“Politics, Power, And Change”: Here’s What You Need To Understand About How Hillary Clinton Views Race
This afternoon, Hillary Clinton will deliver a speech on race in Harlem. There’s a political context here, of course, which is that African American voters are central to both the Feb. 27 South Carolina Democratic primary and the entire campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But when Clinton speaks about race, something important happens: we get a revealing view not just of what she thinks is important, but of how she understands politics, power, and change.
According to guidance distributed by the Clinton campaign, today’s speech is going to cover a lot of policy ground, including criminal justice, education, housing, and economic opportunity. Clinton will also be discussing “systemic racism,” which is a key phrase to keep in mind to understand how she sees race, and how it differs from the way Barack Obama has dealt with racial issues over the past eight years.”
The idea of systemic racism has symbolic weight, but it’s primarily practical. It does speak to the fundamental truth that black people understand and that some whites resist, that racism exists in a thousand places at once, both those we can see and those we overlook. Saying you understand systemic racism is a way of saying that you see the problem as deep, wide, and historically grounded.
But it’s also a way of saying: This is a problem we, and the president him or herself, can actually do something about. If the racism that imposes itself on people’s lives is to be found in systems, then the way you attack it is to change the way those systems operate, through changes in law and policy.
In short — and if you’ll allow me to oversimplify things a bit — when it comes to race, unlike Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton doesn’t care how you feel.
Well of course she cares, but it’s not her primary concern. This is both her weakness and her strength.
Let me start this story in March 2008, when Obama delivered his much-praised speech in Philadelphia on race, after his former pastor Jeremiah Wright became controversial. In the speech you can see the stark difference between Clinton and him, or at least the candidate he was then. While Obama mentions in passing some of the ways racism has been embedded in institutions, most of the speech, and certainly the part people focused on after, was about different people’s perspectives on race. He talked about his white grandparents, noting that even the loving grandmother who largely raised him expressed fear of young black men. He talked about how white people who feel they never benefited from racial privilege can grow resentful of things like affirmative action. He talked about the anger of black people who continue to feel the sting of prejudice.
Like so many of Obama’s speeches in that campaign, it was extraordinarily eloquent and inspiring. It made you feel like no matter who you were, he understood you. Rereading it one can’t help but remember why many Americans went nuts for this guy.
As president, Obama has been extraordinarily cautious talking about racial issues. He obviously understands the way that his political opponents have cultivated racial resentments and used him as the symbol of everything anyone might fear about a time when white privilege is being challenged (regular listeners of conservative talk radio know, for instance, that Obama’s domestic policies are regularly described as “reparations,” wherein white people’s money is being stolen and then showered upon indolent, undeserving minorities). And though you could certainly point to any number of policy initiatives his administration has undertaken that address racial prejudice and its consequences, in his rare public statements on the topic Obama is far more likely to talk about people and their feelings, both black and white, than about the details of policy. It’s clear that he still believes that empathy and understanding are central to bridging the racial divides that his presidency has been unable to improve.
Clinton’s previous remarks on race, on the other hand, are essentially the inverse of Obama’s: some brief mention of values and feelings, quickly giving way to lengthy discussion of policy changes that can be made to address ongoing racial problems. You can see that in a major speech she gave in April about criminal justice reform. Early in the speech she articulated statements of values that link policy with ideas like justice and fairness: “There is something profoundly wrong when African American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts.” She then talked about her own work as a young lawyer with the Children’s Defense Fund, but what stands out for me is that her discussion is about power and institutions. “I saw repeatedly how our legal system can be and all too often is stacked against those who have the least power, who are the most vulnerable,” she says, which is a statement about justice but also a way of saying, I understand this system. The speech is heavy with facts and figures, and while there are a few lines about hopes and dreams, it doesn’t address anyone’s feelings about race. Instead, it’s mostly about policy.
Or consider an even more vivid illustration, a fascinating spontaneous discussion she had with some Black Lives Matter activists in August. It may be the single clearest statement you can find illustrating Clinton’s perspective on social and political change as you’ll ever see.
