I’m drafting this up because it’s something I feel like I really need my “blue” friends (especially my Hillary Clinton loyalists) to consider.
- Y’all already know that I’m a Bernie guy – thanks in advance for reading this even if you’re not. You can comment below! We can discuss it! I’m genuinely invested in the angles I’m missing. I’ll start by laying this out as I see it:
This is clearly an ‘OUTSIDER’ election year in our American politics. The anti-establishment and ‘sick of Washington-as-usual’ sentiment is bigger than ever.
I realize that Clinton is winning these nomination contests against Sanders, and some of you are very happy about it, but I’m really not sure that it’s something we should be happy about if we consider this perspective of the ‘OUTSIDER’ anti-establishment year that we’re in.
Our politics tends to ‘pendulum swing‘. We generally have awfully low voter turnout in America (especially locally and at midterms). We don’t pay continuous attention and it’s like an afterthought correction/reaction that the half that’s paying attention makes every four years.
After this last 8 years of Obama, the pendulum swing would logically swing to the RED side –
– or at LEAST to something that feels “new”.
A “continuation” of 2008’s Democratic win just isn’t historically likely – that’s not logically where the momentum is going to be, nationally. We haven’t elected two Democratic administrations back to back since Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman served between 1933 and 1953.
And importantly, more important than anything in my opinion, if you are paying any attention to people and what we’re seeing politically in America over the last year –
THIS 2016 ELECTION YEAR is NOT a “Republican vs. Democrats” kind of election year.
2016 is not like the Red v. Blue of the 90s, or the Bush v. Gore of the 2000s.
Of course I love Barack Obama and loved Bill Clinton and Hillary fighting for health care in the 90s and Gore fighting for climate awareness and would love a female president. But this year is bigger than Red V. Blue.
This is not a politics-as-usual year.
This is an ‘OUTSIDER’ election year.
This is the year that people are finally beginning to voice (God, finally…) that they are SICK of politics as usual. They recognize that red v. blue partisan gridlock is getting us nowhere and they are ready to DO something about it. This is MUCH of what’s fueled Donald Trump’s rise and it’s basically dismantled the traditional Republican Party as we knew it.
- …don’t care because you’re on the “blue” team? Have you noticed that the media spends 70-80% of it’s coverage on the Republicans (most of that on Trump) and eventually covers the Democrats as an afterthought? So what might the country nationally pay attention to this November?
Bernie Sanders has risen from completely unknown last year to competitive with HRC this year by talking BEYOND the party – about EVERYONE – not just the Loyal Blue Democrats. About EVERYONE who isn’t in the wealthiest 1/10th of 1%. About the middle class. About all of us, not about a two party system.
His rise is due to young people and people who are frustrated with a rigged system they don’t feel they can trust. His rise is fueled by the very people who normally ignore establishment politics.
His supporters are passionate, and committed, and they’re bringing new voters into the process unlike anything we’ve seen in the Democratic party since Barack Obama (*Ron Paul also had it going there for a bit for the middle-right side… remember that…).
This energy and momentum has everything to do with ‘outsider’ politics coming into its own this year.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are conventionally UNLIKELY candidates that are successful this year because they inspire thinking OUTSIDE of the “red v blue” game.
And Donald Trump isn’t really a “Republican” any more than Bernie Sanders is a “Democrat”. (Sanders is an Independent running on the Democratic ticket, and I think Trump probably just saw the weaker field and easier audience to manipulate and figures out week by week the best way to get headlines).
This is an ‘outsider election year’ where the loyal party insiders aren’t dominating the playbook and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that (some would say it’s great!) —
- Being principled is more complex and specific and thoughtful than just being on a team.
Gay or Straight, Black or White, Us vs. Them…For years the internet has been decentralizing and diversifying these monolithic binary myths and it’s finally having an effect. Older generations might be hanging on to some of this old bedrock BUT YOUNGER PEOPLE ARE NOT. They could care less if you try to McCarthy-label something as “socialist”. They know they’re broke and that the 80’s middle class their parents may have enjoyed is disappearing. Our politics (red AND blue) have been corrupted by a rigged system for years and people know it. They feel it. They want to someone else to sound like THEY feel it too, and to voice that. They want someone to sound different when they talk about it.
