I am a Democrat and a democratic leftist (democratic socialist, card-carrying member of DSA) who has openly acknowledged that I will vote for Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination, mostly because of the Supreme Court, while also decrying her awful neoliberal policy positions and the coronation approach. I want to see my "favorite," Bernie Sanders, my next favorite, Elizabeth Warren, and yes even Joe Biden, a nationally-prominent Democrat still with a pulse, run in the Democratic primary. I have always felt that the way Hillary Clinton was being assumed into the nomination was not good.
Meanwhile, powerful so-called liberal or progressive opinion leaders at this blog and others, such as TPM, have helped clear the way for the potential mess we are in with only one assumed primed and ready candidate. Well, what do you have to say for yourselves, oh brilliant opinion leaders? Stay the course before it's even begun? Trust Hillary, she's got this?
For years we have been told what a bad ass Hillary is through an "iconic" image with a theme she might not choose today.
In addition to the failure of Democratic new media opinion leaders through their misguided digital clearing of the field, I fault potential alternative candidates themselves, including Sanders, Warren, and glup Biden, for not openly and aggressively announcing that they each are running for president in the Democratic Party. What have you been waiting for Bernie and Joe? An invitation from Hillary? Her gracious permission? And what about you Elizabeth?
I suspect Warren looks in the mirror and for some reason does not have a strong desire to run, perhaps fearing the inevitable Clintonian knives. Or maybe down deep she does not feel she would be a good president, in which case I respect that, but still, this situation stinks ...
By the same token, I am not suddenly getting on the bandwagon of "Hillary stinks" because of her threatened Eghazi implosion. I do not want Secretary Clinton's campaign to implode, and I do not stay up late at night dreaming that her campaign will be a disaster. I hope she can survive this and become a better candidate. I have always felt she stinks because of her policy positions and not because I dislike her as a person, an iconic image, or a spousal legacy politician.
But still, what the hell has the Democratic Party, led by President Obama, been doing during the Obama years to plan for the future, with its need to, you know, elect post-Obama presidential candidates, other than assume Hillary will run and win and not completely check Joe Biden into an old folks home? The Democratic Party stinks, but it is still my U.S. political party because there is none other which is nationally viable in our flawed non-parliamentary democracy-lite and marginally supportive of justice in the service of love. Please someone help me, I've fallen, and I can't get up. [INSERT ICONIC IMAGE] Can you lend me a hand Joe, you virile plain-speaking plagiarizing guy you?
Democratic primaries exist for a reason. Let's have 50 of them.