The activists essentially argue to Clinton that symbolism, rhetoric, beliefs, and policy are all intertwined. At one point, Julius Jones says to her, “America’s first drug is free black labor and turning black bodies into profit, and the mass incarceration system mirrors an awful lot like the prison plantation system. It’s a similar thread, right? And until someone takes that message and speaks that truth to white people in this country, so that we can actually take on anti-blackness as a founding problem in this country, I don’t believe that there is going to be a solution.” He also wants to know what’s in Clinton’s heart, and how she feels about the mistakes of the 1990s. “What in you,” he asks, “not your platform, not what you’re supposed to say — like, how do you actually feel that’s different than you did before? Like, what were the mistakes? And how can those mistakes that you made be lessons for all of America for a moment of reflection on how we treat black people in this country?”
Clinton’s response, though she doesn’t put it these terms, is essentially that it’s not about what she feels. Again and again, she comes back to the idea that you need a program, an agenda of specific things government should do:
So, all I’m saying is, your analysis is totally fair. It’s historically fair. It’s psychologically fair. It’s economically fair. But you’re going to have to come together as a movement and say, “Here’s what we want done about it,” because you can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it, who are going to say, “Oh, we get it. We get it. We’re going to be nicer.” Okay? That’s not enough, at least in my book. That’s not how I see politics. So, the consciousness raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical. But now all I’m suggesting is, even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives. And that’s what I would love to, you know, have your thoughts about, because that’s what I’m trying to figure out how to do.
Then Clinton and Jones begin talking quicker, and when at one point Jones characterizes her position as being that “what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts is to come up with a policy change,” Clinton jumps in with this:
No, I’m not talking about — look, I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own God-given potential, to live safely without fear of violence in their own communities, to have a decent school, to have a decent house, to have a decent future. So, we can do it one of many ways. You know, you can keep the movement going, which you have started, and through it you may actually change some hearts. But if that’s all that happens, we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation.
If I could put her point in terms that are a little more blunt, Clinton is basically saying that symbolism and feelings are all well and good, but they’re really not her concern. What she cares about is institutional power: who it belongs to, how it’s used, and what effects it has. Movement-building and consciousness-raising are not her job. They’re a part of the larger picture and can make her job easier, but her job is to make change within the institutions through which power flows.
You may or may not like this view of what a president does and how a president makes change. You may thirst for someone who can work the levers of power but can also inspire people, make them see things in a new way, offer a transformative vision of the future. But for better or worse, that’s not who Hillary Clinton is.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, February 16, 2015
“The Unprecedented ‘Precedent'”: What Kind Of Dictator Must Obama Be To Oppose 80 Years Of “Standard Practice”?
How can you tell the seemingly unanimous position of the Republican Party that President Barack Obama should not be permitted to select the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s successor is motivated by something other than apolitical concern for the republic? You can start by looking at the ways that their main talking point – that such an election-year nomination hasn’t been confirmed in 80 years – is both factually incorrect and more broadly intellectually dishonest and a novel reinterpretation of “precedent.”
Eighty years has become a truly magical number in the day since Scalia shuffled off this mortal coil. “The fact of the matter is that it’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year,” Republican Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley said. Standard practice! What kind of dictator must Obama be to oppose 80 years of standard practice? “It has been over 80 years since a lame duck president has appointed a Supreme Court justice,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said in the Republican presidential debate Saturday night; “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz echoed.
Flim-flam and jiggery-pokery.
Just as a factual matter, as has been widely noted, Reagan nominee Anthony Kennedy was (unanimously) confirmed to the court in February 1988 – not only an election year but a year in which Reagan was term-limited and could not run again. So just right off, the talking point is wrong. (Grassley, by the way, broke with his own self-professed “standard practice” and voted to confirm Kennedy.)
But! But! But Kennedy was nominated in 1987, so he doesn’t count, right? When was the last time in history that a president nominated someone for the court in an election year and the Senate confirmed them? That would be Franklin Roosevelt nominating Frank Murphy, then the attorney general, on Jan. 4, 1940, and the Senate confirming him 12 days later. So that was 76 years ago, which is still less than the enchanted “80” benchmark.
So where does the 80-year figure come from? So far as I can tell – through a cursory bit of Googling – it originated with a National Review post from Ed Whelan at 5:32 p.m. yesterday, some minutes after the news of Scalia’s untimely demise started to spread around the country. Points to Whelan for quick research but note how he phrased his item: “It’s been more than 80 years since a Supreme Court justice was confirmed in an election year to a vacancy that arose that year, and there has never been an election-year confirmation that would so dramatically alter the ideological composition of the Court.” He was referring to Benjamin Cardozo, “confirmed in March 1932 to a vacancy that arose in January 1932,” 84 years ago.
