Here’s a question for Joan Walsh. If you’re a progressive Democrat who doesn’t support Hillary Clinton, what are you supposed to do? Now, I know that you suggest that progressives get behind Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown or Kirsten Gillibrand, but they all suffer from the same basic flaw that you’ve identified with Elizabeth Warren: they haven’t “done anything to build an organization in any of the early primary or caucus states.”
It’s true that Bernie Sanders has at least indicated a willingness to consider getting in the race, but he’s not exactly as compelling as a potential candidate as Elizabeth Warren. The problem for people who don’t support Hillary isn’t that Warren might not run. The problem is that no one of her stature seems likely to run.
Sherrod Brown and Kirsten Gillibrand are good alternatives, but they aren’t any more likely to challenge Clinton than Warren. So, why not try to convince the strongest potential challenger to get into it?
Sure, it can begin to look like a cult of personality, but anyone who is going to have a snowball’s chance in hell against the Clintons is going to need some fanatical supporters.
I’m willing to listen to alternatives, but what’s going on here is that there is a hunger for someone who can do more than offer a token resistance to Clinton’s nomination.
The alternative to this is to somehow try to find a way to move Clinton to the left without having a credible threat in the form of an actual challenger. How the hell can that be done?
There are some other issues here to consider, including the idea that Clinton could position herself in a way that is surprisingly more satisfactory than most progressives expect. I see this as a real possibility on domestic issues, but I truly doubt we’ll see the same in foreign policy.
Another thing to consider is that Clinton can say all the progressive things in the world but what will really determine how far she goes is what kind of congresses she’ll deal with when she’s the president. Progressives might do better by focusing less on the presidential race, which seems to be a lost cause already, and more on getting likeminded politicians elected to the House and Senate.
What’s clear, though, is that progressives do not want a third term of Clintonism and they’re getting shut out of the debate before it even begins. For organizations like MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, they can’t just fall in line for a Clinton coronation and maintain their credibility with their members. That doesn’t mean that they will wind up hostile in the end. After all, Howard Dean has already endorsed Clinton, so how oppositional is DFA really going to be?
So, yeah, the Draft Warren movement is partly about people maintaining their progressive credentials with their members, but that’s because their members aren’t sold on Clinton. Without a vessel for their discontent, the next step is apathy.
What really needs to be hashed out here is what progressives find objectionable about a Clinton presidency, because the objections vary a lot depending on who you’re talking to. And some of that old hostility might be misplaced. Clinton isn’t going to reintroduce the Defense of Marriage Act. She probably isn’t going to be all about deregulating Wall Street. This isn’t 1996 anymore.
On the other hand, there are those trade agreements. There’s that foreign policy. There are some questions about character. And age and health.
Just on the most basic level, progressives would like a seat at the table while the party figures out what it is going to be in the post-Obama era. But what good is a seat at the table if it sits empty because we don’t have anyone to represent us?
So, in the absence of better alternatives, people keep asking Elizabeth Warren to get into the race. It might not be productive in the end, and it wouldn’t necessarily change all that much even if the effort were successful. But when you complain about it, you’re basically asking people to either shut up and get on the Clinton bandwagon or your just telling them to shut up, period.
To be clear, I don’t want to have some divisive primary that tears the left apart and leaves us vulnerable to the complete disaster of a Republican presidency coupled with a Republican Congress.
But I don’t want to be completely shut out. I can tell you right now that shutting us out will take all the energy, brains, and creativity out of the equation and leave the left on autopilot, utterly reliant on metrics and poll-testing.
If you want another consultant-dominated campaign, well, you saw what that got the Clintons back in 2008.
It would still probably be good enough to beat the Republicans, but maybe not.
Why take that chance?
Look at David Brock’s exit and the kind of back biting leaks in that situation. That is just so emblematic about what is wrong with HRC.
I think that Hill’s going to run. She’s far to the right of my positions but, perhaps, I (and like-minded) can draw her more to the left.
If we all speak up, loudly and often, I think that we could make it so. The inner tube is fixin’ to be free ’cause we spoke up. Why not Hill?
haha,I’m so old that my old login is my login
and Dean was my guy š
now:
After all, Howard Dean has already endorsed Clinton, so how oppositional is DFA really going to be?
He just went all in for TFA which is essentially a pledge event for the Third Way/No blah blah caucus.
