Disclaimer: This is a Hillary Clinton appreciation thread, which means that most people who come here really like Hillary Clinton. If you have criticisms, please be respectful.
If you missed the diaries and conversation on Saturday, go here.
In addition, here are some good diaries you may have missed:
Frank Vyan Walton: FBI Probe of Clinton Email Server finds “No Malice” so far…
teacherken: Could Georgia actually be in play?
Dr Teeth: A Bold Suggestion for Hillary Supporters
RianFike2016: Bernie is open to being Hillary’s running mate, so maybe she is not all that bad!
West Virginia is on May 10 and is thought to favor Sanders, but June 7 is rapidly approaching. Before Hillary Clinton left California, she sat down with a local CBS 5 correspondent to discuss Donald Trump and the issues affecting the state.
Asked about the marijuana legalization ballot measure in California, she says, "I'd have to study it," and says overall she thinks more research has to be done to make sure that medical marijuana is being used to its best effect. And she says, "I’m interested in following and evaluating what states are doing. I really do think states are the laboratories of democracy. I am supportive of using the laws to create more incentive study marijuana, particularly for medicinal use.”
Meanwhile, this article in the East Bay Times notes Hillary could pick up Republican support in California. I’m of the mindset that for many of these voters, it’s just talk and they’ll back the Republican nominee, but interesting nonetheless.
"I don't know who I'll vote for, but it won't be an arrogant, xenophobic opportunist like Trump," said the 69-year-old Case, a lifelong Republican and retired school administrator from Visalia. "I'm not going to throw bricks at any of his supporters, but I will protest in the form of my vote -- for whatever that's worth here in California."
Tulare County's mix of Christian conservatives and farmers dependent on free trade pacts and foreign labor was never going to be easy pickings for a protectionist billionaire from New York.
"I think you're going to see a lot of Republicans vote for Hillary Clinton here in the farming belt because they're scared of Trump," said Eric Bream, a citrus farmer in Lindsay.
I can see the media conflating “Republicans reluctantly support Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils” into “everyone reluctantly supports Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils.” Despite the fondest wishes of some folks here, that’s not even remotely true. One prediction: should she win the general election, even by a landslide, within a week the media will be claiming that she’s destined to not be reelected because people only supported her because they hated Trump.
Meanwhile, I attended my first Hillary Clinton training yesterday!
It was a chilly, dreary Saturday in San Francisco. Similar trainings took place in San Jose, Los Angeles, and Orange. We were split into groups based on regions of metropolitan Northern California. Some people came from as far away as Sacramento, which is a good 1.5-hour drive. Talk about dedication!
I’ll start with some negatives. The room at the Union Local was large enough to house over 100 people. I would guess that maybe 75 to 85 volunteers were in attendance. They may not have expected many more, as only one of the tables was empty.
Not a negative, but an observation: the group as a whole skewed older than 40, predominantly white, and female. In my experience volunteering, that has generally been the case no matter whom I’ve supported. That said, the gatherings in other cities might have had a different composition.
Another negative was that the program was on the long side and could have used some tightening. The training was meant to last from 10 am to 3 pm, We started about a half hour late, and they spent a lot of time telling us about the basics of volunteering for a campaign. I’m not sure we needed that much time. Maybe I’m a wimp, but after the third hour, I began to mentally check out. It wasn’t until there was 40 minutes left that we finally met with our regional leaders to discuss strategies for targeting neighborhoods. I had to leave early for an appointment that I ended up missing anyway (bleh), but I should get notes on what took place.
The positives: It was so great being around fellow Hillary Clinton supporters! Many of them had such thoughtful things to say about why they were backing her. One 30-something year old man talked about growing up impoverished and how Hillary’s support for S-CHIP gave him health care he wouldn’t have had otherwise. Another supporter said that Hillary was the only one willing to make Roe v. Wade a litmus test, and another supporter said that Planned Parenthood literally saved her life.
The volunteers were also able to offer a lot of reasons why Hillary Clinton was not only better than Trump, but a preferable choice to Sanders. She cares about reproductive rights. She knows how to get shit done. She stands up to the gun lobby. She wants comprehensive immigration reform. She wants her cabinet to be 50 percent women. And so on.
Another positive: Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, a strategist for the Democratic Party, came and gave a pep talk. When the coordinators of the event mentioned that someone special had made the time to drop in, for one brief moment, I thought it would be Hillary. Of course I knew better, because there wasn’t nearly enough security. Christine Pelosi was great at driving the sleep from our Saturday morning brains, though. I wonder if she’ll run for office someday.
Meanwhile, the strategies discussed seemed sound. I won’t go into them in detail to avoid leaking any sensitive information, but they were based on successful Obama campaign strategies, and to some extent matched what people here have said about approaches in other states.
A lot of Hillary volunteers expressed concern about Bernie’s support in parts of the Bay Area. While no one seemed to think he would get enough delegates from this state to actually win the nomination, they worried that winning the state, even narrowly, might lead Bernie to make good on his threat to keep going until the convention. More than one person voiced frustration that he was taking time and money away from fighting Trump.
Overall, it was a good event, and they took care of details that would have been so easy to get wrong, such as supplying enough food (lots of cookies, pizza, and soda), and properly ventilating the room (roughly 100 people in a room over five hours can get hot!). Now I’m fired up and ready to go. I just need to connect with people in my region and I’ll start calling, canvassing, whatever is required.
Here are two three Twitter handles to follow as California grows nearer:
@SF4Hillary
@CoCo4Hillary
@HillarySanMateo
Meanwhile, if you have any money to spare, please consider
**CONTRIBUTING TO THE CAMPAIGN**
This is your open thread.