Well I'm sick of all the get-elected carnival show and gotcha-coverage. Hillary's managed to play trained seal, to approach holding audiences close to Obama's or Trump's or Sanders' size. To figure out to say "$15 minimum wage" if that's what the more vocal organizers say. To apologize fairly quick for "predator" when taken out of context 20 years later. To not flinch when they attack your lone allowed tear because you "didn't cry for Katrina". Because everything's out of context - it's a rolling, juggling traveling show.

My fandom of the Clintons came out of what seemed a Big Tent approach which largely came out of Jesse Jackson's 2 runs (before he tripped up with his Hymietown comment, and who's largely supported the Clintons since). The message was "let's get things done" and they went after tough, previously unapproachable issues, and catered to previously neglected constituencies. This included gays (trying to carefully update the military), blacks (everything from the laughed at midnight basketball to affordable home ownership to more job opps in government to welfare reform in a booming economy to decreasing the horrid murder, crime & drug toll) to women and poverty issues (including Hillary's watershed speech in totalitarian Beijing and health care reforms to cut across all society) to smart new business in the new economy rather than demonixzing capitalism but still going for tax hikes to make government strong. Even early environmental efforts.

I didn't feel like they had to "pander" - it all made sense, it was inclusive, it just seemed to be "do what needs doing...for everyone". We had some military conflicts but tried to limit them. We talked more about global trade and development and helping the 3rd world produce and join the global economy rather than more precarious handouts that feed corruption.

I criticized Gore for abandoning his Administration's successes, but Hillary largely isn't even allowed to run on them. A booming economy (that greatly lowered black poverty and unemployment) has been reduced to the hated and misused "NAFTA" and "Glass-Steagal". Work with black leaders (to decrease the horrid murder rate by 2/3 along with all the drug dependency and gang activity) is "predator" and "incarceration". The attempt at health care that at least produced S-CHIP despite Democratic foot dragging is the maligned "Hillarycare". Hillary's support for feminism became a supposedly elite "white feminism", while her decades of work on rural poverty paled in the face of not putting a $15 price tag on labor. Her years of foreign policy with an end to go-it-alone cowboyism has been reduced to "Libya" and "Iraq" and "Benghazi", ignoring any of the qualifying details (like "popular support" or her nuanced speech with the AUMF) in all of these. As SoS, she even instituted the first department-wide benefits for gay employees globally, but because she didn't come out for gay marriage "soon enough" and because of Biill's political stopgap of DOMA against a GOP Congress in the 90's, it's all for naught.

So Hillary's not black, she won't be doing hip-hop karaoke in the White House, but she'll be putting body cams on police and probably doing much more to ensure fair unobstructed voting at the polls, helping focus on weak parts of black participation in the workplace and economy, make education more affordable without usurious loans, improve int'l environmental agreements and new energy, put a bit more humanity in trade agreements that largely benefit both us and the 3rd World, help with rural participation that's hurting both whites and blacks, and otherwise pushing her usual assortment of practical policies that in a large way benefit the black and Hispanic populace much more than ending fracking and stopping a particular pipeline.

Water problems in Flint? She'll be there. Union protests against Republicans in Wisconsin? She'll be there. She's active, she remembers, she cares, she keeps lists and follows through.

If that's not enough to get blacks to the polls to vote, maybe we can hire some trained seals, since the other side already has a monkey.

PS - Hllary got beaten by Obama, but instead of laying low or fighting him, she's worked with him. Much is not how she would have done it,  but since she didn't win, didn't get to push her program and list of things to do, she actively and full-throatedly backed the guy who did - and would have first black president or not. My boss used to say, "to get where I am I had to kiss a lot of ass... right on the lips". Blacks should know this one by now, and appreciate someone who's eaten a ton of shit just to survive, yet still persists. She's been publicly humiliated so many times, but still manages that friendly, goofy laugh, even when worn out or under another vicious attack. Inauthentic? oh well, can't please  everyone. Smiling's not good enough, you gotta step up and show enthusiasm, and jump thru 3 more hoops to acceptability. Sure, why not.

PPS - maybe blacks can identify with Hillary as a largely quota candidate who doesn't really belong there - following on Bill's coattails, or by women just "voting their vaginas". Or maybe they can commiserate that everything she does is suspicious and criminal - hurricane relief in Haiti, vaccinations for the 3rd world, microloans for poor women - all somehow just to make her rich despite it being an audited charity organization. Or maybe they can appreciate the hostile, overt insults like "cunt", the not-even subtle calls to violence (brandishing the "2nd amendment"), the continual cries to "lock her up", the already streamrolling effort to delegitimize her presidency and block any law or judicial appointment even before (hopefully) elected. No, she's not black nor does she suffer anything like that level of discrimination, but many of the GOP's methods in attacking her the last 25 years are similar or even tied to the way they eliminate or marginalize black voices from the public sphere. Take ACORN - a valid, public good - but set up and bulldozed off the map through obvious, hokey but somehow still effective lies, hysteria, a malicious public relations campaign. This is the backdrop of our political reality - not a "marketplace of ideas", but a bunch of bastards fighting for turf and unfair advantage with propaganda, legal tools and even physical threats, like the current post-voting rights intimidation at the polls and continual gerrymandering nationwide despite lost court cases. Hillary more than anyone can appreciate blacks' knowledge that that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" actually exists.