Breaking — Middle-of-the-road ex-governor revealed to be middle-of-road.
Film at 11.
I googled TFA and the results were all about Teach For America, which seems totally non-political. So I really don’t understand your comment about Third Way. TFA seems to be about organizing volunteer efforts among teachers to combat illiteracy. What’s that got to do with Third way?
Teach for America would be non-political if corporations and school districts were not using them as scabs to bust public school teacher unions.
Progressives could also focus on the Vice Presidency. Elizabeth Warren would make a fine VP. She’d be a bold, dare I say Clintonian selection, much like Gore was in 1992.
Arguably Warren would be better staying in congress. But Warren for veep ? Doesn’t really make sense to me.
Why would you was Warren as VP? I know that the position has become more important recently (and I DO mean recently), but it by no means has the power and impact of a sitting senator.
It is also not a shoo-in for a presidential race, although it does give a lot of name recognition and exposure. Which can be good or bad. re: Al Gore. Does anyone think if Al Gore had spent the 90’s as a siting senator he would have been defeated 2000?
sorry, not WAS Warren, but WASTE Warren
In 1992, Gore was Clinton’s major rival. Selecting Gore expanded the base. While selecting Warren would also expand the base, it would take her away from the power she is gaining in the Senate (as would selecting Sherrod Brown or Al Franken for VP).
The VP selection is really problematic for 2016. I suspect the Clintonian hail Mary move would be to select Howard Dean for VP. He has name recognition, is strongly supported among progressive Democrats and adds something that the campaign lacks — insight into how to reform the state party infrastructure.
By temperament, Clinton is more likely to select Cuomo or Hickenlooper or MacAuliffe–those being the last big-state governors left standing (Jerry Brown is likely not her type).
One of the huge issues for Democrats is age is beginning to be a huge drag on the available bench. There are no standout really young Democratic public officials with the stature or experience to use the VP role like Nixon and George H. W. Bush used their terms. Even if those young guys had to recycle through being a governor to position them for the Presidency. This is where the immediate yearnings for Warren or Bernie Sanders fall down. After the Clinton presidency, even if for two terms, what? Are there any of those excited youth of 2008 who have moved into political office and would have stature in ten years? If there are, the elders of the party overshadow them.
Jerry Brown would make a fine VP. But he’s not only old, he LOOKS old.
Not sure that he would play well in the Midwest, either. Governor Moonbeam and all that.
Picking vice presidents is always a campaign question, not a policy question, and you do it for contrast: she should want someone not from the northeast and more progressively identified than she is, and hopefully somebody who’s not in office, especially in the Senate–Mark Udall, Julian Castro. Picking Cuomo would be a terrible choice by any criteria (“not merely a crime, a mistake”) and I can’t imagine she’d do it.
I don’t see Gore and Clinton as rivals in ’92. Potential competitors: maybe. The idea behind the ticket was pretty clear: two young DLC type southerners, with the difference that Gore had an obvious interest in environment. They were complementary. The picked worked thematically but not in an ideological sense.
Clinton would be insane to pick Dean – who at this point ads nothing. Whether the driver behind the pick is geographical or thematic depends on the polling.
Not so much complementary as going for the double-down effect: Bill’s adviser’s knew the winning formula would check off these boxes — Southern, center-left/moderate, young, attractive, articulate — qualities Bill had.
Only if they could just find someone who also didn’t check off “womanizer” — and voila the raging moderate boy scout from nearby TN. Truly the way to “get two for one” but without the personal baggage.
Dean is just perceived as a bit too loose-lipped and not a good fit, mostly for his outspokenness, as VP. Not gonna happen. Cabinet position or Surgeon General maybe
Not so much complementary as going for the double-down effect: Bill’s adviser’s knew the winning formula would check off these boxes — Southern, center-left/moderate, young, attractive, articulate — qualities Bill had.
Only if they could just find someone who also didn’t check off “womanizer” — and voila the raging moderate boy scout from nearby TN. Truly the way to “get two for one” but without the personal baggage.
Dean is just perceived as a bit too loose-lipped and not a good fit, mostly for his outspokenness, as VP. Not gonna happen. Cabinet position or Surgeon General maybe
Hey — unintentionally doubled down on my post. Swear that was not planned!