Note the rhetorical evolution from Whelan’s careful phrasing (“… in an election year to a vacancy that arose that year”) to the more widely promulgated talking point as expressed by, say, Grassley (“standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during an election year,” period) or Cruz (“80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year”).
Details, details, right? Do they matter? Well, yes, they do. Cruz, Grassley and anyone who repeats the assertion that there’s 80 years of precedent against confirming nominees in an election year is, in fact, wrong.
And the difference is important for a couple of reasons: First, imprecision reflects the questionable logic of the alleged precedent: that Obama’s “lame duck” status – lame duck traditionally means that his successor has been chosen, not that at some point in the future he’ll definitely be out of office – should deprive him and relieve senators of their constitutional duty. How better to justify this notion than by invoking tradition. But this is not a tradition of nonconfirmation in an election year (Kennedy was confirmed) or of presidents not nominating in an election year (Lyndon Johnson nominated Abe Fortas and Homer Thornberry in 1968) or of only confirming in an election year if the nomination came in the previous year (Murphy), but of not confirming in an election year when the vacancy occurred in that year.
That’s a much narrower standard than is being broadly bandied about. But it has to be or else the 80-year “standard practice” becomes less impressive: 76 years, or 48 years or 26 years.
The beauty of 80 years is that it sounds like an awfully big number – saying that the GOP is merely abiding by the “standard practice” of 80 years makes it sound routine, as if this is something that’s come up time and again over eight decades and is a settled matter. But since Cardozo was confirmed this narrowly drawn set of circumstances has arisen … once. Once! One instance in eight decades does not “standard practice” make.
Neither does it make 80 years of precedent. In fact it’s the opposite of precedent: The fact that 84 years ago Cardozo was nominated and confirmed to an opening that arose in an election year is actually precedent for – wait for it – considering an Obama nominee.
So if not respect for venerated precedent, what is going on here? Simple: The GOP neither wants to put another Obama nominee on the court nor allow its ideological balance to tip – especially when there’s a nontrivial chance that a year from now they’ll be able to replace Scalia with someone of like philosophy.
Does anyone think that if Scalia had died in December – before the election year – that the GOP reaction would be at all different? Or that in an alternate reality Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling President Mitt Romney that a Supreme Court nomination won’t be considered because he’s in the last year of his term?
The party is putting governing on hold in the name of political calculation. Republicans should own up to it and drop both the “80-year” talking point and the larger pretense of principle.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, February 14, 2016
“A Generation Later, Rubio Flubs ‘Morning In America'”: The Whole “Morning” Metaphor Is A Little Too Subtle For Marco
Marco Rubio’s new television ad is generating a fair amount of attention, but not for reasons his campaign will like. In the opening moments of the minute-long “morning in America” spot, viewers see a boat crossing a harbor – which wouldn’t be especially interesting except for the fact that it’s a Canadian harbor.
And while that’s obviously amusing, it’s not the only reason to pay attention to the ad.
The “morning in America” reference, of course, is not accidental. It’s a phrase many Americans, especially Republicans, will probably recognize as a signature theme of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign. Remember this ad from 32 years ago? For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s the script:
“It’s morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country’s history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It’s morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?”
And now, consider the message of Rubio’s version of the same ad. Note it’s mirror-image parallels.
“It’s morning again in America. Today, more men and women are out of work than ever before in our nation’s history. People pay more in taxes than they will for food, housing, and clothing combined. Nearly 20 trillion in debt for the next generation, double what it was just eight years ago. This afternoon, almost 6,000 men and women will be married, and with growing threats and growing government, they’ll look forward with worry to the future. It’s morning again in America and under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton our country is more vulnerable, divided, and diminished than ever before. Why would we ever want for more years, again, of that?”
Maybe the whole “morning” metaphor was a little too subtle for Marco Rubio.
The point of Reagan’s “morning in America” was optimism. “Mornings,” as a metaphor, are about new beginnings, fresh starts, and the hopes that come with a new day and new possibilities. It’s why the Republican icon made it the theme of his re-election campaign – he wanted people to feel good about the country.
