3. That Biden interview is not good for Hillary. In goes Joe's knife.

Ya. I thought that was interesting. He basically came out for Bernie as much as professionally possible. Now Chelsea is talking about how Bernie wants to undo Obama care but I don't think Hilary has enough street cred to make that stick as a bad thing.

I'm wondering who the Republican Party would rather go up against- Bernie or Hilary.

Hilary, of course. She has no chance of winning the presidency, because no one wants to see her there.

Why do we viscerally dislike Hillary Clinton? The best I can come up with is she appears inhuman, in that I don't know anything about her as a person. Does she have hobbies? She apparently likes to travel and consider global governmental politics, which is great for the job. Maybe it'd help for her to talk about what she enjoys about that in some way which feels revealingly honest.

On the other hand, Bernie Sanders doesn't need to speak about what he loves, his passion comes through, his reasoning for applying to the job clear in building a better world for humanity. Why does Hillary Clinton want to be president?

Personally, I'm not going to forget that she worked alongside disgraced former attorney Jack Thompson, but that's not going to be the issue for most.

I think it's mostly that she was appointed to power by her husband. She didn't earn anything through her own merit, but purely through nepotism and trading on someone else's name.

You mean like George W. Bush?

Except at least moderately competent, and thus able to cause more damage.

When will Bill Clinton step forward and suck in all the light on the stage? When will we start thinking of this being our chance for his bringing us another eight years of unprecedented peace and prosperity?

She actually was not appointed to power. She ran for the Senate, ran a good tough campaign and did a good job for her state as senator (got reelected). She got along well in the senate, and had the respect of a lot of senators. She ran a hard-fought presidential campaign against Obama which almost went her way, served competently as SOS, and knows a shit-ton more about international politics than anybody else in the race. She also wouldn't make Obama's initial mistake of thinking the R party would do the right thing if you just explain it to them clearly enough.

I was referring to her first political appointment.

You ask a good question - why does Hillary Clinton want to be president?

I think Sanders is doing well in part because - as you allude - he's clearly not doing this out of personal ambition*. I don't think that's true for any of the other candidates. Hillary's tight composure is one of her strengths but it's also a liability, because virtually nothing that comes out of her mouth seems unscripted. I can't blame her, she's spent most of her professional career having every public utterance obsessively dissected and distorted. But it's part of why she comes off as inauthentic, and the strongest impression a lot of people have of her is that she wants to be president because she wants to be the first woman president. Really. Fucking. Badly. But ruthless ambition isn't enough, which is part of what worries me about her as the nominee. She tries so hard not to show any vulnerability that she comes off as the Terminator sometimes.

* It's also why the Washington press corps find him utterly baffling.

Not that I can vote in the US presently (or Canada), but I think her time as Secretary of State has been particularly bad on her politically. I don't mind the more "masculine" stance she takes, as it is comparable to Merkel or maybe even Thatcher, in that national leaders, regardless of gender, need to adopt a "don't fuck with" persona most of the time to be taken seriously. As well, she gets painted with the failures (but not successes) of the Obama presidency, and has really nothing positive to offer on her time as SoS. Even "We got Bin Laden" is a feather for Obama's cap, not hers, and that threat seems so old versus ISIS and Benghazi etc that the public perception is really "what have you done for me lately", which is to say, nothing. If the Obama presidency post OBL had been about nation building and bringing stability to the ME, then she could have easily ridden that goodwill forward. Instead we has Lybia, Syria, ISIS, and a whole mess of other secondary effects from the Iraq war that will remain a problem for the US to deal with for the next several decades.

I don't support her because she's either a war criminal or an idiot, and I don't think she's an idiot. She's very different from the Republican candidates - they're a bunch of wannabe war criminals, she actually *is* a war criminal.

Why?

She voted to invade Iraq, which lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, under false pretenses. I don't believe she's stupid enough to believe the flimsy Bush case for invasion; it's much more likely that she made a political calculation and figured it was safer to go along with the lynch mob.

For the record, should she win the nomination (as I still think is the likeliest outcome), anyone in a purple state should still vote for her, war criminal or not.

