'Post-Iowa Notes'

In case you want to talk about the primaries, here's something to get you started:

Post-Iowa Notes, by Paul Krugman: ...Sanders is tapping into something that moves a lot of Democrats, and which Clinton needs to try for as well. Can she?

Certainly taking a harder line on the corruption of our politics by big money is important — and no, giving some paid speeches doesn’t disqualify her from making that case. (Cue furious attack from the Bernie bros.) Substantively, her financial reform ideas are as tough as his, just different in focus. What is true, though, is that simply by having been in the world of movers and shakers for so long, Clinton can’t project the kind of purity that someone who has been an outsider (even while sitting in the Senate) can manage.

The bigger problem, though, to my mind at least, is the ability to deliver a message of dramatic uplift, the promise that electing your favorite candidate will cause a dramatic change in the world. How do you do that if your reality sense tells you that only incremental progress is possible, at least for now? You probably can’t. (I’m pretty bad at the uplift thing myself). To be blunt, I think Sanders is selling an illusion, but it’s an illusion many people want to believe in, and there’s no easy way to counter that.

In the end, again, Clinton’s tell-it-like-it-is approach will probably be enough to clinch the nomination. And then she’ll be in a very different position, running as the champion of real if limited progress against, well, look at those top three on the other side.