{"id":5541,"date":"2015-07-10T09:36:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T14:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5541"},"modified":"2015-07-09T20:25:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T01:25:06","slug":"16-months-to-the-big-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5541","title":{"rendered":"16 Months to the Big Election — Whence the Millennials?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s why I don’t think that Hillary Clinton has a lock on the November, 2016 Presidential election. I’m going to leave aside all of the contingencies that can arise over the next 16 months. Sure, the election is still a long way out and a lot can happen simply because of the dice-throws of fate; there are plenty of “black swans” out there. But let’s just put that aside for the moment, and think about Hillary’s core game plan; let’s ponder whether Hillary’s basic strategy is sound. From what I understand, Hillary and her people are counting on re-creating the coalition<\/a> of young, minority and female voters that easily put Barack Obama over the goal line in 2008 and 2012. Sure, the national demographic trends<\/a> continue to evolve in favor of this idea.<\/p>\n

However . . . recall that in the Democratic primary season of early to mid 2008, Obama used the same coalition to push Hillary aside; recall further that Hillary seemed like the pre-ordained candidate in late 2007. In 2016, Hillary can certainly count on a good female turnout. But as to minorities, it seems doubtful that she will get the same turnout from black voters<\/a> that Obama did. And as to Hispanics, the most rapidly growing part of the “new demographic”, some of the GOP candidates (Bush, Rubio, Cruz) would probably be able to steal a significant chunk of this vote from the Dems.<\/p>\n

It’s the young voters, however, who I think will disappoint Hillary the most. Obama came on the national scene from almost nowhere (Hawaii? Indonesia? Chicago?), and thus carried little baggage. Right from the get-go and almost all the way through, Obama was able to focus his speeches and positions in an idealistic fashion. He could and did inspire dreams in the minds of the young, with slogans like “Yes We Can” and “We Are the Change We Have Been Waiting For”. He could promise a new day for American politics. Sure, people over 30 probably didn’t buy his message, but many of those under 30 certainly did.<\/p>\n

As to Hillary . . . she just won’t be able to strike such idealistic notes. She has to spend a lot of time dealing with semi-legitimate and seemingly-legitimate attacks on her character and judgement, based on her past (and fairly recent) history. And she has a LOT of history. You would have thought that she would have done all she could after 2008 to avoid accumulating any further “baggage”, that she would have gone out of the way to stay cleaner than clean. But no, there is the e-mail server problem from her Secretary of State years, her seeming public distortion of the details behind the Benghazi attack in Libya, and her relation to the Clinton Foundation and all of its influence-building activity on the part of its donors. She just held a press interview<\/a> the other night, and much of what made it to TV and radio and the internet did NOT involve her dreams and visions for a better America, but her defenses against the continued accusations against her. Including her partisan counter-attacks against those who bring forth such accusations. <\/p>\n

I’m not going to judge just who is right and wrong about those accusations and counter-charges. But it is clear that at 16 months away from the big election, Hillary is not able to do what Barack Obama did. To young potential voters, she appears much like other older, hard-bitten career politicians, and not someone on a mission like Obama seemed to be. Were she to be elected, life for the poor and disadvantaged probably would be better, but this fact alone will not strike a chord in the Millennial voter. A savvy Republican candidate could make inroads into this demographic, or at least assume that not enough of them will be inspired (as they were for Obama) to turn out in numbers that would make a difference for Hillary. <\/p>\n

But hey, doesn’t Hillary have a wonderful and effective ambassador to the younger generation, i.e. her daughter Hillary? And doesn’t her most likely and potentially dangerous opponent, i.e. Jeb Bush, hail from an old, rich and empowered family, something that any self-respecting Millennial should consider totally un-cool? Well, as to Jeb . . . yes, he definitely is a Royal Bush-man. But when you read about his past<\/a>, you could imagine him as the rebellious one, the one who struck out on his own and defined the family’s will — most prominently by marrying at a young age a working class woman from a some small Mexican village, despite his family’s reservations. His story could be spun in a way that Millennials might sympathize with. And sure, Chelsea will help to make her Mom seem OK to her generational peers, but Jeb also has a well-spoken Millennial spokesman in his son George P. Oh, wait, GP is now 39, more of a Gen X-er; but Chelsea isn’t the spring chicken she used to be either, at age 35. And George P is half Mexican and has a semi-dark complexion, so he might get just as much of a hearing from those in their 20’s as Ms. Chelsea certainly will.<\/p>\n

Well OK, back to reality — in the next 16 months, a lot could happen; and if Hillary is lucky, the breaks will go her way and we will have a second Clinton and the first Presidential married couple in American history. But her strategy and position thus far does not tend to favor such an outcome. As far as we can tell right now, it’s going to be a real horse race, one that could go right down to election night. In Hillary, the Democrats are offering the country some used, damaged vessels to convey some otherwise good policies. And most of the potential GOP candidates could be similarly described (at best). It’s going to be a very interesting election season, but as to whether it holds ultimate hope and promise for America . . . that’s the last thing I would bet on right now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s why I don’t think that Hillary Clinton has a lock on the November, 2016 Presidential election. I’m going to leave aside all of the contingencies that can arise over the next 16 months. Sure, the election is still a long way out and a lot can happen simply because of the dice-throws of fate; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5541"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5544,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541\/revisions\/5544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}