I’ve debated with a lot of Clinton supporters, and despite this, I
really can’t get my head around why (most) people support Hillary
Clinton. When I look at this election, I look at what the problems with
America are, and how to solve them. To me, Bernie Sanders is the only
candidate who seems up to the task. I really can’t name many positives
of Clinton by liberal standards besides the fact that she’s not a
republican or libertarian. Her ideas are mediocre, she is a proponent of
the status quo, and while she doesn’t really make us much worse outside
of MAYBE (cant be clear on this one) supporting free trade agreements
like the TPP, she doesn’t make us any better either. If you’re a
mainstream democrat who IDEOLOGICALLY supports the idea that the status
quo under Obama is largely fine, I can respect that, but when I listen
to actual reasons in debates, I don’t hear that. Heck, I don’t really
hear much about policy or positions at all.
“She has experience”
A standard opening argument is appealing to her experience. Yes, to be fair, she is probably, objectively, the most experienced, qualified candidate if we want to look at things from a pure resume based perspective. But I’m *not* looking at it in terms of resumes. I thought like that in 2008 with Obama, and you know what? He didn’t do bad considering being relatively inexperienced compared to every other candidate in this race. Sanders has way more experience than Obama did, with his decades of government service, and all of these candidates are miles more experienced than Trump, whose campaign likely started out as a publicity stunt that people took a bit too seriously.
That being said, both Bernie and Clinton are experienced, Clinton maybe more so, but considering that both are far more qualified than Obama was, it doesn’t matter.
*Vague appeals to “the party”*
A lot of Clinton supporters seem to literally think being walking sheep of the democratic party platform is a good thing. They point out that Hillary is a democrat, Bernie isn’t, she has had decades of experience in contributing to the party, Bernie just joined to win, and quite frankly, Hillary has scratched way more backs and she deserves it, whereas Bernie is just a parasite that is using the party as a vehicle for his message. There’s also an appeal to ideology in here, Hillary is what represents the modern democratic party, whereas Bernie is a *gap* democratic SOCIALIST (yes, let’s make sure everyone understand’s he’s a socialist, even though by a strict definition of the term he actually isn’t) who is way too radical for America.
So let’s unpack this.
1) I don’t care if she’s representative of what the democratic party is. I’m a free thinker. I don’t take my orders from the democratic party. I’m someone who comes up with their own opinions and aligns with people because they agree with me. The second they don’t agree with me, I’ll go elsewhere. I’m not one to subvert my own agenda to an organization. I abandoned the GOP over this conflict of interest, I left Christianity in part over this kind of conflict of conscience, and I’ll leave the democrats if need to be. Moreover, as I showed in my party realignment post, what the party is changes over time. The modern democratic party has only been in existence since 1992 with Bill Clinton pulled the party to the right. Meanwhile, I’m more of the unapologetic 1932 variety in which i want a strong, unapologetic liberal like FDR to get things done. This party would not tolerate FDR in its ranks these days, just like it struggles to tolerate Sanders and myself. The party should represent the people, the people shouldnt be mind drones of the party. And being a mind drone, as some people are acting in debating with me, does not reflect positively on them.
2) They seem to be implying party patronage should be weighed over ideas. It reeks of the whole “its-my-turnism” the democratic party has showed Hillary this year. I dont care how much she has given to the party. I don’t care how many backs she scratched. Isn’t Sanders’ message of taking on the establishment and the corrupt cronyism going on, which stops us from getting so much progress done? To me it sounds like she’s contributing to the problem, whereas Sanders wants to fix it. I dont care that Bernie is a newcomer to the party. I care about who has the best ideas. And it certainly isn’t Hillary.
3) By bashing Bernie on ideology, this is somewhat legitimate, depending on the context. If you legitimately are like a centrist or something, who believes in mild safety nets while still being strongly “neoliberal” and pro capitalism, Clinton is your person. I don’t agree with you, but at least I can respect an ideological difference. But the message isn’t so much that she pushes an ideology on the basis of the quality itself, but that she can win, while Sanders is too extreme. They say “America is not ready for a democratic socialist”, seemingly forgetting that a) Sanders is outpolling Trump by a much larger margin than Hillary, and b) half the country already thinks the democrats are radical socialists, and oppose even moderate ones as if they are. Seriously, the latter part really deserves some recognition. People talk about how bad the ACA was and how hard it was to get that past, but they’re forgetting that it used to be a republican healthcare plan both in the 90s and under the Romney administration (yeah, that Mitt Romney, who ran against it in 2012) in Massachusetts. Seriously, people who haven’t known me for more than, say, 4 years sometimes don’t realize this, but i used to be a republican. In 2008, I was AGAINST Obamacare, and thought it was a socialist takeover of healthcare. I know how republicans think. They literally think Obama is an extremist. They literally think Obama is at least as far left, if not more to the left, than Sanders *actually* is. They literally equate Obama with the USSR. They are throwing everything they can and the kitchen sink in opposing Obama and Clinton. Sanders is more popular than people give them credit for, and after 8 years of crying wolf, I think America is ready for a democratic socialist. And I think the poll numbers prove it. Remember what I said about party realignments before. parties shift, ideologies shift, battle lines shift, and we are ripe for a shifting!
