Head Tale

So last night, the Associated Press announced that they’d surveyed all Democratic super-delegates and there were enough who indicated previously undeclared support for Hillary Clinton that AP was ready to consider her the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee prior to today’s votes in California, New Jersey and a handful of other states.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald summarizes the problems with how this was announced perfectly…

This is the perfect symbolic ending to the Democratic Party primary. The nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders and donors whose identity the media organization – incredibly – conceals. The decisive edifice of super-delegates is itself anti-democratic and inherently corrupt: designed to prevent actual voters from making choices that the party establishment dislikes. But for a party run by insiders and funded by corporate interests, it’s only fitting that their nomination process ends with such an ignominious, awkward and undemocratic sputter.

It is definitely another weird development in an election season that continues to be one nearly unbelievable incident after another.

But really, with the only avenues left for Bernie Sanders to gain the nomination being:
1) since neither Hillary or Bernie will have enough *pledged* delegates to clinch the nomination before the Democratic convention, try to make the case to the unelected superdelegates to switch to him as more electable (even if true, hard since Bernie’s campaign has villainized “the establishment” which is basically who the superdelegates are)

2) the announcement of results of the FBI investigation into Hillary’s private e-mail server while Secretary of State (which is what I’m still holding out hope for – all evidence is showing that she *did* break the law very clearly but then it’s just a question of whether a highly placed, powerful politician will be held to the same standard as those on lower rungs.

Anyhow, if Hillary’s nomination is an all-but-sure thing, it makes me think about how close Bernie came and what, in hindsight, he might’ve done differently throughout his campaign to have more success:

• Perhaps the biggest factor is how much he ceded to Hillary in terms of African American support in some of the southern states which created a gap in delegates he’s never been able to make up.  I’m not sure what, if anything Bernie could’ve done differently to make better inroads running against the wife of Bill Clinton (aka “the first Black President”) who is a southerner, very religious and has very strong connections with that community.
• It was a memorable line in an early debate for Bernie to say “I’m tired of hearing about your damn e-mails” but it was telling that he admitted that it probably wasn’t good politics to say so.  I wonder if things had been different if he’d been a *bit* more aggressive in pointing out Hillary’s scandals, corruption, and so on to better draw a contrast with himself.  It’s a delicate line to run and we ran into the same thing with the Ryan Meili campaign – if you’re the “positive” candidate and you don’t want to piss off supporters of another candidate who’s on the same “team”, how do you walk that line about making fair comparisons but without getting into the gutter?
• Here’s another one that was a tough call but I wonder, could Bernie has embraced the fact that he’d be the first minority religion President (as someone who is Jewish) to counter Hillary’s “first woman President” line that she alternately embraced and denied as anything special wanting to be judged solely on her merits.  Honestly, this was probably too dangerous of territory for Bernie to enter and he was smart not to make it about “my identity politics are just as important as yours” since I suspect Bernie’s (cultural but not really religious) Jewishness is a more loaded minefield than Hillary’s gender.
• This was out of his control but if certain states had voted in a different order, that could have created a different story of the momentum of the race.  Bernie won 7 states in a row but that was right after Hillary won 7 so he was already seen as too far behind to catch up by many commentators.
• Bernie was great at staying on message and framing everything as relating back to his core message of “income inequality/rigged economy” in answers about everything from the environment to education to health to the number of corrupt politicians the United States has.  But sometimes, I wanted him to give answers on a more practical, personal level (and yes, why not even pander a wee bit?) instead of this high level “umbrella” theme that he used to cover everything.
• As mentioned, lumping all super-delegates as “establishment” when you are demonizing the “establishment” in your campaign (and have reached a point where you need them if you’re going to get the nomination) was a mistake and he could’ve been a bit better at separating the concept from the actual people maybe?
• He could’ve done more to effectively use the Internet for fundraising and organizing.  (Just kidding – that was something he kicked ass at!)
• Finally, he could’ve used the same technique Ted Cruz used and try announcing who his Vice Presidential running mate would’ve been really early.  This is unusual but not unprecedented (I can’t remember who but I think other candidates have done it in past year before Cruz did) and could’ve had numerous benefits – if he picked a woman and announced he was only going to stay for one term, that could’ve somewhat offset one of Hillary’s main selling points (first female President), it would’ve given him another strong surrogate, it could’ve helped reinforce his strengths if it was someone with honesty, youth appeal and charisma.  Depending on who he picked, it might even help negate Hillary’s constant appeals to her connection to Obama! 😉

I know it’s a long shot but with both Clinton and Trump facing record-high unfavourably ratings and Bernie rating as very favourable across the spectrum, I really hope he decides to run as a third-party candidate as I think there’s a real chance he could come up the middle.

He owes the Democratic Party nothing after how they’ve run this election and although there’s a risk he could split liberal voters and make a path for Trump, I really think he’d draw a slight majority of Democratic voters plus enough independents to take it all.