“I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have @#% for brains.” – Nick Hornby
I’ve gone most of my life thinking I had a pretty good feel for politics, that I knew what the public would respond to, that I knew what the historical moment called for.
But if you read enough pundits, you know that people who might have sounded smart a decade ago, who seemed to be clever and current and have the answers, start to sound tinny and out of touch. That is now me. I declare that my political gut has met its sell-by date.
The GOP hasn’t nominated a non-establishment candidate since Barry Goldwater. They’re about to outclass that historical boner by a long shot, by nominating the colicky Son of Pat Buchanan. I would never have expected that in a million years.
I also wouldn’t have expected that Bernie Sanders, though an estimable public servant with a long and distinguished career, would have an actual shot at the Democratic nomination. I expected enthusiasm from the usual corners, but essentially I was expecting maybe Jerry Brown-type numbers. I am dumb. I am actually happy to say that I misread the political moment. I wouldn’t have thought I’d link to a Greenwald joint, but this headline made me happy: “Top GOP Pollster: Young Americans are Terrifyingly Liberal.” And with the hand they’ve been dealt — the economy and wages, student loans, health care costs, housing, global warming — what the hell would you expect? I’m finding this current Millennial anthem “Stressed Out” rather poignant.
So I don’t offer this as an “endorsement”, because what do I know? I’m voting for Hillary tomorrow. Do what you like.
I look at this through the lens of two things, upon which depend all the law and the prophets:
- Climate change. If we don’t get this right, well, so much for civilization. And we’re running out of time.
- Supreme Court. Voting rights. Campaign finance. The ability to regulate business at all. Health care. The environment. Workers’ rights. etc.
I am not one to expound on the perfection of Hillary. She is too close to Wall Street. (She should release those stupid speeches post-haste, and Goldman et al should allow it, for their own political benefit if nothing else.) The fundraising practices of the Clinton Foundation raise eyebrows. The NYT has two long articles about her role in deposing Ghaddafi and trying to oust Assad — neither of which have worked out at all well. Jeffrey Sachs, Stephen Kinzer, and others have written blistering critiques of her actions in those cases. I think, charitably, that she is motivated by humanitarian concerns, along the model of the Kosovo intervention in 1999. And who can say that there wouldn’t have been a bloodbath in Libya, without US/NATO intervention? But there are results, and so far they’re bloody and horrific. We are just now getting to corrective action, led by John Kerry.
Hillary is catching flak from Bernie supporters for things done in the Bill Clinton administration: Financial deregulation, welfare “reform”, the 1994 crime bill. I have to give a steep discount, if not a full pass to Hillary for those things, for three reasons:
- She’s not Bill;
- It’s not 1996 — the public mood was different then, constraining the possibilities of any national politician;
- Her current statements (criminal justice reform, Wall Street, climate) are a much better predictor of what she’ll do going forward. I’m not looking for someone who’s always been right; I’m looking for someone who’s basically got it right now. She’s close enough. (And in the Senate, she had the 11th-most progressive voting record — more progressive than Sens. Kerry, Obama, Biden, etc.)
Why not Bernie? The guy who is absolutely cleaning up the youth vote, who is outside a detested establishment, does pretty well in current head-to-head polls vs. Trump et al, and is really running a great race? He brings real strengths — ones that Hillary, in her diffidence and political stubbornness, lacks.
Ach, Bernie’s a “socialist.” A real one, in spite of the protestations of his supporters. That’s just going to be toxic with a lot of people. No, he hasn’t been tested with the scrutiny given to a front-runner: You think Bernie has some Bill Ayers/Jeremiah Wright types in his life? Maybe, like Obama, it won’t matter that much. Maybe. And his plans would be very expensive — except that he’d never be able to get them through Congress. I’d really like to get past the Underpants Gnomes thinking about that, and hear about what President Sanders could do on his own.
I could imagine a 60-year-old from Ohio that didn’t call him/herself a “socialist”, saying the same things as Bernie, being a terrific, viable candidate this year. Bernie’s not quite it.
