Clinton for President: Support / Don't Support

[JackRiddler]

Hillary Clinton for president in 2016?

26 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	She's my first choice and/or the best possible choice.
	2 (8%)
	I prefer someone else.
	24 (92%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[firsttimer]

1. no

[Duckhunter935]

2. nope

[painesghost]

3. No

[JaneyVee]

4. I prefer someone else but would fully support her if she won nomination.

[painesghost]

6. I would also, but would not be happy about having to do it. n/t

[Agschmid]

15. Agree.

[SteveG]

5. She is not my first choice

but I think she is the likely choice. I like Schweitzer, and I like Warren, but I think that Clinton will get the nod if she wants it. She is infinitely better than anyone the Republicans will put up against her, so I will have no problem supporting her if she gets the nod.

[onehandle]

7. Warren or Clinton. But Warren isn't running, for President anyway.

Nobody else can defeat Marco Rubio.

[MannyGoldstein]

10. Hillary said she's not running, either

Multiple times.

[Control-Z]

12. When did she say she was not running?

Just today I heard her say she will decide sometime next year.

[MannyGoldstein]

16. For example...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024201226

[mr_liberal]

8. I want to know what her possible

supreme court picks would be like.

[LittleBlue]

9. No way in hell

Wall Street is already represented on the Rethug ticket, why do they need another representative on ours?

[MannyGoldstein]

11. The results of this poll are.. striking

I think Americans are thirsting for an FDR Democrat. They don't know what an FDR Democrat *is* yet, but when they see it, they'll know it. And vote for it.

[painesghost]

13. I truly hope you are right! n/t

[winter is coming]

14. Ah, you forget: we're not representative of the Democratic party.

Despite that, expect to be endlessly lectured on why we must vote for Hillary. You'd think that if our opinions were so irrelevant, no one would bother.

[Agschmid]

17. I agree.

We are not representative of the party as a whole, we also know MANY more people so the name recognition piece is not nearly as important.

[MannyGoldstein]

18. !

We are the vanguard.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. I think you're confusing "DUers" with "Americans".

You can't make any guesses about the opinions of the latter from the opinions of the former.

[JackRiddler]

33. A stock excuse for right wing politics.

I think you're selling "Americans" short.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

37. National elections over the last 20 years say I'm not.

On average, about half the American electorate vote for Republicans.

Moreover, of the last five democratic presidential candidates, I think it's probably true that the two who won (Clinton, Obama) are less liberal and more centrist than the one who won the popular vote (Gore), who is in turn less liberal than at least one and arguably both of the two who lost hands down (Dukakis was almost certainly left of Gore; I think Kerry/Gore is a tossup).

I would be delighted to be proved wrong, but I have yet to see anything that makes me think the people who claim I am have more than wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

Remember: declared preferences are a far less useful predictor than revealed preferences. If you want to know how people will vote in future, *don't* look at polls of their opinions on issues and look at how those line up with the candidates positions. Instead, look at what they have actually *voted* for in the past, and see how *that* compares to the candidates' positions.

I think that you need to accept that you are living in a country with a large number of people who will vote for candidates with right-wing policies, a large number of people who will vote for candidates with centrist policies, and only a small number of people who will vote for candidates with left-wing policies, and cut your coat to fit your cloth.

[JackRiddler]

40. I do not submit to these premises.

This is only true in a country where no opposition party exists, the mass media have been monopolized by capital, and all acceptable discourse is narrowed to this right-wing range you describe--because the logic you describe is self-fulfilling.

No one with a platform ever puts forth the alternatives because the alternatives can't win, and they can't win because no one with a platform dares to put them forth for long enough.

It is a failure of the Democrats for never representing an opposition to the dominant politics, let alone pushing it with consistency.

"Americans" are not an inert mass that never changes. They have moved massively to the left over the last 20 years, but no one gives them that alternative. They would respond differently at the polls if they were consistently given at least a social democratic alternative over these same decades, instead of the kind of bullshit realpolitik that decided in advance to foreclose on a single-payer health care system on the European model (and call it that! and do so for years!). They would respond differently if they could also drop the poisonous self-defeating thinking that you are propagating (this is the way things are, choose the lesser evil).

What they see is that Democrats are the party of NAFTA and TPP, bank bailouts just like the Republicans', kinder-gentler wars than the Republicans', slightly less corruption than the Republicans, fundraising from corporate sponsors just like the Republicans, and moderately less crazy shit than the Tea Party and the fundamentalists. And the Democratic leaderships have prevented the party from doing better or following its base.

The majority of the people are kept demobilized by the unrelenting lack of choice, they believe there is no point to "politics." If you're going to point to the election results in such an environment as an empirical observation that you fashion into some function of inevitable fate, then at least deal with this empirical observation too: the vast majority are of the opinion that "politicians, they're all the same." Why? Whose fault is that?

[Kaleva]

28. These polls often show a disconnect between DU and Dems in general.

Dennis Kucinich would lead these early DU polls by a very wide margin in times past but that never translated to campaign contributions and favorable mainstream poll numbers in the real world.

[JackRiddler]

35. In this case, perhaps not.

Hillary Clinton is being forced through by the corporate money and the DLC movement. She's not popular and will be beaten by anyone who can coalesce the "not-Clinton" energy, as Obama did.

This time, it could easily be someone on the real liberal-left, in the FDR mode. The American people have been ready for that for a decade or more (given also that both Bush elections were stolen).

The main thing Clinton's got going for her is the myth of her inevitability as devised and promoted by her supporters. This allows use of the "Hillary or the Republican" cudgel.

