Hillary Clinton can not beat Jeb Bush

[delrem]

214. I like the attitude you bring to this place, H2O Man.

Calm and reasonable and open minded.
Anyway....

Jeb vs Hillary will be +$2billion vs +$2billion, from more or less the same donors. It might be seen as win-win, or lose-lose, depending on what side of the $$ divide you stand on.

But which candidate/party would win?

First thing I think of: the more or less thoughtless Republican voter wouldn't see the 18 month $4billion smoke and mirror show as odd, or distasteful. These are jackasses who think that American Enterprise Institute "tea party" astroturf is "grass roots", even while they stand in the shade of the bus they rode in on. They can't even feel their nose rings. Democrats and Independents, even third-way democrats, know that e.g. OWS, however disorganized and disjoint (perhaps in part *because* of that), is truly grass roots action. A +$2billion campaign, marketed like some "gets your laundry cleaner than the second leading brand" soap, will be hard for a lot of Dems and Inds to swallow, given who's paying for it. Most everybody understands the concept of an IOU and that when the money is that big the dues will have to be paid. To Wall St., to war profiteers, to the scum of the earth.

Second thing I think of: Anyone who identifies as "left" or "progressive" remembers being treated like shit by the third-way and their supporters (remember "fucking retards"?). Never listened to, ideas dismissed before hitting "the table", before even being voiced, all in a spirit of so-called "bipartisanship" that profits the wealthy. There seems to be NO attempt to explain/justify/defend recent history -- the ascension of the bankers, of the %.01 (TPP etc), or the PNAC war that started with Afghanistan, moved to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen,... and which the new war resolution being promoted would extend indefinitely, arbitrarily, forever. Third-way has been openly hostile to "the left" on these major fronts, and this is true of third-way supporters at DU as well as elsewhere, and taking $2billion from the banks and %.01 to promote yourself as in "you're Everyday Americans and it's your time... to vote for Me!" does nothing to address the problem that this has created. How many times has a third-way supporter, now a Hillary supporter, said that their team doesn't need or even want "the left"? Well, just look at how third-way, on DU, has rolled out the Hillary campaign, with the one unifying mantra "haha, we have the money, the money is needed to win, and the left will never have the bankers/war-profiteers money".

Third thing I think of: both #1 and #2 above provide the total opposite of the "hope and change (for the better)" consciousness that drove Pres. Obama to victory. Jeb, on the other hand, has no such problem. Jeb's problem will be the opposite, will be convincing the diehard Republican voter that he's a big enough asshole - an even bigger asshole than his brother and father. Which isn't such an immense problem for Jeb to overcome. What I'm saying here is that in Hillary vs Jeb, $2billion each on a perfectly level Wall St. and war profiteer funded playing field, Jeb's route is already slicked whereas Hillary has GOTV problems. Unfortunately, Hillary chose this particular $$$ defined playing field and it defines her as much as it does Jeb.

Fourth thing I think of: gender and, secondarily, LGBT issues. Hillary has an advantage here, not because she's a woman, but because she's a Dem. IMO she's not the strongest voice on either (I think just about any solid progressive Dem would be a stronger voice). But I can't say... I'm ignorant. I recall defending Bill Clinton during the "sex scandals", more or less saying "c'mon, Bill Clinton is a total improvement on that demented warmongering Ronald Reagan, and Republican operatives are cooking these scandals up, offering rewards...", whereas none of the women in my family were having any of that. The women in my family, every one of them, looked at me with disdain for my dismissive apologetic attitude. They didn't like it, they didn't think it made for a good role model, they didn't like how Hillary was spinning it, it contradicted everything they believed in.