So Bernie seems to be a big, big electoral gamble, for not much reward in the window of time of a Presidential administration. For all that Hillary’s been dinged up over the years, for the reasons we all know, I think we have some sense of her floor of support. And contrary to some breathless commentary, I think she’d match up really well on the debate stage with Trump, Rubio, or whomever. Bernie, I just don’t know. Maybe things have changed so much, are so different, that folks will vote a socialist in as President. Maybe. I’ve never seen it, or imagined it was possible. On the other hand, we do know what happened to McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis.
There’s a Catch-22 for the Frighteningly Liberal Sanders supporter. If you want his ambitious agenda to pass — or any Dem agenda — more emphasis should be placed on uprooting a gerrymandered House and flipping the Senate. (There’s a fine candidate in Maine — my old voice student Emily Cain — if you want to adopt-a-Dem for US House.) Unfortunately, movements really love figureheads, which Bernie is embodying now. It’s hard to maintain that energy spread out for 435 House races and 100 Senate seats. But that would be a “political revolution.” In the next few years I suspect that the waves of Millennial Occupiers will start to hit local and Congressional races, and the fun will begin.
For the here and now, I’m voting Hillary. I think — well, I hope — she can win. And we gotta win.
Sorry, but I can never ever vote for Hillary. My reason is clear. This nation has been fighting for a morally directed health care system since the says of Harry Truman. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and even Nixon have fought for this. There have been small victories: Medicare, Medicaid, EMETLA, ACA (Obamacare). None of these have addressed the overall flaw in the foundation of market based health care; an acceptance that health care is not a right, that it will be owned by some and sold to others. Such a foundation is immoral, inefficient, and weakens us as a nation. To quote President Nixon, “In the ultimate sense, the general good health of our people is the foundation of our national strength, as well as being the truest wealth that individuals can possess.”
Hillary Clinton, once a supporter of health care as human right, is now firmly behind health care as a commodity bought and sold in markets; a system that supports health insurance corporate CEO salaries in excess of $10 million a year and fails to deliver health to many.
In 2008, Senator Ted Kennedy said “For me this is a season of hope — new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few — new hope.
And this is the cause of my life — new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American — north, south, east, west, young, old — will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”
Eight years later in 2016, Hillary Clinton reacts to Senator Sanders promise to continue to push health care out of “markets” and into a morally run system as she said “People who have health emergencies can’t wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.”
I cannot accept that a morally run health care system, health care as a human right, is just a theoretical concept. It exists in every developed nation on earth. If Hillary Clinton believes it will never ever happen in the USA and she is unwilling to fight for it, I simply can never ever vote for her.
John, I hear you loud and clear. But I have to say that we get caught up on single-payer as a moral cause in an of itself rather than a piece of legislative technology that does a thing: paying doctors’ bills.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/
“Affordable health care is a basic human right” – I know you don’t like the “affordable” part, but still.
Also Hillary helped create CHIP. Supports the public option, and a slew of other initiatives to make the system work better.
Hillary’s is a tactical calculation, I think, not a moral one. (You will find the opposite coming from the GOP, for whom universal health care is actual tyranny.) That may not be much comfort. But based on her record, I don’t think she’s the problem here. She’s not the obstacle. The GOP is.
Yes, exactly. Her record of taking this side or that side depending on how it will advance her political career. NAFTA, Iraq War, TPP, Keystone, Welfare Reform, Wall Street Regulations…the list is endless. Sure, she’s been on the better side of things every so often. As they say, even a broken clock is correct twice a day. That’s just coincidence, not her conscience.
If elected, she will immediately contact and strengthen her ties with all the wealthy people and corporations that funded her campaign. She will have no choice but to to their bidding because her tactical calculations will all be defined by winning another term. It will not be climate change, Citizens United, health care, or anything else. Her record shows.
And no, I do not like or accept the “affordable” part. Do I have the right to an “affordable” attorney? Do I have the affordable right to remain silent?
The terms “affordable” and “right” cannot exist in the same phrase.
I find welfare reform reference disturbing and race bating by Sanders. It’s one of the reasons why I have looked at him negatively over the past few weeks. When push came to shove, this is what he is made of, and race baiting is not it. SC minority votes gave Sanders a deserved middle finger by supporting Clinton 84% or 86%.
To be frank, I have found Sanders’ campaign empty sloganeering without substance. I’m voting for the person with substance, Clinton. I never though I’d be saying that, if you asked me that question a few years ago, I thought that would be impossible.
