The Few, the Unsung, the Hillary Voters

The New Republic asks the right question:

"Who Is the Hillary Voter?"

"The media is obsessed with the Sanders voter and the Trump voter. Yet it is the Hillary voter who may have the last laugh."

https://newrepublic.com/article/131762/hillary-voter

Great question. And in asking it, this is the right place as, of course, I'm as big a HRC supporter as you'll find and I talk to many HRC supporters on Twitter everyday. I can attest that we are legion.

"The media has saturated us with profiles of the voters who are turning out for these anti-establishment candidates. There is the Sanders voter, a white, social-media-savvy millennial sick of corporate oligarchies and paying student loans. There is the alienated, white, working-class Trump voter,threatened by immigration and trade treaties and Muslims, someone far less interested in small government and the capital gains tax than the Republican donor class would like him to be. And there is the stridently conservative, small-government Cruz voter, a dedicated God-fearing culture warrior."

"The voter we almost never hear about, however, is the Clinton voter. Which is surprising, since Hillary Clinton has won more votes in the primaries than any other candidate so far. She has amassed over 2.5 million more votes than Sanders; over 1.1 million more votes than Trump. Clearly Clinton voters exist, yet there has been very little analysis as to who they are or why they are showing up to vote for her. Sure, there has been talk of Clinton’s dominance among African-American voters, and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic voters. Her voters seem to skew older and more affluent. But these are demographics. (And even demographics have a hard time explaining her commanding win in Ohio, or her wins in Massachusetts and Missouri.) There is almost no discussion of what is motivating these voters. If anything, the media seems to think they are holding their noses as they vote for Hillary. As a recent New York Times article suggested, Clinton is winning “votes, not hearts.”

I can tell you one thing right away about Hillary supporters: we hate snarky digs like this. She's not winning hearts. Again, those who say this don't speak to Hillary supporters. Speaking for myself, she had my heart the first time she gave that Diane Sawyer interview with Bill in 1992. 

She has never lest it since. Many HRC supporters I speak to are very passionate. I have spoken to some black women on Twitter than contrary to what you might think, even supported her in 2008 against Obama. There are some who were Obama supporters first and there are those like me who were always for her. 

There is a young black female Hillary supporter who told me how she was 'over the moon' after Hillary blew away the Bern in South Carolina by 50 points. Her family is in SC and she was on the phone with her exuberant family. 

But the passion is real. We're Democrats who care about the party, not just backing the most ideological candidate in the field. Probably in general we have followed politics longer than the typical Bernie supporter who thinks everything can happen overnight. We get that change is incremental and very hard fought. 

"This is no accident. An examination of Clinton voters and their motivations might reveal that the narrative that most media outlets have been feeding us this election cycle is dubious at best. Because if the biggest vote-getter of either party is Hillary—by a large margin—then that suggests the electorate is not necessarily as angry as pundits claim. It further suggests that perhaps some people are tired of hearing about how angry they are, and are quietly asserting their opinions at the ballot box. If Democrats are so angry, Clinton would not be in the position she is today. Is it really so farfetched to claim that quite a few Democrats aren’t voting for Sanders precisely because he seems angry? Which isn’t to suggest that people aren’t angry—certainly many Republican primary voters seem to be. Rather, it is to suggest that voters who aren’t angry are still showing up at the polls, despite being ignored in news stories."

"Of course, angry voters make for sexier clickbait. So it’s not too surprising that we’re not seeing front-page headlines that scream, “Satisfied Obama Supporters Show Up in Droves.” Furthermore, Trump and Sanders have seen enormous crowds at their rallies, and exuberant support on social media platforms."

"So perhaps Clinton voters don’t show up at rallies so much. Perhaps they are a bit less passionate on Facebook, share fewer articles, give less money to their candidate (she does have a super PAC, after all). But what they are doing is perhaps the only thing that actually matters in an election. They are showing up to vote. In numbers that no other candidate can boast. "

"It’s certainly curious to presume, as many do, that Clinton’s supporters are somehow less enthusiastic than Sanders’s are. How is enthusiasm measured, if not by actual vote count? And they are doing so despite the media narrative surrounding their candidate, despite hearing very little about themselves in the media, despite her “damn” emails, despite Benghazi, despite her low Gallup favorables, and despite how everyone else is “Feeling the Bern.” If anything, Clinton might need to thank the press for consistently underestimating her. Perhaps this is why her supporters are coming out for her in such strength: to assert their existence in the face of a narrative that both overlooks them and disparages their candidate."

Let me assure you: we Hillary supporters notice how much the media tries to disparage our candidate and we do not like it. Bernie supporters who I speak to on Twitter I always caution: if you are trying to win me over, talking about how terrible Hillary is doesn't work. Terrible strategy. Not that I can be won over. 

This is very true:

"This, then, is the one thing the Clinton voter has in common with the Trump voter: a refusal to buy into the prevailing wisdom about their candidate. We always hear about how Trump supporters have remained loyal to him no matter what Trump says or does; their support is rock solid. We never hear that about Clinton, even though she has survived more scandals and accusations than the rest of the presidential field combined. It may very well be that Hillary voters are the most stubborn of all. Because they’ve heard it all for decades—and they are still showing up."

That's how I look at it. The media has colluded with the GOP to throw dirt at her for 25 years. I didn't believe the nonsense then and I don't believe it now.

I think that Jon Favreau a one time Hilary nemesis as part of Obama 2008 now makes a great case for her as the candidate who is not speaking in anger.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/26/why-electing-hillary-in-16-is-more-important-than-electing-obama-in-08.html

There are a lot of people who are angry. There are a lot of other people, though, who are sick of the anger. They're really sick of Trumpism-which is about anger and Bernie, Cruz, et. al are also all about anger.

She alone has a chance to actually heal the country. Not start yet another Holy War whether against immigrants or even bankers.

P.S. This is not to say that there aren't real problems. We do need to do something about wages. As long as there is more wage stagnation we will get more political dysfunction.

But Hillary has some good ideas of how to raise wages.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/hillary-on-uber-economy.html