tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post4140865610448672042..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: An Exchange With Two Readers Who Respect Me But Maybe Kinda Sorta Hate My Support of Hillary ClintonDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-2248094080378871472016-02-25T13:38:33.374-08:002016-02-25T13:38:33.374-08:00You say many reasonable things here, including thi...You say many reasonable things here, including things about foreign policy that also worry me. I fear the Bernie coalition doesn't overlap with the Obama coalition so much as it overlaps with the Ron Paul coalition when it comes noisemaking. From my perspective the good news is that once the primary schedule delivers enough delegates to Clinton (maybe even by March 15) the reddit contingent will crawl back under the floorboards and the story becomes Trump racist fascist idiocy versus Obama passing his baton to America's civic-minded grandmother. The Obama coalition is larger than it was when it won twice before and the Southern Strategy is a recipe for the GOP dwindling into a neo-confederate rump, so I am hoping a solid Senate win and a House in play results in November to break the obstruction and perhaps preside over the dismantlement of jerrymandering/disenfranchisement two years hence and Dems can go back to arguing for good government, with a nice stimulus and green jobs program to kill austerity (and here's hoping the EU gets the message this time).Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-33190529568340185732016-02-24T23:43:25.556-08:002016-02-24T23:43:25.556-08:00I agree that Clinton has the better resume. Sande...I agree that Clinton has the better resume. Sanders has more experience in politics, but Secretary of State probably should be more impressive than House and Senate service. Unfortunately it also highlights her neocon tendencies, particularly US recognition of the Honduras coup. You could say the cabinet members serve at the pleasure of the president and all that, but the Nuremberg defense only gets one so far. Clinton is also a better match for the Obama coalition, and that coalition has a two-term president to show for itself. Can't argue with success like that. Sanders, I think, has a support base that heavily overlaps the Obama coalition. Question is whether it adds more than it lacks. I'm guessing the voters too young to have voted for Obama, and whatever previously non-voting citizens Sanders can bring to the table probably don't add up to a huge number, but would he alienate so-called swing voters in huge numbers? I don't know. As for right-populists, I wish he weren't really trying to court that group. While elections strictly speaking are a numbers game, some supporters are more of a liability than an asset, even though they add to the vote totals. I hope 2016 will be the year that left-populists stop being seen as a liability, (a constituency that candidates are better off snubbing than trying to impress) and right populists start being seen that way.<br /><br />I don't believe that what I have described as the shuffleboard strategy harms the liberal cause or the Clinton general election candidacy. I'm not worried about the risk of it working too well. Based on primaries/caucuses so far, Clinton has decisively more momentum. I do believe that "Bernie or Bust" does harm the shuffleboard strategy (as it explicitly rejects that strategy). I also believe that a highly coordinated campaign of aggressively and relentlessly characterizing Sanders supporters (in general) as white, male, affluent etc. <i>does</i> harm the liberal cause and Clinton's candidacy, because it's more obvious to me that Sanders is more liberal than Clinton, than it is that Sanders appeals to more privileged voters. Some studies/poll interpretations claim that Sanders support correlates negatively with voter income, for example. The idea that liberalism and elitism go together is a decidedly conservative idea that doesn't deserve the amount of dignity that Clinton's supporters appear to me to be giving it. So, I wish a certain non-silent non-majority among Sanders supporters would cut it out with the Bernie-or-bust rhetoric, and I also wish a certain vocal minority of Clinton supporters would stop elite-shaming the liberal faction of their own candidate's general election coalition.Lorrainehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13567383019731167967noreply@blogger.com