Watching her now on Maddow, I realize she looks too much like my mom. And I left her home for good reason. For me, Hillary would mom the country to an extent I can't imagine with other women. Don't tell me what to do, mom! *slams door*

Plus she has those scary, crazy eyes, especially when she laughs. When she speaks, the way she constantly nods, bobbing her head to encourage the listener to agree. The certainty, reminding of mom when she cannot be wrong as conduit speaker for The Word of God. Hillary has that stubborn, infallible certitude. I'm trying to figure if other pols have this and it just doesn't harmonize with that youthful rebellion against my mom.

If true than we will have a Republican president because Bernie has less chance of being elected than Hillary. Don't be mislead by the enthusiasm of the primary process. The general electorate will not elect a self-proclaimed socialist, at least not in this generation. Personally I'd love to see Bernie be President, but realistically it's just not gonna happen

That's what they said about a black president 8 years ago.

Did they? Sure on the surface it seemed improbable the we could elect a black dude with a crazy-ass name, but Obama had already established himself as a skilled political operator with a broad coalition. It's the coalition that Bernie lacks. The one thing he has in common with Trump is a very enthusiastic but also very narrow base. Both of their bases (in Bernie's case mostly young, educated and white) are traditionally not big primary voters. So basically what we're seeing with Bernie is likely a populist bubble. I'll freely admit I could be wrong here, in fact I hope I'm wrong. One thing we know about this election season so far is that it's defied expectations.

I'll drink to that!

Bernie's doing better than Hillary against Trump in polls. While polls are only slightly more reliable than entrails, it's still more evidence than your gut feeling. And as foobar points out, eight years ago people were saying a black man whose name sounded like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden had a love child had no chance to beat the Republican candidate. I think you underestimate Bernie's appeal to voters beyond the early politics geeks - watch his interview with Killer Mike and try to tell me Hillary could pull that off.

I'm still betting Hillary pulls out the nomination - she's too well funded, too well backed by the establishment, and she's been upset before - but if Bernie can beat her, he'll win the White House.

My assessment is based on demographics, not gut feeling, but you seem to be assuming Trump will be the GOP nominee. While this is certainly possible, it's far from a forgone conclusion. An 'establishment' candidate, like Rubio, could potentially beat Sanders or Clinton. The general electorate still remains moderate- the vast 'silent majority' as Nixon labelled them. They'll always favor the candidate perceived to be the more moderate.

Not assuming - Trump has been in the lead for months but has no campaign organization to speak of, which is about to be a crucial factor. But the same polls have done head-to-heads with other GOPers and Sanders still does well - about as well as Clinton and sometimes better.

I agree that a more "moderate-seeming" Republican would be more dangerous, which is one of the problems with Trump (and one of the reasons I don't buy the otherwise-appealing "he's a Clinton troll" theory): he's making other Republicans seem moderate, when their positions are all pretty radical and destructive. If Trump wins the nom he will alienate a huge swath of voters that might still be fooled by Rubio or Cruz.

And I would quibble with "always favor" - that is largely true, yes, but as Biden points out, voter dissatisfaction with the current pro-Wall Street establishment is high. I don't believe FDR was considered particularly moderate, and I think a lot of pundits mistakenly dismiss Sanders as only appealing to young progressives when he's kind of the anti-Cruz, as in even extremely conservative Republicans like Inhofe like him. He could well turn out to be more appealing than Clinton.

(And arguably Obama wasn't perceived as more moderate than McCain.)

I don't know, still not getting my hopes up.

Undo Obamacare? Bernie obviously thinks (like every sane person) it didn't go far enough.

Biden is as Establishment as it gets. This interview should have been all "I didn't get in the race because Hillary is just like me only better." Instead it's "well, Bernie is the real thing, Hillary is Johnny-come-lately". Ouch. There's some bad blood there. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at Hillary 2016 HQ.

The GOP would rather face Hillary - they know her, they know how to paint her as corrupt and dishonest. And even if they lose against her, Wall Street still wins.

1. Bernie's secret is that he's a human being who doesn't appear to have done anything wrong. Of course the DC press corps has a hard time believing that.

2. Hillary's appearance at the Brown & Black Forum starts with them having to ask her three times if she would deport children, without getting a straight answer.

Go Bernie!

That first paragraph, Jesus. I guess politico doesn't use editors either.