My basic observations on the Democratic presidential primary contest, where we stand today.
When I step back from the ruckus I can understand where different sides are coming from, even though I am a partisan to one side in it. For starters I believe that a strong majority of the sentiments expressed by supporters of both Hillary and Bernie are sincerely felt. I also believe that a potent minority of such sentiments expressed are anything but sincere, and in fact are highly suspect. Having said that I think it is pointless as an individual for me to try to sort out who is and isn't a Troll. That quickly leads to witch hunts which are destructive to any community sharing an overall common purpose, beyond this one presidential contest. Real trolls mimic real people, that is how they are effective. I'll leave it to the team running and monitoring DU to use tools I don't have to root them out when they surface.
OK, some observations on the race itself. I know and accept that there are major veins of of strong genuine activist support for Hillary Clinton within the Democratic base, and that includes support from many genuine progressives. Hillary also has benefited greatly from the early and consistent support from the vast bulk of the Democratic Party establishment. Aside from the Obama Presidency, the Democratic Party establishment has on whole been losing ground to the Republican Party establishment, nation wide and locally, for most of the last decade when it comes to electing our side into office. On the whole, nationwide, there has been greater activist enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders than for Hillary Clinton, especially among the young (those below 45, but especially those below 35).
Those who early on warned that the electorate as a whole did not relish another Bush vs Clinton dynastic presidential election sequel have been proven right. Jeb never could be propped up as a candidate, and Hillary has historically high disapproval numbers for a leading presidential contender (second only to Donald Trump) among the general public. No one can pretend that the overall public mood this year has not been anti-establishment. Jeb represented the Republican establishment and Hillary still represents the Democratic establishment. Fairly or not (and I subscribe to thinking it is a combination of both) Hillary Clinton it is turning out to be a fairly weak candidate for our side. I am not speaking here about whether she would make an excellent or poor President, that is largely a separate issue, I am speaking about her as a candidate.
As it has been noted by others on this board, Clinton's trust issue with the public (well documented whether or not deserved) will now be hindered even further by the latest developments in the ongoing investigations into her use of a private email account and server while Secretary of State. I'm not going to go into details about that here, I stand with the official Sanders campaign in that regard - I leave it to the appropriate authorities to sort out. Fortunately there is a Democratic Administration controlling the Executive Branch, I trust it will not come down on Hillary for partisan reasons. I will suffice it to say that I found some of the details in the internal report just issued about her email use to be far more troubling than what I expected.
Having said all that I still find it extremely unlikely that Hillary Clinton will not be the Democratic Party nominee for President - though I am not quite as certain of that today as I was a week ago. Let me put it this way; as it is turning out I'm glad that the Democratic Convention is still almost two months away and that our final presidential choice will not be made before then - no one will get to Philadelphia with the nomination sown up with pledged delegates only. It would take a frightening strong deterioration of Hillary's presidential prospects between now and then to turn enough Super Delegates against her to deny Hillary the nomination. Were that to happen I would hope that she would voluntarily withdraw her candidacy, but if not, under that worst case for her scenario, I would hope that the convention denied her that nomination. Again though, I still don't think it will come to that, I expect Hillary to be our nominee.
If she becomes our nominee, I want her to defeat Donald Trump. In short I am not Bernie or Bust. There is another thing that I am not however, and that is I am not exclusively focused on the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign as the only essential task now before us. The political drift, both in America and the Democratic Party, has been steadily to the Right for several decades. Big money interests and conservatives have consolidated their hold on traditional national media, and both political parties go to the same special interests cup in hand looking for money to fund their activities and campaigns. Job killing, Union busting trade agreements and the deregulation of Wall Street advanced with strong Democratic support. I've said this before and I'll say it again. We have become locked in a pattern where incoming national Republican Administrations take us 5 steps to the Right, while incoming Democratic Administrations move us back two steps toward the center. Then the pattern repeats. It is nothing but a waltz toward (and some day soon over) the cliff.
