In the Year of the Outsiders, Hillary Survives and Thrives

Remember she has received more votes than any other candidate, a lot more than Trump, she has an even bigger margin over votes for the Bern.

Herein lies the difference between the parties:

"In an election defined by anti-establishment energy and anger, the two parties are now diverging as Republicans fully embrace an outsider as their presidential nominee and Democrats line up behind a quintessential insider."

"Republicans seem certain to nominate a bomb-throwing insurgent in celebrity real estate mogul Donald Trump or, should he fall short, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, while Democrats are consolidating around a guardian of the status quo, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who all but locked up the nomination with decisive victories in Tuesday’s primaries."

"The successes of Trump and Clinton underscore important nuances in the sentiments coursing through the two parties. While voters in both share a frustration with the state of the nation’s economy and politics, Republicans blame their own leaders as much as anybody else and are, therefore, more eager for a radical fix, whereas Democrats still believe their elected leaders can bring change from within."

“It’s fundamentally different,” said David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist and architect of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. The GOP “is in full-out revolt — not just a revolt against government, but a revolt against their own party. . . . But Democratic voters appear to be choosing candidates who look like people who can work for institutional change within the institution rather than fighting for it from the fringe of the institutions.”

"This dynamic played out Tuesday beyond the presidential level as well. In a pair of hotly contested Democratic Senate primaries, establishment favorites — Chris Van Hollen in Maryland and Kathleen McGinty in Pennsylvania — defeated more liberal, insurgent challengers."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-is-the-insider-who-survived-the-year-of-the-outsider/2016/04/27/e3d58e70-0c85-11e6-8ab8-9ad050f76d7d_story.html

Robert Shrum hits it on the nose:

“I think Democrats really want to win, and they’re not willing to sacrifice winning to ideology and grievance, which I think in the Republican Party is the case,” said Robert Shrum, a strategist who is a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns.

How do you actually achieve institutional change without winning? There are some who seem to think that Dems should follow the Berners. Matt Yglesias has made this argument that the Dems should listen to the Berners and become a more left wing ideological party like the GOP is a right wing ideological one.

Why would we want the Dems to become a Tea Party of the Left? Have you taken a good look at the Republican party lately? It's a disaster.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/04/you-best-believe-gop-is-on-eve-of.html

I will take the other side of this bet. I think the Dems are better off for not being a rabidly ideological party, for being Center Left rather than Utlra Left. Where we don't engage in circular firing squads over small, imperceptible differences.

 Jamelle Bouie in a post yesterday argued as Yglesias that-for better or worse-the Dems will be this more purist leftist party in the future. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/opinion/campaign-stops/bernie-sanderss-legacy.html?smid=tw-share

He argues that in 10 years we will start to see changes. After all, he reasons as Yglesias also has, the future belongs to the youth.  

1. It will but not necessarily in 10 years. It may well not be until considerably longer until we really see the effects of the millennials on our electoral politics. 

The millennials generally are seen as those born between 1981 and 1986. Right now then, the Millennials are 18 to 33 years old. However, the median voter age is 44 years old.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/todays_median_age_voters_grew.html

A good age, I am currently 44! Though on May 23 I will no longer be exactly median age...

So in 10 years the oldest millennials will start to approach the median voting age. Still, their impact will only begin to shine through as 60 percent of voters currently are 45 and over.

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2011/05/04/U-S-voting-majority-now-age-45-and-up/stories/201105040247

So their preferences will only start to show. We might say that over the next 10 to 25 years we will get an idea of what impact they might have-in 25 years the youngest millennials will be 44. 

2. Beyond that we can't presume that  millennials will always have the same homogenous political and ideological preferences they have today. A lot can change in the next 20 years. 

If we are able to do something about stagnant wages and incomes, you may well see this generation moderate or splinter in its preferences. We've seen it before. The same Baby Boomer generation which voted for Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern would markedly change and become more moderate-indeed, some became conservatives. 

3. The millennials who voted for Bernie are predominantly white millennials. This doesn't mean they are all white, just mostly. I'v'e seen some Berners on Twitter trumpeting that among 18-24 year old black millennials, Bernie leads by about 3 points. 

That actually underscores again how poorly Bernie did with black voters in general. Sure that is a lot better than he did with older AA voters. But the right comparison is with how he did with white millennials. With them he was winning 7 out of 8 voters where as with their AA counterparts he was breaking even. 

And 18-24 is the very youngest millennials. I've spoken to a number of AA Dems on Twitter in their 30s that are decidedly not feeling The Bern. Many of them are very strong Hillary supporters

Which is not to say that the Democratic party should feel too confident about young black voters in the future. At this point, it seems that many of the young Black Lives Matter activists are skeptical of voting as such. They don't share the sentiment of the older civil rights generation for whom the act of voting is sacred. 

Among the very young there is the belief that voting does no good and may even do harm-by 'encouraging' a system that harms them. 

This is a development that many AAs of older generations is dismayed by. 

In this vein, Deray McKesson's run for Baltimore Mayor was a positive development. He clearly wants to encourage his fellow young people to not feel they must only criticize the system from without. He wants them to believe they can actually go inside and make the changes they want to see made. 

Again, though, just like I pointed out in point 2 for white millennials, the same applies to black millennials. Their preferences and attitudes may well change a lot over the next 20 years. 

One thing that might make them less disaffected: to continue the push for criminal justice reform that has started. To end mass incarceration. To bring hope to these communities.