Why was the Democratic establishment so united behind Clinton in the beginning? (user search)
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  Why was the Democratic establishment so united behind Clinton in the beginning? (search mode)
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Author Topic: Why was the Democratic establishment so united behind Clinton in the beginning?  (Read 3203 times)
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jfern
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 53,752


Political Matrix
E: -7.38, S: -8.36

« on: May 29, 2017, 11:32:31 PM »

I think the dominant narrative here of how party elites wield power is wrong.  No individual actor has the power to shift the odds of any one candidate winning the nomination up or down by all *that* much.  So you're talking about the collective actions of a large-ish group of people (big money donors and party leaders).  Each of these people realizes that their leverage is very constrained, so their incentives drive them to back the person who they think is going to win the nomination anyway, which has the potential to drive a massive bandwagon effect.

These folks thought Clinton was inevitably going to win the nomination anyway (she was leading the polls by like 50 points) and they wanted to be on the winning team.  It didn't hurt that they also thought she would be a pretty good GE candidate (remember that her favorability #s were still reasonably good in 2014), and that many of them believed that a coronation would probably be better than a combative primary.  But they were going with the person who they thought was going to win even without their support.  And they did this because they wanted as much influence as possible with the person who they thought was most likely going to be elected president, and because they didn’t want to give said person a reason to seek vengeance against them.  They would have similarly rallied around Joe Biden or Kirsten Gillibrand, or any other “establishment” figure who had a massive lead in the primary polling and appeared to be popular enough among the general electorate to win the presidency.


Obama gave Hillary control over the DNC infrastructure, she had DWS & co. openly sponsoring her.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/impartial-dnc-finance-chief-helps-hillary-clinton-118558

There was also the money laundering of Hillary Victory Fund money back to the campaign to circumvent campaign finance laws, all during the primary. The DNC is absolutely hated for good reason.
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jfern
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 53,752


Political Matrix
E: -7.38, S: -8.36

« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2017, 01:28:34 AM »

I get why they supported her over Sanders, but I'm asking why they tried to clear the field for her early on. It seems that her flaws as a candidate should have been clear then. Were they trying to avoid a primary battle altogether? Did they think that any other plausible candidate had no chance?

To whom? If you read the threads from back in 2013 to mid 2015, you see people mostly praising her. I was one of the few people saying she'd be a bad candidate, but no one listened to me.

Everyone at RRH was well aware of how bad a candidate she was back in the post-midterm days of 2014/early 2015.

Yeah but Democrats are going to dismiss it as just the gripes of a right-of-center community. Very few left-of-center people were saying she was unelectable.

Maybe not unelectable, but I was saying she was certainly not inevitable.
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○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└
jfern
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 53,752


Political Matrix
E: -7.38, S: -8.36

« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2017, 06:01:21 PM »

Being on the Clintons' enemies list is not conducive for career advancement.
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