When you see what Clinton actually does as President you might wish we had elected Trump. A lot of progressives see the Clintonism triangulation issue pretty clearly. Leopards don’t change their stripes.
Yes, we’re all well aware that you don’t like Hillary.
As far as triangulation is concerned, it seems like a pretty smart political strategy to me.
More Fantasyland. Nothing Trump has ever said gives any indication at all that I would ever “wish I’d voted for him,” and nothing Clinton has ever said gives that fantasy any further support.
No. He’s pursuing the nomination, testing and demonstrating support for his positions. When Hillary becomes the nominee, I predict he will endorse her strongly.
We’ve got the Pit, the IMHO, Cafe Society, etc. We really need a Standup Comic’s Corner for amateur attempts at humor.
Yep, and we get what we want, then win the next Presidential election anyway.
None at all. Donald Trump is as Bernie Sanders put it, a pathological liar. This was not said or meant as an insult. It is a fact. He lives in his own narcissistic world of how to con people into believing him. He will not make it to the presidency. He is in trouble with the law–caught red-handed in the Trump University fraud and NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will be prosecuting him. I don’t even know why Trump is still running. His past is all there to catch up to him when he faces real opposition. He is in essence criminally insane–he’s compelled by a complex to over-reach because he has gotten away with it. But the presidency of the United States is not a casino, a real estate deal between a couple of shady high rollers to make a killing and/or stick creditors with a bankruptcy.
Who’s ‘we?’ Republicans? Tea Party?
Console yourself with that thought, whether or not it’s within the ballpark of truth.
It’s what happened last time.
Which “last time”? And what does that have to do with progressive goals?
Last time a Clinton was in the White House Republicans got some major priorities done(welfare reform, NAFTA, cutting spending, shrinking the government workforce, deregulation), and then won the next election.
I am a progressive who has said that the Democrats will have to win my vote if they want it. Even if Sanders doesn’t win the Democratic nomination, I consider Jill Stein, the Grene Party nominee, VERY good, much better than Hillary. But her chances of winning the Presidency as a Green are low. So it won’t be all that difficult for the Dems to get my vote for Hillary … all they have to do is put a few progressive planks in the party platform, like passing legislation to overturn Citizens United and the other very bad Supreme Court decisions that have made our political process a bidding war among oligarchs rather than an actual democracy, and to break up the big banks and reinstate Glass-Steagall. I’d also require some proof that Hillary would stick to her promises (I don’t really trust her, you see) like for example, announcing that Bernie or Jill Stein will be picked as Hillary’s Vice Presidential running mate and Elizabeth Warren named as Secretary of the Treasury).
Really, bob’s your uncle, you have my vote for Hillary. A bunch of empty promises and half-measures? I believe I’ll pass.
I also think having a Democrat in office over the next four years COULD prove disastrous for Democrats or progressives, because it’s very possible the economy will implode again. The big banks have not been broken up, they are still playing with CDOs, Wall Street is less and less linked to the economy. If that happens, whoever is holding office at the time will be left holding the bag, Democrat or Republican.Can you say KA-BOOM! boys and girls?
However, that’s just a POSSIBILITY, not a certainty. The economy might get bolstered by a big war in the Mideast, say. Or the banks could simply take five years instead of three to wreck the economy again. It’s really hard to say. I think the only reasonable thing to do is vote for the person you think would do the best job for America and the world.
That would be Bernie Sanders. And he’s not out of it yet, not by a long shot.
A vote for Jill Stein in some 35-40 states would be fine as a protest vote, because most states are not actually competitive in a general election. If you live in one of the electoral college swing states, then it’s a vote for Trump. I don’t care about the counterarguments to that and I’m well familiar with them (“but she’s my first choice, and no one is entitled to my vote”, etc), it’s a first past the post election and not voting for the candidate who can defeat Trump is functionally the same as helping him win.
I also very seriously doubt Bernie Sanders would have any interest in being Vice President, a position that offers virtually no power and would also require him to say things that the White House tells him to say–something he will have no interest in doing.
