Don’t get me wrong- if Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ nominee in 2016, as everyone (including me) thinks she will be, I expect that almost every Democrat will vote for her.
But I don’t see anything resembling enthusiasm anywhere. If anything, my sense is that most Democrats regard her the way I regarded Mitt Romney and John McCain- as someone I pretty much HAD to vote for, but only because the alternative looked so much worse.
Am I wrong? ANYBODY here really psyched to vote for Hillary, the way so many people were psyched to vote for Obama in 2008?
Again, I KNOW the vast majority of you Dopers would gladly vote for Hillary, if only because Ted Cruz et al seem too horrible to contemplate. But are any of you thinking “Hillary in 2016, is that a dream come true or what?”
I have run into two people in the last few weeks who are very excited about Hillary. Both were Hillary delegates in 2008. I don’t share the enthusiasm, but there is some out there.
In answer to the OP - Yes. I’ve been to a grassroots organizing campaign where there were 50+ eager potential volunteers (in Atlanta). I’ve given money and ordered from the online store. Lots of pictures of grassroots organizing campaigns across the country on Twitter. Lots of excitement especially since it’s a year and a half until the election.
Yeah, of course. Clinton fen, and the sort of people who see getting a woman in office as a victory for feminism.
I had my big happy identity-politics vote for the Hawai’ian mulatto with the funny name. It didn’t really work out that well either for the party or for progressivism.
That said, Clinton has enough allies that her candidacy might have coattails Obama lacked? So maybe it’s useful to the Democrats to have her.
She’s taken some surprisingly progressive stands so far in her campaign. So while I wouldn’t say excited yet, I can say I’m pleasantly impressed so far.
I missed the part where Obama didn’t have coattails.
In the 2008 election, the Dems picked up, what, eight Senate seats (not counting Arlen Specter’s party switch, but including Franken’s eventual win in MN), and 21 House seats as well - on top of the nontrivial House majority they already had, going in.
And in 2012, the Dems picked up 9 House seats and 2 Senate seats. The latter was particularly impressive, given that they’d seemingly maxed out their gains in that Senate class back in 2006.
OTOH, the Dems got crushed in both 2010 and 2014 without the benefit of Obama’s coattails.
My thought in a nutshell. I don’t want Hillary and it has nothing to do with her gender. So much of the nation and congress actively hates her that I think she will have at least as much difficulty executing policy as Barrack had. Under her, I would expect to see the right/left division in this country widen even more.
I want Bernie, despite him being an old white guy. I don’t know that there is the ill-will against him that Clinton would have to overcome. I think at worst he’s regarded more of a philosopher and idealistic crackpot than a president, but I don’t know that anyone really has measurable ill-will toward him. Not on a scale approaching the animosity that comes with being Hillary Clinton.
I was not a big Hillary Clinton fan last time around. I thought and continue to think that she is a largely ordinary politician. She has convictions about some things, but is willing to float on the wind of opinion about others. She is not process-focused, meaning she sees politics as a kind of game where you take the rules as they are and try to play them to maximal advantage, instead of spending any energy on making the rules just. She is deeply cynical and jaded. And while she strikes me as quite smart, we do not think about issues in the same way and she and I do not quite see eye-to-eye on many issues in a way that is mostly generational. She also ran a badly mismanaged campaign that struck me as a sign of lack of leadership skills.
But…
I have come around somewhat and not just because she is the fait accompli for my party. First and foremost, she was largely right to be so cynical. I had no illusions (or at most minor ones) about Obama bringing red and blue together, but I did think it was possible to reduce partisan acrimony and focus more on the business of governing. I now believe those problems are structural and have little or nothing to do with personalities or the approach of a president. So I don’t really care if Hillary would come in as a prejudged quantity. Obama didn’t, and it didn’t matter.
Second, I think her tenure at the State Department was largely a success. I know a lot of people who work there, not all of whom are Democrats, and they have been very positive about her as a manager.
And third, her first major policy address was on mass incarceration. While the issue is becoming more important, she didn’t have to do that. I thought Democrats would probably go one or two more election cycles before it became a centerpiece issue in presidential politics, and I certainly didn’t think Hillary Clinton would champion it, given that Bill Clinton is the second-worst offender in creating the system. I find that extremely heartening.
So I think you could call me enthusiastic. I prefer her over Sanders, Chafee, and O’Malley for reasons wholly apart from the fact that she is a lock to win. I will donate and volunteer.
Well, I think many of us liberals learned our lesson with Obama, just because someone is exciting doesn’t mean they are a good president. Obama has done some decent things, but as a president he has been so-so (he could’ve done more had he been more prepared and more aware of what he was getting into).
So being ‘exciting’ for myself and I would assume other liberals is not really uber important. What matters is do we trust the politician to get things done when in office. With Hillary, no not really. I really hope I’m wrong if she wins, but my hopes aren’t too high.
Either way, I don’t care about the 2016 election. A GOP president but a democratic congress from 2016-2020 wouldn’t be terrible. The big election is 2020. If anything, the GOP winning in 2016 will be good for the dems in the long term because 2020 is when redistricting occurs again, and all millennials are eligible to vote (they will be over 40% of the electorate in 2020). 2020, if done right could be for liberals what 1980 was for conservatives, the beginning of a 30 year era.
