Why the Democratic Party Hysteria? The Clinton Problem Isn't Sanders, it's Clinton's Weakness.

[imagine2015]

What Does Bernie Want?
by Robert Borosage
May 23, 2016

So why the hysteria?
The Clinton Problem

The problem, of course, isn’t the Sanders’ obstinacy; it is Clinton’s weakness. The Democratic establishment essentially cleared the field for her. She started with all of the money, all of the endorsements, universal name recognition, a forbidding lead in the polls, and her pick of the best campaign operatives. She’s battle-tested. She’s intelligent, with remarkable energy and unmatched experience. But somehow she can’t lock up a convention majority from elected delegates against a septuagenarian democratic Socialist who is funding his campaign with small donations.

Turns out the being the establishment candidate grates against the growing number of voters who realize the establishment has failed them. The big money backing Clinton had its costs when voters think our politics are corrupted. Her experience has liabilities, as she moved to disavow the policies her husband and she championed from trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP, to harsh and biased criminal sentencing measures, to banking deregulation and more. She is burdened by scandals, old and new, some self-inflicted, even if inflated by right-wing hit squads.

Worse, she chose to run as the candidate of continuity when voters are looking for change. She made herself the champion of incremental reforms when voters – particularly young voters — yearn for much more. She purposefully presented herself as more hawkish than Obama— an “interventionist” Joe Biden called her – at a time when voters are weary of endless wars without victory.

The result is she’s almost as unpopular as Trump is — and recent polls show him closing the margins between them.

That’s the cause of the hysteria. Clinton understandably doesn’t want to risk the embarrassment of losing to Sanders in California. The superdelegates are aghast that they might face pressure from Sanders supporters to vote for him. Their votes are supposed to be locked up in backroom deals. They aren’t accustomed to being held accountable for them, or to facing public pressure – phone calls, letters, demonstrations, and aggravations – on how they vote. But they set the rules. They could have gone to the convention as observers, but they wanted a vote. Putting themselves in the kitchen, they now complain about the heat.

Read the full article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/23/what-does-bernie-want

[Phlem]

1. K&R! Thank you for this excellent post.

[imagine2015]

2. He's a very competent and effective writer. I thank him for the article!

[imagine2015]

7. I don't know why so many describe Hillary Clinton as elitist and smug. Just don't get it.

[Phlem]

32. !

I don't know what it could possibly be.

[SFnomad]

3. Another steaming pile OP from a Primary bitter loser

Being that you post these crap threads day in and day out ... what are you going to do when Skinner finally calls it?

[Betty Karlson]

6. Typical Clinton response: don't engage the argument, shoot the messenger

and then try to bend the rules so the unpleasant argument may not be made anymore.

Are you going to ask Skinner to call the GE too? You'll need to, the way Clinton is tanking in the (thank goodness as yet hypothetical) match-ups with Trump.

[imagine2015]

9. Well, I'll continue to print the truth. Skinner calls what for who?

[SFnomad]

13. When Secretary Clinton becomes the presumptive nominee on June 7th ... you've got 2 weeks left n/t

[imagine2015]

24. She and the corporate media may call her that but she can't clinch the nomination on June 7th.

I don't think Skinner will call her the presumptive nominee until she has enough votes to capture the nomination.

That can't happen before the convention because super delegates are not pledged to any candidate and can vote for any candidate at the convention, even if they indicated a pre-convention preference. They are fee to change their minds and vote for a candidate they did not initially prefer.

Isn't that right?

[SFnomad]

26. On June 7th Secretary Clinton will have a majority of pledged delegate and

a majority of Superdelegates. When Obama reached that mark back in 2008 (on June 3rd) they called him the Presumptive Democratic Nominee as well.

You can bury your head all you want ... the rest of us will live in a reality based world.

[imagine2015]

29. We don't know how many super delegates Clinton will have on June 7th.

They are not pledged to her. They can abandon her at the convention, just as over 200 super delegates did in 2008, and vote for the other leading candidate.

