Part 3, in which I assert that Sanders is electable if we vote for him and argue that we treat the primary process as our opportunity to nominate the candidate who we believe would make the best president.  I take issue with a) fellow Democrats calling Sanders “unelectable” and b) throwing in early for Hillary Clinton because they believe a) and that they want to be “pragmatic”.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What follows below is from several months ago. It all started with this post to the listserv (not by me):

As many of you know, I have a habit of supporting the most liberal Democratic Party candidate with any chance of winning … only to see the eventual Democratic Nominees Gore and Coakley lose, in close elections to Bush, Scott Brown and Baker.

I have therefore decided to get PRAGMATIC early on, as the 2016 Presidential election takes shape.

I believe the Democratic Nominee is absolutely going to be Hillary Clinton. There will be no President Sanders, O’Malley or Chafee. (Although I am drawn to some of their views.) ….

I have had my differences with Hillary and I was with Obama in 2008. But I will strongly be with Hillary this time around.  She has been Secretary of State, a US  Senator, our First Lady, and she is indeed READY to be President. She stands head and shoulders over any Republican candidate.

More importantly, in my view, she is the only Democratic candidate with a chance of beating the Republican Nominee and their money machine in November, 2016.

I believe it will be a scary close election… I can help you get involved, if [you’re] interested….

My reply:

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People devoting their attention to things that don’t matter while neglecting things that do has been a pet peeve of mine for a while.  My complaint about Chris Cillizza’s column and Ana Marie Cox’s frivolous question to Sanders is just the latest in a series.  Last month a DTC member shared a post by pollster/political scientist Larry Sabato, Democrats 2016: Not Feeling the Bern.  An excerpt from Sabato’s post:

The Buzz about Bernie has taken hold on the Democratic side of the 2016 campaign, and it’s easy to see why. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is drawing huge crowds and great poll numbers in the first two states to vote, Iowa and New Hampshire.

It isn’t just that he’s speaking his mind, saying exactly what he thinks, and stressing the issues of greed and income inequality — which Democrats care about as much as anything else this cycle. It’s really the contrast between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders ought to adopt a new campaign slogan, “Send Her a Message,” because he has become the messenger for party activists’ concerns about Clinton. It’s clear from his rising poll numbers that Sanders has become Clinton’s top challenger at the moment, so we’re moving him up to the second tier in our rankings of the Democratic contenders (see the full Table 1 at the bottom of this article). Sanders has clearly moved way ahead of the other Democratic candidates: recently announced former Sen. Jim Webb (VA) and former Govs. Martin O’Malley (MD) and Lincoln Chafee (RI). Maybe one of them (O’Malley?) will have a turn as the anti-Clinton at some point, but Sanders is clearly that person right now.

You hear the comments about Clinton everywhere: She’s uptight, inaccessible, weighed down by decades of Clinton baggage and mired in old and new scandals. Like her husband (and Jeb Bush), she’s cashed in big-time on her family name and public positions. Clinton may once have been middle class, but today she looks to all the world like a pampered member of the top one-tenth of the one percent.

The protected, even sheltered Clinton is known to take polite questions from a handful of prescreened supporters, or her staff is pictured roping off the press in a New Hampshire July 4th parade (one of the most absurd images of the campaign so far). In contrast, when the news programs do their campaign roundups, Sanders is shown basking in the adulation of thousands — you can feel the energy.

Still: We’re always brutally honest with our Crystal Ball readers, so let’s get right down to it. Despite what we’ve just said, Hillary Clinton is very, very likely to be the Democratic nominee, not Bernie Sanders. That’s true even if Sanders manages to upset Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire. The fact is, the key constituencies of the Democratic Party are likely to back Clinton, and big Sanders audiences aren’t going to change that.

There are several factors that continue to suggest Clinton is the dominant favorite for the Democratic nomination.

The party has chosen

We’ve often cited political science research, most notably from the book The Party Decides, about how endorsements from sitting party leaders can be predictive of which candidate will get the presidential nomination. Generally speaking, a candidate needs establishment support to win a nomination. This establishment has a powerful, formal role in the Democratic nominating process: about one-sixth of the convention delegates will be “superdelegates.” Remember them from 2008? They are the elected officials and party leaders that have a say in who gets the Democratic nomination. On both sides, the path to the nomination involves winning the establishment primary. And in this contest Clinton is polling light years ahead of her competitors.

He continues.  You can follow the link about and read the rest of it for yourself.  As you may have picked up from my previous post, I feel a lot contempt towards those who treat election campaigns as horse races while neglecting the probable consequences of electing Candidate A as opposed to Candidate B.

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As you may or may not know, I am member of the local Democratic Town Committee (DTC).   We have a listserv.  People periodically share things of interest on the listserv.  (I’m a regular contributor.)  Earlier this week a member shared a column by the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza:

FWIW  —   Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza’s take on Clinton’s position as the Dem candidate:

 

[It’s too late for Democrats to start rethinking Clinton’s 2016 viability]

Cillizza’s first paragraph:

Dear Democrats: It’s too late to start over.

As in, there’s no replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton as your party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination. Not with Vice President Biden — even if he runs. Not with former vice president Al Gore. (I mean, come on.) Not with your ideal rich-person-with-no-record-and-a-fresh-faced-appeal.

He goes on.  I won’t quote him but you should read it purely for the spectacle of his inside-the-Beltway view of the world.   I read it in its entirety.  It hit a nerve so, since the piece was shared in the spirit of “for what it’s worth”, I decided to share with the DTC my assessment of it’s worth.   My contribution to the listserv:

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