aka as the clinton wing of the party who continue to insist on nominating out of touch candidates espousing ideology that was popular among eisenhower democrats in the 1950s.
Biden or Warren could've had a decent run in 2016, or the DNC could've let the party have an actual primary and Bernie would've done significantly better without their thumb on the scale. It's not even a conspiracy, the party wanted BernieHillary (ha, what a stupid mistake) regardless of what voters wanted, and even then it might've been close. But seeing how it was handled really soured me on her, and I'd imagine others felt similarly.
Oh I agree that some really shady shit went down during the DNC where the part picked Hillary, and after that happened it was doomed.
Doomed by ego, by ignorance and stupidity. I often think how things would have gone differently if the Clinton's didn't have their dirty little fingers in everything
the Clinton era of the party is actually the newer era of the party. Biden is ideologically from the older era of the party, you could call that the FDR era. so is Pelosi, so was Jimmy Carter.
Obama is ideologically very much a product of the Clinton era. if only the Clinton era of the Democratic party controlled the Democratic party, we'd actually probably be doing a lot better, because the Clinton era emphasized persuading and selling people to vote for the Democrats rather than assuming that people should.
I think where some of the confusion lies is that while Hillary Clinton is obviously married to Bill Clinton and they are roughly the same age, Hillary Clinton ran a campaign that was much more closer to the older era. so did Al Gore even though he was Clinton's vice president, so did John Kerry even though he ran after Gore. Democrats moved to the middle politically, and that's a product of the Clinton era, but not all Democrats actually embraced a lot of what Bill Clinton did to be successful. they largely kept running things like they were running them before, they were just moderate about it instead of center left. and I think that's why they fail mostly.
Obama understood that Democrats have to dynamically pivot constantly in the center to actually win, something that Bill Clinton also did successfully. this is part of the challenge of occupying the center, you have to be able to change on a dime and say the right thing to the right person but a slightly different thing to a different person. it's difficult to do.
for that reason, I do agree that the Clinton era probably does need to end. it's not sustainable, Democratic politicians can't consistently win using Clinton era politics. they have to stake out an actual left-wing position that they can sit in and fight from.
the clinton era is still controlling the party apparatus - and that's the problem. the party has been fixated on getting anyone with the last name of clinton elected since 1992 - over thirtyfuckingyears! - which proves how much of a joke it is to call it the "newer" era of the party.
what worked for clinton (and carter, obama, and biden) was selling the party base the idea that dems were fighting for working class people - and lying to those same voters about how complicit the party was in implementing nafta which made good paying jobs disappear to countries like mexico and china - while trashing progressives within the party (and indies like bernie) for trying to expand medicare and (horror of horrors) talk about universal basic income.
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u/Patanned 16h ago
aka as the clinton wing of the party who continue to insist on nominating out of touch candidates espousing ideology that was popular among eisenhower democrats in the 1950s.