I will say that people who like Bernie tend to be more annoying than those who are supporting Hillary. This is a meta-criticism of Bernie and not actually reflective of his candidacy. His has passionate fans due to the fact that he brings something to be passionate about.
So then what is the case for Hillary? The case I hear the most is that she is electable. This is a self referential truism not based on anything. She has won exactly one election for public office and that was against Rick freakin' Lazio. The 2008 primary was not some fluke or black swan event, she is simply not good a running a campaign. The most electable candidate of all time is now trailing a, until recently, largely unknown senor citizen.
On the campaign trail she has been touting her foreign policy experience, I for one think that it is not something to be touted. She voted for Iraq War, her instincts in Syria, Iran, Libya have been terrible. She openly supports the tyrannical Egyptian and Saudi regimes. She was certainly a serviceable Secretary of State viewed through an Overton Window, and every presidential candidate is bad on foreign policy. In fact every Western leader with maybe the exception of Jeremy Corbyn have bad/no ideas in regards to the Middle East FP. It is a wash between the two.
This leads to this 3D game of chess theoretical scenario that somehow a president Clinton will somehow lead to a more progressive outcome than a president Sanders. That has to be one of the most cockamamie ideas ever floated. Does anyone remember the 1990's? How hysterical the GOP and the media in general got when it came to the Clintons. Clinton will face a greater challenge in congress than Bernie ever will. Hillary's record has shown her to be a staunch neo-Liberal and an eager opportunist. Below is an interesting first hand excerpt oh how Hillary operates:
One can imagine only more non progressive legislation that hurts the poor coming from a Clinton White House, again.
I get it that single payer healthcare has a long way to make it to law. Although, according to polling it does have a have plurality of public support. What is key to negotiation is to take a strong initial position, not to concede that only small incremental progress is possible. A Sanders (or anyone's) presidency could maintain the status quo. Along with all the other power the president has, I cannot fathom how someone could believe that a Hillary presidency would be better for low and middle income Americans than a Sanders.
I will also comment on how some are portraying Obama as some sort of progressive who couldn't get stuff passed in Congress. Anyone who had been paying attention knew Obama for what he was, a centrist Democrat, a much better one than Hillary. Adolph Reed had him figured out, not in 2006 but 1996!
Adolph Reed’s 1996 assessment of Obama, shortly after the latter won his
first Illinois state senate race:
“In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program -- the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better.”
“The Curse of Community,” Village Voice, January 16, 1996(New Press, 2000)
None of this means that I would not vote for Hillary in the general election. I will gladly vote for Republican-lite over the Republican anytime. Some people actually like neo-Liberalism, so Hillary is perfect for those voters. Getting decent Supreme Court Justices on the bench is critical. But if the best we can hope for is a continuation of the last 35+ years of neo-Liberalism then what is the bleeping point?
I hate to make this comparison, but the reason why Trump and Sanders are connecting with people is that they are offering ordinary people something other than tax credits. We have had a generation of privatization, austerity, boot strap pep talks, etc. The electorate is hungry for something more.