I highly doubt this “hot take” mainly because there are far more desirable candidates they could throw money at that not only check the same boxes that Clinton does but many additional ones that are actually negatives for her.
Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden to just name a few.
The press isn’t as careful about saying “intends to run for President” as they are about “alleged murder suspect”. 
Thread:
There are a number of politicians flat out agreeing with what is a statement as old as politics: if you’re not going to vote, they’re not going to care.
So if you plan on staying home because no one excites you, guess what? You will never get someone who excites you, because you don’t matter to someone who knows they can get elected without you. Yes, it seems like a shitty attitude, but it’s cost effective and realistic. And if they’re not going to risk voters they know they already have, on the off-chance that you might vote.
Sad, but true.
People in my area are voting early and I’m voting Tuesday, so I seeing people with “I voted” stickers and am like:
This is one of the many reasons to get out to vote. This asshole is actively cutting funding to fight domestic terrorism. WTF???
Speaking as an outsider, it seems to me that one of the perennial problems the American left has is people not engaging with the political system as it is, but as how they think it should be.
Thus the people who refuse to accept that not voting sends only one message: that you don’t matter; or that most times, voting for a third party is a waste of your time and vote at best, and actively counterproductive at worst; and so on.
Finally managed to vote after two failed attempts at voting early.
I am not posting that aimed at people with legitimate reasons, but if you have the time to stand in line to buy tickets or get into a sale, you don’t get to say that the line-up is too long for voting.
The easiest way to make sure your iPhone doesn’t rat you out to the fascists? Don’t let the fascists take power. (Ideally, you want people who will put laws in place limiting who can collect what kind of data, but start where you can).
Right now we have a refusal to contend with the root causes of the 2016 loss masquerading as concern for Russian meddling. Even if Russian meddling was at the level people pretend it is (and if you read about it with any kind of skepticism, there is a lot missing from the picture) and even if it tipped the balance: The race was close. Against Trump.
And people will bring up voter suppression, electoral college, and so on, and it’s not irrelevant, but these are best understood as battlefield conditions. Nobody should have been surprised there was an electoral college. We’ve had one for centuries at this point. Yet when you point out the failure of the Hillary campaign to target sensitive communities in relevant states, you get, “Well, she didn’t really lose,” a truly epic denial of who is currently in the White House, and “those voters should have known the right thing to do without being pandered to.” As you said, there is a failure to engage the system as it is.
Right now? I would put real money on Trump winning in 2020. Reading articles on BoingBoing, which I think is a relatively accurate microcosm of North American liberalism (albeit one that skews a bit left) you get the impression that people think this is a board game: Trump broke the rules, so he should automatically lose. This is not a board game, and there are no grown-ups to send Donny to his room. This is a back-alley fistfight that’s rapidly becoming a mugging, and if you’ve ever been in one, you know this: No one is coming to save you. Not Mueller, not Senate hearings, not a clause in the Constitution.
Vigorous agreement.
the race in the electoral college was close. the race in the popular vote, not so much.
there are multiple challenges. voter suppression is more significant than you seem to credit but it has had the positive effect of making those communities most seriously effected by voter suppression efforts becoming motivated to get out there and get the i.d.s and get out early to the fewer polling places and asking for provisional ballots. of course that is also causing an escalation in the suppression tactics of the republicans. the recent legislation in north dakota basically wiping out the ability of native americans ability to vote in the state is a good example of that.
there is a problem with this. every person who said they didn’t vote in 2016 because “bernie wasn’t on the ballot” or more generically “no candidate with my policy preferences is on the ballot” is guilty of not engaging with the system that is. i’d like to think the bitter experiences of this administration’s actions so far would be enough to shake some of that loose but i’m still seeing people here arguing that it wasn’t the non-voters fault because hilary. it makes me wonder whether by 2020 4 years of hell on earth will be enough to change some minds or if there will some who think the “contradictions need heightening some more.”
i agree with most of this sentiment. honestly, i don’t know many folks who think of it like this. as a texas democrat who has been actively participating in the process since i was a state delegate for jesse jackson in 1984, and working to help local democrats get on the ticket and get elected in the years since, i deeply understand the no holds barred fight to the death this is. it would be an eye-opener for most of the naive “my vote is special and i won’t waste it on the unworthy” voters i’ve read here and in other places if they could have had the chance to spend a summer working with the county party chair who taught me about elections, caucuses, and conventions when i was 23 and getting people out for jackson in 84. she was a strong, black woman who knew the damn score and was willing to teach if you were willing to engage.
i think we have a chance to beat him in 2020. my greatest fear is a fracture in the country either before that happens or as that happens.
My problem with that is that you seem to be overly focused on a relatively minor factor.
The evidence suggests that the number of Bernie voters who did not vote for Clinton was relatively low, as was the number or Bernie voters crossing over to the GOP. Less than the number of Clinton voters who switched to McCain in 2008.