DONALD TRUMP “sounds different” than a regular politician – his supporters constantly cite this as the reason for their loyalty – and it’s WORKING VERY WELL for him.
Bernie Sanders “sounds different” too.
- Sanders’ inspiration is rooted in 30 years of consistent populist principles and Trump’s is about as sophisticated as a schoolyard bully’s opportunism sprinkled with xenophobia, racism, and misogyny, but, they both “sound different“. And I’ll spare you the Bernie love here but the way you know #feelthebern is real is that he isn’t still at 3% in the polls.
Does Hillary Clinton ever “sound different“?
Or does she sound like a Washington insider whose staff stays up all night engineering the next prepared statement she’ll deliver?
And maybe that was the most effective strategy for 1996 or for 2005.
But was it the most effective approach in 2008 when she ran against Barack Obama for being an impractical idealist who couldn’t possibly have a shot? (Who wasn’t a Muslim “as far as she knows” because she “takes him at his word”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFREDHB-nQ)
- Sometimes it sure does seem like Hillary Clinton supporters (as well as she herself) have conveniently forgotten she was ever in a long drawn out heated presidential campaign with Barack Obama. I haven’t because I was a big Barack Obama fan in 2008 and today’s debates are more than a little déjà vu (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3JHexXljk — sorry for the casual title, I didn’t make it. 2:04 is where Obama reminds her that when he was community organizing for regular people on the streets of Chicago she was “a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Walmart”).
Will Hillary Clinton’s strategy in the fall of an ‘outsider election year’ be the winning strategy?
If we know that Donald Trump
- is getting massive new political support from people who usually ignore politics and resent establishment politics
- can play the media like a fiddle to ensure he gets limitless free air time
- can morph at any time into anything he wants without suffering for it among his following
- promotes left OR right positions just depending on what’s most effective for his current goal/deal
…and if we know he’s very likely to be the Republican nominee this fall,
…and if we know that this is an “outsiders” type of election year (It is),
…and that what the 2 establishment parties thought would happen didn’t (It didn’t),
…and that all of the political pundits have been wrong in their predicitons (They have),
…and that we still have to work on a Red v. Blue ticket system (We do),
*Who* is, then, our best shot to put up for the Blue team in an “outsider election year“?
- The fresh new-to-the-scene outsider independent populist who rails against a rigged system and politics as usual and who’s getting all of the college and under-29 youth vote and who went from unknown to a movement in 6 months?
Or,
- A partisan democrat with low trustworthy and likability ratings who reminds people of 1990s dynastic gridlocked politics promising safe incremental more-of-the-same policy and who relies on low caucus/primary turnout and Superdelegates potentially to secure the nomination?
Republican turnout in early states so far has been WAY UP from previous years.
- NEW VOTERS, “outsiders”, who haven’t voted before.
Democractic turnout in early states so far has been ABYSMAL.
- We’re taking things for granted after 8 years of an articulate president after 8 years of a president who could barely put together a sentence. Sanders is creating new youth momentum and getting 80% of the youth vote in early states but there’s been low voter turnout overall, and Clinton’s getting wins from traditional older low voter turnout. I’ve always believed the Democratic umbrella would include like 75% of the country if generally open minded and reasonable young and middle-aged people bothered to vote, but they DON’T. I think that they WOULD this November if it were to stop Donald Trump, but they aren’t turning out RIGHT NOW in the early states’ primaries in large enough numbers to overturn low Democratic establishment turnout and get Sanders the nomination. Fine – I mean, there’s only so much I can do or say about that, low turnout is frustrating but it’s will of the people, etc., that part just is what it is…
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So, if we don’t make Sanders happen, the future I’m glancing, in the year of an OUTSIDER ELECTION, is a DONALD TRUMP vs. HILLARY CLINTON general election.
Sure, if enough principled people vote with logic and reason, HRC should handily defeat Donald Trump.
