Hillary's electability is largely political myth at this point

[cascadiance]

168. I think more than previous elections, Democrats are increasingly resenting candidates PUSHED on them

... which is why I think if people see another contender that speaks more for them, I think there will be MORE likelihood this time around for that candidate to pick up a lot of votes than they might have in the past too. People gravitated to Obama in the last election is that because of the top two candidates, he was the bigger unknown quantity than the other, and people were "hoping" that he might ultimately show himself to serve the people later. Especially voters like Edwards supporters or other lesser candidates that felt towards the end they had to pick one of the two left, which lead to Obama's surge then.

Polls at this point had her a "lock" for the nomination in 2008, but another candidate won both the primary AND beating the Republicans. What evidence is there that this time the same thing can't happen?

Of course it can happen, the question is how likely it is to happen. I think it's highly unlikely that another primary candidate will emerge to seriously challenge her. But like I said in my last post, "electability" isn't about winning the primary, it's about winning the GE. And the current polls do show her in a good position for the GE.

But there are also articles that show that the Republican candidates would likely have problems against ANY Democratic candidate, not just HRC. Trying to just claim that because the media has focused their polls showing HRC winning over all of them as being meaningful, when many other Democrats if they were polled by a more neutral press, would probably show the same thing for other Democrats too, making it a far smaller issue than what the Democrats actually stand for that will help them win a nomination, a choice that corporate interests and the corporate media DON'T want us to emphasize.

And you are making it sound like candidates have to be "centrist" to win elections now? I think you are swallowing a bit too much of the Korporate Koolaid these days. Americans, when asked to vote on issues tend to have a MAJORITY, even in red states show themselves to be what the corporate media and the corporate elements of both parties to be "far left"

I think that centrist candidates appeal to centrist voters. I agree that, on issues, the electorate is further to the left than the government that they elect. But that doesn't mean that a candidate perceived to be too liberal won't have trouble winning states like Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, which is basically where the presidency is decided. It has nothing to do with Kool-Aid. The fact of the matter is, "Socialist" is a bad word to many American voters, whether or not you or I like it. And the minimum wage (from your link) is not a "far left" issue. Obama supports raising the minimum wage, I'm not sure if Hillary has officially taken that position, but she probably does as well.

What are "centrist" voters? I'd like to think, unless they are part of the 1%, they don't really exist. The implication is that they are "moderate" and "middle of the road" and "flexible" on issue stances to work with "the other side". In reality, they are mostly just flexible on social issues, that their backers don't really have a strong concern about, but with fiscal or other issues that affect their corporate and 1% backers, they are pretty inflexible and NOT moderate, when you are talking about the interests of 1% versus 99% of Americans. Perception is managed by the media, and many people when they start to hear messages less filtered by this media, they start to get truths that have them support things that are depicted by the media as "far left". The media tries to foster division on social issues to keep the public divided, so that elections are decided on these more visible divisive social issues rather than the underlying fiscal and other issues that the "centrist" pols support only a 1% minority of Americans, and a huge majority might throw them out (from both parties as well as independents) if exposed. I noted that prop 90 here in Oregon last election showed that kind of messaging and unity that helped revolt against corporatist takeover of our elections.

Obama might talk about supporting the minimum wage and decent pay for all of us, but in effect his actions are working AGAINST the minimum wage, with his pushing for the passage of TPP, which will allow employers to push wages downward a lot more rather than up. I'm concerned with Hillary's lack of stances on TPP, and her pretty vocal support for H-1B program expansion show her to be in the same boat of her actions working against workers rather than for them.

I think I'm starting to like the term "progressive" to get behind rather than "liberal", "left", "progressive", or "socialist" that we've evolved between as the right has made or has tried to make each of these a "bad word". Progressive doesn't try to advocate a "left" or "right" leaning, and amplifies the notion of the masses versus the controlling elites, which I think has some more potential support for not just "far left" people as we are termed, but from independents as well as many Republicans who are frustrated with these "centrist&quot corporate serving) issues almost as much as we are. it would be a lot harder for the Third Way to cannibalize the term "populist" like they've been recently trying to do with the term "progressive", as it more directly is aligned against the way Third Way and other corporate serving entities are set up for.

Too bad in a number of those states, if the Democratic candidates had been more clear on their support of these "far left" issues, they might have won instead of losing to the more "honestly corporatist" siding Republican candidates. Same thing happened in 2010 too in the midterms where Democrats lost the House because so many corporatist Democrats that Rahm Emanuel's DCCC had earlier pushed on to us were the ones primarily flushed from office by so many Democrats who saw no reason to care about many of them any more, and Republicans profited from that, and as a result were able to subsequently gerrymander for the next 10 years so many districts after that census year.

Well, that's one narrative, and there's probably some truth to it. But Democrats historically don't show up for non-presidential elections. And also, the fact that centrist Dems are the ones that lost is primarily due to the fact that they were from conservative districts and didn't have Obama's coattails to help them the second time around.

If we're looking for actual evidence, I don't see very much that running Warren/Sanders type candidates nationwide would lead to success. A lot of people here on DU complain about Obama, but in polls, liberal Dems are the people who approve of him the most, and his disapproval among liberals is something like 10%. I don't know offhand, but have Dems as liberal as Warren or Sanders actually won state-wide races in swing states like Ohio and Florida and Virginia? Maybe.

I would argue that part of the reasons Democrats don't show up for non-presidential elections is the narrative of the media that emphasizes them over more local elections as being important, and also the growing problems that Americans have in general these days of finding time to get involved with too many different things besides work and family, and keeping up with a presidential race is perhaps in many instances the most they can keep up with and participate in. That and heavy work schedules that don't even allow them time to vote, even if in many interests many of them might do so. To me this is a sign even more so that the Democrats need to prioritize making life better for the middle class and lower class voters (and even some of the upper middle class voters) so that in coming elections, their work/wealth/free time situations can be made a lot better like they were before Reagan's time, so that they can take more interest in being involved with politics, both voting and campaigning and participating in as well. Another reason why corporatist agenda is a recipe that works against this party.

Bernie Sanders gets a lot of support from Republicans within his own state, who realize that he's working for THEM, and look across party lines as they know him as a man of his word that isn't working for some other special interests against theirs. We need more of that kind of politician, and I think with the internet and other forms of peer-to-peer communication now, we can make a difference in helping getting more of that kind of candidate elected nation-wide. But we need people to not just swallow the corporate media spin and who will be willing to work in new ways to help candidates like him get support that I think so many people want, but they've felt neglected getting.

I do think that the minimum wage votes in very conservative states that passed is a testament if you get down to the level of issues that matter to people, it really doesn't matter what party or what label people hang over your head. They will vote for you if they think you are working for them. That to me is the strength of populist candidates like Bernie and Warren.