The Guardian: "'Hillary, can you excite us?': the trouble with Clinton and young women"

[Attorney in Texas]

link; excerpt:

The other day in Manhattan, Hillary Clinton supporters met for lunch at the home of the media executive Geraldine Laybourne. A group of 50, mostly women, was determined to generate excitement for Clinton’s campaign for president. They were frustrated to see her lagging again among younger voters, and their invited speaker was Kenyatta Cheese, a young Obama campaign veteran and internet impresario.... “When you are in the White House, you’re going to be connected to the establishment,” says Sarah Kovner, who served in the Clinton administration and was at Laybourne’s lunch. “That’s just a fact.”

Sanders put Hillary Clinton on notice last summer, when no one was paying him much heed. “All over this country,” he declared, “ordinary people, working people, elderly people are moving in our direction because they do want a candidate to take on the establishment.”

During that most recent Democratic debate in South Carolina, I read texts about Clinton by some students at Harvard, where I teach, and talked to some afterwards. Although Clinton’s difficulties with young voters have been much written about, their comments revealed a more acute ennui.

“Hillary, can you excite us?” asks Osaremen Okolo, a 21-year-old African-American who supports Clinton but “misses feeling fired up” as she was for Barack Obama and as some of her friends feel about Sanders.

“Young people like Bernie because he sounds like a revolutionary,” she says. But Okolo prefers Clinton’s experience and positions on issues like equal pay for equal work and criminal justice reform. “Hillary sounds pragmatic, which can come across as stuffy to young people. Her experience can almost count against her.” She adds: “Sanders seems bold, even if none of his ideas can happen.”... Kara Lessen is a 23-year-old in her final year at Harvard who has volunteered for Sanders but was excited by Clinton eight years ago. “The ‘I’m a woman and it’s OK to vote with your uterus’ message is tired,” she said. “Bernie really understands systemic oppression. Her neo-liberal politics is pretty tired.”

[SamKnause]

1. Think small.

No we can't.

It's too hard.

Don't even try.

Now is not the time.

[Dems to Win]

2. This is sad.

To ask the question is to know the answer.

I so much wish Clinton had announced 7 years ago that she would not make another White House run and encouraged other Dem women to throw their hats into the ring.

[WillyT]

3. K & R !!!

[hedgehog]

4. I watched most of last night's Town Hall, and Bernie

really excited me. I've heard it before from him, but it's still exciting.

I like O'Malley, but I think he was using the occasion to slip in a lot of boiler plate I've heard before.

Then came Hillary. I am so tired of hearing how brave she was as wife of President of the United States to call for women's equal rights in 1995 at some conference I never heard of. I'm also tires of hearing how people are mean to her. No excitement at all.