“But but…Clinton will compromise!”
Ask yourself this question. How much as Obama gotten done in the last 6 years? Not much. The republicans really *are* throwing everything at Obama, including the kitchen sink to stop him. The party is literally doing everything they can to NOT compromise and sabotage the democrats. To them, their ticket to being able to come back as a party is to sabotage the democrats until people swing back to the republicans again. They literally can’t let the democrats to succeed, because they know the writing’s on the wall and that they’re dying as a party. They’ve been dying since 2008, and they’re like a desperate animal that’s backed into a corner. It makes them far more dangerous than they otherwise would be.
Obama has tried to compromise. It’s part of the reason I realized the GOP was insane. Obama was sounding reasonable in 2011 and 2012 over budget negotiations, whereas the GOP was throwing a temper tantrum because he wouldn’t let them cut people off of unemployment so they could lower rich peoples’ taxes. More recently, they won’t even hear Obama’s supreme court nomination and Garland is far more moderate than most liberals would like. The fact is, Obama has bent over backwards compromising his party’s principles away to deal with a radical republican congress that just won’t appreciate it anyway, and will do everything they can to oppose him.
This will continue regardless of whether we have Clinton or Sanders. The GOP literally cannot oppose Sanders any more than they have opposed Obama and will oppose Clinton. It’s not possible. They’re already maxed out in their opposition to them. Clinton won’t be able to compromise, and if she does, the compromise will sell out the left. Plain and simple. Sanders starts from further left, so a compromise coming from him would likely be more favorable.
The fact is, we don’t need a compromiser to deal with this congress. We need a president who won’t take any crap off of them and do everything in their power to ram their agenda through. It’s graceful to forgive after an opponent punches you, like Obama did in 2011-2012, but when they keep hitting you over and over and you just take it, you start looking weak after a while. We need a strong candidate like FDR who will label them as the do nothings as they are while pointing out all the stuff they want to do.
“But but….Clinton and Sanders actually want the same things!”
Didn’t you just argue that Sanders was too far left? Either way, Clinton and Sanders are very different ideologically and in terms of policy. They’re not the same. Clinton is for moderate and incremental change, Sanders is for more radical, sweeping change. Their ideology and methods vary greatly, and the illusion of similarity is caused by our two party system and how “democrats” looks more similar than they are because they vote up or down on the same bills or the same party positions.
“But but…we don’t want the people to have too much power, look at the republicans, they got Trump, the superdelegates will save us!”
This randomly came up in debating a Hillary supporter on the issues above, I don’t know how it’s relevant, but it appears to me they like being democratic party stooges, and support being screwed by elites who support their own interests over the good of the country. I dont care about the party, I care about the country. The party is just a vehicle to carry an agenda for the country. Wanting elites to make decisions for them because they’re too stupid to do so seems like a form of mental slavery to me. This guy also made an appeal to the concept of the US being founded on the concept of democratic republics and opposing “tyranny by majority”, to which I pointed out that yes, the founding fathers were rich elitists who only wanted property owning white males to vote. So yes, it’s true. It is elitist, I dont agree with it, and appealing to the way our country is run doesnt work on me, when I actually speak quite actively for the need for a more responsive democracy. The elites do have too much control, and the people should have more. I’m still for representative democracy, but I do believe representatives should represent the people, not the elites.
“You’re a horrible person if you want the superdelegates to support Sanders over the people!”
Not really. It’s possible to hate the rules of the game, while gratuitously abusing them to your benefit. Just because I want to get rid of superdelegates as a concept doesn’t mean I won’t use every means at my disposal to pass the agenda I want. It’s unfortunately necessary in this system we have. We want to change it, but until we do, nothing wrong with using the rules to our advantage. Don’t like it? Well then maybe you’ll see the problem we had with superdelegates for months and change it.
Yes, for the record, both arguments came from the same person.