You didn't know that?

[SFnomad]

30. It's not going to happen ... but you just keep on dreaming. The rest of us, including the media,

will be calling her the Presumptive Nominee. And no matter how much you pout and stomp your feet, it's not going to change that.

[Peace Patriot]

31. The Corrupt Media called it for Bush-Cheney in 2004.

You going with that--and with "the rest of us"? We know who the Corrupt Media are. But who are "the rest of us"? Half the Democratic Party, which is already a minority party compared to Independents, a non-party that now comprises 40+% of the electorate. The Democratic primaries have been measuring a narrow and restricted demographic, almost half of which voted for Sanders. You cannot include any of us in "the rest of us" until we say so. Got it? So it's you and your narrow demographic and the Corrupt Media who, working hand in glove, are going to "call her the Presumptive Nominee." When? On what basis? Do tell.

[SFnomad]

33. This hardly compares to Bush/Cheney 2004 ... it's more like Obama in the 2008 Primaries

when they called Obama the Presumptive Nominee on June 3rd, even though you needed to count Superdelegates then as well to arrive at that conclusion. That will be no different than Secretary Clinton on June 7th ... you should be here and party with us.

[Peace Patriot]

43. No, my friend, as to the Corrupt Media, it is worse than Bush-Cheney '04.

The Corrupt Media this time CREATED a foil for the Wall Street/MIC candidate, by giving Donald Trump billions of dollars worth of FREE political ads, with their 24/7 coverage of his every sneeze, for months and months, from the day he announced! What credibility did he have, say, compared to Bernie Sanders, who has 40 years of uncorrupt public service? None is the answer. Trump had NO credibility. Yet now look at him! The monster has got out of hand and is smelling power. He's saying the things, on cue, that help make Clinton's Wall Street economics and war hawk views and advisors look "liberal." But very unfortunately he's become more than a foil, and COULD WELL end up in the White House, if current polls, which show him BEATING Clinton, are any guide. (And their unanimity with Clinton's high polling negatives on trustworthiness and favorability reinforce how much trouble the Democratic Party is in, if Clinton is the nominee.)

Meanwhile--while the Corrupt Media was CREATING Trump, the candidate--they black-holed Bernie Sanders for months and months and months, until almost the present time, and even now all they're saying is "he can't win," even though, in truth, he CAN. He's been winning all along, against the most formidable forces that were ever assembled to stop one candidate. Last week, he demolished Clinton in Oregon (and the final stats there HAVE YET TO BE REPORTED!). He didn't just win. He won by something like 67% of the vote--a feat that may well be repeated in California.

He "can't win." They said it from Day One. They've said it after every one of his victories. They're saying it now. And they even FAILED TO REPORT the magnitude of his latest victory. It's almost as if this narrative was written by David Brock. And given the corruption we've seen in the Corrupt media, that would not surprise me one bit.

Your snark about partying with you over the demise of the Democratic Party, of which I have been a member for over 50 years, is noted.

[SFnomad]

45. What a steaming pile ... but if it makes you sleep better at night n/t

[Ace Rothstein]

42. The other leading candidate?

Only one candidate can be leading in a two horse race.

[Betty Karlson]

4. K&R for truth!

[msongs]

5. despite sanders propaganda she is successfully fighting off TWO men from FOx news and winning nt

[Yurovsky]

12. Too bad she couldn't fight off the urge to sell out to Wall Street...

anyone who claims to be a liberal, a progressive, or even a Democrat should be outraged. But I guess being in the pocket of Goldman Sachs is no big deal to most of her supporters, and the ones that are troubled by it would,never think of questioning Her Majesty about taking all that filthy dirty corporate blood money.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Blaming the left is SOP when the party puts up weak candidates and lose.

And, it works on some people.

[SFnomad]

14. That's why we are not putting up BS ... the weaker candidate n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Not according to the polls.

But, if she wins the nomination and loses the GE will the Hillaryites blame Sanders and the Left for her defeat? Or, will it be because she failed to win enough votes?

