When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

If you had such a good point, there was no need to lie...

And no need to make it personal either. Other posters here, e.g. Edgar and Joe from Chicago are on the same line, as are supposedly millions of Americans out there. This is not about Lash. It's about Clinton's lack of credibility as a reformer; about Sanders being such a unique US politician; about his capacity to attract voters from beyond the Dem party; about Trump and the risk he poses (maybe Clinton doesn't need the votes of a few hardcore Sandersists to win); etc.

The real question is: how big a risk does Trump pose to Hillary? If she has a solid lead over him, there's no need to demand the last Sanderista vote for Hillary.

If on the contrary she is assailable, then she needs the Sandersistas' vote, and therefore she should try and approach them with something a little better than contempt.

Contempt from the Clinton camp for the Sanders challenge has been an issue from day one, including here on A2K. I think it is totally stupid and counter-productive. You can bet that if Sanders was in the lead, he would try to cajole Hillary supporters rather than insult them...

A great deal of Bernie supporters are not in fact from the dem party, and do not feel any obligation toward the dems. That's fine with me --

“After Trump, Our Turn!”
By Michelle Goldberg

Let’s be grateful to Susan Sarandon for exposing just how vapid and callous the left-wing #NeverHillary argument is. Speaking to Chris Hayes on MSNBC on Monday night, Sarandon, a Bernie Sanders surrogate, said she was unsure if she could bring herself to vote for Hillary Clinton in a general election. Hayes was shocked, but Sarandon posited that a Trump presidency might be preferable to a Clinton one, because it would hasten the revolution. “Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode,” she said.


It’s unclear how many people Sarandon speaks for. There are lots of posturing radicals on social media who pretend Clinton would be no better than Trump, but my guess is that they are a tiny fraction of Sanders supporters. Sanders himself certainly doesn’t encourage such political nihilism and will surely rally to Clinton’s side if she beats him in the primary. Inasmuch as #NeverHillary is a phenomenon, however, Sarandon, a rich white celebrity with nothing on the line, is a perfect spokeswoman for it.


What Sarandon is voicing is the old Leninist idea of “heightening the contradictions,” which holds that social conditions need to get worse in order to inspire the revolution that will make them better. In this way of thinking, the real enemy of progress is incremental reform that would render the status quo tolerable. That was the position of the German Communists in the early 1930s, who refused to ally with the Social Democrats, proclaiming: “After Hitler, our turn!” A similar—if less deadly—assumption underlay Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign, for which Sarandon served as co-chair of the national steering committee. George W. Bush, Nader argued then, could serve as a “provocateur,” awakening the power of the left. “If it were a choice between a provocateur and an ‘anesthetizer,’ I'd rather have a provocateur,” said Nader. “It would mobilize us.”


To be fair to Nader, under Bush, the contradictions got pretty high. He left the Middle East in flames, and the economy hasn’t recovered from the financial implosion he presided over. Had Bush not wrecked so many lives, we might never have gotten President Obama and the Affordable Care Act, or, for that matter, a democratic socialist running a credible presidential primary campaign. Yet the Bush example should also make it obvious that the cost of electing a Republican provocateur is human misery on an inconceivable scale, inflicted on people who lack Sarandon’s many resources.


The problems with Sarandon’s position go beyond its tolerance for human sacrifice. There’s also the gormless unreality of her idea of revolution. Does she mean a political revolution, like the one Sanders has proposed? Because the major barrier to such a revolution is not a populace that needs to suffer more in order to reach Sarandon’s superlative level of wokeness. It is the structural obstacles to democracy systematically erected by Republicans and Republican-appointed judges: the widespread erosion of voting rights, the unlimited flood of money into politics unleashed by the Supreme Court, and the epic gerrymandering following the 2010 census that makes it nearly impossible for Democrats to win back the House, even if they win a majority of votes. These things will get worse, not better, in any Republican administration, making the possibility of a peaceful electoral revolution all the more remote.


But maybe that’s not the sort of revolution Sarandon has in mind? Maybe she actually longs for the kind where things “really explode”? If so, one wonders who she thinks is going to fight this revolution. It’s certainly possible that a Trump presidency could lead to violent political conflict. If it comes to that, however, my money is on the side with all the gun fetishists, not subscribers to Jacobin.


The results of a Trump presidency would likely be far less dramatic. They might just include the widespread persecution of undocumented immigrants, the appointment of Supreme Court judges who will jettison Roe v. Wade, the end of any federal action on global warming, and a ramping up of American war crimes. We certainly won’t see any expansion of family leave or early education. Based on what we’ve seen of Trump so far, we can expect him to use the powers of the federal government, including NSA surveillance, to target and humiliate his personal enemies, especially women. One thing, however, is sure. No matter what happens, Susan Sarandon will be just fine.

Me, I am going back and forth. I want Bernie to do well, even in defeat, to moderate the Hillary stances more to my way of thinking. But I sway towards voting for her in the primary too and getting it over with. And then I sway back to adding my voice in the primary for Bernie.

My point is that Hillary, her team and most ardent supporters should try to understand Bernie's allure and even try and capture some of it,

Contempt from the Clinton camp for the Sanders challenge has been an issue from day one, including here on A2K. I think it is totally stupid and counter-productive. You can bet that if Sanders was in the lead, he would try to cajole Hillary supporters rather than insult them...

If you didn't mean there has been "stupid and counter-productive" "contempt" from the "Clinton camp" toward the Sanders challenge "from day one" here on A2K, then maybe you shouldn't have said so.

Quote:

If you didn't mean there has been "stupid and counter-productive" "contempt" from the "Clinton camp" toward the Sanders challenge "from day one" here on A2K, then maybe you shouldn't have said so.

I did mean to say that. I find it pretty ridiculous AND counter-productive how some posters are constantly feeling the need to express contempt at Sanders and pro-Sanders posters, as opposed to trying to take them seriously.