Standard lesser of two evils thinking
I already discussed this, support Clinton or you get Trump. It’s not an argument, it’s a threat to corral people who otherwise wouldn’t support you into voting for you by limiting their choices. It’s sickening, it’s disgusting, and it’s another reason I’m not a fan of Hillary.
She’s a woman
Almost forgot about this reason. Quite frankly, I don’t care what sex Clinton is. If Bill Clinton were running for reelection for a third term and he were allowed by the constitution, I would be just as, if not even more opposed to him getting it. Yes, it’s nice to have a woman president for once, but it’s not a priority of mine. I want to fix the economy, which is way more important than what sex my president is. And now, I’m not sexist for thinking this way, if anything, the people saying this are the sexist ones because they seem intent on discriminating in favor of women. I just want the best president for the job, and my second choice behind Bernie is a woman, Jill Stein. My criticisms of both Stein and Clinton largely come down to policy more than anything, and really, that’s what I’m voting on. Ideology and policy. What the person in charge is going to do with their power.
Conclusion
That being said, I see few good arguments for supporting Clinton, and really don’t understand where these guys are coming from. Sure, there are some people who may ideologically support Clinton and have valid reasons for doing so, people who are ideological moderates and all, but so many of the reasons I see people appeal to Hillary for or defend Hillary with are just so…silly and vapid. They talk of the need to follow the party. The party, the party, the party. The party this, the party that. Clinton is a member of the party and represents it ideologically, Sanders doesn’t. Clinton does more for the party, Sanders doesn’t. Blah blah blah.
I don’t care about the party. I’m not a party stooge. I’m a free thinker and I evaluate my own opinions. I don’t care about compromise in the face of the failures of the Obama administration, and I don’t care about her experience. All in all, she’s a boring, wishy washy, untrustworthy candidate to me. She’s not horrible. She’s better than the more right wing candidates, sure. but that isn’t a high bar to meet, and I see very few actual reasons to support Hillary outside than to avoid something worse. Even if I did relent and vote for her, it wouldn’t be an enthusiastic vote, it would be an “ugh, how did it come to this” vote. She doesn’t enthuse or excite me. She does nothing to win me over. She’s the epitome of democratic mediocrity endemic to this failing party alignment. She does nothing to solve our problems, and as a matter of fact, perhaps the biggest problem I have with Hillary and her supporters is an overall failure by her campaign to actually address problems as they pertain to me. It seems obvious her and her supporters don’t care about winning people like me over ideologically. They know they can’t do it. They know she’s mediocre, that she offers nothing. So they talk of her strengths in transactional politics, her experience, and make vague appeals to party loyalty, which, by the way, makes me think less of her and her supporters. I want someone who will solve our problems. I want someone I can agree with and get behind for the right reasons. Clinton just isn’t that person, and I for one just can’t see what most people see in her.
“She has experience”
A standard opening argument is appealing to her experience. Yes, to be fair, she is probably, objectively, the most experienced, qualified candidate if we want to look at things from a pure resume based perspective. But I’m *not* looking at it in terms of resumes. I thought like that in 2008 with Obama, and you know what? He didn’t do bad considering being relatively inexperienced compared to every other candidate in this race. Sanders has way more experience than Obama did, with his decades of government service, and all of these candidates are miles more experienced than Trump, whose campaign likely started out as a publicity stunt that people took a bit too seriously.
That being said, both Bernie and Clinton are experienced, Clinton maybe more so, but considering that both are far more qualified than Obama was, it doesn’t matter.
*Vague appeals to “the party”*
A lot of Clinton supporters seem to literally think being walking sheep of the democratic party platform is a good thing. They point out that Hillary is a democrat, Bernie isn’t, she has had decades of experience in contributing to the party, Bernie just joined to win, and quite frankly, Hillary has scratched way more backs and she deserves it, whereas Bernie is just a parasite that is using the party as a vehicle for his message. There’s also an appeal to ideology in here, Hillary is what represents the modern democratic party, whereas Bernie is a *gap* democratic SOCIALIST (yes, let’s make sure everyone understand’s he’s a socialist, even though by a strict definition of the term he actually isn’t) who is way too radical for America.
So let’s unpack this.
1) I don’t care if she’s representative of what the democratic party is. I’m a free thinker. I don’t take my orders from the democratic party. I’m someone who comes up with their own opinions and aligns with people because they agree with me. The second they don’t agree with me, I’ll go elsewhere. I’m not one to subvert my own agenda to an organization. I abandoned the GOP over this conflict of interest, I left Christianity in part over this kind of conflict of conscience, and I’ll leave the democrats if need to be. Moreover, as I showed in my party realignment post, what the party is changes over time. The modern democratic party has only been in existence since 1992 with Bill Clinton pulled the party to the right. Meanwhile, I’m more of the unapologetic 1932 variety in which i want a strong, unapologetic liberal like FDR to get things done. This party would not tolerate FDR in its ranks these days, just like it struggles to tolerate Sanders and myself. The party should represent the people, the people shouldnt be mind drones of the party. And being a mind drone, as some people are acting in debating with me, does not reflect positively on them.
