Hillary's supporters need to calm down and stop depressing primary turnout.

Politics & Elections
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The real threat to the Democrats is not an acrimonious split between Bernie’s babes and Hillary’s handmaidens. The real threat is political indifference among the young and the poor: Not just about the Presidential election, but all those other elections this year that apparently Democrats have a bad habit of forgetting about.

Hillary’s treatment of Bernie in the debates has been smart so far. She’s not calling him a Communist and trying to kick him out of the party. She’s just trying to make a case for herself as a nominee for the party. I wish I could say the same for her advocates.

Look, those of us on the Bernie side have legitimate criticisms of Hillary. And we aren’t all Democrats getting up and walking away from the coalition of Bill Clinton and John Kerry. There’s an anti-war movement that turned out for Dems in 2006 & 2008, before the Democrats took them for granted and kicked them to the curb. The Democrats have lost without them, and will continue to mostly lose without them. Hillary is trying to gimmick her sex into the White House, and it might work this year, but that’s not a good long-term plan.

Getting Occupy kids and millennials to vote in a Democratic caucus or primary is a good thing. It gives them buy-in in the party. You need turnout, and you need a base to turn out. Much of your old base have defected to the GOP or died; if you don’t get new blood, you could start losing the high-turnout elections (where you used to have an advantage) in a few years.

Bill Clinton ran on “change.” Barack Obama ran on “Hope & Change.” Inverting that, and telling someone with real plans for revolutionary change, is very bad for the party–certainly over the next decade or two, and also likely this year. The “change” constituency can show up to vote for Bernie, or they can show up to vote for Trump. After that, they may keep voting for the same party in the general. Which party do you want to increase affinity for?

So let this be a fight. Let Bernie threaten to win, let him get ~40% of delegates, let his chances be alive well into May.

This brings younger voters into the party–as in, younger than 45 y.o., that’s how geriatric the party is now.

And, if future polling shows that he continues to be more likeable than Clinton, and he starts to get more coattails, we can throw it to him in June. We have the option. If he doesn’t, oh well, at least the interests of the younger generation, the anti-war movement and the poorest Americans will have a seat at the table in the future–and with them the Democratic Party will have a seat at the table in the future.

Without those constituencies, the Democratic Party is going to be a crippled husk very soon.

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Cite?

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So far, just on this board, there’s SlackerInc, who considers Sanders “disqualified” for being a pinko: Bernie’s Soviet “honeymoon” and trips to Nicaragua and Cuba are disqualifying.

And I forget who it was who wanted Bernie to only win a majority of delegates in one state. Like, “Win New Hampshire and then disappear,” but not in so many words.

I will try to post other examples here when I notice them.

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Maybe Hillary Supporters should stop saying women MUST vote for Hillary, because… woman.

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That, too. That’s so annoying!

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More immediately, without a base, you may not have a base to turn out. And you will still lose.

Hillary may or may not need the young socialists. But the Democratic Party, if it ever hopes to be a Congressional majority again, does.

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I think Frank’s “cite?” was for your subject line claiming that primary turnout has been a) depressed, and more specifically b) depressed due to Clinton supporters.

There’s been a grand total of one [del]primary[/del] caucus thus far. Shouldn’t there be at least two before one can identify a pattern and a cause?

8

Fine. Don’t try to depress turnout in the future. Desist from depressing primary turnout.

I apologize for inexact language. I’m just getting really irked at Krugman, the Vox lads, and one particular poster on this board, for these wonky arguments that Sanders is a no-hoper with bad ideas and therefore (implicitly) [del]pointless[/del] “worthless.” They may say they’re being realistic, but writing off this big a component of the potential Democratic electorate is a bad idea.

It has the effect of short-circuiting the nomination process to no useful effect. It will, if successful at torpedoing Bernie early, depress voter engagement and turnout in the future. That’s no good for the party.

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Well, the Voxers and Krugman I think have valid points, but there are also some really stupid things coming out of Hillary supporters’ mouths, especially the female solidarty stuff. Back in 2008, much of the feminist movement stuck with her but a lot of prominent females sided with Obama. Women who support Sanders are getting a lot more shit for it from the Steinems and Albrights of the country than female Obama supporters got in 2008.

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I would love to see a woman president of the US. I’d also love for that women to NOT be Hillary Clinton. The more I think about president HRC, the more Bernie looks appealing. I’m rethinking my earlier thoughts on his unelectablity.

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In online discussions it seems one of the Hillary faction’s favorite strategies is turning it into a gender thing, which is peculiar given the biggest difference between the two groups is age. Plus Bernie people tend to be proud of being more liberal than thou. It would make more sense if it were an alternate universe where, say, Warren supporters were castigating Biden supporters as “Biden bros.” Even then it’d be silly.

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I thought you were talking about something in real life. I don’t agree that SlackerInc expressing his opinion about Sanders will depress voter turnout, nor do I think that is what he is trying to do. He’s saying, “Here’s why to vote for Clinton,” not, “Stay home.”

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There has been no voter depression in any primary. THEY HAVEN’T HAPPENED YET.

Sanders is not a viable candidate. Not because of the stuff that comes out of his mouth, some of which is very good and some of which is bad, like any normal candidate. But because he polls between 2 and 20 percent with African-Americans. After South Carolina he will be as publicly and obviously doomed as some of us are now properly saying he is.

The whole attractive candidate notion is sheer nonsense from the beginning, in any case. Remember when Ron Paul was bringing in all the young, energized voters in 2012? Should everybody have stepped aside to let him get close so those young voters would stay in the system?

There is only one issue in the campaign: keeping the Republicans out of the White House. Nothing is even second. Remember when people talked about laser focus? Stop the blithering about Bernie Sanders and keep a laser focus on ensuring that Hillary wins.

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This is this nomination process. People who support one candidate try to convince supporters of other candidates that they should switch. Viability in the general election is always part of the conversation, in both parties.

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To me this is the most compelling reason that Hillary is not going to be a good president, her supporters can’t provide any better reason for her candidacy. The line is that she has always fought for women’s rights and will continue to do so, which might work in the general election but currently implies that Bernie is somehow another chauvinist pig male who would not support women’s rights as president.

I don’t think primary turnout is depressed so far, Bernie’s bringing out the young vote, and not just the 18-22 year olds, he took a commanding lead from the entire 18-29 demographic in Iowa. This could lead to huge turnouts in the rest of the states to resolve this generational divide.

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Every year there’s some shiny penny candidate who’s going to bring out the youth vote. It almost never works, younger people don’t turn out and it’s like watching Lucy snatch the football away from Charlie Brown.

With perfect , lily white, demographics, Bernie still lost in Iowa. He might win neighboring New Hampshire , but once the races moves to diverse states, he’s toast. The die hard Bernie Babies will learn that hashtags aren’t votes.

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Both parties.

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Why does everyone assume Clinton has more appeal to AA voters than Sanders? He’s a white Jew from Vermont, she’s a blonde WASP from Illinois.

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Because the polls indicates it?

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Bill Clinton was very popular with blacks, and Hillary has been a noted ardent supporter of Obama policies since she left the administration. I think she’ll do quite well with black voters, a constituency Sanders has never represented.