Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line
Kep sometimes I feel you're fighting the last war instead of the next one. The "I'd rather have a beer with him" mantra got destroyed (like a lot of things) by George W Bush. I'm also not sure there's a lot of distance been Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton on issues. Udall I agree is far more liberal.
I agree with you on Warner, and I think we'd have the Clinton triangulation problem if he were the nominee. Not to mention that he would be running to the right of any primary opponent not named Hillary which means he'd commit to a lot of weak sauce policy stuff indistinguishable from the center-right. So, granted, I withdraw Warner as a choice. O'Malley gets mentioned a lot but to me (from up close in MD) he just seems like a time-server who only comes up because it's "his turn." Historically, that is much more a GOP maneuver, so I don't see him being able to fundraise adequately for IA or NH.
Cuomo is as big a disaster as Hillary -- completely a tool of Wall Street. I'd prefer he just switch parties already and run as a 70's Republican.
Patrick comes up a lot -- I don't see the big deal about him either way. He doesn't have Obama's dead shark eyes of political opportunism, and he doesn't seem to have any ideas of what a president should be except he should be named "Deval."
The more I look at the list the more I think it's thin. Hillary is going to have to screw up monumentally to even make this a horserace.
Beyond all this though, its like using a magnifying glass to find differences. If you can get 80% of what you want, as opposed to 0%, that's a deal you take. Failure to recognize this is what gave the country the second Bush Presidency as whiny liberals came under the spell of the fraud Little Ralphie Nader.
I'm not sure how else to put this after having the same conversation 20 times: DUH. Nobody wants Nader Redux, which is why when the nomination is settled we'll all hold our noses and bravely pull the lever for the sh
it sandwich that is Miss Thing. But the question was "who else ya got"?
Hillary doesn't give me 80% of what I want; she gives me, at most, 25%. On most issues she is dead center. On some, like military intervention and the continuing obsession with bowing to AIPAC dollars, she is center-right. Her sole redeeming feature is she would likely win handily enough (in our modern split reality that means 55-45) in what is already going to be a great year for Dem Senate prospects that she would likely not have to worry about the current Senate fluffernutters (although no matter who the Dem nominee is there will be weekly Poutrages from the right about him or her being "the most radical arglebargle..." since that's what keeps the rubes riled). The downside of that is, of course, that her agenda only looks enticing if the alternative is Republican Neofeudalism.
But yes, yes, of course -- when she's crowned I'll be there at the coronation. Just don't expect me to be happy about it.
You can't elect Bernie Sanders President anymore than Jim Inhofe has a chance to win. The goal is to 1) win the Presidency, and then 2) have a more progressive Congress pass legislation that is more likely to get enacted then if President Paul or Cruz is in office. The idea that a Clinton Presidency would reflect a return of neo-conservativism is fvking lunacy. It more likely will mirror Bill Clinton's record on foreign policy which was pretty darn good.
Hillary is highly susceptible to the "must bomb a new place every quarter to prove she's got a d
ick" problem. Thatcher Disease.
My solace is a wave election in '16 and/or '20 might give us a liberal enough Congress to force her to the left -- the mirror of '94. The Clintons are utterly amoral -- they are purely power-seeking organisms. If the political context is liberal they will govern as liberals. The risk is that with big money dominating politics more and more their line of least resistance will be conservative, and the next 10 years will be a battle between the GOP Insane Clown Posse and the Clintons' "power for our own sake," with absolutely nobody actually representing liberal ideas or national interests.