Bernie v. Hillary

[randy_byers]

I'm not sure why I feel the need to post this. Probably it's because so many of my friends are Bernie-supporters that I feel compelled to say that I'm no longer part of the club. That is, I've been saying since the campaign began nine hundred years ago, or whenever it was, that I would vote for Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general election, because I didn't think Bernie had a prayer of becoming the Democratic nominee. I still don't, but as push has come to shove and people have started making passionate arguments for and against the two candidates, I find that I have changed my mind and decided to vote for Hillary in the primary too.

The reason for my change of mind has been the realization that many, if not most of, Bernie's supporters, including very much Bernie himself, are the left-liberals who have found Obama weak, disappointing, and basically a closet Republican. I feel, and have always felt, that this is pure horseshit. For me, Obama is the best president in my lifetime, which goes back to JFK. This is what a transformative, progressive presidency looks like in our age, unless, like FDR, you have 69-75 Democratic senators out of a total of 96 and 313-333 Democratic House members out of a total of 435. That's what total control of the government looks like, and that's what allows pretty radical changes to happen. Our system of checks and balances is otherwise rigged against rapid change, and even FDR was slowed down by the Supreme Court, much to his annoyance. If you are impatient with Obama, it's because you are impatient with the American political system, and obviously a lot of Bernie's supporters think the whole thing is hopelessly corrupt and needs to be swept away in a revolutionary tide and replaced with something more perfect.

I believe that's highly unlikely to happen, and that what's more likely is what we've seen under Obama: painfully slow and imperfect change against fierce, grinding opposition. Yet Obama embraces the system, and I think the results under his leadership of the Democratic party have been utterly remarkable. As for the idea that he's basically a moderate Republican, show me the moderate Republican (John McCain? Mitt Romney?) who would have stood up to the frothing reactionaries in his own party to kickstart the Green Energy Revolution by investing stimulus money in solar and wind power, or who would have massively expanded Medicaid (single payer insurance!) as in Obamacare, or passed the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, or who would have done away with Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, or who have negotiated a nuclear treaty with Iran, or normalized relations with Cuba, or regulated coal plant emissions with the EPA, or, leveraging the reduction of carbon emissions from that and the Green Energy Revolution, would have concluded a carbon emissions deal with China and India and all the major industrial nations, again in the teeth of raging right wing opposition. It's impossible to imagine any Republican doing any of that. Instead they would have cut taxes, further deregulated Wall Street, probably continued to cut back on social spending rather than increase it, and probably started a war with Iran instead of negotiating a treaty.

All of these accomplishments by the Democrats are BFDs, for those of us who believe in progressive change, and if you think it's not enough, you know, you're right! The system really is rigged for the haves and against the have-nots, and it's rigged to make it hard to unrig it. But if you think Bernie is going to completely transform the American political system, which by the way would require completely rewriting the Constitution, you are a dreamer. If you think that what has been accomplished in the past seven years is a disappointing failure by somebody in over his head, then we are not seeing the same world. If nothing else I have a number of good friends who now have health insurance because of the Medicaid expansion. It's not great health insurance, but they are getting treatment for pre-existing conditions, and that will very likely prolong their lives. That's real progress.

My biggest problem with Hillary has always been her association with Bill, whom I hated while he was president. I never voted for him, voting for small third party candidates both times. But you know what, I was a lot more idealistic then, and I really had no clue how constrained presidents are within our system. I didn't really understand that he was signing bills that the Republican Congress wrote, at least during his second term, that's how ignorant I was. That said, I believe he really was an inferior president to Obama, because he didn't get much done while the Democrats had control of Congress in his first term. Partly that was because the Democrats still had a lot of conservative Dixiecrats (hello, Sam Nunn, hello, Don't Ask Don't Tell) in their ranks at the time, but partly it was because Clinton made a lot more rookie mistakes than Obama did, maybe because he was unwilling to use any of Carter's staff in his own, which left him with an inexperienced staff. Certainly Clinton muffed his own attempt at health care reform, and Obama was able to learn from that when his own time came and he staffed his administration with people from Clinton's.

In any event, I have no idea how good a president Hillary will be, if she wins the presidency, but I do know that she's embracing Obama's legacy, while Bernie is saying it ain't good enough. Bernie is right that it isn't good enough, but I believe it's the best the system will allow. Revolution isn't on the agenda, and it certainly isn't going to be fomented from above by a sitting president. So I'm voting for the woman who embraces incrementalism (What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Real Soon Now!), and my 25 year old self is shaking his head in sad disbelief. Sorry, 25 year old self, but I see things differently now. On the bright side, I see that some things are improving and that hope for even better is not lost. It will just come slowly, as it always has.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I hope I can avoid getting into an argument with you here, because I really don't want that, but the bulk of your argument is one I've heard before and which sparks in me thoughts of bovine excrement, though you're much fairer and more reasonable than most people who make it. Which in turn means I hope you won't accuse me of expecting "rainbows and unicorns," which is the response I usually get (weirdly, always using those exact words) to my points, even though nothing I say could be fairly so interpreted.