Gore didn’t run for POTUS in 1992; so, he wasn’t a Clinton rival. Gore did run in 1988. That may have led to Clinton electing to pass that year and in the minds of some to view the two as rivals. In 1980, GHW Bush was 56 years old and didn’t have the elective office resume of the 39 year old, GOP VP nominee in 1952.
Clinton’s short list probably hasn’t changed much since 2008. Although Warner’s near loss last year might have dropped him down a few notches. With zero need to cover a left flank, my guess is that Evan Bayh is sitting in the #1 slot.
With zero need to cover a left flank, my guess is that Evan Bayh is sitting in the #1 slot.
That’s certainly one way to lose my vote. I doubt she’ll chose Bayh, if she’s the nominee.
Doubt team Hillary is worried about the votes of lefties. Politically, not much daylight between the positions of Bayh and Clinton. Pragmatically, he adds an experienced and slightly younger face to the team and importantly, puts a state in play that the GOP has to win.
Eau contrary, Hillary is far more disliked by the liberal “Democratic” wing of the party than she is distrusted by the moderate wing, who she is perceived as belonging to. The latter, including what once were Dem loyalists like white working class, is the segment she can rely on. Not so the progressive Democratic Democrats. So she would need to shore up support on her left by going slightly leftward with a VP.
Choosing a conserva-mod like Evan Bayh? That’s a little too cynical in addition to being well off the mark. If IN is in play in 16, it will be because of Hillary’s own strength there. And choosing a Bayh, for questionable gain in one state would likely mean she gives up support in places like IA and OR because of further erosion in the liberal wing.
Only if Mark Penn somehow returns as her main campaign adviser — Demican Evan Bayh would be his ideal guy to “complement” Hillary .
A question — and I’m only speaking strategically and not what lefties or liberals want — which states flip from blue to red if Clinton were to choose Bayh? Throw in Jeb! as the GOP nominee and that puts FL in the red column.
Clinton could lose any two out of CO, OH, VA, and WI and still win. But is there a single potential VP nominee that would keep two of those states blue? I’m not seeing it. What I am seeing is that OH was Obama’s 2012 second weakest state (FL was first.)
As a Dem, I’d be worried about IA, OR and WI, maybe a few more, with a HRC/Bayh ticket. It would either enable a lefty third-party candidate, enough to throw those states into true tossup status, or it would demoralize the liberals in those states enough to cause them to not vote.
Going rightward for a VP for Bayh is exactly the opposite of what she would need to do, especially given her FP posture, which doesn’t appear likely to change much, and her unfortunate track record w/Iraq.
A VP needs to shore up a nominee’s perceived weaknesses, if any. And hers are almost entirely with failing to excite the liberal base of the party. Bayh doesn’t address that need — only exacerbates it.
This is possibly where we disagree: A VP needs to shore up a nominee’s perceived weaknesses, if any.
Not that that isn’t where Obama went in 2008. Biden to fill in a perceived shortage of experience. However, others have tried and failed using that strategy. The critical difference between Obama and say Dukakis is that Obama-Biden looked and acted like a natural team. Same with Clinton-Gore in 1992 which IMHO was the first Presidential election when the power of a “natural team” became obvious. Since then, the “two left feet” tickets have lost (or sort of lost in 2000). The phenomenon is likely a by-product of TV national campaigns. Reagan-Bush and Bush-Quayle didn’t look much like a team except in comparison to Mondale-Ferraro and Dukakis-Bentson. This is likely to remain operational in Presidential general elections.
Mostly gone are the days when the VP slot was used to shore up or move a state into the party’s camp. That was accepted as JFK’s rationale for choosing LBJ. OTOH, the ticket wasn’t dissimilar to Obama-Biden. Two senators with the younger and far less experienced at the top of the ticket. Yet, it’s foolish not to consider the potential of a VP nominee to add votes for the ticket from his/her home state.
The outside/inside or inside/outside DC combo for a ticket is also a consideration. Even if it’s more perceptual than actual. A sitting or former governor as a nominee does need at least a nominal DC insider as VP. Technically, neither GHWB in 1980 nor Cheney in 2000 were DC insiders but they were perceived to be. On that criteria, Clinton is so far inside that she could use some outside help. The problem is that the bench is extremely thin. Two or more terms in office, seven or more years younger than Clinton, and male, it shrinks down to two possible candidates.
