Hey, Hillary–Listen to the REAL Message
Bernie Sanders said two things worth noting the other day, at the same event. When asked at a Town Hall meeting how to convince Bernie supporters to vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee, he responded, “it is “incumbent on her” to win over his supporters. Specifically, he pointed out that he doesn’t exercise control over his supporters and nor should he, and that many have a deep suspicion of a candidate with such close ties to Wall Street. He even gave her a road map: endorse his Medicare-for-ALL healthcare plan.
At the same event, he announced that he would do “everything in my power to keep the Republicans out of the White House.”
Hillary responded only to the first, pointing out that she did not put any conditions on her endorsement of Obama in 2008. And analysts agree that she worked very hard for Obama after the convention. However, she didn’t seem to hear the second.
She still does not get that Bernie is not a politician in charge of a machine in the old style of politics. He finds himself at the forefront of a people’s movement that he does not control. Bernie can endorse and I’m sure will endorse Hillary if she is a nominee, but that doesn’t mean he is able to overcome his supporters’ massive and justified skepticism of her belief systems and her actions. Once again, he has spoken the truth; she does have to win them over.
And Hillary needs these people. Independents and left-leaning Democrats will be major factors in November. If they stay home, we get whichever monster emerges from the Republican convention. If they show up, we get a Democrat.
I have serious issues with Hillary Clinton, and particularly her foreign policy. I worry that she’s too much of a war-hawk and way too comfortable with the worst excesses of Israel’s ultra-right government. I don’t love her cluelessness about people’s movements and her coziness with Wall Street. And while she’s obviously extremely smart, she’s done some really dumb things over and over again. I don’t expect any significant progressive shift under a Hillary Clinton administration.
In the past, including in 2000, I’ve voted 3rd party. Of course, I have the luxury of living in a state where my vote doesn’t count anyway. Knowing that Massachusetts was safely Democratic made it easy to vote my conscience and cast my vote for Nader.
Yet, if she’s the nominee, I will hold my nose and vote for her. The prospect of either a Trump or Cruz presidency is so distasteful that I want the margins of victory to be enormous; this year, I want to be counted in that victory margin, and not pushed off to the side with a Green Party vote that nobody pays any attention to. Under Clinton, I would expect some attention to economic policies that help poor people—as a sop to Sanders supporters, if nothing else—and some good stuff on women’s issues. I would expect excellent Supreme Court nominees.
And, unfortunately, I would expect once again to be out in the streets with thousands of others, doing my best to keep us from being sucked into whatever war HRC would get us into.
If I can’t vote for Bernie, I’m voting for a SCOTUS I don’t have to fear or despise.
Deep breath. My I-statement: I am fighting for the reproductive freedom of our daughters and grand-daughters. Hilary is the candidate against Trump. Whom would you entrust the safety of our daughters’ health to? Seriously. And of course that’s not the only issue, but, I’m speaking to one of my core concerns.
I agree entirely altho ,as with most issues, I don’t think Trump cares one way or the other. He’s just a plain old Narcissist and wants to have his ego stroked. Hillary will also be better on climate change, human rights….
I probably am going down a messy road here. I respect Hillary ‘ s position on women’s reproductive rights. I don’t respect her position on war. If I have to measure the two, well, I won’t support such a hawkish candidate. I don’t trust Trump because I have no clue what he would do. He’s all over the map on his positions. But I am not subscribing to the Hillary /Trump narrative at any rate.
I repeat: Supreme Court
Nadar and Bernie are false equivalents. Nadar never polled higher than high single digits. Bernie, even in a 3 way race could be the most electable candidate. If he doesn’t run, which is the likely scenario, he has effectively started a new party which I hope will ultimately transform our political system.
Correctamundo!
If Bernie runs as an Independent he places a Republican in the WH…very very bad. Hillary is not going to change much but she’s the best we have since Bernie is out of it. Take a deep breath and vote for Hillary..Think Supreme Court. Do you want another Scalia?
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My two points of difference are that
1) Nader showed himself to be a divider, even an egomaniacal destroyer. Third party candidates virtually always put the kibosh on the candidate closest to them politically. Though I’d supported him in 1996, I lost all respect for Nader when he posited that the Dems and GOP were exactly the same – Tweedledum and Tweedledee. His campaign was never viable – not a single state won.
And 2) Gore fought for his election for 5 weeks/ 35 days, and at that point, even some Dems were starting to detach from the fight. He only gave up after the 5-4 “unnatural selection” of SCOTUS, in order to reach a resolution and to stem impending chaos. It still breaks my heart. But I don’t see what else he might have done to avoid a deeper crisis. I thought he was heroic and presidential to the utmost. He showed his compassionate leadership again during Katrina, when he hired (and self-funded) several airlift rescue operations of hundreds of Katrina victims. Not a photo op. The real deal.
