Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in 2008 because A) many voters found her unlikable and unrelatable, and B) more voters, especially young ones, were inspired by Obama’s message of “hope and change.”
HRC crushed by Bernie in young demos, crushing him among Dem leaners over 50 https://t.co/LPyMLEa3PK pic.twitter.com/HC3sLss7Kr
— Justin Green (@JGreenDC) April 11, 2016
Thank you to the more than 27,000 New Yorkers who came out tonight to join our political revolution. Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/wHVQhWvaqy
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 14, 2016
Hillary is probably going to win the Democratic nomination this time around, but her weaknesses as a candidate remain as glaring as ever. Young people still aren’t impressed. They overwhelmingly prefer Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont.
Bernie is the one turning out Obama-size crowds of young fanatics pining for change. But the party wants Hillary. It’s her turn, and very few Democrats are eager to get their names added to the Clinton hit list.
This has created an unusual dynamic in which some of Obama’s staunchest defenders, including Hillary and her supporters, are attacking Sanders for being too much like the 2008 version of Obama. Consider this paragraph from the Rolling Stone endorsement of Hillary Clinton:
You get a sense of “authenticity” when you hear Sanders talking truth to power, but there is another kind of authenticity, which may not feel as good but is vitally important, when Clinton speaks honestly about what change really requires, about incremental progress, about building on what Obama has achieved in the arenas of health care, clean energy, the economy, the expansion of civil rights. There is an inauthenticity in appeals to anger rather than to reason, for simplified solutions rather than ones that stand a chance of working. This is true about Donald Trump, and lamentably also true about Sanders.
In eight years, the Democratic Party has gone from embracing Obama’s (authentic?) platform of “hope and change” and “fundamental transformation,” to rallying behind Hillary’s ruthlessly pragmatic platform of “incremental progress.”
Hillary has tried to appear hip and trendy and cool in an effort to appeal to the youths of our nation, but the results have been underwhelming, to say the least.
Hillary even sat down for an interview with millennial sex icon Lena Dunham, but her message for discouraged young people wasn’t very inspiring. What does Hillary think of all the young people supporting Bernie Sanders? She feels sorry for them because they haven’t done their research and believe her opponents’ “lies.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon followed up with an uplifting and not at all condescending assessment of the Democratic primary.
Listen to your parents, kids. The time for incremental progress is now.