Again, that’s my opinion.
I do not know what you are driving at here. My opposition to President Clinton’s welfare reform has nothing to do with race. At the time of its implementation, I think I was for it. What I discovered, however, in its aftermath is that it was a cruel policy that hammered the poor. It did, of course, make Clinton appear “tough on those lazy poor”. Standard issue stuff and stuff that he and his wife ought to be ashamed of. Finally, my first knowledge of how horrible this welfare reform was appeared when I read an except from “Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America written by Barbara Ehrenreich.
You also had a different opinion of Clinton policies AT THE TIME. That is what I wish people would remember rather than judging the 1990s on a 20/20 hindsight fantasy of what should have been.
I hated Bill Clinton and everything he represented – a newly bipartisan consensus to screw over the most vulnerable and accelerate the destruction of the middle class. For my family and most of the people I knew it was an awful time of lost employment and shattered dreams.
I don’t trust a single “progressive” word either of them say and NEVER will I vote for either of them for anything.
n/t
…that incomes rose at all levels, that 20 million plus jobs, that inflation was held down, markets shot up. Can we have more of that middle class shafting, please? Glad you live in MA too – HRC doesn’t need your vote:(
I refer you to previous diaries I have posted on this matter.
It was THE issue of 2008. After the election, you had a Dem in the white house and Dem majorities in both houses of Congress, and could barely get it through, even without the more radical Sanders elements. The successful effort cost some Dems in Congress their jobs, and was one of the things that lost both majorities. The result is HATED by Republicans, loathed by liberal Democrats, and sort of unpopular among everyone else, even though on the whole it made things better than they were previously.
Now, we want to go back at it, and this time, we are going to get single payer or socialized medicine dammit. And somehow this will happen with GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.
This as a campaign issue seems like pure fantasy, and is completely divorced from the actual political reality.
The actual political reality is at the moment hostile to liberal political ideas, and is likely to remain so. Clinton’s tactical politics are just more suited to the situation at hand.
I will work for his election in November.
…which is nearly certain to give its electoral votes to the Dem nominee, with or without you. HRC is absolutely for universal health care and while I too prefer the single-payer method there are other ways to accomplish that goal.
I totally understand if you don’t want to vote for her tomorrow, but who are you going to vote for in the general? Don’t make the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The fact is that Bernie is almost certainly not going to be the nominee, and even if he were to someone overcome Hillary and Trump (or whoever) and win the Presidency, I don’t believe that he would be able to deliver on any aspect of his legislative agenda. We don’t really need Bernie in the White House. We need progressives (including Bernie) to control Congress if we are to productively move forward on these issues.
Except for this:
How so?
In the previous midterm the GOP had taken both chambers, the House for the first time in 40 years. Tacking center was smart politics and good policy for the times.
I wonder if this is what it felt like when FDR was elected, an economic meltdown and a nearly revolutionary election. My hope is for the best, the time when “What’s the matter with Kansas” comes of age, not Mein Kampf. Neither Hillary not Bernie are FDR but we may be a better country than either of them. I am not so optimistic as you about HRC, been around too many pols who flip and flop once elected, but we only have this country and we will mostly remain vigilant (once you set aside the idolators).
My fear is that we get the political version of the other side of the Atlantic during the Depression. It is hard for me to understand who is scarier, Trump or Cruz.
I am part of a generation of the Old Left that knows the Italian Communists were pretty damn good and the Socialists were corrupt. I live by the words of Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Letters, where he wrote that ““I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” So we continue on this journey.
If I had any expectation that my vote for Sanders would nominate him and prevent Hillary from ultimately prevailing, I would cast my vote for Hillary. Particularly to secure this country from a Trump presidency. On the issues of foreign policy I agree with your take, she took a long time to unlearn her lessons from the 90’s, but nobody else in this field is capable of handling his issue. She should retain John Kerry and continue the work he and President Obama have started on tackling global climate change.
If we had a Democratic majority like we did in 2009, I’d be more willing to wager on a Sanders presidency as a bolder alternative. But at the end of the day, their domestic policies are dead on arrival. But I trust Clinton to get her court picks through and be a global leader. I can’t trust Bernie to do that.
