I have a similar, but slightly different take. Both Clintons are really done with politics (at least directly). Hillary's never going to run again. They will (of course) try being "Dem elder statesmen" and "kingmakers" behind the scenes, but they'll never run for anything again.

Because of this, all the GOP obsession with Hillary just looks to the public like looking backwards. Dems can point to this in the future as how "the GOP can't get anything done except for hounding their former political opponents," and it will likely resonate with the voters.

Take care to understand that this nugget applies equally to that faction of Democrats/Bernie supporters who seem to be equally obsessed with looking backwards and hounding Hillary... how it does resonate. :)

Re-reading [2] and [3], I think you may be conflating Hillary's primary campaign and her general campaign in your mind. She did attack Trump's tweets, but not so much until she had sewn up the nomination.

HRC had a lead of 191 pledged delegates after Super Tuesday, March 1, not including the blowout lead she held with super delegates since Democrats tend to vote for candidates who are actually Democrats (go figure). The primaries continued through mid June while the press made it actually seem like they were neck and neck but Bernie had been eliminated on March 1, mathematically speaking, of course.

So I think what we have here is a simple case of me taking you literally with your use of the words "entire primary campaign" when I remember her basically coasting to the win after March 1 while lobbing softballs at Bernie in the remaining almost 4 months and primarily dealing with the Trump BS of the day. :)

I'm not a Hillary-hater or anything, and I do applaud her for the quoted passage in the article, because (as I stated) I hadn't heard those excerpts before. Bernie campaigned in poetry. You can argue he wouldn't have been able to govern in prose, and that's debatable. But Hillary tried to campaign in prose from the get-go, and that's just not how you win elections (that's the very basis for the whole "campaign in poetry/govern in prose" metaphor, in fact). Her husband could do both (in masterful fashion), but Hillary just couldn't seem to do the first part of it.

I think a lot of that is a gender thing too. It is frequently assumed that male candidates can deliver on their "poetry" while women are expected to have detailed plans regarding how they'll accomplish the exact same poetic thing. Do you think if candidate Hillary Clinton advocated for a national $15 minimum wage that she'd be allowed to just promise it and not be required to explain how she could deliver on it in rural areas and states like Arkansas and Mississippi? Do you think candidate Clinton could make a poetic promise to rein in Wall Street and/or break up the big banks without an explanation of how she'd go about accomplishing that using the limited powers of the presidency? It is assumed by many that men naturally know how to accomplish things, while women are generally expected to explain how. Sure, attitudes are changing... but slowly. :)

(see: all the Democractic primary debates, for starters...)

All 9... count them... 9 of them? I saw them already... very repetitious.

Sigh. OK, I went and looked one of them up (from an extended article I wrote on the subject a while back). Here's Clinton on healthcare, mistakenly suggesting that Bernie's plan consisted of "(1) remove Obamacare, and then (2) start debate on Berniecare, which will take years." No, seriously, that's what she was insisting on the campaign trail. Here she is from January of 2016:

I want you to understand why I am fighting so hard for the Affordable Care Act....

A speech she gave from Des Moines, Iowa, early in the primaries.

On issue after issue ($15/hr, free tuition for all at state colleges, marijuana legalization, reining in Wall Street, etc., etc.) this was indeed precisely what Hillary did.

Really? Are you trying to prove my point with these examples? ;) While it without question applies to a few issues and to the early primaries, like I said, I believe it is truer of HRC versus BO and applies less during the latest Democratic presidential primaries. Take your statement and apply it to a few issues.

$15/hr: Clinton's entire primary campaign was premised on ridiculing Bernie's $15/hr idea as being "pie in the sky" which would never, ever actually happen. Nope because it had already happened in Seattle in 2014, and New York State was working to enact it, which they did in April 2016 in the middle of the primaries, which HRC actually supported, but nationally she advocated for a nuanced position of $12/hr minimum wage. The United States is a big country with vastly different regional labor markets, and states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and rural areas in many other states aren't at all equipped to cope with a nationwide increase to $15 so she therefore took a nuanced position. Alas, American voters don't do "nuance" very well and just wanted to hear $15/hr period without all the incremental details included in the enacting of the policy. The Berners then labelled her as against a $15 minimum wage and ridiculing it.

Marijuana: Clinton's entire primary campaign was premised on ridiculing Bernie's legalization of marijuana idea as being "pie in the sky" which would never, ever actually happen. Nope. HRC supported the use of medical marijuana and to the best of my recollection didn't ridicule Bernie's position on this as "pie in the sky which would never, ever actually happen," and why would she when it had already happened in some states?

Read that quote from her book in the above article -- if she can admit it, looking back, why can't you?

In my response to your statement, I said I believed it was truer about HRC versus BO than it was HRC versus BS... so I clearly have no issue with admitting she did it. Besides, she didn't admit her "entire primary campaign was premised on ridiculing Bernie's ideas as being pie in the sky which would never, ever actually happen." She admitted that she learned that "it's important to set lofty goals that people can organize around and dream about, even if it takes generations to achieve them."

