2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: A not-that-political friend's take on Bernie Sanders [View all]Rilgin
(787 posts)We see this all the time, Hillary supporters saying they support Bernie's issues.
At the same time, many HRC supporters go through substantial internal mental stretches to avoid looking directly at Hillary's past and current positions and what they might mean for the future or the contradictions between her current positions and her past positions. Are such changes evolution, pragmatism, cynicism. It really is impossible to know and this causes cognitive dissonance in anyone who wants to be or is invested in being her supporter. To avoid such dissonance, I think I never see the supporters actually looking directly at Hillary's past or positions. Almost all of such examination, is forgiving, comparing her with Republicans, twisting clear positions to make them ambiguous, or outright ignoring inconvenient problems with her candidacy. Her support is more based on faith and emotion than a direct look at her positions, good and bad.
A good example is the TPP. Her history shows she is a supporter and she previously stated she would not take a position till she saw the final agreement. This was seen correctly as trying to not offend the base and her donors, threading a needle rather than taking a position. Recently, even though she could not have seen the final documents, she made an ambiguous statement that was read to be a position against the TPP although even that seems to have been made more ambiguous by her most recent post debate statement on the TPP. Many Hillary supporters are against the TPP or have some problems with it. To avoid the cognitive dissonance of Hillary's history and ambiguity we see some rather awkward arguments from a great majority of supporters. I will contrast this with more authentic Hillary supporter arguments I have seen although rarely (the rarity is the subject of this post). I have seen posts actually trying to defend the TPP, or stating that it is not a big deal. I have also seen as a rarity, honest posts where people disagree with Hillary on TPP and other corporate issues but put those issue as non fatal for them. However, this honesty is rare because it is not usually seen as a path to a nomination.
She is an attractive, smart, capable woman. She has been a public figure for years and has had good moments in that history. However, she also has a long history of contradictions and wrong political calculations. Some of these are major and would be absolutely fatal in another politician.
This is what I think is incomprehensible. If you took another candidate and gave him Hillary's past and current positions and history, I think most Hillary supporters would be against that candidate.