When I'm Mobile [View all]

[H2O Man]

Systems are funny things. As everyone who has had the misfortune of reading my contributions here knows, I often compare various systems to a mobile hanging over an infant’s crib.The mobile’s objective is to maintain balance. Thus, if one piece moves, several others must adjust their position to maintain the balance. If a new piece is added to the mobile, all the other pieces must adjust, and a new balance be found.

Let’s consider some potential examples of fall shifting, as the November election approaches. Let’s say that Trump does not win the republican nomination. That leaves about 30% of the republicans angry. If, in this circumstance, Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate, he will get about half of those Trumps supporters, because they hold Washington in utter contempt. If Hillary is the Democratic candidate, she will not get any of the Trump supporters’ votes.

Now, let’s consider another possibility. Suppose that Trump is the republican nominee. If Bernie is the Democratic nominee, he will defeat Trump. If Hillary is the Democratic candidate, that could be a very closely contested election ….unless certain things shift.

As always, I’ll take a second to clearly identify my position. I support Bernie Sanders. Still, I have been clear that I will support the Democratic Party’s nominee in November. More, I will encourage my family, friends, and associates to do the same. However, because the majority of the people I hang with are either progressives in the Democratic Party or Democratic Left, I do not believe many will vote for any Democratic nominee other than Senator Sanders.

Indeed, I have attempted to communicate that to my friends who are supporting Hillary, both here on the internet, and in “real life.” For a variety of reasons -- and it doesn’t matter if one believes them to be valid or not -- it is evident that just as she has many people who support her, Ms. Clinton has high negatives. Obviously, she received a lot of negative attention from bat-shit crazy republicans in the 1990s. But it is equally obvious that this is distinct from the reasons why, over the past 16 years, lots of progressives have come to dislike her. And it would be very difficult to convince people who do not trust Hillary, who view her as part of Wall Street, to still vote for her.

I do not believe that those people who are running the Clinton campaign are stupid. They know that besides those who definitely support her candidacy, they will require another segment of the voting public to win. They must recognize that the old, “you have no where else to go” will not work in 2016. It’s not that any meaningful number of Sanders’s supporters would vote for Trump. That won’t happen. Rather, they will either cast a “third party” protest vote, or not vote at all.

Instead, it appears to me that the Clinton campaign is banking on something similar to what worked for Nixon and Reagan: getting votes from the opposition party. Many of us here recall Nixon’s “the Silent Majority,” or his southern strategy, and the “Reagan democrats.” And, seriously, if the November contest features Clinton vs. Trump, who will the Bush family be supporting? Who will Henry Kissinger endorse? Who will John McCain favor? And who will Goldman Sachs support?

I think that this model explains a lot of the curious features that we see today. The hostility and utter contempt that Team Clinton shows daily for the Sanders movement does not make sense in any other context. Two things have threatened the balance of the system: on the left, the Sanders movement, and on the right, the Donald Trumpsters. Hence, those with the most to lose hanging in the balance will tend to reinforce one another.

Now, whenever someone talks like I am here, and points out some things that the Clinton campaign prefers to ignore, there will be a few general responses. The first, of course, is to simply ignore it. Yet, as John Lennon noted, a conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words. Others, at the grass roots level, will simply say, “No, that’s incorrect” …..for they are largely unaware of the true nature of that mobile. Most of them would not consciously seek to promote a program that appeals more to republicans, than actual Democrats. And those at the upper levels of the Clinton campaign view it as holding promise that as President, Hillary Clinton could work effectively with republicans.

Again, these are the types of things that would make it very hard for a person like me to get friends and associates to vote for Hillary if she is the Democratic Party’s nominee, especially if she is competing against Donald Trump. It deflates the argument that there are really important differences between the two parties, at the top levels. If it was Clinton vs. Cruz, I could use the US Supreme Court for leverage. But that argument is far less compelling if it’s Hillary vs. Trump.

Hence, when I think about why the Clinton campaign treats the Sanders movement the way it does, I find that the idea that they are betting on Clinton vs. Trump in November -- with the republican machine quietly backing Hillary, makes the most sense. I find that unacceptable.

Peace,
H2O Man