So why am I voting for Bernie? Because it’s a vote for a better Democratic Party. Not one led by the gutless and witless careerism of a Debbie Wasserman Schultz but one that competes in 50 states, appeals to working class voters, and strongly stands for core principles beyond technocratic competence and cultural liberalism. Voting for Bernie ensures that a younger, more capable and charismatic candidate, maybe a woman of color, can run on his platform and win and govern in a decade or two.
We need a game manager for this next season, but Bernie will yield much better draft picks down the road. So he’s got my vote in the primary, Clinton earned it in the general long ago.
Tell us what HRC learned from Libya (and I am not talking about Benghazi). Check out the NYT this weekend for another of her shitty Middle East war plunges. If you have not been there then you do not know.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
I read it earlier this weekend and feel it deserves its own thread,
you’re more than free to write that up with your own experiences included. I just don’t have the free time to do posts like that anymore. Few have been harsher on her foreign policy record here as consistently, or as frequently as I am. It was the single biggest factor for why I voted for and worked my ass off to get Obama nominated instead of her.
But at the end of the day it’s a binary choice and she has more experience on this issue than Bernie Sanders. I can’t picture him negotiating a treaty. Clinton already has. He has zero foreign policy advisers that have signed on to his campaign, he has made basic mistakes about understanding the Middle East that are borderline disqualifying, and I am just not confident as I was with Obama that it’s an issue he is knowledgeable or passionate about to the degree he would need to be to be a good president.
I am confident that she has largely learned from her mistakes and that the progressive base of the Democratic Party along with the broader electorate has lost any appetite it once had for humanitarian interventions overseas. The Sanders run missed a golden opportunity to articulate an alternative to her foreign policy-as did figures with more experience than Bernie like O’Malley or Webb.
that have led to the destruction of the American Dream for so many, and that have killed hundreds of thousands, destabilizing entire regions, abroad.
Why should we trust her judgment? Why should we trust that she’s looking out for us?
Yes, she’s saying the right things now, for the most part. She said a lot of the right things during elections then, too, then went and did different things.
As for your conventional wisdom views that make you think she’d have a better chance in the general, it’s exactly the kind of thinking that led to Massachusetts electing Scott Brown and Charlie Baker, and what led the nation to electing GWB in ’04.
Establishment “safe” choices have been anything but, while progressive stalwarts have won big victories in tough election years against tough, well funded opponents.
Fuck, in the year that was an absolute legislative bloodbath nationally and in Ohio, for Democrats, that pinko commie Sherrod Brown won a not-even-close victory over a well-funded, strong Republican. And, in MA, that whacko moonbat no one heard of 6 months before the election, Elizabeth Warren, blew away that truck driving tough guy Scott Brown, who many thought early was the odds-on favorite — and who won the union vote over an establishment Democrat with all the union endorsements two years before.
Hillary’s a bad choice on the issues, and the polling math and recent electoral history suggests she’s not looking so great in the general — even (or especially?) against Donald Trump.
Since it sounds like you’re done with the Democratic Party. I can appreciate the sentiment and encourage you to expand all your energy on that cause locally. Bernie won’t be the nominee and you don’t want to work for Hillary, I get that so feel free to start our committee in Swampscott. Would love to start this in Charlie’s backyard.
…though given the trajectory of the country during his term I could take another term of Bill.
I also agree about the speeches. I think it’s a silly gotcha, but I’ve come around to the view that she should just release them already if for no other reason than to get it off the table as an issue.
is the total number of votes cast in the first four primaries favored the Republican side. Identified Dems was actually down from past years. It is far from a guarantee if Hillary is the nominee that she will win nationally. It will depends whose base is stimulated to get off their duffs and vote. Hillary has spent her time and organization courting established Democratic voters while Bernie has counted more on new voters and independents. There is nothing overly worrisome in either of their government visions, only what is dug up by media and twisted out of context. Since some 40% of the electorate chooses not to participate regularly, this throws cold water on any reliable predictions about who is most electable. Bernie has won several elections for national office, and has shown his executive ability as mayor of Burlington. His judgement on foreign affairs stands out from the pack. As for SP, family/sick leave, tax paid tuition at public college, and the minimum wage are policies already in existence, even in this country. Medicare is a SP system, 65% of health expense is already paid through taxes(Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and government workers on all levels of government).
