2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"Why Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Pose a Critical Threat to Hillary Clinton" By Jamelle Bouie
"For more than 20 years, Bill and Hillary Clinton have engaged with black voters, black leaders, and black communities. Theyre familiar. And when coupled with the role blacks play in the Democratic primarystalwart voters who tend to support the safest choicethis adds up to a powerful advantage for Hillary. So much so that the only candidate to breach itBarack Obamahad to run an almost flawless campaign, in addition to being black himself. Had Obama failed to build ties to the black political establishmentand had he failed to show his viability with wins among white Democratsits not clear he would have overcome and reversed Clintons advantage with blacks....
This truth gets to a broader fact about where we are in the Democratic presidential primary. Clinton is a transactional politician who operates from the center of the Democratic Party. Sanders is an ideological politician who has worked, for his entire career, to push the Democratic Party to the left.
Clinton is struggling to build enthusiasm for her campaign because its hard to build excitement over a transaction. She can promise to fight for Democrats, she can promise to represent them, but she cant bring a political revolution. But Sanders, as a possible nominee for the presidency, has the opposite problem. It is hard to transition from protesting the party establishment to trying to lead it. Whether he can do sowhether, in effect, he can become more transactionalwill play a big part in his electoral success. If he can break or subvert Clintons relationship with black Democrats, he can win. If he cant, he wont."
daleanime
(17,796 posts)and I'm probably going to scare them if I ever do. Who wants a hug from a stranger?
SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)Sanders has done nothing but fight - for a better world for all
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom