Can it really work? Discuss!
The 2016 Democratic primary will probably include a democratic socialist candidate for president. That would be Bernie Sanders, the irascible senator from Vermont, who has spent the past few months telling the press that he is considering entering the race.
Michael Kazin, himself a socialist and one of the old guard at Dissent, is positively jubilant. Sanders, he wrote last month, would provide Democratic nominee-apparent Hillary Clinton with a much-needed “shove from the left,” without which she “is likely to stick to mushy moderation.”
In a similar vein, The Week’s Ryan Cooper penned a column last week volunteering former senator Russ Feingold to be the 2016 primary’s anti-Clinton. Although he “would almost certainly lose,” writes Cooper, Feingold could still “make Clinton worry about her left flank” and force her into a more dovish posture.
It’s not hard to see why drafting progressive candidates into the Democratic primary has become a favored pastime on the left. (Pleas for Elizabeth Warren to run are practically their own sub-genre.) Clinton supported the Iraq War as a senator, signaled her support for Keystone XL as secretary of state, and sat on Walmart’s board of directors for six years. We don’t exactly know what her 2016 presidential campaign will look like just yet, but the left’s wariness isn’t unreasonable.
Nonetheless, any effort to drag her further leftwards by making her “worry about her left flank,” as Cooper put it, is almost certainly doomed. If Clinton is all but guaranteed to win the primary one way or another, as both Kazin and Cooper admit, then what could she possibly have to worry about? Why should she bother trying to mollify people who have rallied behind an obvious stalking horse?
It’s incomplete if you don’t read the rest.
Bernie Sanders can’t win. Clinton can’t lose. Neither can Eric Cantor. Clinton’s mandate, if she runs and becomes the next president, will be this “We voted for you just so the Republican wouldn’t win.” How low we’ve all sunk. We are now content to vote not for the best person, but for the least worst person. That is the position in which the oligarchy (1%) and it’s flood of campaign cash has placed us. And Clinton is just fine with that because her only goal in life is to become the president. She owes he allegiance to the bankers and corporations. Not to “We the people.” Shame on any Democrat who supports Clinton and her charade.
Why does it take money to run for president, rather than good ideas? Because that’s the way the owners set it up. It limits the choices to those whom are already in the club. You can’t get in without their help, and if you accept their help – they own you too. It’s a nice, tight, little circle-jerk designed to keep the wealth of our nation flowing in one direction. The USA is not broke, the money is just being held by very, very few people.
And two, nobody in Democratic politics, socialist Bernie Sanders included, has the nerve to risk handing the White House over to a Republican. The specter of Nader 2000, along with the very real danger that Paul Ryan (or whomever) could seize the presidency, will be enough to keep potential spoilers in line.
This old line again? Let it never be said that the left in this country such as it is) doesn’t have its own set of zombie lies. Including the hoary old chestnut that Nader cost Gore the election.
Over 300,000 FLA democrats voted for George W. Bush.Yet we’re still blaming Nader and whinging about spoilers.
And Sanders is only out there to pull support from Warren. His bona fides are looking a little tarnished lately. He can go back to the senate and nap.
After eight years of Big0, I will be very pleasantly surprised if we don’t get a total Repub takeover. The Democrats have proved to the limits of human ability that they’re not about to do anything useful. So the voters will kick the bums out without worrying too much who’s on the other side. … Unless the Repubs are dumb enough to nominate somebody who’s a bad liar. Clinton would just be a sacrificial lamb again.
“Sacrificial lamb again,” implies that she has been a sacrificial lamb in the past. Funny I can’t recall when that was. Pulling a gun in the commission of a robbery and then being disarmed and subdued by your intended target doesn’t qualify you to claim victimhood. If anyone will be a victim in the 2016 mess it will be Warren. Sanders has the gravitas, money and balls to hold his own against all comers. To be forced to settle for another Clinton when there are better Democratic candidates available might just drive the Left to vote for everybody on the ballot except for box marked President. Putting a Republican in the WH will assure a rapid end to this exercise anyway.
Why all the discussion about Hillary’s flanks?
Pure sexism, if you ask me.