Maybe Jim Webb, depending on how irascible he is and how much his foreign policy crosses taboos.
Two problems with Webb. First, he’s weak in a role of a loyal subordinate. Second, the optics of an all senior citizen ticket isn’t good.
A real consideration for any potential nominee is if she/he wants the role of being the distant third in the administration. Gore could tell anyone what that’s like, and that was after he had demanded and received assurances from Bill that he wouldn’t be benched in favor in Hillary.
Interesting fellow that Webb, but wish he’d stuck to writing songs or books or whatever it was. Artist Jimmy Webb had talent, but the pol Jim Webb was rather a dull crank of a barely-Dem.
Hillary probably cannot afford to pick so center/center-right (on DP or FP issues) as Webb presents (on DP). She would need to go leftward, even if just a tick or so. Certainly on FP — no squaking hawks or those perceived as such.
Would she dare to pick Latino and go for a Julian Castro? Bold move but also a pick that would help neutralize Jeb’s perceived strength (for a Gooper) with Hispanics.
Castro wouldn’t bring much to Clinton’s ticket. Could possibly shore up CO, NM, and NV. But Jeb! could counter with Martinez or Sandoval as VP.
Jeb has a built-in slight advantage wrt hispanics in terms of getting enough to cross over to the GOP to make a difference — he speaks Spanish and his wife is hispanic (if I’m remembering correctly). No need to counter.
But that wouldn’t be possible anyway as the GOP holds their convention in July 2016, so no countering possibility, only the opportunity to anticipate the other side’s strategy. Dems will be in a position to counter if necessary.
I like JC’s profile and not only his hispanic vote-getting ability, but his broader appeal — Obama-like– to white middle-class liberals, many of whom will be lukewarm at best about Hillary.
Seems to me that the Latino support for a Bush Presidential candidate has eroded over the past decade. Particularly among women and younger voters. The GOP retains an advantage with white voters and that’s stronger for white male voters which is how Republican leaning/committed Latino males view themselves.
The demographic focus of team Clinton will be white and Latino women without conceding more than a couple of points of the white and Latino male vote to the GOP that went for Obama in 2012. As the white male vote is much larger than the Latino male vote, wouldn’t it be more astute to minimize the loss of white male voters than Latino male voters?
I’ve accepted the Hillary’s going to take the nomination easily and I’m willing to support her. The alternative is too horrible to imagine.
Progress comes in small increments and a HRC presidency would get us some decent Supreme Court and other federal judicial nominations. If she has coat tails and can sweep in Democratic majorities in Congress, that would be far better than an Elizabeth Warren neutered by a Republican Congress.
Like it or not, there just aren’t enough progressives in this country at this time to get the kind of government we’d fully approve. Changing this is going to take a lot of hard work. The kind of sustained effort Democrats have been unwilling to make. The minute things don’t go as we’d hoped, we pick up our marbles and go home.
I completely agree with you and with Booman when he says:
“Clinton can say all the progressive things in the world but what will really determine how far she goes is what kind of congresses she’ll deal with when she’s the president.”
While people don’t identify themselves as progressives they certainly support progressive ideas.
By aligning early behind Clinton the Democratic party should be able to take back congress. Then it is up to the Progressive Caucus to take a page out of the Tea Party’s book and force some populist concessions for the people of man street.
I thought this was the nut of the post:
Imagine how much better off the country would be if Obama had had Nancy for Speaker and 61 votes in the Senate for the last 6+ years…
Hillary may well have a lock on the nomination at this point (says he who thought she wasn’t going to run), but without a Congress that she can work with (and push back against her mistaken policies and proposals) it won’t mean much more than treading water in too many areas.
If by chance she’s not going to run, and I still think there’s a small chance of that, she needs to decide fairly soon so that others can get to work.
The Presidency is only part of the picture. We can’t spend the next 18 months only working on that. The Democrats need to work doubly hard on winning back the Senate and laying the foundation for winning back the House. Demographics isn’t going to do it on its own.
Cheers,
Scott.
I don’t think Hillary consulted with those 200-300 economic experts recently if she weren’t very serious about running. I mean, hearing from 2 or 3 economists in a day is tiring enough …
She came oh so close a few elections back, and this time there seems no one in Obama’s superstar class to deny her the nom. She’s still physically and mentally healthy — obviously though her last opportunity to get the WH. Short of some sudden unexpected medical issue, she’s running.
