Now, who was I supposed to vote for again?

UPDATED 6/1/2015 - See the bottom of this article.

You say you aren't sure who to support for our next President? join the freakin' club, pal. 

Once again, we in the U.S. face national elections next year. Actually, a year and a half from now: November 2016 to be exact. It still seems like such a long way off...

Once again, the Republican party faces a plethora (a record plethora this year) of contenders, all hoping to out-conservative each other in order to gain their party's nomination, and said person will then face the difficult task of trying to plausibly deny all of the far-right claptrap they were more than willing to spew in the primaries; all in order to appeal to a more centrist electorate than they had to pander to for the nomination. That strategy isn't likely to end well...remember Mitt Romney?

On the Democratic side, things are a bit trickier.

For months, years even, it has been almost universally assumed that the Democratic candidate would be Hillary Clinton (and indeed at this point it still looks that way). It looked as if the Democratic primaries would be little more than a formality, existing only to rubber-stamp her candidacy. But now she has a challenger, and a serious contender at that; Bernie Sanders.

(I should note that, at this point, Elizabeth Warren is still in the definitely-will-not-run category, which is a damned shame since she is someone I could support unreservedly. I, like many others, still hope she'll change her mind. But time for that is running short.)

I'm not going to go into brief, but inevitably way to long, bios of Clinton and Sanders; there are web sites for that (check the links at the bottom of this article). I will say that I think Clinton more likely to eventually win a national election than Sanders, but that I find myself politically more in agreement with Sanders.

I am going to admit that I'm a bit disappointing (not much, but a bit) with Clinton's campaigning of late; I don't think she's doing enough of it. Clinton has been campaigning like the nomination is hers to lose, which in fairness it is, but so far her strategy has been primarily defensive and (in my opinion) not aggressive enough.

Sanders, on the other hand, has come out with both guns blazing, attacking the established power structures in banking, business, and politics with gusto. Hillary needs to do more of that.

And that's what Bernie Sanders brings to the table...passion. The sort of passion that Clinton's campaign has been lacking. I am hoping that the presence in the race of a hard-core unashamed Liberal like him will restore some needed passion to Hillary Clinton's campaign specifically and to the Democratic party as a whole.

Frankly, I am hoping to see a more aggressive campaign from Hillary Clinton.

Since I had decided to hold off on supporting a candidate until after the primaries (not that it matters at all in the scheme of things who I favor) I wasn't openly supporting Bernie Sanders because the eventual candidate might be (probably would be) Hillary Clinton, and I would likely be supporting her in the election. An if that's the way things break, I still will. But Bernie has been actively saying things that I very much agree with, while Hillary Clinton...well, not so much. Hillary needs to learn, and the sooner the better, that she has not been anointed and she needs to stop behaving as if she were, and she really needs to make sure that the nation hears her message. Now.

Eventually, it will all come down to the two major party candidates and I will almost certainly support, and campaign for, the more progressive of the two. I feel confident in predicting that that will be the Democratic candidate. Beyond that, I am not willing, at this point, to predict a damned thing. If Bernie Sanders can shake up the Democratic status quo (and by that I mean Hillary Clinton) and get Hillary out actively campaigning--and keep her from drifting too far to the right, which I can definitely see as a possibility--then I'm going to go ahead and risk looking like a total Bernie Sanders supporter, because even if he's not the eventual candidate of the Democrats his candidacy can only help the party. And, I believe, the nation.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


A direct comparison between Bernie Sanders an Hillary Clinton: http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/compare/35-40/Bernie-Sanders-vs-Hillary-Clinton

Bernie Sanders' website: https://berniesanders.com/

Hillary Clinton's website: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/

UPDATE: When I logged on to publish this just now and went to Facebook to post a link to my page, I read that former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley (D) had thrown his hat into the ring. Frankly, I know little about him, other than that he sings and plays guitar in a rock band that I have never heard. I can't say this changes my article, so I see no reason to change anything. I will say that I think that a broader Democratic field at this stage benefits everyone, and that I am happy that the Democratic party will now be forced to have actual debates. That, too, is a good thing.

Martin O’Malley Announces Presidential Campaign, Pushing Image of Vitality (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/us/politics/martin-omalley-presidential-campaign-2016.html?_r=0