Let's hope they don't give up by the time the oldsters are out of the game.The chief moral argument of the Clinton revolution was not about striving for an end to the war or poverty or racism or inequality, but keeping the far worse Republicans out of power.
The new Democratic version of idealism came in a package called "transactional politics." It was about getting the best deal possible given the political realities, which we were led to believe were hopelessly stacked against the hopes and dreams of the young.
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Hillary voted for the [Iraq] invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks.
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In fact, it was during Bill Clinton's presidency that D.C. pundits first began complaining about a thing they called "purity." [...] Sometimes you had to budge a little for the sake of progress.
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The implication is that even when young people believe in the right things, they often don't realize what it takes to get things done.
But I think they do understand. Young people have repudiated the campaign of Hillary Clinton in overwhelming and historic fashion, with Bernie Sanders winning under-30 voters by consistently absurd margins, as high as 80 to 85 percent in many states. He has done less well with young African-American voters, but even there he's seen some gains as time has gone on.
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For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income inequality, among others.
And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.
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This pattern, of modern Democrats bending so far back to preserve what they believe is their claim on the middle that they end up plainly in the wrong, has continually repeated itself.
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[Hillary Clinton] has been playing the inside game for so long, she seems to have become lost in it. She behaves like a person who often doesn't know what the truth is, but instead merely reaches for what is the best answer in that moment, not realizing the difference.
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My worry is that Democrats like Hillary have been saying, "The Republicans are worse!" for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything.
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[Young people are] voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral "revolution" that bars corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of success, the only practical road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption.
Rolling Stone
Next question: What can they do about Superdelegates?
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