2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)Hillary needs to dismantle Sanders' fantasies, but how, without losing the dreamers. [View all]
Sanders' campaign is based on fantasies. Sanders is politics as wish fulfillment.
He is basically telling supporters they can have their heart's desire, with no real costs, if they just click their heels three times, and say "we will have single payer, we will have free college for all."
Challenge is that you can't beat that kind of thinking back just by speaking the disappointing truths. Disappointing truths have no place in dreams or in politics as wish fulfillment.
So what's a truth based candidate to do?
Somehow she needs to pull open the curtain and reveal that man behind it is just a huckster from Kansas, who has no idea how to get back home.
But how do you do that, without seeming to speak only disappointing truth? Well, have to show that the truth isn't so disappointing after all. That grand things are possible. Building on the affordable care act, for example, to both expand coverage and bend the cost curve even more is no mean thing. And it's a doable thing. Okay, it's not the magic of single payer. But do you know what would have to happen to make single payer a reality..... That's not going to happen. That's wishful thinking. But we don't need wishful thinking.
She also needs to get especially the young to disvalue mere authenticity for authenticity sake as the prime political virtue. Authenticity in pursuit of phantoms in the air is no virtue. A indefatigable pragmatism in the pursuit of the truly achievable is no vice. Yes Don Quixote was authentic and sincere in his search for Dulcinea. Though we can admire his Quixotic devotion to her, that didn't make her a reality or make his quest non-Quixotic.