I disagree that progress comes in small increments. The process appears to be one of punctured equilibrium in which strong political trends build up until there is an outburst of fairly rapid changes, a reaction, and another long equilibrium. All of the money and police power and disenfranchisement of voters is really intended to prevent an outburst of change that most politicians are aware is an overdue correction from the Reagan era but now are scared of. Even Democrats are scared of what that outburst might bring. Thus the hard line on non-violent demonstrations by Democratic mayors, governors, and the federal security agencies.
That only means that the frustrations will build.
Franken. He’s already written his “Pres. campaign” book.
“Why Not Me?: The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency”
Also knows how to fight a recount battle and WIN.
Franken has already endorsed Clinton.
What’s wrong with Bernie Sanders?
Three strikes and you’re out.
Old. White. Guy.
He has not summoned the courage to run as an old white guy in the South and the West with his version of a populist message.
All focused on Hillary means there will be no coattails. Any alternative has to create their winning strategy on building a majority from a Congressional and legislature coattails strategy in order to organizationally offset Hillary Clinton’s media dominance.
The funk that progressives are in is seeing that a Hillary victory will like the Obama victories come without to the Congressional and legislature power to actually change the narrative or to change policy in progressive direction even if that were Hillary Clinton’s predisposition, which most doubt. A huge personal victory then is a Pyrrhic victory for Democrats and alternatives to the conservative financial juggernaut.
And what that does is weaken Hillary Clinton’s support further among progressives. If Hillary going to be pinned down like Obama has been for his Presidency, why not vote for Jill Stein who says all the right things and has a platform framed for progressives. Or some other third party candidate. That will be the logic that will split the progressive vote and narrow Clinton’s margin when it comes to election day. Clinton’s inevitability will become like Al Gore’s inevitability — make the election close enough for Republican chicanery, this time perfectly legal voter ID restrictions and gerrymandering, to steal.
But progressive have neither bothered to build their numbers or their geographic distribution in order to arrest the conservative slide of legislatures. And local and state Democratic parties have become unusually incompetent at winning elections in areas in which they used to be shoo-ins. Moreover the rampant corruption in the Democratic Party (Cuomo, Emanuel, and the folks already convicted) is a lead weight on voter turnout.
There is now too much to do to correct this to be able to do before November 2016. Especially since no one has found the antidote that returns victory to people politics in the face of billionaire money politics. It’s no longer an election; it has become an auction.
And local and state Democratic parties have become unusually incompetent at winning elections in areas in which they used to be shoo-ins. Moreover the rampant corruption in the Democratic Party (Cuomo, Emanuel, and the folks already convicted) is a lead weight on voter turnout.
Isn’t this really the big problem? The Third Way/DLC’ism is killing the party from the inside out. Just the way it was intended.
You and THD have hit it on the head. This Third Way stuff is killing the party. There is no longer room for progressives. I received a survey from the DNC today and retuned it unanswered with a letter expressing my disappointment in any real progressive agenda these past six years. And when it comes to local/state politics, faggataboutit.
I wish Bernie WOULD run a primary campaign. I also wish Franken would run … I think he would make a great VP and would be easier to replace in the senate than Warren.
I hope Webb runs. I want a vigorous, populist, progressive primary season which will force HRC to the slightly left of center positions she held before coming to power.
I don’t think any of the current, named potential candidates will beat her, but that isn’t the point. The point is to have a candidate that has the backing of all Democrats and not have 1/3 of them pissing and moaning about how they never had a chance to get their message across.
This would help immensely in getting better management of local campaigns through experience on the ground. That used to be a Democratic hallmark.
I think there is a great danger that an unopposed Hillary Clinton would go flat and get blindsided by the GOP candidate and the huge media blitz that is coming from the billionaires.
Having some sharp primary competition could prepare her for the general election debates. Unfortunately that is not the way that the Democratic establishment thinks. It might create surprises like the incident in South Carolina when the Big Dog went all racist on Barack Obama and got no traction for Hillary in the white community at all. That was when Obama started winning primaries until that passed and Hillary failed to make up the elected delegate totals by the end of the primary and the superdelegate system that was to prevent another George McGovern was about to lose progressives by coronating her anyway. It seems that being Secretary of State served Hillary’s vanity enough to deal. No doubt Biden brought a few superdelegates along with him. And all the other team of rivals so celebrated at the time. Did no one notice how many governors became cabinet secretaries?
This worries me A LOT. It’s very dangerous for her and her organization to go into the general essentially untested.
It is the branding efforts themselves that have distorted and distanced American politics from the voters. Voters no longer feel that they are actually heard by the candidates, who put technology and forced-choice between themselves and voters who are afraid to be candid even on safe home turf. I remember candid members of Congress prior to the Reagan administration and I didn’t move in the VIP circles where candor is exchanged for campaign cash.
Consultants might be necessary to winning, but they and the money it takes to hire them have deformed the political process in ways that fundamentally disadvantage progressives.
With TPP it’s all a sham anyway. The multi-nationals will own the small part of this country that they don’t already own.
Who is President is important to political professionals. It determines who gets the gravy. For ordinary voters, it doesn’t matter one bit. I believe that is why voter participation continues to drop. Political campaigns only determine who gets to suck on the corporate teat and make no difference to the lives of ordinary people.
right. Republican restrictions on voting have absolutely no effect on overall voting at all.
I don’t know, maybe the voter restriction laws DON’T have any real effect on voter turnout (nationwide). But I doubt very much that low information voters are not voting because they have come to the conclusion that President doesn’t matter for ordinary voters. Of course, that begs the question of whether a Republican President would be worse in the long run for low information voters. Yes, I can definitely see where low information voters would think Cruz, Carson, Huckabee, Perry, Jeb Bush et al would EXACTLY THE SAME and EQUALLY AS BAD as Hillary.
And I got land in SE Louisiana I’d like to talk to you about.
I never said they had absolutely no effect. I’m saying I know many registered voters who don’t vote because all the candidates are crap. Keep deluding yourself that it’s all voter suppression. Yeah, voter suppression is why there is a Republican Governor in Illinois, not inept/corrupt Democratic politicians. Sure. That’s why.
Is Hillary herself capable of being driven Progressive?
Only if a progressive near supermajority in Congress puts legislation on her desk.
Which will happen around the time of the heat-death of the Sun.
The Democratic Party is a coalition.
As a result, a supermajority wouldn’t be progressive, and no progressive majority would be a supermajority.
Even in ’32, or ’64, you didn’t see it.
She will absolutely be as progressive as the Congress she’s given, in foreign policy as well as domestically. You know where her hawkishness comes from–the turmoil when she gave Mrs. Arafat a hug. She remade her views to run for Senate from New York, then remade them a bit to stand out on Obama’s “team of rivals”. She’ll do it again to suit the current pro-peace, anti-Likud trend nationwide, and hopefully fools like Schumer and Menendez will accept it. But we really need to stop focusing on the presidency, it’s just not that decisive, and we cannot hope to have as thoughtful a president as Obama for another 20 years. Congress, with any Democrat whatever in the White House, is what’s going to count.
No
will say ambiguous things that COULD be interpreted as being progressive. Some in blogsphere will highlight these things as proof she is moving left.
These things will be forgotten about 30 seconds after the Democratic Convention is over.
Because that is what Clintons do. I know this is hard to believe: but on many core issues the Clinton’s just don’t think we are right. They like free trade. They don’t believe in progressive economics.
In a Clinton Presidency there will be no move to single payer (which needs to happen: either we get single payer or we will get medicare cuts in the long run). We will get little regulation of Wall Street (my god, can’t everyone figure out the Clinton’s don’t believe in it). We will have a foreign policy to the right of Obama’s.
Pressure from Congress? Really? How did that work out when we actually had a majority?
Bernie? I was a Burlington resident in 1981 when he first won. I will be voting for him here in New Hamsphire. I like him. But if he gets the nomination he will get destroyed. The stuff about O and William Ayers was bullshit. Look up the Vermont Electors for the Trotsky believing Socialist Workers Party in 1980 – which supported the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
Any liberal/left politics requires as a first step the creation of an identity separate from neo-liberal Democrats within the party (because no one can want a repeat of 2000). You need leadership to make that happen.
We seemed bereft of it. Most are simply to afraid of the Clintons.
