Clinton will continue to largely fail to connect.
Her campaign is all about her, not we. Frankly, I could not care less about her, she has her’s and then some. In the early primaries and caucuses, I predict Sanders will win big in New Hampshire, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, and Vermont. Clinton should not get too cocky about the South. Sanders has game in the South and has been drawing big crowds. I think Sanders will do surprisingly well there. Sanders is bound to be competitive in terms of convention delegates after the March caucuses and primaries.
The idea that Clinton is the most experienced candidate ever is a crock.
Sanders has more than double the experience of Clinton in public service 34 to 12 not quite double, 34 to 20, if you count the years Clinton had an unpaid and unofficial position in the White House as government experience. Sanders ran cities for eight years as mayor of Burlington, worked 16 years in the House, and is in his tenth year in the Senate. Sanders won twelve elections and lost only one. Hilary was appointed Senator and then won two elections, then left after eight years for four years as Secretary of State.
The meme that Bernie has problems because he lost in Iowa by 2/100’s of a percentage point and one delegate and Iowa voters are demographically the same as New Hampshire is just silliness.
If the voters in Iowa equal the voters in NH, he would have won by approximately 20% right per polling in NH? Oh no you say, NH is next to his home state so of course he has to win that. By your logic, you have to concede all of New England and New York. Except that NH is not his home state, and NH is not progressive: the Congressional delegation in VT is 3 D’s and in NH it is 2-2.
The idea that Clinton is the inevitable choice of women was thoroughly debunked in Iowa.
Ironically, women of child bearing age overwhelmingly favored Sanders with his 100% Planned Parenthood rating over the self-styled champion of reproductive rights who has the PP endorsement. Seems that should have been exactly the opposite and her support not limited to affluent elderly ladies.
Clinton has more than the usual complement of Achilles heels.
Clinton exudes the taint of her lies, corruption and scandal like no other Democratic presidential candidate since her husband. She is her own walking, talking opposition research, spewing all manner of crap on an almost daily basis. It is like the Repulicans, you just cannot keep up with it.
Most people in this county see Clinton as a damned liar and an untrustworthy and uncaring person. Reasonable Americans cannot help but be cynical about her honesty.
In her “victory” speech in Iowa, she claimed to be a progressive. Oops, she is caught bragging on tape in Ohio: “I’ve been accused of being a moderate, and I plead guilty.”
Clinton lied that Sanders was going to be the one who “turned your and my health insurance over to governors” when the truth is his plan provides that the federal government will run a state’s universal single payer health care program if the state fails to do so.
Clinton lied about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia
“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
Last but not least, Clinton is one of the chickenhawks who went stupid and lied us into the war in Iraq. This is what she said in her floor speech:
“Now, I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt.” In her litany of “facts,” she rattled off one lie after another: “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members…”
Except there were no WMD’s, no biological weapons, missles, nuclear program or Al Qaeda. Our war profiteers in the financial services, fossil fuel and defense industries may like this shit, but her Iraq vote should not sit well with minorities and the poor, who not only do not benefit but bear the brunt of our twisted foreign military adventurism.
That stuff about Sanders trying to find someone to primary Obama but not finding anyone. (Since when are we opposed to competition and debate in our democracy.) Clinton’s attempt to use Obama as a human shield is not just crude pandering to minorities. It is tantamount to lying.
Clinton would have us to believe that she did not do worse to Obama, running against him, savagely criticizing his policies, attacking him, slandering him by insinuating he was sleazy and dishonest, and going negative on Obama’s “unrealistic” progressivism.
Clinton even played the race card for all it was worth against Obama. She attacked him over attending a black church with controversial pastor Wright: “You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend." Later the same day, during a press conference, "I think given all we have heard and seen, [Wright] would not have been my pastor.” This is pretty distasteful, not just for the raced baiting, but Clinton has never denounced any crazy white church or pastor, like her own:
"Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer, is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship to God."
Remember Doug Coe the whack job from the Fellowship? Spiritual adviser to the political elite, like Mark Sanford and John Ensign? She keeps poor company and has damn poor taste.
Today’s Clinton is even worse than the callow 2008 version.
