I agree with this, Plucky, as stated. Obama won because he’s phenomenal. But. In the process of losing, Hillary showed herself to, well, rather poor advantage. Her bad grace did not cause Obama to win, but it did cast some doubt on her political and campaigning ability. I tell myself it’s time to forget 2008, at last. But is it?
Because it plays with the remnant of Reagan Democrats, and far too many independents. She is talking tough, but no tougher than Obama, and she was the one who started the process to get an agreement with Iran through sanctions, not bombing. Don’t fool yourself, Hillary won’t hawk out short of another 9/11. And if that happens, even Bernie will hawk out more than you want him too.
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I agree, and the polling does as well – every poll I’ve seen that addresses this question shows the vast majority of Hillary supporters have a favorable opinion of Bernie, and the vast majority of Bernie supporters have a favorable opinion of Hillary. [Those who don’t are a concern, but it is important to remember that they are by far the exception to the rule, and at this stage of the game we shouldn’t assume that many or even most of them can’t eventually be persuaded to vote for the other Democratic candidate anyway – especially when the other choice is Trump or Cruz or whoever.]
Bernie is doing better than he was a couple months ago because he’s succeeding in getting his message out more broadly and many Democratic primary voters like his message a lot. Hillary is continuing to do very well (let’s not lose sight of that) because she is continuing to succeed in getting her message out there and many Democratic primary voters still like her message a lot, too. Assuming the polls are at least reasonably accurate, these are two mostly-overlapping circles, and the movement within that overlap is basically about whose message is resonating a bit more at the moment.
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I’m not sure it would be accurate to say that she started the sanctions. Of course, she was the secretary of state at the time, but Colin Powell was also Secretary of State when he gave his speech to the UN. I believe that few people would give him credit for starting the Iraq war.
I believe she faithfully and Abele executed the foreign policy as directed by the President, just as John Kerry deserves a lot of credit for his contributions to the Obama administration. I would not consider it fair to say that John Kerry is responsible entirely for the Iranian nuclear deal.