It was a young crowd at the Sanders rally in Vancouver, Washington.
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Voters my age--Boomers--saw Hillary Clinton take a beating from Republicans and the Conservative media for being a woman, a feminist, a supporter of health care reform, a lawyer, and the wife of Bill Clinton. She proved her Democratic bone' fides under Republican fire.
Millennials voters don't have that history, so they see her differently.
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| Bernie in Vancouver, Washington Sunday |
Millennial voters overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.
The state of Washington has 3 major media markets: Seattle, Spokane, and Vancouver-Portland. In preparation for the Washington caucuses Bernie came to Vancouver.
It rained in the Portland area yesterday. Bernie Sanders spoke at a high school gym that held about 4,500 people and there were another 2,500 in the overflow area. People stood in the rain for hours to get in. People standing in the rain for something means a little less in the Pacific Northwest than it would mean elsewhere. People in the drizzly Northwest realize that rain doesn't kill you. (Depression kills you, but that is another story.)
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| Young Crowd |
It was a young crowd.
My son, 24, is going to vote for Bernie Sanders. My nephews in their 30s are going to vote for Bernie Sanders. He projects hope and change. Hillary projects same old, same old. Political trench warfare.
I witnessed the 1990s. I saw Hillary take hits for the team. I read news accounts about billionaire banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife funding investigations of the Clintons. I watched Newt Gingrich and Fox News and Kevin Starr in real time. They were as mean as they knew how to be. Indeed, they were even coached by Newt Gingrich and word-guru Frank Luntz on which words would cause the most disgust: "corrupt", "devour", "greed", "sick", and "traitors".
Millennials don't have that history. They were kids in the 1990s. They weren't imprinted by memories of Republican accusations and tabloid speculation that Hillary probably murdered Vince Foster, found dead of an apparent suicide. Millennials were not imprinted by the Republican attacks on Bill as a draft dodger, a pot experimenter, a student with long hair. Millennials don't remember the investigation of Hillary having make money with some options trades on cattle futures. Millennials don't remember the attacks on Hillary for saying she didn't expect to stay home and bake cookies. ("Bitch Hillary hates homemakers!")
Millennials don't remember Hillary being attacked for referring to herself as Hillary Rodman Clinton. (Bitch femi-nazi.) Millennials don't remember a 7 year investigation attempting to learn whether Bill and Hillary made money in a real estate transaction known in the press as "Whitewater" (no wrongdoing found) but which morphed into an investigation of Bill's sexual transgressions forcing him to give testimony regarding his sexual past (where they found lots to be embarrassed about, plus a perjury charge). Millennials don't remember in real time the impeachment and trial, in which Clinton was acquitted but the Speaker of the House leading the impeachment, Gingrich, ended up resigning since his own 6 year affair with Callista Bisek was becoming an open secret.
Millennials don't remember Hillary being attacked for referring to herself as Hillary Rodman Clinton. (Bitch femi-nazi.) Millennials don't remember a 7 year investigation attempting to learn whether Bill and Hillary made money in a real estate transaction known in the press as "Whitewater" (no wrongdoing found) but which morphed into an investigation of Bill's sexual transgressions forcing him to give testimony regarding his sexual past (where they found lots to be embarrassed about, plus a perjury charge). Millennials don't remember in real time the impeachment and trial, in which Clinton was acquitted but the Speaker of the House leading the impeachment, Gingrich, ended up resigning since his own 6 year affair with Callista Bisek was becoming an open secret.
At the time Hillary and Bill were the leading target of Republicans and therefore they stood as the standard bearer of Democrats. Hillary said the relentless attacks came from the "vast right wing conspiracy," and the evidence showed there was, in fact, a vast right wing conspiracy of donors and interest groups and media doing non-stop investigations and attacks.
Republicans had great success in the 1990s beating up on Democrats. But Bill and Hillary took the beating and survived. They took one for the team. More than one.
Hillary does well among older Democrats.
Republicans had great success in the 1990s beating up on Democrats. But Bill and Hillary took the beating and survived. They took one for the team. More than one.
Hillary does well among older Democrats.
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| Millennials: A Future to Believe In |
Younger ones don't have that history. They see Hillary as shopworn and damaged, a veteran of old fights they have heard about but don't remember. They didn't watch Hillary take the beating on their behalf. Bernie Sanders has a history that is read as ideological purity, and GOP SuperPACS are delighted to give Bernie a pass and focus on Hillary because Bernie's purity of fundraising and ideology serves to make Hillary look complicated and compromised in comparison. And they expect Hillary to be the nominee.
Bernie is the new guy, the exemplar of hope and change. So young people like Bernie: a true Democrat. They don't like Hillary: a old and compromised politician. They don't see her as scarred in battle because she was a liberal, progressive hero. They just see the scars.
Politicians are defined, in large part, by their enemies. The campaign season is young still and the Republican campaigns and superPACs are hitting each other, not Hillary much, but that will change. If she cannot make the case herself that she is the progressive hero worth standing in the rain to see possibly her detractors will help her make that case.
They did so in the 1990s and may again.
They did so in the 1990s and may again.
2 comments:
My 24 year old daughter and 30 year old of Google Seattle campus are firmly in Hillary's camp. I mention this to remind us all of the gendered flavor of Sanders' campaign as well as the pristine experience of him on the national stage. I also want to add: there is a certain outrage among women of the BB generation about her marriage (yet another trial by fire all by itself): that Mrs. Clinton could be guilty of helping to throw the apparently numerous women of Pres. Clinton's intimate acquaintance under the bus to preserve appearances, to protect his governorship/presidency. Her attempts to assert a personal realm in spite of high office are discounted or ignored when with past presidencies, FDR, JFK, LBJ, their extramarital adventures were excluded as having any bearing on political performances. It's a tough, complicated situation for any of us to parse, one that I believe Mrs. Clinton quite appropriately resolved for herself when she ran for the Senate out of New York.
I recall from somewhere somebody in Arkansas saying once Bill Clinton took office there as governor that with her work in public service for the benefit of education and children's issues the voting public had elected the wrong Clinton. As you point out, she was pilloried for wanting a role that her education and work experience fitted her for. To me there is a poetic righteousness about her candidacy -- she has taken on the mantle that in a world without gender bias she might have worn from the outset.
Sheryl Gerety's post is exactly what Hillary needs on the enabler charge-- that it is tough for any of us to deal with a reprobate spouse, especially when the spouse is Governor or President. If Hillary could package what Sheryl says, that issue would be resolved.
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