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Bringing Sanders supporters to Clinton

Jul 28, 2016

I’ve been trying to figure out what Hillary Clinton would have to say to turn this Bernie Sanders supporter into a Hillary Clinton supporter. Here’s what I think she has to do to win our (and probably some Trump) support. She needs to acknowledge the pain and stress we are feeling — intellectually or empathically, I don’t care which — and it’s enormous stress, crushing really. We’ve seen wage stagnation for decades, increasing school tuitions, crumbling public institutions including meak unions, increasing debts, reduced opportunities to work meaningful jobs, with respectful pay — there’s so much more. It’s pretty clear we are in trouble to those of us outside of the gentrified bubbles around the country, and even to many of us within. Some acknowledgment that the system she has been a part of, even helped design to some degree, has been responsible would be nice too, though not strictly necessary.

Based on her surrogates in the the media, and generally what I’m hearing from her supporters, who seem to prefer to use rhetoric to dismiss the pain and stress people feel as if it’s childish, or unwarranted (screw you), I’m not sure she (or they) really understand how bad things are for working people, and citizens in general. It’s bad, and I’m not sure why she (and her supporters) can’t trust us or respect us enough to hear it when we tell her. If Clinton can figure out how to communicate that she does get it (and if she really does), then she can easily win the white house. If she can’t, Trump has a real shot (despite being a terrible candidate — I mean, monumentally bad, just from a purely political standpoint, not even getting into substance—just super bad).