Our dreams are dying; they’re just getting started. It’s not the end of an American promise; it’s the beginning.
Rubio’s ad keeps saying “it’s morning again in America,” except the Florida senator doesn’t seem to understand that he’s using “morning” incorrectly. To hear Rubio tell it, the United States is on the verge of a dystopian nightmare as our country descends into a hellhole. Rubio’s “morning” isn’t about new beginnings and new possibilities; it’s about waking up, opening the window shade, and feeling as miserable and pessimistic as possible.
It’s as if the senator got confused, and thought “morning” and “twilight” were effectively the same thing.
This is, however, part of a pattern. For months, Rubio’s polls were stagnant when he tried to run a positive, optimistic campaign, so he decided to scrap his message and adopt Trump’s script as his own. As of a couple of months ago, Rubio began telling the public the United States is “in decline”, the American dream is “dying.”
This new commercial is a continuation of the theme. Rubio is selling crushing pessimism with a smile, assuming people won’t pay attention to the fact that he’s not pitching Reagan’s message; he’s offering the literal opposite.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 16, 2016
“It’s Tricky Dick All Over Again”: Donald Trump Is Running For Richard Nixon’s Third Term
Conservative candidates usually beg for comparisons with Ronald Reagan, but Donald Trump’s political spirit animal is Dick Nixon.
And in true Trump fashion, he hasn’t been subtle about wearing his unfashionable influence on his sleeve. The signs are everywhere.
Travel through the primary states and you’ll see the placards plastered at events and scattered by the roadside: “The Silent Majority Stands With Trump.” That is, of course, a direct lift from Nixon’s oft-resuscitated slogan, which was meant to resonate with the “non-shouters, non-demonstrators” during the Vietnam War.
It’s no small irony that the children of these “forgotten Americans” now are being asked to rally around the ultimate shouter in American politics, a billionaire who avoided military service during the draft. The economic and cultural resentments of the white working class Nixon courted have only grown more intense in the wake of the Great Recession amid a fundamentally more diverse America led by a black president.
But lifting Nixon’s Silent Majority slogan barely scratches the surface of the debt Trump owes Tricky Dick.
In 1968, Vietnam was raging and Nixon campaigned on a “secret plan to end the war.” Now we’re embroiled in a multi-front war with ISIS and—you guessed it—Trump has offered up a secret plan to end the war against ISIS.
Days after kicking off his campaign, he told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren: “I do know what to do and I would know how to bring ISIS to the table, or beyond that, defeat ISIS very quickly… and I’m not gonna tell you what it is… I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing.”
Trump’s love of bluster balanced with a complete lack of policy detail doesn’t stop with war.
Take health care: Trump is running on a platform of “repeal and replace with something terrific.” When pressed for detail by George Stephanopoulos, The Donald replied, “Nobody knows health care better than Donald Trump”—retreating to Nixon’s favored third-person self-reference. “We’re going to work with our hospitals. We’re going to work with our doctors. We’ve got to do something… We’ll work something out. That doesn’t mean single-payer.”
In Trump’s world, it doesn’t matter that he once backed single-payer in a book that bears his name. And of course it doesn’t matter that Nixon’s own health care reform plan was considerably to the left of Obamacare. Our debates have been unburdened by fact for some time now, and that suits candidates like Trump just fine.
Nixon’s enemies list is another dark legacy Trump enthusiastically apes. Trump is quick to attack critics by name on the campaign trail—from mocking a disabled New York Times reporter to going after everyone from Megyn Kelly to George Will to The Daily Beast. For a candidate who loves to engage in rough-and-tumble verbal combat, his thin skin is a bit of a mystery. But Trump’s enemies list is so notorious that Vanity Fair lampooned it back in 2011 during his birther-backed flirtation with the presidency.
While Nixon’s enemies list can seem quaint almost a half-century later, they were far from simple partisan score-settling. We now know that Nixon’s lackeys looked at planting evidence on investigative journalist Jack Anderson, spreading damaging rumors about his sex life and even plotting to kill him, with the methods varying from putting poison in his medications to smearing massive doses of LSD on his steering wheel.
This is chilling stuff that smacks more of Vladimir Putin than an American president. But it’s a reminder of how much character matters in a commander in chief, because tone comes from the top. In an era of social media mobs and hardcore partisan news sites, pushback could turn to private citizen-directed opposition research and something uglier.