There are people in the Black community who are ready to concede the 2016 election in lieu of more political capital in 2020. The Democrats have blackmailed us for so long with the threat of horrible Republican policies that many have stopped listening. Maybe, the best way to leverage our political power moving forward is to sit out 2016? This isn’t that crazy of a thought to someone living through hell. How much worse can life get for someone trapped in a failing neighborhood, in a failing city under a Trump Administration? I don’t subscribe to this line of thinking, but I know some very smart people of color who do. Some live in solidly blue states and some live in deep red states, but there are some in battleground states who have decided they will vote Jill Stein or avoid the long lines and stay home.

Seriously?  When health care, including Planned Parenthood is gone and police are even further militarized, when it's even harder to vote at all, those very smart people might find that they have far fewer options in the next cycle.  I disagree completely with the notion that by saying that Democrats will work harder for the rights of all people, that it is blackmail.  It is simply truth.  Can we get everything done that we want and try to do?  Have you taken a look at Congress lately?

 Staying home this year, or any year is just plain stupid.

Hillary is leading in the polls. Hillary will get the same portion of the black vote as other Democratic Presidents. 

Republicans are impacting black votes by defying court orders in states like North Carolina. The NAACP has taken the GOP to court, just days before the election. Blacks are aware of what is happening.

Take a deep breath.

Danny, I respect your opinions but this you have to explain to me. When Obama was elected, Mitch McConnell vowed to make Obama a one-term President. The GOP has been openly hostile to most of the things Obama wanted. A President is not a dictator, he/she has to get bills passed in Congress. The GOP blocks legislation.

I expect that a good number of disappointed people you talk with are paying lower taxes than they paid under Bush. Why are they disappointed? I suspect some are receiving health benefits they could not get before. Whey are they disappointed? Regarding Stop and Frisk, especially in NYC, active citizen pressure got the practice in court. The ruling of a judge sharply curtailed Stop and Frisk in NYC. Why is the threat of bringing back a policy that takes away civil rights not a big deal? If people do head for the polls, even to vote for Jill Stein, many may find that their ability to vote is challenged by the state. The black people I talk to wonder why the GOP is not seen as a clear and present danger. Why should we have to suffer because others want to engage in a temper tantrum? Explain how others overlook things that have been done despite opposition.Did it go unnoticed that the DOJ is still battling voter suppression despite the wingnuts on the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act.

Regarding the media, I suppose I am numbed to their recurrent inability to proper report on the black community. When Minister Farrakhan organized the Million Man March, if you remember the media did not realize anything was happening until the actual weekend that buses were headed to D.C. When "only" 80 % of blacks in Ohio voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate, blacks were accused of losing the election. Now the press wants to rinse and repeat a prior meme by reporting low early turnout without mentioning Republican voter suppression efforts in many states. 

I and others simply do not understand why blacks who see the GOP directly attacking black people, blame the Democrats and are willing to accept Trump as a result of wasting a vote.

(moved down)

The "left" is not scapegoating black voters - the media is. They're pumping up the FUD that Hillary's base isn't there for her, that she still has a millennial problem that includes blacks, that she can't count on what Obama could count on, that there's no enthusiasm, even as Republicans actively try to lower black registrations and voting.

Last night Beyoncé was rocking Cleveland, noting cheekily that she "could have stayed home baking cookies", the line that 25 years ago gave Hillary so much shit and today is just an obvious statement of women's right to choose what they do.

She gets it, blacks get it. They were Hillary's unflinching support back in March when some said Southern states don't matter, back in 2008 even when there was a black dude to compete for her affection, even back in Little Rock when it was the same issues as always, why she became a Democrat and political junkie to start with. We're good.

I watched a film on Chess Records last night ("Caddilac Records" with Queen Bé giving a fine performance ), proud of the white pioneers like Leonard Chess who built up black dreams in black neighborhoods when it wasn't acceptable or allowed and black pioneers like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf who created early rock and roll out of blues. We're not fighting today, we're taking progress and culture one step further.

Leonard Chess died of a broken heart literally as he was closing down his studios in 1969. What could be cooler than that.