Favorite or not Hillary Clinton faced a challenge in attempting to secure the Democratic Presidential nomination, certainly, but her basic mission was linear and clear cut; win the Presidency. By any definition hers is not an insurgent campaign. Hillary entered this race already established as one of, if not the, leading political figures in America and the World. Over the course of 25 years and several national campaigns she and her husband have built a strong web of contacts in the Democratic Party nationwide. They are the insiders, and they've used their fame and stature to help advance a lot of political careers (nothing wrong with that) so a lot of people owe them a lot of favors. Hillary Clinton has never had any trouble getting national attention for her own political agenda, it rests rather comfortably within the spectrum of conventional establishment politics.
That has not been the case for the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party. Voices like Amy Goodman, Noam Chompsky, and Michael Moore are infrequently heard in the mainstream media, and theirs are among the highest profile voices on the Left. The Sanders campaign is not only about winning the Presidency, at its most basic level it is also about breaking through the media blockade and being heard with an alternative progressive vision for America. Because of the Sanders campaign for President, that is finally starting to happen. I'll give you a fairly minor example that involves someone I'm personally slightly acquainted with; Jonathan Tasini (I helped in his campaign when he opposed Hillary Clinton in a Democratic Primary for her seat in the U.S. Senate). Google him sometime – he has solid leftist credentials and a pretty strong list of accomplishments, but he's the kind of guy who never would have gotten any real national media time before now, even if he staged a three week hunger strike in front of the White House. This year I've seen Jonathan often on TV, as an advocate for Bernie Sanders,
Bernie Sanders is helping build a strong and hopefully lasting movement among a leftist constituency that the Democratic Party, frankly, had largely long taken for granted and been faintly dismissive of. And with every state primary or caucus victory Sanders secures, both his own political standing and that of the movement that has coalesced behind him continues to grow. In short, it would be foolish and counter productive to his goals for Sanders to stop pushing his political agenda now while remaining presidential primaries still afford him a strong national platform to do so. And the thing is, aside from the passions that have risen due to an intense presidential contest, I believe many current Hillary supporters would ordinarily be happy to see Bernie do so, just like they too would like to see the corrupting influence of Wall Street money removed from politics.
Some say Bernie is hurting Hillary by aggressively remaining in this race. I won't say that he isn't, instead I'll say – barely. On one hand her supporters say that her current personal unfavorable numbers should be discounted, because she has been hit with constant Republican attacks for twenty five years and counting. When it is just her against Trump, they say, she will forcefully face him down and the public will overwhelmingly back her as the superior choice. That may be true, but it hardly squares with all of the hand wringing that anything Bernie Sanders says about Hilary now can seriously wound her: he who never drags up tawdry sexual charges against her husband, or blasts Hillary over Benghazi or her emails. There is nothing that Bernie Sanders has or would say against Hillary Clinton while running against her that doesn't pale in comparison to the mind boggling negative things that have been said about Donald Trump by the Republicans who ran against him. I am not worried about old campaign footage. Bernie Sanders has been far milder with Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama was in 2008, or than she in turn had been with Obama during their nomination battle.
Here is what does worry me. The national mood still remains strongly anti-establishment and against the status quo, which works against Hillary's strengths, and may work against Trump's weaknesses. Should Clinton become the Democratic nominee she stands to strongly benefit from every ounce of authenticity and anti-establishment credibility that Bernie Sanders possesses if he is standing in her corner after the dust has cleared. And Sanders will maximize, rather than squander, all that by seeing his quest fully through until the end, into the convention with the agenda that empowered a movement behind him. Hillary will need the heart of that movement behind her also if she emerges from Philadelphia as the Democratic standard bearer. She will need that energy and some of that passion. If she positively and convincingly acknowledges the significance of that movement, perhaps she could still win enough of that in order for her to win in November. Now is not the time for her campaign and its surrogates to train their fire against supporters of Bernie Sanders, there's been far too much of that already. It is the definition of counter productive.
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