But I just don't accept the line that "Obama couldn't have done any more, because Congress." What he could have done is he could have TRIED. He promised Hope and Change, but he ran a discount on the Hope, so the Change dribbled out the pocket too. With the health care bill, which even started out, as others have noted, closer to the Gingrich alternative to Hillarycare than anything else, instead of selling it on the bully pulpit, Obama kept stripping out provisions in an attempt to woo the so-called "moderate" Republicans. But they refused to be wooed, so that didn't accomplish anything on what wound up being passed on, IIRC, purely Democratic votes.

With such a damp squib, no wonder the people lost enthusiasm, and that meant low turnout, and that is why the Democrats lost Congress in 2010. No other reason. The 2009-10 Congress was, though not filibuster-proof, movable. The ones since then have not been. But it wasn't cosmic fate that did that, it was disappointment in what happened in 2009-10. So Obama is, in that sense, responsible for the existence of the Republican Congresses.

I don't expect that a better Obama would have been able to do much more, but I think he could have made incremental improvements, in two or three ways. 1) A president savvier in the ways of Congress could make more and better deals. (This is still the Democratic Congress I'm talking about.) No, he can't steamroll over them - even FDR couldn't do that - but there are ways to grease their intransigence. 2) The bully pulpit: whip up the enthusiasm of the people. This has the beneficial effects of a) putting pressure on Congress, b) encouraging progressive voter participation, c) moving the Overton window.

And yes, Obama's policies and procedures are effectively those of a moderate Republican. So, for that matter, in practice were Bill Clinton's. You question this, asking what Republican of recent times could they possibly be like. Answer, none! There are no moderate Republicans any more! We (I say "we" because I was originally that even longer-gone species, a liberal Republican) have all become Democrats! Which is why the Democratic Party today is full of moderate Republican policies. Please remember that McCain, one of your suggestions, is on many issues further right that Reagan (who at least had the sense not to chant things like "Bomb-bomb-Iraq"), and that Reagan came on to the presidential stage as the clearly-different right-wing alternative to Gerald Ford, and that Gerald Ford was, in his day, a conservative Republican. Not a moderate. Things have shifted that far.

As for Hillary, I expect her to become President, and I expect she'll be no worse than Bill or Obama. And any Democrat, even one far worse, would be infinitely better than any of the troglodytes who call themselves Republicans these days. So, unlike many Bernie supporters, I'd be content with her. What bothers me about Hillary is not the specter of Bill. Bill is Bill, and Hillary is not responsible for that, and over the years she's clearly separated herself from that. What I worry about is her neocon instincts, and what digs at me is the history of Hillarycare. Not the proposal itself, which was good, but the way she failed to sell it to Congress (again, a Democratic Congress, and - again - the only Democratic Congress that administration ever had). That failure denied us a health care program for FIFTEEN FRICKIN' YEARS. I'd like to see her acknowledge that she screwed that one up, and to show that she's learned better how to work with Congress - exactly the thing that Obama didn't know either.

In the end, I'm supporting Bernie because he's proposing the things I really want, and Hillary isn't. That's really the whole story.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, we really do disagree about all of this. I guess what I would observe is that you didn't respond at all to the list of Obama's accomplishments I made, nor did you suggest how he could have improved on those accomplishments. Do you think he could have achieved Medicare for All, for example? Which 60 Senators do you think would have voted for that? Joe Lieberman of the State of the Insurance Industry, who wouldn't even vote for the public option? Down to 59 already, and that's before you consider Ben Nelson, not that it matters, because 59 votes wouldn't have been enough without filibuster reform (which would have had to be done by the Senate, not Obama). Do you think the deal with Iran is worth nothing? Do you think the reduction in carbon emissions is worth nothing, or could have been increased somehow? Do you think the investment in solar energy technology is worth nothing? Is the Medicaid expansion worth nothing? Is the fact that I have friends who are benefiting from it worth nothing? I understand that it's not good enough, and that there's way, way more to be done, and that the system is thoroughly corrupt. But I do not understand the refusal to acknowledge that progress has been made, as ugly as some of it has been. I think the list of accomplishments is pretty amazing, honestly, even though it's not enough.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You are responding as if I'd said Obama had done nothing. I didn't say that. You might as well have accused me of wanting rainbows and unicorns. (I didn't characterize your argument as "Obama couldn't do anything, because Congress" but "Obama couldn't have done any more, because Congress." You must have missed that.) I said he should have tried harder. In response to your list I can add another sin, that he didn't sell what he did do. Again, bully pulpit: it would encourage people.

