The gaping hole at the heart of Hillary Clinton’s campaign
A good read.
Paul Wldman, The American Prospect, published in WaPo
"But right now, the Clinton campaign has a much bigger problem than the story it wants to tell about New Hampshire. That problem is this: the campaign has no story to tell the voters about Hillary Clinton and why she should be president.
Having a good story doesn’t guarantee you victory, but nobody becomes president without one. The story has to contain three simple elements. First, it explains what the problem is. Second, it explains what the solution is. And third, it explains why this candidate, and only this candidate, is the person who can bring the country from where it is now to where it ought to be.
As Greg discussed this morning, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have very simple messages that are resonating with substantial parts of the base voters in each one’s party. Trump says that America is being played for chumps, and only a fantastic, luxurious individual like him can make us win again. Sanders says that the political system is corrupted by the influence of the wealthy and corporations, and a revolution delivered by an unsullied figure like him is necessary to break their stranglehold on our politics. Anyone who has paid attention to the campaign for five minutes understands what those messages are, whether you agree with either one of them or not.
Now tell me: what’s Hillary Clinton’s message?"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/02/10/the-gaping-hole-at-the-heart-of-hillary-clintons-campaign/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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I was trying, the other day, to think of a "redemption" ("sack cloth & ashes"
scenario for Hillary Clinton. Give back her Goldman Sachs, et al, millions, or at least promise to take no more, shut down the super-pacs and beg for our small donations. Say "Bill threw me off balance" (every woman will understand this!) and made her go wrong on all the Shafta "free trade for the rich" laws that have shafted women more than anyone else (women here, who make 75 cents on the dollar compared to men, and women in sweatshops worldwide who make 75 cents an hour or even A DAY) but have basically shafted everybody everywhere who wasn't already wealthy. Apologize to African Americans for taking their votes for granted while doing absolutely nothing about racism, police militarism and murder, mass incarceration of African Americans and severe economic hardship in African American communities. Bill made her wrong on the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" and wrong on flimsy Wall Street 'reform.' Made her wrong on vicious, Reaganite 'welfare reform.' Etc. She now sees the light. She is now not only a new woman, independent of Bill, but also is a born-again New Dealer, and will fight tooth and nail for Bernie's agenda: expanding Social Security, Medicare for all, free tuition at public colleges, etc. AND get down on her knees, in sack cloth & ashes, and beg us--beg us!--to forgive her for her Iraq War vote. Tell us truly why she made that horribly wrong vote--her ambition--and apologize for it; say ambition isn't everything, even for glass-ceilinged women! AND--one more thing--cry, cry as a mother for Mother Earth, and promise that, with all our help, we can save Her, for our children, for our grandchildren and the future of humanity.
She could beat Bernie if she did this. HE might even vote for her! She could win the GE in a landslide and take Congress as well. Stranger things have happened, in history and in American politics. But I don't think she has the imagination to do it. She is what she is, as you say--in my opinion, a woman shaped by, and distorted by, her husband's rise to power; and then adopted by the 1% who have profited so egregiously from his policies, compounded 1,000x by Bush-Cheney policies, because they want those policies TO CONTINUE, and they think putting a Clinton in the White House will do that. She is not her own woman in many ways. She can't see what her ambition has done to her. She just can't see it. Nor can she see the rest of us, women and men, who are being impoverished, sent to unjust war, cast out of our homes, thrown in jail for nothing, working our behinds off (greatest labor productivity in the world) for nothing, or getting a college education at the cost of lifelong onerous debt. She can't imagine a different better society. She is of THIS battered, looting and looted society, and can't see it, or herself, as changeable.
Your list of Clinton's contradictory positions is reflective of her personality, which is all too capable of changing policies with the wind, but not capable of a genuine change of heart and mind.
Response to Red Oak (Original post)
Response to musiclawyer (Reply #23)
and that should easily have been enough to carry her through the primaries, with nothing more than token opposition. Our party is pretty good at GOTV, and the party was geared for Clinton to have a cakewalk. It's not like there aren't other people with great qualifications, like those of Governor O'Malley. It's just that there was no air left in the room. The room in question being the one our establishment, and our generous donors, lives in. I'm not knocking that we have an establishment. And I'm grateful for wealthy Democrats who open their wallets. Most get nothing in return beyond getting their picture taken.
This not being a dictatorship though, someone like Senator Sanders does have the opportunity to speak directly to the people. And so here we are, feeling the bern. 
I remember reading the question once of, "If gorillas could dream of a better gorilla, what would that gorilla be like?". The point being that we're all blinded by what we know.
Gorillas "know" that bigger muscles and bigger teeth are what determines success. That, and more aggression, more dominance of others. (Not like those puny hairless aberrations)
Secretary Clinton has had the time, money, experience, and political savvy, to conceive and implement one giant gorilla of a campaign. (Hey, what's that hairless little biped coming my way for? RRROAR!!!)
lol