- I mean, what risk could there possibly be that Americans might not pay much attention and turn out, or that they might sort of just go along with whatever is new and entertaining? …that they might just vote for an entertaining TV personality? That they might just vote for the most different option out there rather than the politics-as-usual option they’ll be told to vote for ‘for their own good’?
Let’s remember – Our presidential politics is a game of LOW voter turnout – 60% max.
Red cancels out Blue, and the “INDEPENDENTS” choose the president.
That’s how it usually happens. A few swing states decide it, etc.
Who might inspire those independents and compete with Trump?
The pendulum isn’t swinging back Blue like it was in 2008 after 8 years of George W. Bush. It’s an OUTSIDER ELECTION, And the RED TEAM has an enormously successful entertainment personality who is immune to all of the usual rules of politics.
We don’t have Barack Obama.
We aren’t on track to having Bernie Sanders.
We’ll have Hillary Clinton.
Again.
Who already lost a similar fight on her own side in 2008.
Is this smart?
What I think might “trump” Trump is a candidate who inspires NEW participation. Who effortlessly oozes AUTHENTICITY and SINCERITY. 30 years of consistency. Who very surprisingly created an unlikely MOVEMENT of young people and NEW participation and NEW enthusiasm.
Not calculated prepared statements that move to the left or right as necessary.
Trump dominates that chameleon game — Clinton just doesn’t pull it off like he does (and her target audience is smarter).
What I’m fearing, is that in the year of an OUTSIDER ELECTION, “the red side” is going to put up an OUTSIDER, and “the BLUE side” (who’s principles of course I most closely support but nonetheless) is going to put up a CAREER INSIDER.
?!
Our best weapon in 2016 is a new chapter of the Clinton Dynasty? The counterpart to what what JEB BUSH just tried? Look how that just worked out for him. And it’s not some narrow evangelist right winger we’re potentially up against, it’s a very clever and skilled media mastermind that knows damn well how to create and entertain a following.
I’m trying to imagine that in November the *REPUBLICANS* are going to hold the timely outsider rebel position of selling anti-Washington to the half of America that can’t stand Washington, and our counter-punch will be a career partisan insider who champions her 90s ability to “take on the Republicans”.
You don’t think we might want that counter-punch to be the fresh-to-the-scene (but with 30 years of consistency and experience) populist that’s inspired a movement of YOUNG people and NEW VOTERS? We’re going to miss out on the national populist opportunity of our time this fall that because of apathetic democratic low voter turnout in some early states? And Superdelegates?
Great.
Democracy is about participation, and we get the democracy we deserve.
I kind of feel like, on the night before Super Tuesday, I’m watching a 6 month train wreck in slow motion.
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CLEARLY, if it’s Trump v. Clinton I will fully and tirelessly support her and hope she can do it. But I look at the enthusiasm of Sander’s support, and all those young and new voters, in an ‘outsider’ election year, and I wonder, what the hell are we doing. We’re gonna say NO THANKS to that energy? Things are moving forward, fast, and faster I’m afraid than the establishment Democratic party has figured out. HRC has a career of doing very very good things. No one’s saying there’s anything fundamentally “wrong” with Hillary Clinton. But this is not the 1990s. 2008 was not her time, and I’m afraid this is not her time either. Even if we give her the nomination.
The pundits all said Trump would sabotage himself and the 2nd place guy would get the nomination.
The pundits all said America isn’t ready for “socialism” and that Bernie Sanders wouldn’t go anywhere.
You know where I put my faith? In the movement that’s authentic and whole-hearted and bigger than itself and NOT ego-driven, that’s waking up millions of people and inspiring them to pay attention for the first time, and participate.
The pundits have been wrong about *everything* since the beginning of this. This is NOT the year to listen to the mainstream media for conventional wisdom.
I just worry that well-intentioned progressive-minded people might be thinking too small about what’s happening today with politics. Or thinking too much in the past and not enough in the present.
We must drive this car, not just stand on an overpass watching traffic.
We must participate, and inspire.
(WE MUST CAUCUS/PRIMARY TUESDAY NIGHT if you’re reading this before then!)
Your thoughts??
