I fully understand why many Mass Dems love what Bernie Sanders is saying and intend to vote for him on March 1. Four decades ago, I felt the same way – only the candidate then was Sen. George McGovern. After years of Vietnam under Johnson and Nixon, we wanted the change McGovern promised. But things were and still are very different between the Hudson River and the Sierras. This is largely a center-right country. We got killed then — in fact, Massachusetts was the only state to go for McGovern (Remember the “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts” bumper stickers?) — and with Bernie as our candidate, well, I’ve seen this movie before.
We all want what Bernie wants, but it’s not going to be as easy as he seems to think — after all, we Dems control neither the House nor the Senate. Any positive change will be incremental, and any Democratic President will be abused by yet another right-wing Congress. For 25 years Hillary has shown she has the right stuff. She is tough enough to deal with whatever Fox News or Ted Cruz throws at her; while Bernie has yet to feel the back hand of the Republican noise machine. Further, as anyone who has been following current events during the last quarter-century knows, Hillary is better prepared than almost everyone who has entered the Oval Office. That’s why I’m supporting her, and I hope you will, too. As I said, I’ve seen this movie before, and I don’t want to see it again. The stakes are simply too high.
…I DO see Sanders carrying much more than just MA and would not rule out him winning if he were the nominee.
It would be really hard for the Dems to go much below 212 or the Republicans below 176 electoral votes given current state makeups (barring some unusual third party candidate). Only about 10-12 states are really in the mix for determining who will win.
The lack of an incumbent (and also the highly problematic GOP frontrunners) also makes a McGovern or Mondale-type blowout highly unlikely.
There was a lot of good work showing how Obama’s coalition of minorities, young people, women, and working people were enough to beat out Romney’s coalition of middle and upper middle class whites, the elderly, and religious conservatives.
They looked at 1984 not 1972, but basically Obama won the same percentage of those groups as Mondale did while Romney won the same percentage of the white vote that Reagan did, but instead of a near 50 state blowout for the GOP it ended up being a fairly significant loss in both the popular vote and electoral college based on the contemporary vote share those respective groups have in the electorate.
Hillary may yet be a safer bet than Bernie, but Bernie isn’t nearly the kind of risk a candidate like him would’ve been a decade ago, let alone four decades ago.
Put Hillary in the Lyndon Johnson role.
Johnson read the writing on the wall when Eugene McCarthy got 42% of the vote in New Hampshire to Johnson’s 49%. A previously unknown Senator from Minnesota came from nowhere with a campaign fueled by anger over the Vietnam War.
Sadly, Bobby Kennedy was murdered, the party split badly, and the political establishment shoved Hubert Humphrey down the throats of the party. Richard Nixon was the beneficiary of the split in the party.
Hillary’s strength right now comes from the super-delegates, which gives party insiders the opportunity to trump the primary outcomes and potentially install a nominee that fails to gain majority support through the primaries. I hope that doesn’t happen, but that is my nightmare scenario if Hillary loses a string of blue state primaries and captures the nomination through proportional apportionment of state delegates combined with a solid block of super-delegates.
First, Hillary strength right now is from super-delegates because Iowa was a tie. After New Hampshire — the state second most likely to vote for Bernie — he might lead in non-superdelegates. If that’s the case after Nevada and the SEC primary, I’ll be shocked. Too many Bernie supporters refuse to acknowledge that Hillary is that popular among many key constituencies that built and sustained the Democratic Party, such as working-class women.
However, I can riposte the suggestion of George McGovern with another — Ronald Reagan. Here was a guy way out of the mainstream, laughed at by the savvy class, and he won. He won, and despite a Congress controlled by the other side, radically remade our country. Tony Blair did something similar in the UK. Pierre Trudeau did up in Canada. It is possible — but not if you give up before the first opposition arises.
Superdelegates have the effect of breaking a virtual tie, assuming of course they all or mostly go one way, but they do not have the power to veto a clear mandate from primaries and caucuses.
Hillary Clinton is not an incumbent President forced to defend an illegal war spiraling out of control.
The attempted comparison between Hillary Clinton and LBJ completely ignores the context of the 1968 election campaign. What is the analog to the Vietnam war in your comparison?
I think we can count on Trey Gowdy coming up with an indictment of Hillary for Beghazi during the election but it will be much worse if the feds indict her for the email junk. I do not want this or think it is justified but the GOP hates her and will throw every piece of garage they can put their hands on, and she leaves plenty of detritus in her wake, plenty for them to throw at her.
A Democrat without her baggage, the luggage she packed for her career trip back to the White House, should clock any of the GOP front-runners. I keep wondering if the super delegates and party establishment will talk back channel and tell her the game is over and help choose an electable Democrat.
…though my understanding of the FBI investigation of her emails is that she is not the target of suspicion. Besides, the superdelegates are almost entirely with her.
McGovern ran a disastrous campaign (e.g. the running mate fiasco) against an incumbent president during an economic expansion during an ascendant period for conservatives, over 40 years ago. Hard to see the point of comparison here.
The Sanders campaign is firing well on a lot of cylinders right now.
In addition to the big win yesterday, they also launched this:
http://together.vote/
The video is superb. It strikes me as better-than-Obama-level branding. Yes, it’s just marketing, but very, very good marketing.