Clinton now has an individual net worth of over $30 million, amassed in large part from her employment by the 1% as a speaker. We can really relate to that. Laugh all you want Clinton, of course the 99% will call BS on you. Her speaking gigs are certainly more consistent than not with her squeamishness on Wall Street, health care, and on income, capital gains and estate tax reform? Until we see the transcripts we will not know for sure, but it is probably not a bad guess that Clinton was sucking up to the banksters, health care profiteers and foreign interests she spoke for. It is only reasonable to assume we can expect more of the same from her. Does $465,000 thousand for speaking in Denver for a couple of hours sound like an honest day’s work? Or does it appear more akin to profiting from our misplaced trust in her and her husband that got them elected way back when. She trades on the family’s celebrity. Her candidacy smacks of the greed and nepotism of the 1%. Still, for no particular reason, she opposes people earning a measly $15 an hour!
For some reason the man on the street, and not just rocket scientists, believes the banks you see on every street corner in the land need to be reigned in. Clinton is still chattering away that the crash was not their fault. After all her husband was the one who put the taxpayer on the hook in the first place.
Follow the money. The dots connect from the Walls Street gigs and contributions to Clinton’s utterly light weight financial reform proposal. There about three million reasons masquerading as dollars why Clinton is so easy on the banks.
In July 2015, Senator Sanders immediately cosponsored Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. This is the plan to break up the banks. The bill reduces risks to the financial system by limiting banks' ability to engage in certain risky activities and limiting conflicts of interest, to reinstate certain Glass-Steagall Act protections that were repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and for other purposes.
The banks are broken up by having to dispose of all their business lines other than taking deposits and making loans, the traditional banking activities that are a service to the economy. One huge benefit of the restructuring is that the taxpayers will be off the hook for bailing out the banks because of non-bank activities such as proprietary trading, swaps and other speculative activities, and the taxpayer funded FDIC etc. is not so easily put in play by these activities. Moreover, insured deposits will no longer be available to fuel the speculation. The investment banking and shadow banking will have to be separately capitalized and not by depositors, or by way of a taxpayer bailout. That is a solid structural reform that cannot be end run, like Clinton’s jawboning method. I say this as securities lawyer for thirty seven years.
And by the way, Hilary, AIG’s banking affiliate, AIG Federal Savings Bank is a bank. So what you said in the debate was just more disinformation to justify your opposition to the Warren’s bill and Sen. Sander’s position. Shame on you.
Clinton sold out African Americans, the poor in general, and children in particular, in her all in embrace of welfare reform.
Clinton destroyed their safety net, Aid for Families with Dependent Children. So let us not get ahead of ourselves about the South. And I’ll bet you Sanders wins the minority vote in NH. Sanders’ plans to educate African Americans and the poor at public universities for free, like so many countries do and even we used to do, rather than send them to suffer and die in a foreign war. Paid for by a clawback from the investor class through a small tax. So what if 1% of kids, the kids of the 1% may get free college. Such a petty concern. (The Trump kid example was more Clinton baloney. Trumps’ kids by the way went to Penn and Georgetown where they could network and leverage their status and privilege. Smart kids!)
Let us not forget that the failure of Medicaid expansion under the ACA in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas should be an issue in their primaries. Expansion cannot be crammed down the throats of their governors due to an unconstitutional flaw baked into the ACA. Clinton’s stance on merely tweaking the ACA may be viewed as complacency and lacking in appropriate urgency. I doubt that the ACA is looked upon as being all that marvelous. Community health clinics are pretty much all some poor people and people in rural areas have in the way of care. Sanders’ critical contribution to the ACA by increasing fund for the clinics exponentially, doubling their number.
Sanders’ universal single payer plan would work well for African Americans and all the poor. Poor kids would have their own health care — cradle to grave — that would not be dependent on Medicaid expansion, mom and dad’s finances or employment status or finances, or the kindness of strangers, like their parents’ employers. I don’t know exactly why, but I don’t think I want have to trust my employer. Mom and dad will not have to keep a terrible job and suffer abuse just for insurance. Just like any normal country – Japan, Taiwan, the whole of Europe, and most of Central and South America (yes, Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia and Chile to name a few).Unlike Clinton’s health care for the 80% of Americans, but only if you can afford the exorbitant premiums and prices, and do not mind ruining your life with debt and bankruptcy.