I was wrong: the democrats should have preselected Bernie

It’s important to admit when you were wrong, so here it goes.

I am not ashamed to say that I am a fan of Hillary Clinton. I think she’s inspiring, I am impressed by her wonk credentials, and I think what other people consider her failings are really just the side-effects of the messy reality of leading a global superpower from the centre of American politics. That goes for both her foreign policy hawkishness and her more foolish domestic policy choices, like mandatory minimums. HRC’s shifting positions are exactly what you would expect over the long career of a centrist politician. I am much more concerned about the moral absolutism demonstrated by someone holding the same positions for 60 years than I am about someone who changes with public sentiment, especially if those changes are dictated by new evidence.

That said, HRC was the wrong pick for democratic preselection in terms of retaining control of the American political apparatus for the democrats. It may have been the right choice for the party—preselecting a long-time independent like Sanders would have been pretty weird—but it was the wrong choice for winning the election.

I had previously argued otherwise.

My mistake, I think, was mostly in forgetting that America does not have compulsory voting (the greatest political institution on earth). In America, winning elections is about getting out the vote, not about convincing swing voters to change sides. Swing voters are more disconnected in America than in Australia and stay home. 

I've been coming back to this a lot amidst all the commentary of 'why Trump won'. There's little mystery. Trump only got as many votes as Romney; he mobilised the same portion of the Republican base. What's more interesting is how he won the primary. Hillary didn't get the democratic base out in the swing states because she appealed to Republicans instead, who stayed home. 

HRC was a great centrist candidate able to appeal to pro-business republicans (in a way that Trump really can’t because his policies are plutocratic not meritocratic), muscular foreign policy types (notably people who don’t want America to withdraw from the Pacific) and people who want technocratic solutions to policy problems rather than grand ideological gestures. But centrism doesn’t count in America as much as being able to mobilise your base. Sanders would have mobilised the base.

I also didn’t count on just how much people literally hate Hillary. I’ve been quite struck by the venom with which otherwise fairly temperate people rebuke her. It’s visceral.  

I maintain that Sanders would have been a terrible President. He didn’t even have a plan for how to execute his signature policy of breaking up the big banks. In the best interview with him that I came across (best in the sense that he came across very well) he said ‘we’ll pass a law’. When quizzed whether Congress has the relevant authority, he said he didn’t know. Bernie does a valuable service grilling people in hearings and the like, but he doesn’t have what it takes to be President.  Still, he would have beaten Trump, and now we wouldn’t be looking at climate apocalypse and mindless repeals of the ACA.