2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: NY Times Attends Clinton House Party in Iowa, Finds Instead MORE SANDERS SUPPORT In Evidence. [View all]MisterP
(23,730 posts)Last edited Mon Jul 27, 2015, 03:54 PM - Edit history (1)
represents what they think the party stands for and who can also get popular enthusiasm for the general (which is often just assumed to be equal to the enthusiasm/vote they get in the primary)
I presume that the Clinton campaign absolutely didn't expect a real primary campaign--there'd be O'Malley and a scattering of others that'd be like Bill Bradley was in '00: affable, a little lefter on a few issues, but not shaking up the system or demanding any policy or change that couldn't be easily absorbed into the main campaign
strategically, they could even lose IA and NH like Bush '00 or McCain '08 on the other side of the aisle, but that'd just means more endorsements come November since everyone's playing the game: there'd be no vocal, wildly popular opponent like Obama in '08 so it could even be a clean campaign; Obama even lost the Dems' strongholds of CA, NY, and PA and managed to win--
generally the primary campaign is an extension of the general run: meet-and-greets, townhalls, big donors that you "need" to win the general, strategizing against the probable GOP opponents, building name recognition, careful stage management and pre-arranged interviews with only the friendliest of talking heads; the slot would go to the VP or SoS or maybe a Senator already popular with the people and on the floor, and a few challengers who'd never break 20% or 30%
but this time around Sanders saw Obama waste away his mass movement, buddy up with the GOP and big business, give the war criminals and the Wall (St) criminals even more money, give single-payer advocates the bum's rush--and, worse, this was all after he'd condemned this sort of bait-and-switch and even regular Capitol Hill horse-trading; Sanders is an Old Democrat, not a TV-production Blairite who promises the sky: he's a bigmouth in the style of Proxmire or Fulbright or Yarborough, someone who remembers when college wasn't $30,000 a year, corporations resisted their raiders, and economic policy didn't actively reward shipping a factory to Mexico or China--but also remembers the war, racism, and environmental negligence of that era
now all the "officialists" can do is draw the curtains and pretend the storm's a drizzle, and send out the innuendo brigades
and "wooden"? yeeoouch! and I say that as someone who just got banhammered from the "safe space"
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