day 1. I question whether the country will have appetite for two terms or whether the voters can finally wake up and blame the GOP. But it’s a strategy, a proven one as the 90s remind us. Bernie has the same plan as Obama-mobilize grassroots army to force change. Obama didn’t really believe in it hard enough to try, Bernie does but I am unsure if it can work.
What you’ve written here is precisely what I mean by “effective”. I agree with your summary of the administration of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. I share your opinion of the contest between Mr. Sanders and Ms. Clinton.
I would only amend it as follows because, at the end of the day, I don’t believe there is that much of a philosophical difference between Hillary and Bernie vis-à-vis leveling the playing field to provide economic and social justice for all in a more peaceful and secure world.
So,it becomes : Which President would be most effective in getting his or her progressive priorities passed into LAW by a supportive Congress while simultaneously defeating the attempts to scuttle that agenda by the vast, right-wing, neo-Fascist political/industrial/media juggernaut ?
And that is why I support Hillary Clinton.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
You mention this demographic shift where millennials outnumber boomers.
Do the number of Millennials who are registered votes outnumber Boomers, or just population?
of the Daily Kos post is that those Millennials will be more likely to register to vote if Bernie is the nominee.
That’s not what my post did. I was simply making the observation that in a lower turnout race the vote of young people and people of color is less represented per a portion of it’s population and the vote of the older white electorate is over represented as a portion of it’s population. This is not a dig at the elderly-they are smart and vote in every single election. Which is why all an incumbent has to do is campaign to that single audience. Forcing them to compete for voters in every age demographic is not writing the elderly off.
I am saying in the short term it makes more sense to run a progressive insurgency against a Deleocrat in November, especially this November, rather than in a September primary very few voters will turn out to or taking a chance on a special election. .
older voters were not interested in progressive candidates. But I admit it might be a little strong in today’s post to construe that statement as having written off older voters. I accept that you didn’t mean it that way.
As one of the old Daley press secretaries once said “print what da mare meant, not what he said”. I think we can agree that was the case here, the implication while unintended was there and rests with me.