Again, if it’s Hillary I’m voting for the Republican. Both the Third Way Dems and the Republicans seen completely incapable of having a foreign policy filled without blowback or dodging recessions, so I’d rather not have a Democrat in the hot seat when things inevitably blow up.
I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed with the ‘reasonable’ progressives. The ones who say that America is barely progressive, let alone socialist, and despite the fact that they love progressive policies they despise the label. So it doesn’t particularly matter what a particular President will do as long as we drive up the electoral margins. So we should vote Hillary Clinton, because something something gendered identity politics, her polling numbers are currently gonzo (just like Dukakis’s in early 1988!), and she has sooooo much money. So who are you going to vote for, O’Malley? Psssht. It’s not like America will notice the lack of progressive policies during the election.
While I do agree that Americans don’t know what the fuck they want, I do know that Americans know what they don’t want. And Clinton, Summers, et. al seem determined to try to force-feed the public their brand of plutocrat-bootlicking incrementalism. I don’t know what makes them think that they’re going to be the ones who’ll thread the needle of warhawkery and neoliberalism. Not when better Presidents (FDR, Carter, Obama) tried that nonsense and got their shit handed to them in Presidency-derailing ways.
So vote Communist.
Troll.
Not good enough. Those contradictions don’t heighten themselves, you know…
What’s this crap about heightening the contradictions? Look, I have three standards of descending importance for supporting a President. They’re not particularly big ones like ‘smash the corporate state, impose social democracy’ or even medium-strength ones like ‘can we have Carter-era tax rates again’. They’re pretty small:
1.) You need to be serious about climate change. If Hillary Clinton decided to make this the central theme of her campaign, she could marry David Koch for all I cared. Unfortunately, not even the super-leftists seem really committed to this so I can’t really judge her by this standard. However, if her campaign team wanted me to come over to her fold and donate cash and register voters and shit without any other changes in her position, she’d do this.
2.) You have to show appreciation for what it takes to run the economy long and short-term. Nothing in Clinton’s voting record or speeches shows that she’s up to this task.
3.) You have to not be a warhawk. Warhawkery fucks the party in the ass for no appreciable gain.
So given these standards, I will vote for a non-belligerent Conservadem like Hickenlooper or Jon Tester (despite his conflict with point #1, but like I said no one is really good on this) before I vote for Hillary. All I ask if that if you’re in the White House your contribution to the long-term health of the Democratic Party is at least [i]neutral[/i]. But she can’t even meet that pathetic standard. So yes, I will vote for a Republican before I vote for Hillary unless she’s ready to do one hell of a mea culpa.
That such incredibly low standards is apparently me being a communist shows that the Democratic Party is your problem, not mine.
When things “inevitably blow up”, I would prefer that that not entail a nuclear war that destroys civilization and possibly the human race. A good number of Republicans want Armageddon, and I refuse to put anyone in power who is accountable to them. Hillary, despite her flaws, is at least not actively trying to kill us.
There’s no point in arguing with “progressive” purity trolls. They’re legends in their own minds, but outside those fetid confines they’re utterly insignificant in both numbers and influence.
If you’re despondent about the prospect of a 3rd Clinton term, you may be in a full blown depression when you hear that Michael Bennet D(CO) may be Hillary’s choice for vp. That’s the rumor going around in Colorado.
Both Bennet and his wife were at Yale about the time the Clintons were there and Michael’s wife Susan Daggett is from Arkansas where her father was/is an attorney. Michael’s father was in the BC administration (as well as the Carter administration) Too cozy for comfort.
If you’re not familiar with Sen. Bennet, check out what VoteSmart has to say about him. He is the quintessential neoliberal and refuses to declare positions on anything, especially controversial issues.
http://votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/110942/michael-bennet/#.VNpOHSxz6So
From Bennett’s Wikipedia page:
Michael Bennet then entered the business world, working for six years in Denver as Managing Director for the Anschutz Investment Company where he had direct responsibility for the investment of over $500 million.
I hope people know who Philip Anschutz is. He’s a super-rich wingnut who used to own National Review for a time and presently own the wingnut welfare outlet The Washington Examiner.
Colorado is a more or less must-win swing state.
I would rather lose in a principled, consistent fashion, though.
The way into the future is paved with glorious progressive defeats.