Hillary Clinton is a Democrat who cannot by honest means defeat a non-Democrat in the contest for Democratic nomination that great majority of Democrats in Congress and in the media expected her and enabled her to win hands down.
She thinks saying this out loud is a winning strategy.
Mind-boggling incompetence.
There’s a difference. The downballot argument is legit. It is entirely possible to make that argument without playing the identity politics of whether he’s a “Democrat” or not. Is this whole thing a huge deal? Not really. She’s still extremely likely to win anyway, but it’s not unreasonable to be concerned that these kinds of attacks are counterproductive and evidence that her campaign is recognizing some weakness as a result of his recent surge, lashing out to counter it.
I don’t think that has anything to do with it and I’m not seeing any evidence of that in anyone’s posts, mine included. People around here are generally pretty rational and try to have a legit rationale for their positions.
She is right, but that doesn’t matter.
Lots of Democrats support Bernie, and that’s what matters. This is a losing message for Clinton, and makes her look petty.
It only makes her look petty to the Berniacs because, in the general election, this is Sanders Achilles Heel.
I’m a Democrat by anybody’s standards, working for Democratic candidates since 1968, registered as a Democrat since I turned 18, and only not voting for the Democrat in the presidential election my first time out, when I voted Socialist Workers. Bernie’s enough of a Democrat for me.
I’m pretty sure this will provoke a response from purest of the pure who hate having to share their party with us lesser mortals.
You are showing your age with this comment. The ACA was developed by the Heritage Foundation for Nixon - now it is a Democrat policy because of HRC in 1993. Trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP were GOP supported agreements that Democrats used to fight against tooth-and-nail. Supporting Wall Street over Main Street was never a Democrat policy until the Clintons and their machine. Giving ground in ANY AND EVERY negotiation before the negotiation ever started to the GOP is a Clinton approach to policy making that Obama has carried on. This is what it means to shift to the right, but because the GOP has gone so far off the deep end of the right, most young voters (say, those under 25 who have never known any Democratic President except Clinton and Obama in their lifetimes) do not know any other Democratic Party and do not know how far to the right they have actually shifted with neo-liberal economic policies and social justice abandonment. Establishment Democrats like Clinton, Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and the rest of the leadership are just GOP lite, and older Democrats who hold with the values of the Democrats in the past can see it clearly. It is why they vote for someone like Sanders and encourage young Democrats to embrace the things he has been fighting for all his life. And make no mistake, while he was fighting in the trenches for issues that Democrats embraced, many of us remember that Clinton was a registered Republican and working for the likes of Wal-Mart.
New York is a closed primary where only registered Democrats can vote. She’s just exploiting Sanders’ weakness with voters who are probably pretty loyal to the Democratic Party .
One without the other is useless to the rest of us.
So?
Yesterday it didn’t make her look petty. But if she keeps addressing it then it will not only make her look petty, but be petty.
It’s a perfectly valid point, but not one to hang your hat on. The needs to say, “Look, he hasn’t been a supporter of the Democratic Party or Democratic candidates in the past, and that’s it. Bernie brings it up as a positive, and we think it is not. But it’s time to move on to more important issues like …”
And then after that just say, “We have more important things to talk about, like MS with their anti-gay laws …” or whatever other issue she’s pressing.
But she can’t let the media keep making this about who is a pure Democrat and who is not. That’s a losing argument for both sides.
Oh please. Anyone who votes Socialist Workers isn’t a Dem. And if that’s what you’re looking for, great. it’s your choice. But you’re not a Democrat and you should be voting for another Party.
Exactly, particularly when one candidate continues to claim he’s expanding the electorate and bases his ability to get anything accomplished as president on the notion that there’s going to be some kind of great revolution. There’s not even a a great revolution in the Democratic Party.
And make no mistake, while he was fighting in the trenches for issues that Democrats embraced, many of us remember that Clinton was a registered Republican and working for the likes of Wal-Mart.
YAWN!
Edit to add: I might remind you that Establishment Democrats like Clinton, Pelosi, Reid, Obama managed to pass healthcare reform which had been a liberal goal for almost a century.
You have to admit it sounds petty. It certainly doesn’t convince people who are not completely happy with the corporate-friendly tendency to triangulation that has participated in causing such dissatisfaction. Party loyalty only goes so far.
It’s not about purity, Sanders is the one focused on purity. This is a the basic and simple as to whether or not the man is a Democrat. I don’t know how anyone can actually know the answer to that when he’s running for president as a Democrat and running for reelection in VT as an Independent.
Not a coup, but a wave of expectations.
Or not. Hard to say if the wave is strong enough.
You’re right - go vote for Independent Party. No, really, go. This is one of the problems I have with the whole “he’ll pull her to the left” canard. Partly what it’s done is to create some artificial schism between the pure so-called Progressives and the rest of us.
We’re in agreement that it’s not about purity. But by allowing the media to keep pushing her on it, to allow it to stay a story, it is becoming a purity question.