Read this quote from Hillary's book and see if this might apply here:

That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would propose a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger. On issue after issue, it was like he kept proposing four-minute abs, or even no-minute abs. Magic abs! Someone sent me a Facebook post that summed up the dynamic in which we were caught:

BERNIE: I think America should get a pony.
HILLARY: How will you pay for the pony? Where will the pony come from? How will you get Congress to agree to the pony?
BERNIE: Hillary thinks America doesn’t deserve a pony.
BERNIE SUPPORTERS: Hillary hates ponies!
HILLARY: Actually, I love ponies.
BERNIE SUPPORTERS: She changed her position on ponies! #WhichHillary? #WitchHillary
HEADLINE: “Hillary Refuses to Give Every American a Pony”
DEBATE MODERATOR: Hillary, how do you feel when people say you lie about ponies?

*****

It's becoming apparent that Americans don't like "nuance" and don't want to hear policy details, i.e., the "devil in the details." Word of caution to Democrats, though, about setting lofty goals that Americans can rally around and dream about; they cost money, trillions of dollars, and there's a happy medium in there where policy is concerned and best take care not to paint yourself too far into a corner wherein your opponent simply lists your "dreams" one by one and explains to Americans that the price tag is breathtaking, to the tune of trillions of dollars, and that "of course the Democrat Party wants to give you a $15 minimum wage because half of that will be going straight to DC in order to pay for that list of dreams they're promising," that this money will come straight from their wallets in the form of huge tax increases. Those are some details Americans understand. I'm not saying not to dream big or have a big dream; I'm just saying to do it in such a way that your big dream can't be characterized as a national nightmare.

Yeah, it confused me too, because the full doc actually starts off with the "recap" highlight section. But then you keep scrolling down, and the full document appears... glad to know I read the whole thing!

-CW

I have come to believe the primary process as we now know it has neutered both major parties by turning them from leaders into followers.

In so many ways than imaginable... yes, yes, and absolutely; TS says exactly what I was trying to say without being able to put it into proper words.

Perhaps future candidates would be well served to refuse to follow and be prepared to explain as many times as necessary: "I don't have a comment about the inane BS tweeted out by the halfwit this morning or any other day; I suggest we ignore the distractions and focus on serving the people."

Refuse to follow. Lead or get out of the way.

My mistake - I misinterpreted the "full text" link to the pdf. The verbiage seems the same.

The PDF is longer? I viewed the full document (in html), copied and pasted it to Word, and it was like 26 pages long. Are you saying the PDF was noticeably longer? Let me know...

That is an excellent point about the spot on the food chain the authors are in, I have to say. Hadn't thought about that, but you make a good point.

[5] -

Watched the first hour or so of Sessions. His memory loss seems to be awfully specific at times, if you know what I mean.

Heh.

Paula [8] -

Thanks for the link, I will check it out. I've read other articles that quoted people inspired to resist Trump who tried to join local Dem groups, but found them either non-existent, exclusionary, or otherwise unwelcoming. Some decided to take over such groups with a show of strength, and some decided to just form their own structure outside the official Dem tent.

The party really needs revitalizing from the bottom up, that's for sure. But it seems to be happening, at least haphazardly.

The GOP went through this (with all the anti-abortion and Moral Majority people) long ago -- committed people with fierce determination decided to take over the party from the inside. It took years (decades, even), but if the effort is strong enough and has enough stamina, it can indeed be done.

TheStig [9] -

I wish you well. But I had to comment just because your last line was so funny. In life, it is often the little things that matter the most, and politics is no different. Woof!

Balthasar [11] -

I have a similar, but slightly different take. Both Clintons are really done with politics (at least directly). Hillary's never going to run again. They will (of course) try being "Dem elder statesmen" and "kingmakers" behind the scenes, but they'll never run for anything again.

Because of this, all the GOP obsession with Hillary just looks to the public like looking backwards. Dems can point to this in the future as how "the GOP can't get anything done except for hounding their former political opponents," and it will likely resonate with the voters.

-CW

Re-reading [2] and [3], I think you may be conflating Hillary's primary campaign and her general campaign in your mind. She did attack Trump's tweets, but not so much until she had sewn up the nomination.

I'm not a Hillary-hater or anything, and I do applaud her for the quoted passage in the article, because (as I stated) I hadn't heard those excerpts before. Bernie campaigned in poetry. You can argue he wouldn't have been able to govern in prose, and that's debatable. But Hillary tried to campaign in prose from the get-go, and that's just not how you win elections (that's the very basis for the whole "campaign in poetry/govern in prose" metaphor, in fact). Her husband could do both (in masterful fashion), but Hillary just couldn't seem to do the first part of it.

-CW

See, I just knew you were going to like this one, somehow...

:-)

You should read the whole autopsy document, you'll absolutely love it.

Kick [2] -

(see: all the Democractic primary debates, for starters...)

