This past weekend a blog by the title of"Hillary Clinton Doesn't Trust You"was featured on several progressive web sites. The title suggested red meat sympathetic to Sanders. Since it came on the heels of the Clinton camp ratcheting up its rhetoric against Sanders single-payer health care plan – rather dishonestly it seemed – I imagined the piece was going to be something in line with these criticisms she’d been receiving regarding her language of half-truths.
Instead it was a piece on campaign strategy. A sample:
The subject was Sanders's support for a single-payer health care system. The policy puts Clinton in a bind: It's popular with liberals but dangerous in a general election. Sanders's support for it is, to Clinton, everything wrong with his campaign in miniature — it's an idea that sounds good on the stump but really reveals a preference for ideological symbolism over the hard work of policy change.
In 1994, Clinton spearheaded a doomed overhaul of the health care system. I've interviewed dozens of people who worked with her on that effort, and who have worked with her since that effort, and the lessons her team took away are clear and deeply held. When it comes to health reform, do not screw with what people already have…. [snip]
…But Clinton doesn't trust Democratic primary voters to listen to that argument. Pragmatism might win in policymaking, she believes, but inspirational fantasies win primaries. So her campaign has, instead, tried out a series of attacks on Sanders meant to confuse primary voters about where the two candidates actually stand.
The blog then goes on detailing the Clinton campaign stumbles in the way they are attacking Sanders’ plan. Really the article is a round-about pro-Hillary piece. It pumps up her “strengths” and discusses what she should be doing to point out that Sanders’ health care plan is too vague to be serious (The Sanders campaign has since released a detailed plan since this was posted). It ends with this:
…”there's a strong case to be made for a pragmatic approach that respects the sensitivities of the electorate and the power of the status quo. Liberals might disagree with Clinton's true position on single-payer, but I think they would respect it. Instead, in her effort to avoid that disagreement, she's blundered into a position that no one agrees with and no one respects. Worse, it's a position that makes people think Clinton doesn't respect them.”
Of course, according to this author, she does really, really respect you. Maybe. I wouldn’t know.
But this is beside the point. This whole blog misses the big picture just like every pundit in the mainstream that is discussing the horserace - the beltway-bubble where high and mighty campaign “strategy” is king to these few only looking at the way the Potomac flows. This whole spotlight on focus-group based parsing how the mysterious voter is broken down and what might be a “dangerous” election strategy is yesterday’s news.
The reality is that Americans are sick of the status quo. We thought we were going to get real change in 2008 and what we got were longtime insiders, foxes guarding the Wall Street wolves, and more triangulation in the first 100 days and every day thereafter.
If you think this type of message and approach is what citizens want, by all means, keep chirping about pragmatic campaigning. It will get you someone that inspires only those that like the idea of a woman in the White House no matter what her views are on the issues; or the fact that she represents no change in our national leadership whatsoever.
If you think most Americans will be perfectly happy with the New Democratic, neoliberal way of running things that started with Bill Clinton, then we are all in for a rude awaking if Clinton prevails in the primaries on this “electability” issue that is based on the old way of doing things.
Because Trump will most likely be the GOP candidate. Unless he stumbles in a major way (which I don’t know what that could be based on all the abysmal things he’s said up to now… throw a baby out a second floor window maybe would do it? and even then I’m not so sure). Trump represents the Republican side of people enraged at the status quo. We need a counter-balance to this reality in the election, or we could very well be saying President Trump in 2017.
Because as it has been pointed out already, Washington is a revolving door of insiders. With Clinton the people in the White House will remain the same as with Clinton-I and Obama. There will be little hope of a revolution at the polls to bring in a more progressive Congress, so the incumbent run gridlock will continue on The Hill. People know this – they have seen this cozy court from the cold exterior of a disintegrating democracy. And they don’t want to go back to this future.
The pundits and Hillary loyalists that ignore the anti-establishment gripping the nation do so at all our peril.
Sanders represents new faces in the White House and federal agencies. He represents those that will try to close the revolving door of fat cats between Wall Street and the regulators that are supposed to be watching them. He represents real change.
It’s irrelevant that we can’t imagine the current Congress never passing a single-payer system, because the dream of new blood riding in on his coat tails is possible. That is what he means by “revolution” and his supporters want to do everything they can to make this happen.
Clinton doesn’t inspire and in many parts of the country she downright repels. I would worry that to the next generation coming up her candidacy would be such a morale flattener that the progressive side of the anti-establishment rage would just stay home. And as Jeb! is finding out, we’re sick of dynasties. Bush-Clinton-Bush-(Obama)-Clinton. No thanks!
The beltway bloviators don’t seem to get this as Ezra Klein’s (the same that was named of the 50 most powerful people in Washington DC in 2011) piece is Exhibit One of these voices that represent this bubble of willful ignorance. Well, bubbles eventually burst. Let’s do this the easy way in a bloodless revolution in November rather than one that would be much, much worse if the status quo prevails in the short-term.
The American people want to see real change, Sanders as the Democratic nominee is the only positive way that will give back some power to the people. Otherwise, Trump will be the only one to represent this fervor gripping the nation and come November, I fear, it won’t be pretty.