The deepest irony in the Trump-Nixon overlap has surfaced only in the past few weeks, as The Donald tries to appear more presidential. “Bring Us Together” was a signature Nixon 1968 campaign line, allegedly inspired by a sign held by a little girl at a rally and eagerly adopted by speechwriters like William Safire. Now Trump is punctuating his interviews and debate performances with the same line, promising to unite the nation if elected, despite all campaign tactics to the contrary.
Trump’s use of the line has already led to some surreal exchanges, as when Stephanopoulos asked him to explain how his opposition to marriage equality after the Supreme Court decision would lead to a more united nation. “It’s very simple,” he replied. “We’re going to bring our country together. We’re going to unify our country. We’re going to do whatever we have to do. I’m going to put the absolute best judges in position. If their views—we’re going to see what their views are. I will make the determination at that time.”
Such rhetorical tap-dancing means less than nothing and offers false comfort to some increasingly resigned establishment Republicans desperately looking for a silver lining if Trump is their party’s nominee. They hope the candidate doesn’t mean half of what he says, that he’s just pandering to get conservative populist votes. It’s a strained domestic extension of Nixon’s self-described “madman theory” in foreign policy, a belief that negotiating leverage is increased if your opponent believes that you might go nuclear. Extreme statements are all part of the art of the deal.
Perhaps not coincidentally, some prominent remaining Nixon aides have been backing or advising The Donald.
Trump’s sometime adviser Roger Stone, master of the dirty trick and artful smear, boasts a Nixon tattoo on his upper back. Former Nixon speechwriter and paleo-conservative populist Pat Buchanan, who innovated many of the anti-immigrant and anti-trade policies Trump now advances, declared him “The Future of the Republican Party.”
And while Trump’s once-close relationship with Fox News chairman Roger Ailes has been publicly strained with the recent Iowa debate boycott, Ailes basically innovated the cozy relationship between politics and television while working for Nixon in 1968.
Perhaps Trump is a secret political nerd who internalized all the divide-and-conquer strategies Nixon innovated at the time. Or perhaps he’s been getting advice on the dark arts of politics from acolytes of the former master.
Trump shares with Nixon a tough-guy pragmatism, a ruthless and occasionally unhinged determination to win driven by deep insecurity. Nixon also believed people vote out of fear more than hope. But whatever Nixon’s many failings, he was a policy wonk who loved the mechanics of politics. Trump is a blunt force instrument in politics, a born marketer with bluster a mile wide and an inch deep.
As he aims for the nomination, Trump might be taking Nixon’s cynical advice to “run right in the primary election, then run to the center in the general election” to heart. But as Nixon and the nation found out, character is destiny. And Trump’s exploitation of our worse impulses for political gain will also end in tears.
By: John Avlon, The Daily Beast, February 15, 2016
“The Electability Conundrum”: Scalia’s Death Only Reinforces The Need For Democrats To Choose Their Nominee Wisely
The death of Antonin Scalia has brought home two truths about the presidential race to voters in both parties. First, there may be no more important issue in the campaign than the Supreme Court (which some of us have been saying for some time). And second, if that’s true, then there may be no more important criterion in picking your party’s nominee than who has the best chance of winning in November.
Unfortunately, electability is a difficult thing to predict, no matter how much you know about politics. During the 2008 primaries, for instance, many intelligent Democrats believed there was no way that the voting public would ever elect an African American with a name like “Barack Hussein Obama.” Four years before, many Democrats thought that John Kerry was the most electable Democrat because Republicans couldn’t possibly attack the patriotism of a war hero, especially with a couple of draft-dodgers like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at the top of their ticket. Neither of those assessments turned out to be correct.
Nevertheless, it’s an impossible question for partisans to ignore, given the stakes of the election. And just how high are they? Someone (usually someone running for president) will always say “This is the most important election of my lifetime,” and it’s easy to dismiss. After all, no matter what happens, the republic will survive. If you’re a Democrat, you can console yourself with the fact that it survived Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, as much damage as they might have done; if you’re a Republican you can say the same about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Nevertheless, there are some reasons why this election could be particularly consequential, particularly for Democrats. The first is the Supreme Court, and Scalia’s passing is only part of that story. When the next president is sworn in, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83, Anthony Kennedy will be 80, and Stephen Breyer will be 80. What if Republicans succeed in keeping President Obama from seating a replacement, then a Republican is elected, and some or all of those three fall ill or retire? You could have a Court made up of seven relatively young conservative justices and only two liberals, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The days of liberals losing cases by a 5-4 margin would be but a happy memory, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the end of affirmative action, and the crushing of labor union rights would be only the beginning of a judicial scorched-earth campaign that would not only lay waste to rights liberals hold dear, but would keep doing so for decades to come.
