Monday, February 8, 2016

Bernie for saint?

Robespierre and Danton. Oil and collage by Zuka, 1988.
Charles Blow's take on the state of the Democratic campaign wonders mentions an ominous number I haven't seen before:
Iowa did see a record number of caucusgoers … for the Republican candidate. The number of Democratic caucusgoers fell significantly, and half of those went to Clinton.
As RealClearPolitics reported:
“The trend line is positive for Republicans (turnout up 54 percent from 2012) and negative for Democrats (turnout was down 22 percent from 2008).”
It's just one state, and a pretty peculiar one at that, but if it does indicate anything it doesn't look good for the political revolution, or the "half a revolution" Clinton proposes either. I wonder, too—given the evidence, such as it is, that negative campaigning may tend to discourage Democratic turnout in particular—if the increasing nastiness of the atmosphere, between the "Bernie bros", to whatever extent they exist, and Gloria Steinem, might be making things worse. It's certainly having a dispiriting effect on me. When I see old Bill Clinton out slinging poison as we do this morning
The former president, addressing a few hundred supporters at a junior high school here, portrayed his wife’s opponent for the Democratic nomination as hypocritical, “hermetically sealed” and dishonest
—I do not feel good about that. Does Bill remember at all how it worked out in the 2008 campaign with his underhanded attacks on Barack Obama? Not only did she lose then, but there are a lot of people in my orbit who ought in my view to be backing Hillary Clinton now, eight years later, and aren't, specifically because of memories of the perceived racism of those attacks.

A more helpful way of understanding the situation for the Clinton campaign might be to remember how often it is, in history, that revolutions are conducted by pairs—a moral authority and a political authority, Washington and Hamilton, Gandhi and Nehru, Dr. King and President Johnson, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. When they get the division of powers wrong (saintly Robespierre running the government while earthy Danton rouses the masses), things can get very out of hand, too.

If Clinton offers only half a revolution, as Blow remarks, Sanders does too: his is the grand Underpants Gnomes part of the equation—

  • call for a political revolution
  • ?????????
  • a New Heaven and a New Earth

—and hers is the dorky task of filling in the question marks. The Clinton campaign, if they want to win, needs to communicate, especially to younger voters, with authentic respect, the understanding that Bernie is too big to be president, not too small.

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