2) They seem to be implying party patronage should be weighed over ideas. It reeks of the whole “its-my-turnism” the democratic party has showed Hillary this year. I dont care how much she has given to the party. I don’t care how many backs she scratched. Isn’t Sanders’ message of taking on the establishment and the corrupt cronyism going on, which stops us from getting so much progress done? To me it sounds like she’s contributing to the problem, whereas Sanders wants to fix it. I dont care that Bernie is a newcomer to the party. I care about who has the best ideas. And it certainly isn’t Hillary.
3) By bashing Bernie on ideology, this is somewhat legitimate, depending on the context. If you legitimately are like a centrist or something, who believes in mild safety nets while still being strongly “neoliberal” and pro capitalism, Clinton is your person. I don’t agree with you, but at least I can respect an ideological difference. But the message isn’t so much that she pushes an ideology on the basis of the quality itself, but that she can win, while Sanders is too extreme. They say “America is not ready for a democratic socialist”, seemingly forgetting that a) Sanders is outpolling Trump by a much larger margin than Hillary, and b) half the country already thinks the democrats are radical socialists, and oppose even moderate ones as if they are. Seriously, the latter part really deserves some recognition. People talk about how bad the ACA was and how hard it was to get that past, but they’re forgetting that it used to be a republican healthcare plan both in the 90s and under the Romney administration (yeah, that Mitt Romney, who ran against it in 2012) in Massachusetts. Seriously, people who haven’t known me for more than, say, 4 years sometimes don’t realize this, but i used to be a republican. In 2008, I was AGAINST Obamacare, and thought it was a socialist takeover of healthcare. I know how republicans think. They literally think Obama is an extremist. They literally think Obama is at least as far left, if not more to the left, than Sanders *actually* is. They literally equate Obama with the USSR. They are throwing everything they can and the kitchen sink in opposing Obama and Clinton. Sanders is more popular than people give them credit for, and after 8 years of crying wolf, I think America is ready for a democratic socialist. And I think the poll numbers prove it. Remember what I said about party realignments before. parties shift, ideologies shift, battle lines shift, and we are ripe for a shifting!
“But but…Clinton will compromise!”
Ask yourself this question. How much as Obama gotten done in the last 6 years? Not much. The republicans really *are* throwing everything at Obama, including the kitchen sink to stop him. The party is literally doing everything they can to NOT compromise and sabotage the democrats. To them, their ticket to being able to come back as a party is to sabotage the democrats until people swing back to the republicans again. They literally can’t let the democrats to succeed, because they know the writing’s on the wall and that they’re dying as a party. They’ve been dying since 2008, and they’re like a desperate animal that’s backed into a corner. It makes them far more dangerous than they otherwise would be.
Obama has tried to compromise. It’s part of the reason I realized the GOP was insane. Obama was sounding reasonable in 2011 and 2012 over budget negotiations, whereas the GOP was throwing a temper tantrum because he wouldn’t let them cut people off of unemployment so they could lower rich peoples’ taxes. More recently, they won’t even hear Obama’s supreme court nomination and Garland is far more moderate than most liberals would like. The fact is, Obama has bent over backwards compromising his party’s principles away to deal with a radical republican congress that just won’t appreciate it anyway, and will do everything they can to oppose him.
This will continue regardless of whether we have Clinton or Sanders. The GOP literally cannot oppose Sanders any more than they have opposed Obama and will oppose Clinton. It’s not possible. They’re already maxed out in their opposition to them. Clinton won’t be able to compromise, and if she does, the compromise will sell out the left. Plain and simple. Sanders starts from further left, so a compromise coming from him would likely be more favorable.
The fact is, we don’t need a compromiser to deal with this congress. We need a president who won’t take any crap off of them and do everything in their power to ram their agenda through. It’s graceful to forgive after an opponent punches you, like Obama did in 2011-2012, but when they keep hitting you over and over and you just take it, you start looking weak after a while. We need a strong candidate like FDR who will label them as the do nothings as they are while pointing out all the stuff they want to do.
“But but….Clinton and Sanders actually want the same things!”