Your hypotheticals about who would vote for what miss the point. The key is not about working harder, but working better.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Again, which of his accomplishments do you think specifically could have been better? Are you talking about the public option? Are you talking about breaking up the big banks? What specifically did he fail to do that you think he could have made happen through hard work? These accusations are irrefutable because of course there's always more to do, always fixes that need to be made. But so be it. I've kept my peace about anti-Obama liberals for probably the past six years, and this was my last outburst of accumulated irritation. We can all vote as we see fit, of course, and hopefully good things will continue to happen.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Again, you are missing the argument. The question isn't what he more he could have accomplished under the circumstances that prevailed. It's about what he could have done to have made those circumstances different, and, if he had, who knows what else he might have accomplished? Maybe little, but it would have been something, and it would have felt better, and people like you wouldn't be grumbling over the lack of appreciation for what did get done.

You want a specific thing he could have done, he could have pursued health care with more vigor and less apologetically, not to have gotten more in the health care bill (though maybe it would have), but to have left his supporters encouraged - along with more vigor in the bully pulpit generally - so that they would have turned out enough to have won the 2010 midterms, which, if they had turned out, would have happened.

After that alt-history split, the ground rules are different. It's no longer the same situation.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, good luck with Bernie then. I've got nothing more to say on the topic.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm going to risk saying a little more, because I think I do owe you a direct response on what I think of Obama's actual accomplishments. I approve of them. Some I think he could have been more forward on, like health care and same-sex marriage (into which he was pushed by Biden and Duncan), but they're steps in the right direction and I approve.

Middle Eastern policy is more dampening. I don't believe there exists a good and productive policy there. All we can aim for is a least bad policy, and I think Obama has been aiming at that. I approve.

Then there's normalizing relations with Cuba. That one's pure A #1 +. The reversal of a truly stupid counter-productive policy that nobody else had the guts to cancel. Obama did. I cheered. That's the Obama that I voted for.

I am not anti-Obama. I am not anti-Hillary. I just think we could have done better, in the ways I've already irritated you by describing. I don't expect Bernie to win the nomination, I don't expect him to be able to accomplish much of his agenda if he does somehow become president, and I'm totally embarrassed by finding myself in the same camp with a bunch of sexist pigs who hate Hillary (apparently) because she's a strong woman. (Those guys should be Republicans and back Trump.) I'm supporting him because his goals are my goals.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. As I said to Geri, I'm okay with people voting their ideals, not that anybody needs my permission. Obama is my ideal president for this era in America, so by voting for the woman who is embracing his accomplishments, I'm voting for my ideal. You should by all means do the same. I think we all probably agree that when it comes to November 2016, we'll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is.

For what it's worth, I agree about the Middle East, particularly Libya and Syria and Yemen, but I think the nuclear deal with Iran is a BFD that could pay off in unexpected ways (i.e. maybe allowing us to ultimately cut ties with the despicable Saudis) in the long run. To me that's a great example of his negotiating ability, too, because he included Russia, China, and our main European allies in a way that will make it very hard for Republican hardliners to undo the deal down the road, much the way that the Medicaid expansion is designed with an economic logic that will force the hold-out states to accept it over time.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Iran is a good example of what I mean by "least bad". At first glance the deal made me uneasy. Are we giving too much away? But every alternative proposed has been worse, so I guess this is ... the least bad. And it was certainly a major accomplishment, and - as with Cuba - got us out from a hole that we had only been making deeper.

Also, as you note, getting those other countries on board. That reminds me of the difference between Gulf War I and Gulf War II. Unlike many of my fellows, I thought Bush Sr. did the right thing here, and getting Russia on board only a year after the fall of the Iron Curtain was a major accomplishment. W's "Coalition of the Willing" was a grotesque parody of this.

My biggest concern about Bernie is: does he have any idea of what he's doing in foreign policy? It's just not his area of interest. Of course that was initially Obama's problem too, but he learned fast, and he got really big cheeses to help him. We've had occasional Secretaries of State who would be believable as President before, but Obama has had two of them.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yes, it took Dubya to teach me how wise his father had been about putting together the coalition to liberate Kuwait, which also included Arab states like Syria (!) and Egypt, as I recall. Obama reached out to members of Bush Sr's foreign policy team (Scowcroft, Powell, Robert Gates), and I think it was an attempt to drive a wedge between them and the neocons. However, for all Bush Sr's wisdom at building the coalition, he still ended up in the untenable position of trying to contain Saddam without overthrowing him, which unfortunately seemed to have an inexorable logic of its own over time. Still, foreign policy basically makes idiots of everyone, because all states have their own agendas, and it usually isn't to do what's on yours.