Whether you support Hillary or Bernie...

[firebrand80]

you should be glad that we have a real race on our hands.

In 2008, Obama pulled off a surprise victory in Iowa, and was ahead with a week to go in NH. The primary was about to be over before it even got started. Hillary pulled off a miracle and we ended up with a primary that went damn near all the way to the convention.

That contest made both Obama and Hillary stronger candidates. Hillary was a bad candidate in 2008 when she her campaign was operating with an aura of inevitability. She got knocked on her behind and came back out swinging. By the time she got to Ohio and Pennsylvania, she was the candidate she should have been all long, but it was too late.

If you support Hillary in this cycle, then you should want her to learn to deal with allegations of ties to wall street, donations to the foundation, speaking fees, etc. She has to prove that she can fight back on these attacks and come out on top. If you support Bernie, you should want him to prove he can hold up under the national spotlight, that his "socialist" programs will appeal to the center, that people will buy into his tax increases.

2008 was a long, brutal contest, but Democrats came out of that contest fired up. I would encourage everyone on here to take a deep breath and watch their respective candidates go at it. After all, this is just batting practice compared to what the GOP is going to come at us with.

[INdemo]

1. Im thinking as it was in 2008 Indiana with our

primary in May will play a key roll in the nomination process.
So Indiana DU's we have to make sure we get Bernie on the ballot>

[Cassiopeia]

2. Thankfully

Hillary didn't learn a damn thing about campaigning in the last 8 years.

Bernie 2016! Because the status quo is not acceptable.

[firebrand80]

4. I disagree

I think she's shown to be a much better candidate this time around

(this current single payer argument nothwithstanding - she's making a bad argument on that issue)

[Cassiopeia]

6. The only difference this time around is face time Hillary has given.

Debates were limited to reduce her exposure. For the last 6 months she's mostly stayed with small private fundraising events. She has purposefully reduced her exposure because she is the largest liability to her campaign.

Now that the polls are slumping for her she has to get out there in front of the cameras and people. She's making the same mistakes she made in 07/08.

Same Hillary, same whirlwind campaign of flips and flops.

[SheilaT]

3. What I recall best about 2008

was the refusal of Hillary to accept reality when she no longer had a chance of winning the nomination, and the behavior of all the PUMAs out there, not just here on DU. There was a real chance they'd tear the party apart and hand the Presidency to McCain. Fortunately, that didn't happen.

It seems to me as if things are even more bitter this time around, especially on the side of the Hillary people who seem to think they were cheated out of her Presidency in 2008, and that she absolutely deserves it this time.

[firebrand80]

5. I don't know about that

I don't think she was in it too long last time. Toward the end, I recall there being a tepid acknowledgment that it was over, she would say things like "I'm going to stay in this until the end for all the people that supported me." The PUMA folks were mostly right-wing trolls, IMO.

As far as whether it's more bitter this time, a week ago I would have said this race isn't even close to the bitterness of last time, but now that we have a real race, we'll see.

[SheilaT]

7. I will suggest you just don't remember 2008 very well.

She stayed in until the last primary/caucus, even though a month or so earlier is was evident she would not get the nomination. The PUMAs were decidedly not right wing trolls, but her most die-hard supporters who didn't give a flying fuck about party unity. Hence PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) for anyone who has forgotten.

[ieoeja]

8. Bill ran against the Democratic congress in 1992.

I remember the pundits being perplexed. In speech after speech he touted himself as the one who could rein in the out of control Democratic liberals. He pretty much ignored Bush that election.

His supporters seemed to have fallen in love with that strategy. He essentially built up his own party-in-a-party. The only good Democrat was a Clinton or a supporter of a Clinton. This site http://www.hillaryis44.org/ is apropos.

I used to be a fan of http://www.bartcop.com. But it became clear after awhile that he also suffered from this issue. In 2004, with no Clinton even on the ballot, I went through two weeks of his posts and tallied up his - the ones he authored, not stuff he linked to - attacks on Republicans, criticisms of Democrats (mostly Kerry) or support of Democrats. The ratio was something like 5 attacks R to 10 critiques D to 1 support D.

There are still a lot of Conservative Democrats out there who elect Conservative Democrats locally while voting for the Republican Presidential candidate. They might vote for Hillary in the GE, but nobody else.

In addition, I knew several lifelong Democrats who left the Party because we elected a Black President. They were all for giving Blacks a fair shake and a helping hand up. But putting one in charge was going too far. "My God, people, do you realize what we're about to do," was the shocked phrase I heard often in 2008. They were quite surprised to find that most of us were perfectly happy with this. The thing about a bigotry is that a person assumes mostly everyone else feels the same way since to them it feels normal.