Wow, my DailyKos accout is 11 years and 11 months old today. I created it back when our other famously blunt Vermont politician, Howard Dean, ran for president. I supported him because he was the only major candidate to point out that Iraq was a strategic disaster. But now it's time to figure out who I'm supporting in this primary.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie has an excellent reputation in Vermont, for a variety of reasons.
- Bernie has proven himself competent, as both a mayor and a legislator. Seriously, for all the jokes about "The People's Republic of Burlington", it's a lovely small city, and it routinely winds up on lists of Best Places to Live and Best Places to Raise a Family. There's a walkable downtown, with excellent restaurants, outdoor music, plenty of interesting shops, and a gorgeous waterfront area. Here's an interesting article about the Burlington waterfront and how it got converted from an old railyard known for being an "eyesore" into a collection of parks, pathways and public space. Sanders' role was a bit complicated: He fought a protracted court case to give the city control over the land, and then he backed a controversial "hybrid public space plus commercial development" plan that would have been very inexpensive for the city. But when local environmentalists pushed hard against the development half of the plan, he worked hard to make a more expensive option work, and converted almost the entire waterfront to public space. This is an interesting article, because it shows how Bernie works. And on the legislative side, well, the best article on Bernie is still Rolling Stone's "Four Ammendments and a Funeral" from 2005, which shows Bernie's raw determination and incredible tenacity in a hopeless fight against a corrupt House leadership. Bernie, it turns out, is very good at writing amendments, finding allies on both sides of the aisle, and making legislation suck less. For a more recent example of his legislative work, Bernie was the "lead negotiator for the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act" which helped win him the VFW's 2015 Congressional Award.
- Bernie works for the public good. I may not always agree with Bernie's position on an issue, but long experience suggests that I can safely assume he's working hard for the public good, as best as he can—and as (1) suggests above, he's usually doing so in a practical, competent fashion. I wouldn't necessarily vote for just any "democratic socialist", but I've always been delighted to vote for this particular one.
- Bernie can reach out to a surprisingly wide range of people. In Vermont, the most famous examples of this were the front yards with "Bush/Cheney" and "Bernie" signs side-by-side. In Congress, it was Bernie's ability to ally with libertarians like Ron Paul on trade issues. Most recently, it was shown by his speech at Liberty University.
- Bernie is good at retail politics. Seriously, back when Bernie's poll numbers were through the roof, and he had basically zero chance of losing, he still campaigned tirelessly all over Vermont. He'd show up in some local VFW hall, and give one of his trademark speeches, followed by a local Vermont country band and a free spaghetti dinner for everybody who showed up.
So that's the argument in favor of Bernie: He fights for the public good; he's practical and competent enough to actually do a good job; he gets along with a huge range of people; and he somehow enjoys the nitty-gritty of politics (campaigns, committees and amendments) without having been corrupted by the system. He'd be a pretty darn interesting president.
On the downside, Bernie has some weaknesses as a presidential candidate. He hasn't yet been faced with the right-wing smear machine that Hillary has survived for over two decades, his foreign policy is a bit of an unknown (besides "avoid stupid wars and support veterans"), and it's possible that he's so much of an outsider that the system would do everything in its power to destroy him. So if Bernie is going to be our nominee, I want him to prove that he can run a competent, national-scale political campaign and appeal to a wide range of voters. He can only win this if he runs an incredible campaign.
(Hillary and Biden after the jump.)
Hillary Clinton
I like Hillary. OK, yeah, yeah, she's an establishment politician, and after having spent 20 years being investigated to death, it's obvious that she's surrounded by a number of very minor political scandals (like that cattle futures thing, which was perfectly legal at the time, but ethically sketchy, if I recall the details about how "assigned trades" worked). But honestly, I can live with an establishment politician and a few minor scandals, provided she can do the job. And I think she can—she did a solid job as Secretary of State.
Overall, she'd probably make a decent president: She'd probably fight for a couple big progressive wins—and help fine-tune ObamaCare—and the country would still be in reasonable shape when she was done. I ultimately liked Bill Clinton and Obama, despite many policy disagreements, and another president in the same vein would be reasonable. But I'm not sure we can keep electing "centrist" presidents indefinitely. Sooner or later, we need to confront some of the large structural issues which are slowly bleeding Americans to death. And the centrists can't help us much with that, because they're so tied into the existing system and they need lots of Wall Street money to win.
If Hillary's the nominee, I'll vote for her happily. In my mind, the biggest danger with Hillary is that she tends to take victory for granted—she got blindsided by Obama, and she seems to be doing it again this time around. If she's going to be our nominee, I want her to work for it, and to build out a nationwide organization during the primary. She's a solid campaigner once she starts, and we're seeing some signs of that now, which makes me happy.
Joe Biden
I honestly don't know much about Biden. I do know that smart, reasonable people think he'd be solid on foreign policy, and he seems to be on the right side of a lot of issues. And like Dean and Bernie, he's charmingly blunt, with I've always enjoyed in politicians, and which appears to be a big asset this year. But on the flip side, I remember when Biden earned himself the nickname "the senator from MBNA" for his close connections with the credit card industry. And Biden seems to get along well with establishment, for better or for worse. At least they wouldn't use scorched earth tactics to defeat him.
But if Biden wants to run, he needs to get in ASAP. It's not OK to treat a presidential campaign like a student putting off homework until 1am the night before it's due.
So that's where I'm standing this time: I support Bernie because of his ideals, his practical competence, and his willingness to campaign hard. But most importantly, I want this to be a highly-competitive primary, so that our candidates can get ready for the general election, and they can show us that they're able to build and run a nationwide organization.