Election Years generally can be classified as one of two kinds:

A “Change” year, such as in 1980, 1992, 2008, or a “Stay the Course” election, such as in 1984, 1996, 2012.

The 2016 race feels like a Change election, for a number of reasons. Across the country we’re seeing a great passion to turn away from the Status Quo, from Black Lives Matter to Occupy Wall Street to massive crowds supporting alternative candidates such as the loathsome Donald Trump and better-tempered Bernie Sanders.

The American middle class is in retreat, as working-class Americans see no path to attaining the American Dream for themselves or their children. Some Americans are losing hope, and desperately seeking any new direction for our country, even embracing the bizarre visions of Trump with wild enthusiasm.

This presents a problem on the Democratic side, because Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton has been running a “stay the course” campaign, promising to continue Barack Obama’s policies, only tinkering around the edges, when what a growing segment of American public wants is a drastically different course.

For a campaign like this, Sanders would be our ideal candidate; he plots out a new course for the U.S. and is a significant departure from the more centrist Obama. However, Clinton started this campaign with a massive lead; she had all the endorsements, she has the establishment of the Democratic party, the big money and the media backing her up, not to mention her husband, the former President and most successful Democrat in living history.

Hillary probably has the nomination locked up, but because this is a “change year” she could lose to Republican Trump in November since people who are not doing well may cross the aisle and take a risk to get serious change and will not vote for “more of the same.”

During the 1990s, the Democrats, under Bill Clinton, were carefully dissecting the Reagan Revolution, giving way on some issues like welfare reform and crime, perhaps necessary steps to win back the “Reagan Democrats”. However that time is long past.

Hillary Clinton still operates in the politics of the 1990s, when it’s really time for Democrats to embrace progressive, not centrist, values. The Reagan Revolution has failed. The Evangelical Right, the wealthy, and southern bigots are breaking up into incoherent squabbling, which means  the Reagan Coalition is finally over.

This is the year we need to elect a President who will steer the nation into a direction of greater fairness, justice and sustainability.

 

By Marc Sylvestre

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