A plea to Bernie Sanders supporters.

[DanTex]

135. Good post. So here's where I'm coming from.

First of all, I see Clinton as not that different from Obama. Conventional wisdom-wise, she is a bit to his left economically, a bit to his right on foreign policy, and about the same on social issues. I think that's about right, but regardless, I think they stand for a lot of the same things, and I think you probably agree, as do most Bernie supporters here who are frustrated with the status quo due to things like inequality, TPP, etc.

I take issue with your opinion that Obama hasn't changed things for the better on the economic front. For one, there's Obamacare. There's Dodd Frank. There was the auto bailout and the stimulus. Rolling back of the Bush tax cuts at the top. And, in part due to Bernanke and Yellen, but also the Obama administration, we've recovered from the crisis better than most other countries.

Arguably, preventing a second great depression, or the collapse of the auto industry, isn't "improving" but rather preventing them from getting worse. But I don't think that's fair either to Obama or to the depth of the problems we were facing when he took office.

I still agree we aren't where we should be, but this has nothing to do with Obama, and everything to do with the GOP. Obama's first two years were the most productive in many decades. This is because he had a Democratic congress. Since then, progress has stalled, but on all fronts, this is due to GOP obstruction. Obama has repeatedly called for things like greater investment in infrastructure and jobs, higher minimum wage, immigration reform, etc. but it goes nowhere. It's not about Obama: we could have had Nelson Mandela as president, and the results would have been the same.

Your next point, will Hillary govern as far left as Bernie? No. Will she push for the same level of financial regulations, anti-trust, etc.? No. I don't think this is because of her DLC connections (her record on economic issues, despite the Goldman Sachs speeches, is actually pretty strong), but simply that Bernie is more consistently progressive than her. Though on some issues, like climate, I don't see the gap between Bernie and Hillary as being very large at all.

But more important, I don't think that pushing for policies to the left of Hillary's is going to make the slightest bit of difference unless the Dems have large majorities in both houses. Even with 60 in the Senate, we barely got Obamacare thanks to centrist Dems like Lieberman in the Senate. Realistically, only a small fraction of all the good stuff Bernie talks about will actually become law, in the same way that only a small fraction of the good stuff Obama talks about actually makes it through congress.

Which brings me to my main concern: winning the 2016 election. Because if the GOP wins, really bad things happen. And I see Hillary as much better suited to win a national presidential election than Bernie. Part of this is him being a self-described socialist, which doesn't matter me at all, but is definitely a vulnerability in the current political environment. Part is that she can raise huge amounts of money which is unfortunately necessary. Part of it is the polls, which are admittedly early, but still.

Finally, the kind of rhetoric which I find totally counterproductive are the claims that there's no difference, or at least not much difference between Hillary and the GOP. For example, here's a recent OP making exactly that point (see the last paragraph), which is now up to 200+ recs. I understand frustration with the status quo, but the "no difference" argument just seems absurd to me, no matter what the level of frustration.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6844968