A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

  What do you know about Bernie that I don't? Is it that he simply doesn't have a chance or what? I've written and discarded three full blog posts over the last two months on why I'm inclined to support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. This version has taken me a week... and it started out as a simple reply comment on Facebook. Part of the delay: it's not an easy decision. I know and respect too many sensible Sanders supporters (like my husband), and am influenced by their thinking. But also: I don't want to tear down a candidate who might be the party's nominee and whom I would still vote for in a general. I suppose you'd call me a "Hillarealist" in that I think Clinton can win a general election and Sanders can't (for reasons I’ve discussed before HERE and HERE ). But unlike those alleged “Democrats who would love to line up behind Bernie’s sunny ideals but know that he just isn’t electable,” I wouldn...

A response in two parts.  Part One.  There is a Republican equivalent of Hillary Clinton and it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Mitt Romney.  Most of what shapes your opinion of Clinton isn’t true. Rather, it’s truthy , and the direct result of a 30-year-long smear campaign, very little of which has ever turned out to be true. It’s the way that many Democrats still think George W. Bush went AWOL during Vietnam even though the documents alleging it were almost immediately debunked and the way some liberals think Romney paid $0 in federal taxes because Harry Reid said so. Accusations get a lot of coverage, particularly in partisan media; debunking gets almost none. T his is what I do for a living, so I end up hav ing to read everything. I don’t design jet engines or treat patients or program software or fill cavities five days a week. I do this.* I like to joke that I read more National Review and American Spectator in any given week than most of my Republican ...