The basic story of the election was that the usual GOP base voted for the GOP, the usual pre-Obama Dem base voted for the Dems, but many of the extra voters who had been attracted by Obama’s illusion of hope and change returned to despair. They aren’t disloyal or lazy Democrats; they aren’t Democrats at all. Most people don’t identify themselves by party.
From a practical politics point of view, attacking those people is of very limited utility. You can’t make them vote for you by yelling at them; the only way to get there is to listen to them.
We need a candidate first. The binder full of potential Democratic candidates is surprisingly thin, and the GOP is proactively trying to damage the ones they can think of as possibilities, using the strategy they successfully used against HRC. (Throw as much crap against someone as often and for as long as you can, and no matter how ridiculous and easily countered the smears are, enough voters will still believe them that the candidate will lose.)
I don’t think it should be a senator; a senator has to overcome the stigma of being a senator, not to mention any track record of the kind of compromise you have to engage in to be an effective senator. Only once since Kennedy has a senator won a presidential election, Obama over McCain, and that was both kind of special and against another senator. Before Kennedy you have to go back to Harrison to find a senator winning the office.
The best shot would be a governor, but there are almost no Democratic governors, and the ones in place are mainly not especially notable. Jerry Brown is both very smart and quite well-known, but he has too long and strange a history in the public eye and would be too easy for Trump to attack. Of the rest, I kind of like Wolf and Hickenlooper, but let’s be honest, Americans will never elect someone named Hickenlooper as president. W/r to the two female Democratic governors, Raimondo is under investigation by the SEC – I don’t know if this is the GOP trying to damage her early – and K. Brown seems to be kind of gormless.
I honestly don’t know as much about Tom Wolf as I should, but on paper he is pretty impressive. Really impressive. Anyone from PA that can speak to his presence? Can he debate?
i’m just not willing to accept an abdication of their part of the responsibility. in an election where the electoral college vote was swayed by a few tens of thousands of votes, possibly even a few thousands of votes, i don’t think there are any minor factors so everything needs to be worked out and worked on. getting out the vote, fighting against voter suppression, fighting against and guarding against russian interference as well as foreign interference in general, working on governors’ races and state legislatures to deal with gerrymandering. it all needs work.
if i’m a little hypersensitive to people who i know are democrats, progressives, and liberals who withheld their votes in 16 because of some misinformed, illogical, and tendentious argument about clinton “stealing” the nomination it’s because i consider those as votes for 45 and one part of why we are where we are. i’ve had that argument too many times to have any patience for it any more. it only looks like i’m shouting at them because the results of their actions are so hideous.
Oh I’m sorry… I’ve been blaming Trump for the disastrous policies of the White House. Clearly, I should be blaming Hillary, because she won the popular vote and is now the president.
I reiterate:
Whether it was beginner’s luck on Trump’s part, or just the mood the country was in that day, she was outmaneuvered here. Evidence? She’s not the fucking president. I’m not going to litigate whether or not she won a moral victory. Those don’t count for shit right now. I don’t care how unfair the EC is, or how much I wish it wasn’t a factor. Shit one hand and wish in the other, see what gets filled first. But if people don’t want to accept that, I’m going to double down on my 2020 bet, so have your money ready, though I warn you that by then I may not be accepting US dollars.
I had a Republican who voted for Gary Johnson tell me he didn’t vote Democrat because Bernie wasn’t on the ballot. Let me ask you this very simple, not-at-all-a-trick question:
Is this a Democrat? Obviously not.
Okay, let’s try another one: Someone who doesn’t show up for primaries and usually votes Democrat, when they feel like it. Mostly they wish there were more than two parties.
Is that a Democrat? No. Why would you think that’s a Democrat? That’s a swing voter. So why on earth do people pretend that you can whip voters who aren’t Democrats to vote for Democrats consistently? This is presuming you can whip voters like you can whip delegates or representatives. You can’t. You can’t shame people into loyalties they’ve never held. You have to do the hard work of buying them. Otherwise why even have campaigns? Why canvas or challenge people to debates?
You can’t win on shame, if only because we have a secret ballot in this country.
I completely disagree and I’m deeply unhappy about it.
FYI
LOLOLOL no
Care to elaborate?
Correct. Since not one but all of those factors were to blame for the “victory” of Il Douche or his far-right GOP comrades,* they all need to be addressed. One of those minor factors that added up to a major debacle were the loudmouths who didn’t vote for Clinton (or, more specifically in a duopoly system, against Dolt-45) in the general election because (and it’s hard to contest this) the DNC establishment did a fair amount of rigging things in favour of her during the primaries.
As much as I’d like to see a less corrupt Democratic party in this regard, the time for Sanders supporters (like myself) to address that particular factor and reform the party would have been after Il Douche was defeated in the general election.
[* and no-one except strawmen erected by Putin’s useful idiots and perhaps a handful of Bernie Bros really claims there was only one factor at fault for the 2016 result]