What is missing is the outright support that is timid about change. None of his policies create more financial distress, and, in fact, put more money in people’s pockets, not less.
If Hillary is the choice so be it, but Bernie’s candidacy offers an opportunity that does not come along often. The majority of polled voters agree when he is matched up against GOP candidates, even more so than HRC.
I rather promote progress rather than wondering if his Dem opponent will truly be a progressive or be happy with the status quo. I’m voting for Bernie because he represents what will improve our politics and economy for not only me, but my children, and grand children.
“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”. Just saying.
I read absolutely nothing into the fact that they are getting higher overall turnout in terms of November predictability. They have the entertainment factor that I’m just as happy not to have on our side. Plus some unenrolleds may feel that it’s better to play games with their race than ours for now.
It’s pretty easy to imagine a Trump candidacy driving turnout for HRC, don’t you think?
And nationally they sit within the margin of error. So unfortunately the opposite is also likely. HRC candidacy driving turnout for Trump. It is the independents, as always, who will determine the election. If there is any slippage in party affiliated voters, the opposing party nominee can carry the day. Bewilderment comes because this country is not unified in any unified way.
Trump most likely will have lower vote totals with Hispanics (’12- 27%) and African-Americans (’12-6%) than Romney.
But there’s a good chance he will increase Romney’s white male totals.
The question is does Clinton draw women from the Romney total? My own wife might be one of them. There’s a chance I won’t vote for Trump, though my wife views blanking the ballot in a dim light and she’s good at making me feel bad.
Then in addition to the country being split, my own house might get split.
A lot (I think) will depend if Trump moderates his tone (not necessarily his views). If he starts calling Clinton names for example, it’s not going to work in the general.
From Gus Newport, Gallup’s Director of Polling, and posted today:
This election is winnable for the eventual Democratic nominee, but there is a lot of work to be done. In this climate of rancid populism I would advise against complacency.
made by jconway and probably a few others (and me), but this whole line of reasoning is based on the notion that Sanders could beat Clinton.
If he could, then (arguendo) you have to worry about electability, the Supreme Court, and President Trump. And you can have endless hairsplitting arguments about who would be most electable and why, who would be most vulnerable and why, who would rally the base, etc. (And you can have loads of fun shouting at each other about it. Whee!)
If he can’t win however the question is, How well (or poorly) do you want a progressive to fare in a primary election against a moderate?
49.9%. Bernie needs to do well enough to make HRC realize that she needs to co-opt his message and skim off some of his base’s enthusiasm. And that would help her win both the nomination *and* the general.
See, that’s why I’m not “endorsing.” Win or lose, the Bernie voters are playing their role. The Hillary voters are doing theirs. It’s all for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds!
You’re right that if Bernie wins the nomination, the Republicans will attack him as Socialist.
However if Hillary wins the nomination, the Republicans will also attack her as Socialist.
I trust that Bernie isn’t going to back down from his position (which is simply liberal – he isn’t generally advocating for the workers to own the means of production).
I believe that Hillary will handle such criticisms by tacking hard-right (i.e. “third way”), and will attempt to get crumbs for the middle class by giving a lot more crackers to the super-wealthy.
If you are equating hard-right with the third way, we have a major problem in political comprehension. The third way is by definition CENTRIST, and NOT hard-right! Implying she is a political coward is shameful.
That would suggest she wants to be progressive but is scared to do so. I don’t believe that for one second. I think she’s a hopelessly out of touch creature of, by, and for the elite.
The New Deal was the “Third Way” between laissez-faire and communism. The same could apply to Western European social democracy. The Clinton-style “Third Way” might as well be hard right, because it allows the Republicans to drag the entire conversation onto the right side of the field. Its practical effect is to cut off the possibility of anything to its left.
She already is one. I’m more of a New Dealer now than I was in the 1990s and I suspect I’m not alone. The third way did not allow the GOP to drag us to the right. It was in response to it, and to Dem routs in 84 and 88 when we ran liberals. Why not believe her? When has she actually said she would do something and reversed herself or otherwise lied about her intentions? I am getting SO TIRED of these accusations regarding honesty and trustworthiness, which are about as fact-free as many Tea Party beliefs about Obama!