The problem with your analysis is you fail to recognize the Republicans are like the conservative forces in Europe in 1848 or the dying gasp of them in 1918 in Europe, or the final vanguard of Jim Crow legislators in the 1960s. Society is moving on from some of the worst of the Republican ideology that has developed in the past 25 years. This is likely the last election where they can win, hold both houses of congress, and pass a ton of regressive nonsense. By 2020 the GOP will have started a move back to the center–because the population of the country has, if the GOP hasn’t, then it’ll fall into irrelevancy and possibly implode (leading to a “new party system”, we’re either in the 5th or 6th party system in U.S. history depending on who you ask, FWIW I say 6th.)
A lot of the worst ideas the GOP spouts are the most popular with its oldest voters, and its most religious. Two groups that are slowly but surely disappearing (the old at a pretty set rate, religion is still clinging hard but is inexorably becoming less relevant among younger Americans.) The GOP has a chance here to engage in some revanchism, and if they get the right Supreme Court justices in the changes in 4 years of Trump and two GOP Houses of Congress could take 20 years to undo.
FWIW the reality is that Clinton’s first term will be more about making sure nothing bad happens because of the GOP, running foreign policy, appointing judges (she’ll likely have a Democratic Senate that will likely use the nuclear option on SCOTUS filibusters since there is no functional reason not to any more), reworking some regulatory frameworks and etc.
She may have a chance to go on offense in her second term if the Democrats can win back the House, but it’ll be very hard before 2022, and even then may not be possible. The Democrats need to focus tremendously on being better organized and run at the State and local level.
They’ve shown no interest in doing that. I just moved from a blue to a swing state, and was surprised to see that 3 GOP house seats up for re-election are running unopposed by a Dem.
Crazy as it seems, I don’t think they really want to get the house back. The Dems are primarily a presidential party, and the GOP a legislative party. An obstructive congress is a convenient scapegoat/excuse for the Dem executive branch, and vice-versa. It seems to work for the money interests that fund both parties.
yeah, but they didn’t REALLY get rolling until Dubya took the White House. Man, what a fucked up excuse for a Presidency that was. And the Republicans haven’t changed their priorities either. Still the same idiot neocons running foreign policy. Still the same trilckle-down/deregulation fanboys running the economy. Garbage in, garbage out, and that sure does describe every Republican Presidency since 1980.
The fp neocons don’t have a party affiliation. They are like cockroaches that perpetually infest the White House no matter what party resides there. The fact that so many of them are salivating at the prospect of a Clinton presidency is a major concern for me.
Well then it’s time for Hillary and her bunch to do some serious negotiating with the progressives, isn’t it?
Of COURSE Bernie wouldn’t be Hillary’s “Yes” man, that’s NOT why progressives would want him to be in place. He would be there to serve as a progressive check on Hillary’s regressive tendencies. He would not accept an offer that would involve him agreeing with her when her policies were bad, and neither would any other progressive worth his salt. If that means Hillary won’t offer him the job, or any other progressive … well, that would be a damn shame, you know?
The problem with YOUR analysis is that it does not take into account that this is ALSO the last gasp of the DLC centrists. Republican-lite is gonna go out the door along with Republicans. If the DLC Centrists want to hang on to power in this election, they are gonna have to do some dealing. Did you notice that Bernie has almost a thousand delegates in the primaries, just 300 or so behind Hillary? The base is splitting, son.
And yeah, sure, the stakes are high, the nation may be irretrievably ruined … I have heard this from centrists and their apologists for the last 20-30 years in every election.
I don’t believe you any more.
So go ahead. Say it. Cry “Wolf!” one more time. It’s kind of funny by now.
As it should!
If the Democrats want to survive as a party, they need to focus on getting all the young millenial progressives into the fold. That means they are going to have to drop the DNC centrists, or at least make them a minor faction of the party. I fear, though, that folks like Hillary and Debbie Wasserman Schulz and Chuck Shumer are going to be unwiling to fall on their swords for the sake of the party. Gonna be interesting times, man.
I find the parallels between your arguments and those made by the hard conservatives in regards to what they referred to as RINOs to be very striking. The results for them and their ceding the middle are evident today.
No the Democratic party is not at this time the party in an existential crisis.
OTOH anyone who is a rational progressive and who believes that their numbers will increase, must conclude that keeping the presidency out of the highly reactionary hands while Conservative forces hold Congress and Supreme Court nominations are sure to come up, is job one, with job two being wrestling Congress, ideally both arms, out of Conservative control, and from there increasingly into win control of the party by winning a majority of the seats, district by district.
Given a hypothetical circumstance that Sanders does not secure the nomination, what is your plan to make that happen?