And then there’s the matter of what a Republican president would be able to accomplish through legislation. If the GOP nominee wins in November, it will almost certainly also mean that Republicans have held on to the House and the Senate. That president might or not not be a radical conservative, though Donald Trump looks like the only contender with a chance who couldn’t be described that way. But Congress certainly will be radical. The Republican Party has been moving sharply to the right in recent years, and with unified control for the first time in a decade, it’s safe to say they will pretty much go nuts. Repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing upper-income taxes, gutting the safety net, rolling back environmental regulations, passing federal restrictions on abortion—if it’s in any Republican’s fantasies, it’ll be able to pass through both houses and get signed by the president. And don’t think Democrats having the filibuster will stop that train; given the respect Republicans have shown for norms and traditions, do you think they’ll let that stand in their way?
So if you think electability ought to be part of your calculation, what do you need to consider? The Democratic primary makes it a little easier because there are only two candidates, but it’s still complicated. Here are the variables to consider:
- The reward to be gained from a Bernie Sanders presidency
- The reward to be gained from a Hillary Clinton presidency
- The chances of Sanders winning in November if he’s the nominee
- The chances of Clinton winning if she’s the nominee
- The consequences of a Republican victory in November
That’s not to mention how each Democrat would match up against any given Republican, which introduces another dimension of complexity. But here’s the basic calculation you have to make: Figure out whether, for your preferences, (1) is larger than (2) or vice-versa, and by how much; then figure out whether (3) or (4) is larger, and by how much; then weigh both of those figures against (5).
For instance, you might decide that Bernie Sanders’s presidency would be superior to Hillary Clinton’s, but Clinton has a higher chance of winning in November, and since a Republican presidency would be so dreadful, you’ll support Clinton even though you like Sanders better. Or you might decide that a Sanders presidency would be so good that even if Clinton might have a slightly better chance in November, it’s worth some measure of risk in nominating Sanders because the reward of him winning is so high.
The truth, of course, is that because we aren’t rational people we constantly construct post-hoc justifications for the choices we make. In this case, that means we’ll convince ourselves that whichever candidate we prefer is also the more electable one. While it might seem logical that Clinton has a higher chance of winning a general election than Sanders, I’ve yet to encounter a Sanders supporter who actually thinks so. They say that Clinton has her own electability problems (undoubtedly true), and that Sanders will bring in so many new voters that it will overcome the effect of the attacks Republicans will launch on him for his leftist views. Clinton supporters, on the other hand, find this argument laughable; they’ll tell you that Republicans will positively disembowel Sanders, and by the time they’re done with him he’ll seem like he’s too much of an extremist to get elected to the Burlington City Council.
I’ve also found that Sanders supporters are more likely to minimize the negative consequences of a Republican presidency. That might be because they don’t see as much of a difference between Clinton and the Republicans, but it’s also because they’re focused on the first variable, the potential rewards of a Sanders presidency. Clinton supporters, on the other hand, have no sweeping expectations from their candidate; for them, staving off disaster is more than enough reason to support her.
Even if your heart goes aflutter at Sanders’s mention of things like single-payer health care and free public college tuition, you’d have to grant that achieving those goals is anything but guaranteed even if he wins the White House. And most of what he would do doesn’t differ from what Clinton would do. That’s particularly true of the Supreme Court: Any Democratic president who had a chance to name a new justice would be choosing from the same pool of liberal jurists now serving in federal appeals courts or perhaps a few state supreme courts.
But even if you find the substantive differences between Clinton and Sanders to be enormous, it’s hard to see them as actually being bigger than the difference between them on one hand and the tsunami of change that will occur if a Republican is elected on the other. Which leaves Democratic voters with no choice but think hard about which candidate is more electable—even if there are no perfect answers to the question.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, February 15, 2016
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