Sigh. OK, I went and looked one of them up (from an extended article I wrote on the subject a while back). Here's Clinton on healthcare, mistakenly suggesting that Bernie's plan consisted of "(1) remove Obamacare, and then (2) start debate on Berniecare, which will take years." No, seriously, that's what she was insisting on the campaign trail. Here she is from January of 2016:

I want you to understand why I am fighting so hard for the Affordable Care Act. I don't want it repealed. I don't want us to be thrown back into a terrible, terrible national debate. I don't want us to end up in gridlock. People can't wait. People who have health emergencies can't wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass. People can't wait. Your daughter calls and says she has a mass in her forehead, you can't wait. You quit your job to take care of your sick daughter -- something I think a lot of us can relate to -- you can't wait.

I bolded that one bit, just in case you missed it. On issue after issue ($15/hr, free tuition for all at state colleges, marijuana legalization, reining in Wall Street, etc., etc.) this was indeed precisely what Hillary did. Read that quote from her book in the above article -- if she can admit it, looking back, why can't you?

Or, if you need further proof, look up some of those primary debate transcripts. There are plenty of examples to find in them.

-CW

Perhaps they are, like the President, stuck in a temporal loop regarding the election. Every time Trump brings it up I think, it was as much a shock to him as it was to us. Maybe it created a sort of PTSD that makes him think it could unravel unexpectedly.

Feeling trapped, Donald? We know how you feel.

But as Jerry Nadler went to some pains to point out today, even though she got five million more votes than Trump, Hillary didn't win. She's a private citizen now, and holds no federal office. Moreover, pursuing the prosecution of political rivals is a particularly 'banana republican' thing to do.

But Trump, ever eager to play the role of tinpot dictator, continues to tweet that 'Americans are angry' that Clinton hasn't been prosecuted.

The good news is that even Sessions knows that's a bad idea, at least for now.

Also, catch the bit from John Oliver's latest show on the subject of "whataboutism" for a clear-headed way to sort this subject out.

It seems to me that Sessions is threading a very small needle between angry Dems and Reps. Remember the video of the guy in the wing suit who flew through the cave in China? Sessions is trying to pull of something like that. Risky, yet compelling. An unlikely extreme sportsman. I wonder if he knows how to use a GoPro?

Neilm

"We need a compelling speaker articulating big vision ideas around a central theme of "We will make America work for regular Americans" - good healthcare, good education, and a good retirement for every American, not just the rich..."

I confess that candidate sounds a lot to me like a Bernie. That said, a Bernie in 2018/20 may only be viable because of Nasty, Incompetent, Lying, sell his grandma for a quarter Donald Trump...and the Republicans too craven to stand up to him. Every choice needs clear a frame of reference. Boy howdy, the USA has one now. Trump is the dead albatross around the GOP neck, he will only continue to ripen over time.

That said, Democrats all too often whiff at the plate. I take nothing for granted. I'll be canvassing in my home district - which leans Republican. My key virtues as an operative are: semi abundant spare time, stamina (rolling winding hills) and a good understanding of dog behaviors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/magazine/how-the-resistance-helped-democrats-dominate-virginia.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

This is the message that will resonate - and it is basically the populist message the Republicans used in 2016 and earlier - it is time for the party of Labor to call out the party of Capital - time for a "class war" as the right will try to call it.

The Republican Party is coming apart - the pressure that kept it together has been released with the results of the 2016 election and we can see the cracks opening between the religious nuts, the libertarians and the country club/chamber of commerce types.

We need a compelling speaker articulating big vision ideas around a central theme of "We will make America work for regular Americans" - good healthcare, good education, and a good retirement for every American, not just the rich

"In all of my testimony, I can only do my best to answer all of your questions as I understand them and to the best of my memory," Sessions said in prepared remarks to the House Judiciary Committee. "But I will not accept, and reject, accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie."

The ol' faulty memory defense. His best seems pretty faulty at best, and at worst is just a second round of lies from a conspirator.

I have come to believe the primary process as we now know it has neutered both major parties by turning them from leaders into followers. Ditch the primaries, hold local, state and national conventions with wide participation by activist, card carrying members. Put some ordinary passionate people behind the policy, as opposed to political consultants and ad "men"with dubious loyalties. Politics should be messy at the lower levels. We have made a mistake by creating a faux sanitation. Representative government has been scrubbed to within an inch of its life yet it is dirtier than ever. Trump is the master caution light flashing in our eyes.

I believe this statement is truer of HRC's first campaign for the White House against Barack Obama, but Clinton's ENTIRE primary campaign was premised on ridiculing Bernie's ideas? Did I miss something? I don't remember Clinton's campaign as doing all that much ridiculing of Bernie's ideas since they largely agreed on just about every issue except firearms.

So help me out here, seriously: When did all this ridiculing of Bernie's ideas take place? HRC didn't have to ridicule Bernie all that much and pretty much laid off him because if I recall correctly, the majority of Clinton's primary campaign was spent focused on a multitude of issues regarding Trump's daily tweet or bullshit du jour and NOT Bernie Sanders at all.