Prepare yourselves
As sanitation workers labor to clean the blood off the streets of NH from last night's progressive massacre, I wanted to briefly offer my 2¢ on what's next.
If you thought the Clinton campaign was going into desperation before, it's about to get a lot uglier. Now is when the attack ads, push polls, and dirty tricks will start in earnest, making whatever we've seen until now look practically polite. This is especially the case given that not only did Bernie win NH, but by a landslide, and that he won over Hillary's stronghold there (which is evidence that he can do it plenty of other places, too): white, blue collar voters.
My expectation is that the Clinton camp will now intensify its two-pronged strategy of: 1) Steal the Bern (try to fully out-Bernie Bernie), and 2) Going negative with a vengeance. However, I suspect we'll also see the entire Democratic machine come out of the woodwork now in an effort to tip the scales, and pitching in on both prongs.
On the bright side, all of this does nothing but draw more attention to a distinction the Dem establishment would like very much to downplay: Bernie doesn't do mudslinging. The public sees those tactics as profoundly ugly, and when Bernie refuses to get down into the mud as well, it will only improve his favorables. Of course, I'm basing that assumption on watching his successive campaigns from inside of Vermont, but I don't have a huge ("yuuuge"
reason to think it will be much different on a national level.
Anyway, time to dig in our heels and get ready for the push-back. The better Bernie does, the more kicking, screaming, and sleazy behavior we can expect from the DP establishment.
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