You want Sanders supporters to support their candidate instead of attacking Clinton–and then you spend the rest of your post attacking Sanders via his supporters.
You want us to vote for Clinton? Find–tell us to vote for her. Don’t tell us how terrible Sanders supporters are.
I think there’s a very strong case to be made for Clinton, along the lines of, she’s extremely competent, she’s god a track record of finding consensus, she’s very organized, she’s got foreign policy experience. These are all great reasons to vote for her, and they’re why she’ll get my vote in the general if things go the way I expect they will.
The case for Clinton does not consist in attacking Sanders supporters as Crypto-Republicans.
Actually, if you paid attention to what I’ve written, I’m not attacking his supporters. I’m attacking his supporters who are acting like jerks. As I said, I fully intend to vote for Bernie- heck, I’d prefer for him to win. But if he doesn’t get the nomination, I’ll vote for Hillary.
So, basically, I’m a Bernie supporter. I guess that means I’m attacking myself?
Here’s an idea. Why don’t we all take a deep breath and resolve that we aren’t going to make voting decisions, or arguments in support thereof, based on the assumption that random people on the Internet who support a particular candidate are typical of that candidate’s supporters? Particularly given that, as someone mentioned above, confirmation bias will always lead us to think that the other candidate’s supporters are stupider and ruder than our own team?
Also: criticizing the other candidate, assuming such criticisms are true and relevant, is a perfectly legitimate method of supporting your own candidate. Note, as above, that “X’s supporters are so mean to Y’s supporters on Facebook!” is probably not true and certainly not relevant.
And also: Sanders’ lack of appeal to minority voters is probably an insurmountable obstacle to him winning the nomination. It’s irrelevant in the context of discussing his hypothetical chances in the general election, unless someone has polling data showing that minority voters would jump to the GOP if Sanders were nominated.
I’m totally feeling the Bern, and I thought your OP was spot on, but that’s not fair. Hillary, in her 20s, while working for a civil rights organization, went undercover in the South posing as a parent looking for an illegally segregated school for her daughter. It’s not hyperbolic to say she would have been at risk of being murdered had she been found out by the wrong people. This doesn’t sound to me like a woman who was ever in any danger of becoming a Republican.
If you want Hillary to win, of course you want her to win as soon as possible, which by definition involves “torpedoing the only remaining challenger”. A long primary campaign, though it might be better for the party as a whole, increases her chances of not winning the nomination. It seems a bit much to argue that people in early primary states who actually support Clinton should instead vote for Sanders in order to make the race more interesting!
I am aware of the idea. It is based on sloppy and fallacious reasoning, and does not fit my experience of my state’s Democratic Party.
The majority of citizens *do not vote. *The majority of white citizens do not vote. The majority of black citizens do not vote. The majority of latino citizens do not vote. Just because a demographic is not voting for the GOP does not mean they are voting for you. And a Democratic Party of old privileged white insiders that offers nothing to young populist movements, that just sits back and waits to be voted in by a groundswell of young brown voters, will fail ever to see that materialize.
And some state Democratic Parties are still full of white people who, low-key, are small-c conservative and uninterested in reaching out to black voters.
Obama appealed to young people, and not only to young people; he had appeal across the whole range of voter ages. And he had appeal across races and social classes. He represented in his person integration and social progress. But the party hasn’t found a way to take that kind of ‘celebrity executive’ appeal and translate it to winning legislative seats.
Democratic engagement is not something that automatically happens. Most people are capable of living as apolitical–even in oppressive societies, even in oppressive societies that nominally have the franchise. Ferguson, MO had bizarrely low turnout among people who lived there and owned land there, until the Mike Brown shooting and the political organization following that.
And a majority certainly doesn’t automatically coalesce around you because you’re not quite as vile as your opponents. You don’t actually have laws forcing citizens to vote for one of two parties, nor even to vote at all. Democrats are not entitled to anyone’s vote just because Republicans have lost it.
OK, I see you remain to be convinced on this. For future consideration: How many primaries has Ron Paul won? How did he do in his best showing at the Iowa caucuses?
We agree about the facts but not the causes. Do you really think young people wouldn’t vote if a party catered to them?
I wasn’t aware that we never got out of Vietnam. Or do you mean something else I’m not understanding?
No. This election *year *is about getting several hundred Democrats elected in multiple chambers across this country, and enough that there will still be Democrats after an off-year election loses seats for the President’s party. For a party with “Democrat” right in the name, y’all sure act like you think this is an elected monarchy.
The party has had twenty-two years since the 1994 wave to work on that, and so far their brightest new stars have been two guys from Chicago–one is Prez, the other an asshole mayor–one guy from NYC who got canned for stupid use of the internet–and Elizabeth Warren, who’s not that young. I still say the party is hollow. But a party with more candidates Weiner’s age that talk more like Warren has a chance to contend.
This proves nothing about politics beyond the particulars of the post-Gingrich GOP.
Can, yes. Will, probably not. And totally beside my point.
I would vote for her to beat Ted Cruz, of course; or a fanatical hard-right Roman Catholic, like Rubio and probably Kasich. I may vote for her against Trump given his support of active ethnic violence so far. Against Christie, I really don’t know yet. Maybe.
But no, I really am a socialist, I really do think that Hillary’s version of the Democratic Party is bad for poor people, and I really may vote Green in protest, although the set of circumstances in which I expect to do so is narrowing.
If it’s her versus another Bush, I probably won’t actually decide to douse myself in gasoline and set myself on fire, but I will laugh with the mad laugh of despair.
They need to go at each other hammer and tongs. Clinton and Sanders are in danger of encountering lines of attack in the general election that they aren’t seeing now because Clinton won’t attack socialism from the right and Sanders ain’t interested in her damn emails, or any other ethical problems for that matter other than her Wall Street connections. The Republican nominee is going to have been hit with everything they can be hit with.
Well I do think there is this idea that Bernie supporters are committed to socialism and so, wouldn’t vote Hillary in the general. Whereas Hillary supporters would hold their nose and vote Bernie over the right. I don’t think this is actually true… at the very least if the GOP gets smart and nominates Rubio, who, yes, does some some ridiculous positions, but can sometimes position himself sounding far more reasonable than he actually is. Centrist Democrats voting for the right wing candidate that sounds positive isn’t something in a fantasy FWIW - ‘Reagan Democrats’ (and a lot of them union members) come to mind.
Well, OK, fair enough; she’s not a racist “social conservative,” and the way I used “Republican” in that sentence was both unfair and pointless. The parties today are different than in her parents’ day. But I wonder about an alternate timeline where she married a northern Republican (like her father) and became a moderate voice in that party. How would she react to Gingrich in the 1990’s?
I’m not saying not to vote for her. I’m saying it’s worse for the party if it’s all a walk after South Carolina, like the Clintonites expect. I don’t think that helps progressives, really. I hope Bernie’s campaign does have legs, and I think it probably does.
Sorry, I haven’t been paying attention to which candidate you support based on other posts. When you said something about thinking half of vocal Sanders supporters were secretly Republicans, that sounded a bit like an attack on Sanders supporters. If that’s not what you meant, I misunderstood :).
In mad despair.