Didn’t you just argue that Sanders was too far left? Either way, Clinton and Sanders are very different ideologically and in terms of policy. They’re not the same. Clinton is for moderate and incremental change, Sanders is for more radical, sweeping change. Their ideology and methods vary greatly, and the illusion of similarity is caused by our two party system and how “democrats” looks more similar than they are because they vote up or down on the same bills or the same party positions.
“But but…we don’t want the people to have too much power, look at the republicans, they got Trump, the superdelegates will save us!”
This randomly came up in debating a Hillary supporter on the issues above, I don’t know how it’s relevant, but it appears to me they like being democratic party stooges, and support being screwed by elites who support their own interests over the good of the country. I dont care about the party, I care about the country. The party is just a vehicle to carry an agenda for the country. Wanting elites to make decisions for them because they’re too stupid to do so seems like a form of mental slavery to me. This guy also made an appeal to the concept of the US being founded on the concept of democratic republics and opposing “tyranny by majority”, to which I pointed out that yes, the founding fathers were rich elitists who only wanted property owning white males to vote. So yes, it’s true. It is elitist, I dont agree with it, and appealing to the way our country is run doesnt work on me, when I actually speak quite actively for the need for a more responsive democracy. The elites do have too much control, and the people should have more. I’m still for representative democracy, but I do believe representatives should represent the people, not the elites.
“You’re a horrible person if you want the superdelegates to support Sanders over the people!”
Not really. It’s possible to hate the rules of the game, while gratuitously abusing them to your benefit. Just because I want to get rid of superdelegates as a concept doesn’t mean I won’t use every means at my disposal to pass the agenda I want. It’s unfortunately necessary in this system we have. We want to change it, but until we do, nothing wrong with using the rules to our advantage. Don’t like it? Well then maybe you’ll see the problem we had with superdelegates for months and change it.
Yes, for the record, both arguments came from the same person.
Standard lesser of two evils thinking
I already discussed this, support Clinton or you get Trump. It’s not an argument, it’s a threat to corral people who otherwise wouldn’t support you into voting for you by limiting their choices. It’s sickening, it’s disgusting, and it’s another reason I’m not a fan of Hillary.
She’s a woman
Almost forgot about this reason. Quite frankly, I don’t care what sex Clinton is. If Bill Clinton were running for reelection for a third term and he were allowed by the constitution, I would be just as, if not even more opposed to him getting it. Yes, it’s nice to have a woman president for once, but it’s not a priority of mine. I want to fix the economy, which is way more important than what sex my president is. And now, I’m not sexist for thinking this way, if anything, the people saying this are the sexist ones because they seem intent on discriminating in favor of women. I just want the best president for the job, and my second choice behind Bernie is a woman, Jill Stein. My criticisms of both Stein and Clinton largely come down to policy more than anything, and really, that’s what I’m voting on. Ideology and policy. What the person in charge is going to do with their power.
Conclusion
That being said, I see few good arguments for supporting Clinton, and really don’t understand where these guys are coming from. Sure, there are some people who may ideologically support Clinton and have valid reasons for doing so, people who are ideological moderates and all, but so many of the reasons I see people appeal to Hillary for or defend Hillary with are just so…silly and vapid. They talk of the need to follow the party. The party, the party, the party. The party this, the party that. Clinton is a member of the party and represents it ideologically, Sanders doesn’t. Clinton does more for the party, Sanders doesn’t. Blah blah blah.
I don’t care about the party. I’m not a party stooge. I’m a free thinker and I evaluate my own opinions. I don’t care about compromise in the face of the failures of the Obama administration, and I don’t care about her experience. All in all, she’s a boring, wishy washy, untrustworthy candidate to me. She’s not horrible. She’s better than the more right wing candidates, sure. but that isn’t a high bar to meet, and I see very few actual reasons to support Hillary outside than to avoid something worse. Even if I did relent and vote for her, it wouldn’t be an enthusiastic vote, it would be an “ugh, how did it come to this” vote. She doesn’t enthuse or excite me. She does nothing to win me over. She’s the epitome of democratic mediocrity endemic to this failing party alignment. She does nothing to solve our problems, and as a matter of fact, perhaps the biggest problem I have with Hillary and her supporters is an overall failure by her campaign to actually address problems as they pertain to me. It seems obvious her and her supporters don’t care about winning people like me over ideologically. They know they can’t do it. They know she’s mediocre, that she offers nothing. So they talk of her strengths in transactional politics, her experience, and make vague appeals to party loyalty, which, by the way, makes me think less of her and her supporters. I want someone who will solve our problems. I want someone I can agree with and get behind for the right reasons. Clinton just isn’t that person, and I for one just can’t see what most people see in her.
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