Hillary's campaign against Bernie-- and that's all it has degenerated into-- is deceitful, vicious and ugly. Part of it is to project its own shortcomings and tactics onto Bernie's campaign and his followers. "The BernieBros are being mean to everyone" is part of the Clinton message now, even as Hillary-bots fan out across the media-- social and corporate-- with their litany of offensive lies about "NRABernie" and Bernie the racist, Bernie the misogynist, Bernie in the pocket of the banksters, Bernie the flip-flopper and Bernie the unelectable.Clinton's political conservatism, her timidity about progressive issues, her position embedded deep in the heart of the Wall Street predatory establishment, her failed tenure as Secretary of State and her mundane and mediocre job as a U.S. senator-- plus the fact that she is widely disliked by independents-- make her the dream candidate for the GOP, the easiest to beat by Trumpf. Polling consistently shows that Bernie would beat each Republican while Hillary might scrape through if Trumpf were the nominee, she would lose to Rubio and possibly even to Cruz.Her "ex"-Republican attack dog, David Brock, one of the most unsavory figures in American politics, has become the face of Hillary 2016-- and its a face no Democrat should want to consider for even two seconds. Hillary's top aides and surrogates have been saying that if their own flawed candidate loses they will try to get jobs working for the election of New York plutocrat Michael Bloomberg, slightly to the right of Clinton and, like her, a standard bearer for the Wall Street elites. Her vocal online supporters seem uniformly incapable-- both intellectually and emotionally-- to ask themselves why or to even look at the sordid collection of lobbyists, careerists and conservatives dominating her inner circle.This weekend, her campaign is all about smearing Bernie in the same ways she attempted to smear Obama when she ran against him. Funny how her most ardent supporters never ask themselves why every Democratic NRA shill in Congress has endorsed her and not one NRA shill backs Bernie. In Ohio her campaign is indistinguishable with that of NRA long-time hero Ted Strickland, Hillary's endorsed NRA A+ candidate for Senate. Virtually every single congressional Democrat who has backed the NRA agenda also backs Hillary. None back Bernie-- not one. Yesterday we wrote about the primary in TX-29, where progressive Adrian Garcia is challenging NRA darling Gene Green. Green, of course, is for Hillary, while Garcia is neutral and positive about all three Democrats running. NRA-friendly congressmen like Tim Ryan, Henry Cuellar, Jim Cooper, Filemon Vela, Kurt Schrader, Tim Walz, Derek Kilmer, and Pete Gallego, a Texas Blue Dog endorsed by the NRA who lost in 2014 and is running again this year.Who wants this as president?Greg Sargent pointed out that "whatever happens in Iowa, we can already reach this conclusion: Democrats, and Hillary Clinton, will have to engage in a serious, genuine effort to learn from the Sanders phenomenon and what it really represents.
The Sanders phenomenon raises possible warning signs for Clinton’s chances in a general election. His ability to engage, excite and involve younger voters-- his ability to make them feel invested in politics-- throws into sharp relief Clinton’s relative failure, at least for now, to do the same. Some Dem pollsters, such as Stan Greenberg, have already begun warning that Clinton will have to make extra efforts to excite millennials.Sanders has figured out a way to speak to a sense that the system is fundamentally broken in very profound ways that put our future in doubt. Those two things may be related: Sanders appears to make young voters feel they have a stake in his candidacy-- and by extension, in this election-- because they think their future is the one that’s in doubt. By speaking in bold strokes about the need for gargantuan solutions, he seems to makes their deep concerns about the future feel heard and, perhaps, assuaged. (While Donald Trump’s diagnosis of the problem is very different, leading him to wallow endlessly in demagoguery and xenophobia, he also has flummoxed pundits who under-appreciate his ability to speak effectively to a similar sense that people feel the system is fundamentally failing them.)