[SFnomad]

20. Being that BS is nearly 300 pledged delegates down and more than 3+ million voters ...

that's the definition of a weaker candidate.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

21. That's one interpretion.

Another is that she's in trouble with progressives and independents who didn't vote for her and may not in the GE.

[SFnomad]

22. That's your interpretation

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. Indeed it is. And, it's also the interpretation of Hillay allies.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/280994-clinton-allies-blame-bernie-for-bad-polls

[SFnomad]

27. From the article ....

One Democratic strategist and veteran of the 2004 and 2008 election cycles predicted that Clinton would see a similar bounce (like tRump) in the polls if Sanders were to exit the race.

“I’ve never seen an advantage this big before on issues like preparedness to be president, and a big majority of Sanders supporters already say they’ll support her as the nominee,” the strategist said.

[Maedhros]

18. We may see this script flip in November.

McGovern's loss to Nixon in 1972 led to the "liberals can't win" malaise that has crippled the Democratic Party for 40 years.

Clinton's loss to Trump could lead to a similar malaise for the corporate shill wing of the Party. One can hope, at least.

[Cobalt Violet]

37. they are throwing a sure win away.

I hope that would take out the Third Way and the DWS of the party.

The party will never be whole again if they are still running it into the ground after she loses.

[Maedhros]

44. Complacency and acquiescence are killing the Left.[n/t]

[senz]

41. Death of the Third Way?

What a wonderful thing that would be.

[EndElectoral]

10. K&R - Spot on article.

[JoePhilly]

11. More CommonFantasies hysteria.

[highprincipleswork]

15. Power to the People.

[Sky Masterson]

16. President Trump is going to suck

.

[TwilightZone]

19. What hysteria? The only hysteria I see is in nonsense like this. In the real world...

Clinton is going to clinch the nomination on June 7th, Sanders will drop out shortly thereafter and endorse her, and those of us who think that we should defeat Donald Trump in November will be working hard to do so.

[Xyzse]

23. I found this important:

No one likes a sore loser. But one of the hardest challenges in politics is to be a generous winner. If Clinton believes as she says that she will be the nominee, she should run hard to win California, while curbing the attack dogs, shutting down the attacks on Sanders’ character or his supporters’ intelligence. She should warn the superdelegates they’ll have to take the heat, even as she seeks to consolidate their support. She should begin paving the way for unity. Sensible first steps would be getting the poisonous Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of the way, and opening up the platform and rules committees to Sanders nominees. After California, she should reach out to Sanders directly.

This is particularly true as many of the attacks I found are not the positions of Sanders and his supporters.

This is very true in regards to Super Delegates, and guns.
Then add to that the dismissiveness that Clinton supporters evince in regards to voting irregularities, sudden rule changes and things that make her wins look illegitimate. Include the way they coordinate with Super PACs through cross pollination of their staff, and their victory fund. It just makes things look even more corrupt.

I am not saying they did anything illegal, but there is following the law while breaking its spirit.

Any how, in regards to DWS, she is hitting her term limits as chair any way, so she will be gone no matter what.
Unfortunately, that allows her to do whatever she wants and wallow in her own crapulence which is plain nasty.

Thanks, I enjoyed the read.

[SheilaT]

28. So true.

I see that now the Hillarybots here are saying she will finally clinch the nomination on June 7, which is just a bit of a change from the claim that it's been in the bag at least since the first Super Tuesday.

If she were that amazing a candidate, that skilled a campaigner, that popular with the people, she really would have gotten all the delegates needed for the nomination long before this. Instead, she's still struggling. And dropping like a stone against Donald Trump.

[Tarc]

34. Common Dreams is becoming my favorite go-to for fantasy reading

[Skwmom]

35. The main reason for the orchestrated NV show.

[senz]

39. That's right. They are extremely nervous.

[CharlotteVale]

36. K&R

[senz]

40. Me too. They've always stood up for the progressive view.