Progressivism doesn’t die with Hillary Clinton: Debunking myth that only Bernie..~Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/11/progressivism_doesnt_die_with_hillary_clinton_debunking_the_myth_that_only_bernie_can_foster_hardcore_liberal_ideas/
Progressivism doesn’t die with Hillary Clinton: Debunking the myth that only Bernie can foster hardcore liberal ideas
Progressive ideas need to be pushed through organizing the party and pushing legislation, not outsider rebellion
Excerpts:
...The reality is that Clinton’s campaign is much more representative of the liberalization trend than Sanders is. Despite the loud honking about centrism and DINOs coming from the Sanders camp, the truth is that the Democratic party is not a cluster of recalcitrant centrists and conservatives. The Democrats have been drifting leftward for decades now. Not as fast as the Republicans have been drifting rightward, because that’s impossible, but, even though it might be hard for Sanders fans to swallow, the movement to the left has been quite steady.
Clinton herself is part of this trend, with a Senate record that put her in the top third of most liberal Democrats, and even to the left of President Obama. She’s certainly more liberal than her husband, in part because her career as a politician started when his ended, meaning that she’s tracked left as the party has on issues like gay marriage and immigration. No wonder she voted with Sanders 93% of the time.
In other words, Sanders didn’t make what he calls socialism “an acceptable idea to a good chunk of the electorate,” as Mitchell would have you believe. On the contrary, there’s been a long, if boring, takeover of the Democratic party by the liberal wing, represented by Clinton and Obama, and Sanders is reaping the benefit of the mainstreaming of liberalism.
While the Sanders base is appealingly young, there is a major problem with the assumption that his base represents some kind of demographic future: They aren’t particularly diverse. On the contrary, the Sanders base looks disturbingly like the Republican base, dominated by white men. Clinton has won women in all but three states: New Hampshire, Vermont, and Wisconsin, and in Wisconsin, Sanders only got 50% of women. Clinton continues to crush with black voters and is doing much better than Sanders with Hispanic voters, as well.
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