Clinton Sees Her Shadow
Sanders' answer is that he could inspire a grass-roots revolution, producing a flood of new voters, as he said in Thursday's MSNBC debate. I'm all for new voters, but I worry -- and, more to the point, Democratic officeholders worry -- about what happens when the Republican onslaught is unleashed against the essentially unknown, unvetted Sanders.
Revolution is easy to promise, but hard to achieve in the current political environment and in the short space of a single campaign.
Which brings me to the striking way in which the 2016 argument echoes that of eight years ago. At the final pre-primary debate back then, Hillary Clinton was making precisely the same case: Change is hard. Achieving it requires more than impassioned rhetoric. She has proved her capacity to do so.
Consider this Clinton quote from the final debate before the 2008 New Hampshire primary: "What we've got to do is translate talk into action and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that, of taking on the very interests that you have just rightly excoriated because of the overdue influence that they have in our government.
"And, you know, probably nobody up here has been the subject of more incoming fire from the Republicans and the special interests. So I think I know exactly what I'm walking into. And I am prepared to take them on."
No one could blame Clinton for feeling nostalgic for the party her husband led, or a sense of frustrated deja vu about the argument she seems endlessly condemned to make.
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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.
Copyright 2016 Washington Post Writers Group