Gore conceded the night of the election, effectively putting himself in the position of then having the burden of proof on him to reverse a decision he already agreed with.
Brian Gleason Actually, what I recall is that Gore was on his way to give his concession speech, but then pulled it back (which pissed Bush off). Maybe Gore should have called for the whole state’s recount, and not just the 3 Dem counties. He truly did fight it in the courts for 35 days (remember David Boies/Ted Olsen?), leading to SCOTUS. I’m going to look it up – you maybe have another angle on it.
Worst political moment in my lifetime.
Yes, but I believed he did eventually concede that night. Am I wrong?
“By 4:30 a.m., after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush’s margin to just over 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their predictions that Bush had won Florida and the presidency. Gore, who had privately conceded the election to Bush, withdrew his concession.”
They don’t say it in wikipedia, but I heard that when Gore called Bush to retract his concession in the limo, there was a moment of silence, and then Gore said, “Well, you don’t have to get snippy about it”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000#Results
Shel, you are SO speaking for me! Thank you.
Bernie needs to run as an independent — and he’d beat both HRC and Trump!
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Thanks for the complement on my writing, Julia Neiman. Actually, I think it does make a difference. We would not have had the Iraq disaster, Citizens United and maybe even the Great Recession if Gore had had the guts to make a big deal about the stolen election, and taken his case to the people. I don’t want to spend the next three decades undoing whatever horrible things a Trump or Cruz will do. The Republicans had a long-term strategy that took 20 years to get Reagan elected. We on the left need to be long-term strategic thinkers as well.
Did you see that John Boehner called Cruz Lucifer in the flesh? He certainly has a way with words. I hear what you are saying Shel but I do disagree. We thought things would be different and that we would have change with Obama, but not much has changed. I’m sick to death of having to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Oh, she put conditions on Obama, she wanted a key place in his administration. Plus, she stated that she worked hard to convince her followers to vote for Obama. See the difference, Bernie trusts his supporters to make up their own minds.
Very well written and I respectfully disagree that we need to cast a ballot for Hillary out of fear of the other guy. I think it doesn’t matter who is in the white house from either party because they have no real power anymore.
It is only when we stick to our beliefs and vote for what we do want no matter what that they will take notice. It might already be too late for democracy but I for one am going down fighting if that’s the case.
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Green/Rainbow Party, after decades, has not really caught on here. Working Families has clout in NY and other places. If folks are serious about 3rd parties, WFP seems most viable.
I’m not even sure Hillary is “clueless” in any conventional, individualistic sense. Our educational and employment systems have their specials ways of making deference to Money unconsciously engrained in our attitudes and behaviors.
Of course, that makes us fortunate in that for much of the world deference to power is still enforced by the age old techniques of brutal terror.
But our *successful* politicians are socialized and indoctrinated in pervasive ways that go beyond the obvious need to cozy up to the donor class for fundraising.
Perhaps the flip side of what Bernie and Shell are saying is that Hillary can not and will not change unless there are significant changes the electorate.
Maybe it should not be totally disheartening that so many Bernie supporters will consider voting for Trump rather than Hillary. (Maybe…) But that is where we are.
Right now there are too many influencers saying it’s unrealistic to have Medicaid for all, to expand Social Security, to offer life long educational opportunities to all, and to rebuild our energy infrastructures so they don’t pollute us into a “civilization bottleneck” of evolutionary proportions.
That these ideas are termed “unrealistic” rather than “radical” or “dangerous” might be a hopeful sign. But these ideas need to be understood for what they are: necessary.
They are necessary, but also quite conducive toward preserving the elements of our current economy that almost everyone idealizes. (The same must be said for our political/governmental systems)
America is supposed to be about expanding opportunities for everyone. No doubt our systems have made some significant progress there, but there is a long way to go. And the stagnation of economic opportunities for the many while wealth is being monopolized by the few has persisted for a generation now. It is very significant, and it has the power to set us back in terms of democracy and opportunity even independently of the grave threats associated with climate change and our Terroristic National Security Surveillance State.
Hillary is no FDR (maybe), but everyone should remember that he could only do what circumstances and political pressure “made” him do. And it cannot be any other way!
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Yes, I always liked that.
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I wish Massachusetts had the system that New York State has, where a candidate can be cross-listed as running from more than one party. Then votes for Hillary on a Green party ballot line, or a Working Families ballot line, would actually show how much of her support she owed to the Left.