[joshcryer]

29. Nah, this is DU dude.

Ask the same question but with "If Clinton is nominated, would you support or not support."

The "not supporters" would get banned on DU2 but would probably get to stay around and entertain us on DU3.

[JackRiddler]

36. Wow, it's DU. I hadn't noticed.

You can ask your preferred question in your own poll, if you like. It's been asked in many ways, as it is the main argument going on behalf of the bullshit line that Clinton is inevitable.

Here we're asking what should actually matter: Do you want this person as president?

And indeed, this is DU - in which the very active posters who support neoliberal pro-corporate "Third Way" politics and neoconservative foreign policy a la Clinton are a tiny minority.

[Tx4obama]

19. There is a Hillary or Elizabeth poll on the link below

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024202790

[joshcryer]

30. Thanks TX!

[cherokeeprogressive]

20. Nnnnnope. Not on her BEST day.

[politichew]

21. Prefer someone else, not because I dislike the Clintons...

I admire them greatly.

But because I was born in 1988, and Bush Clinton Bush Obama Clinton doesn't sit well with me.

I want to experience something new and exciting... didn't get to with Obama because I didn't come around to the left until mid-2011.

[Demo_Chris]

22. Absolutely not. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. I'd prefer Bernie Sanders, but I'd settle for Warren if she's nominated.

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. Yumyumyumyum

[cantbeserious]

26. No Support Here - The Country Does Not Need A Corporate Democrat In The White House

eom

[gtar100]

27. 2014 2014 2014 2014

So much, much more important than 2016 right now. Dems love the presidential race but the President can only be effective if there is actually a decent group in Congress to work with. Have we learned nothing since 2010? Screw 2016 for now. It'll have its time but that time is not now!

[JackRiddler]

31. Sure.

It's a quickie poll to confirm something obvious: the Clinton "inevitability" wave on here is a case of astroturfing by a small minority of posters (self-appointed and otherwise).

[TheKentuckian]

39. President gets air on a national board because it is a national election.

The local nature of other elections makes them more difficult to discuss. Folks don't know the players, don't connect to the local politics, and district primaries are pretty deep into the woods to hash out in this far in advance.
As the races move to the generals then it is possible to whip a little and get folks to donate or help phone bank but right now it is clunky to speak about. I have one of the juicer bits with Grimes v McTurtle because he is the minority leader so it generates more broad interest than most but there is only so much folks in New York and Oregon can discuss and debate about right now.

Meanwhile, the Presidential conversation is one that we all get a piece of and more to the point, serves as an anchor point for the debate about the future and direction of our party that hundreds of individual races just can't even if they have more actual impact on those who we are and what do we aspire to be questions.

I think this is why even the 2014 nannies have little to discuss about it other than to admonish folks for not being focused enough on 2014.

Of course we could discuss issues and then parlay that into candidates that measure up well on those issues but then folks are accused of being purist who will lead us to defeat against radical regressives (who magically are semi default and not as extreme as what used to be a fairly average Democrat).

That leaves us with essentially rah - rah national generic Democrats and boo - hiss national generic Republican which while great and true is not much of a discussion or debate. It especially doesn't work when election season is expanded to essentially forever and seems to require a significant amount of ignoring what the people we elected actually do unless it is good or can be spun as good because otherwise one is trying to elect (insert boogiemam de jour here).

The most important election in history is always the next one. Okay, fine but what that has become our politics to the point of getting elected is getting lost in the shuffle other than mitigation to varying degrees of the worst possible outcomes of the machinations of the soulless cruel, the staggeringly stupid, dragon like avarice, and sociopaths while playing friends with the same fucks and ever moving in their direction while simultaneously forcing them to even further extremes in some phony chess match that the people seem to be losing more and more in by the day.

Start some good threads and they will come, wag your finger and snark and they will be sour. Wanna elect more Democrats? The ones we have need to suck less to keep folks that only show up on "the big one" to be more consistent, for those that vote third party to stay with us, and most importantly to get some of that big ass chunk that sits home to make sure they keep getting a better deal.

Chasing independents is a silly distraction because almost all of them are partisan or leaners at minimum. It is running after shadows and worse the few that do exist tend not to be ideological at all, they are appealed to by charisma, humor, appearance, and all kinds of things that don't tie to policy but policy is used as the rationale for winning after the fact.

That goofy conflation I might hate the most, that insists without basis that if Dukakis had run on Clinton's agenda he would have won and that a pol with the talent of Clinton couldn't even make a run on the policies we had the previous election.

Shit, our biggest problem is we tend to favor the dull and the soft spoken. Lots of what folks might call nerds. Obama is almost a hybrid able to play preacher or professor. We get all professor and folk's yawn, nod, and vote for whoever they think they would want to have a beer with or stay home.

[Laelth]

32. k&r for Elizabeth Warren. n/t

-Laelth

[L0oniX]

34. She's inevitable I tell ya. The 1% will tremble and fear us once again thanks to her!

[Rowdyboy]

38. I need real choices before I commit to vote for someone. I would certainly vote Clinton if she is

the nominee.

In a primary? Depends on who else is running. Against Biden, Andrew Cuomo or Jerry Brown, she has my vote. Against Brian Schweitzer, Martin O'Malley or Sherrod Brown-I'd think long and hard. Elizabeth Warren isn't running and Alan Grayson is a non-factor in my mind.

[Enthusiast]

41. I refuse to support any Third Way candidate. That means Hillary Clinton.

Third Way is bent on making the Democratic Party into the party of Reagan.