I want to wish the best of luck to Hillary and say this

[cascadiance]

128. One way or another, we need a more progressive agenda for this party...

There are many here who really adamantly want someone like Warren over Hillary Clinton, and what up to now has been her past history of actions as a politician and in other spaces...

But just like the OP, we will likely vote for her if given the choice between her and a Republican for the president.

The real issue isn't us here who really want a new progressive set of policies for the party, it is what those independents, and others that have felt disaffected by both parties will do and who they will vote for.

This is where either:

a) we nominate a more progressive candidate like Warren (IF she runs of course, given those who want to keep the "she isn't running" posts responding to any conjectures of this sort).

or

b) we nominate Hillary Clinton, but through the primaries, she's been a lot more specific now on what she would do to depart from her past work to promote monied interests and more to work towards progressive reforms that this country sorely needs. This potentially could happen, but likely will only if we have someone like Warren or Sanders in the primaries, promoting a discussion of such issues which won't happen without them, and with a corporate media asking the questions that don't want to be in conflict with their funders.

I would contend that there are many independents, and even some Republicans that are waiting for candidates to speak for the 99% more, as they as well as Democrats or other progressives are affected by things like the growing wealth gap, shipping of jobs overseas through "free trade deals" and "guest worker" indentured servant worker programs that hurt the average American, whether they are Democrats, independents, or Republicans. If we stay with the third way mantras, we WILL NOT grab the middle vote that might be needed to win this coming election, whether we have Hillary Clinton or someone else running as a Democrat.

If someone like Rand Paul, should he be nominated, runs on many more visible Libertarian issues (pot legalization, cutting military funding, investigating domestic spying, etc.), even if at his core, he won't help us as progressives or the 99% in the fashion they need, he may pick up these votes instead, because we're not exercising leadership for the progressive change that this country needs, and for some of the less informed, he gets perceived as the "candidate of change", which the corporate media will gladly latch on to and push this notion.

That is why it is so important, even if we nominate Hillary, we stay very strong in our stance that she MUST change from the past history of what the Clinton family has done in putting place things like NAFTA (and perhaps now TPP in the same fashion), signing Republican bills to get rid of Glass Stiegel, and the Telecomm bill, which has done as much damage as what Republicans have done over this period to create the atmosphere we have now where our middle class is getting wiped out and we don't have the necessary abilities for voices to get heard to change it.