I used to really hate Hillary. Early in 2007, I was a big Obama supporter on this site and went after Hillary pretty hard, though she did earn my grudging respect toward the end of that campaign. Last night’s debate cemented for me why I strongly support her this time around, and why I think Bernie is the wrong choice on the merits, not just on electability grounds. First, a caveat. This year it's hard to be a professional or amateur pundit. It looks like a lot of people saw the debate differently than I did, with the consensus being that Bernie won. Many thought that Sanders' relentless returning to Goldman Sachs and the adjective "rigged," regardless of the question, showed commendable "message discipline." I thought it repetitive to the point of being reflexive. Remember when Giulani was mocked in 2008 for answering every question with a noun, a verb, and 9/11? For Bernie it's a noun, a verb and "the big banks."
Bernie would deserve credit for doing a brilliant job if he we were running to get a few economic platform planks adopted, but he's apparently running not just to protest but to win. And if he wins, he'd have to govern on a whole array of issues. Bernie doesn't have a sliver of the depth that Hillary has on that whole range of issues. I don't love Hillary as a person; as I said at the outset I was a huge supporter of Obama in 2007-08, and a big part of that was because I could not relate to Hillary as a person and thought others wouldn't either. But she won Obama's respect and mine as well through her persistence and smarts. She seems to me to be in politics for essentially the right reasons. Yes, she is ambitious, but if it were all about power, power, power for her, as the SNL caricature would have it, would she really take the time to get so deeply wonky and understand at such a high level of detail the massive number of issues she understands? I think she'd skim the surface and get by just fine, sort of like Trump - a guy who, unlike Hillary, is seeking office for nothing other than vanity and ambition.
And, truth be told, the reason that I think Bernie fails to show the same range and depth of knowledge as Hillary is not because he hasn't studied up on all the issues or because he doesn't care about all of them. I think it's because he actually believes, theoretician like, that there is One Great Cause of all of our economic and social problems -- the extraordinary power of the big banks and the billionaires -- and not dozens of different causes and hence dozens of different problems to solve separately and empirically. That's where he loses me. The big banks and the wealthy are no doubt adept at blocking needed change and at manipulating the political system, and campaign finance law is in need of whatever overhaul can be done given current constitutional law, but it's overly simplistic to treat the banks and the wealthy as the cause of virtually all of our major problems, not just economic but social. This is why many African-Americans have been slow to embrace Bernie even though they know he is a friend and is more than well-intentioned; they see that his economic determinism may be causing him to miss cultural nuances that transcend economics.
While these are the reasons I support Hillary on the merits, electability nails it down even more. I can't close my eyes and see Bernie beating any of the Republicans either in the debates or more importantly in November. The hypothetical matchups are meaningless at this point, because Bernie, not having been taken seriously, has not been subject to the barrage of attacks that will be coming his way if he starts to be taken seriously. It won't be fair and it won't be right -- in fact it will be disgusting -- but the Republicans will soon figure out that atheist may even be a dirtier word than socialist among the swing voters Democrats need to piece together a winning coalition. And, in addition to calling him a socialist, they will ask why he won't say whether he believes in God — a line of attack that, though repulsive, I regret will work among some of the voters needed to patch together that winning coalition. It’s no wonder that the Republicans were tweeting pro-Bernie messages last night. They want to run against him, not her.
I hope I am wrong about swing voters’ willingness to embrace Bernie after he is fully attacked by the Republicans. The nation in 2016 apparently has the appetite to tolerate and take seriously as a presidential candidate a guy who has violated all rules of civility and who essentially admits and embraces the fact that he's a practicing asshole; I thought Trump would last one month. Maybe the nation this year also will show tolerance to someone who breaks the mold in a completely different way in Bernie. I just don't feel comfortable betting on it.