How much damage can be done in four years with Supreme Court appointments. Rollback of the ACA. Rollback of EPA regulations and a denial of global warming.
I’m not saying Hillary will stop global warming, but at least she won’t put policies in place that accelerate it. She may not have the political clout to get UHC - or even expand the ACA (though there, I think she might), but she won’t let it go without a fight. And she’ll get the chance to appoint a few justices - ones that think that people being able to vote is important, and a woman has a right to make decisions about her own body, and gay people should not be discriminated against, and ‘freedom of religion’ doesn’t mean you get to discriminate against me or shove your religion down my throat, or that Sheriff Arpaio should get to run his own little anti-Hispanic harassment society under the pretense of law.
He’ll last through the DC primary, since that’s what he said he was going to do. Promises after that, though, have all been in terms of advancing his issues or positions. He’ll be able to withdraw from the field and endorse Clinton without losing face.
What’s the other option? Between June 14th and July 25th, what would his campaign actually do? He can’t hold rallies in states that haven’t voted yet, because there aren’t any. He can’t air television ads urging people to vote for him, because that’s all done. The only conceivable tactic he has is to convince superdelegates to switch their votes, which (A) isn’t going to happen, and (B) isn’t the kind of thing you hold rallies for. It’s all phone calls and coffee meetings, and that doesn’t get you on TV, and it doesn’t advance the cause for the issues that Sanders obviously cares a great deal about.
Even if Sanders was driven enough to hold on and not concede until Philadelphia, I doubt whether even his fervor would be enough to sustain a campaign for a month and a half with essentially nothing visible going on. At a certain point people would just stop showing up to hear his stump speech when there’s no call to action associated with it. There are no doors to knock on and no phone banks to staff. Volunteers and activists remain engaged when there’s something tangible to do.
Shares in Bernie Influence stock are at an all-time high right now but will only go down from here. He’s a smart man; he knows to spend his coin now when it’s worth the most. If he can get a major reform in the Democratic primary process publicly endorsed by Clinton and other top Democrats, he can rightfully point to a big victory for his side. That’s something that can be done now, not next January, and it’ll be good red meat to serve to his supporters.
He said they are evil or incompetent. Even if you don’t think they’re evil, then they’re very incompetent.
If the Green Party spend its time and resources that they used to get access for presidential candidates that will get about 1% of the vote and instead used that to try and get local candidates elected, that’s where takes a real Grassroots take hold.
You said a lot of negative things about Sanders all the time. But guess what? He did it the right way.
As an independent he moved from mayor to the house to senator to getting nearly 45% off the boat for the Democratic nomination for president.
The Green Party could have success stories like that, dead they put no effort into it because long-term planning and thinking locally isn’t nearly as sexy as vanity spoiler runs for an office they will never win.
Guaranteed loser? You have a short memory: When Bill came onto the scene, there was talk that Democrats would never win the White House again. You may not like how Bill took the Democrats to a center position in 1992, but the fact is that he was just about as liberal a candidate who could have won under the circumstances.
Additionally, you lumping in Hillary with her husband doesn’t take into account that she is far more liberal than he was, mostly because she can be, and was before Sanders insurgence helped move her a little more to the left:
And who cares what ‘self-described patriotic Americans’ think? If anyone goes out of their way to call themselves a “Patriot,” I assume that they play for the NFL team based out of New England or are an idiot who is more likely to support Trump against anyone so who the Democrats nominated is irrelevant.
More memory problems - H. Ross Perot was a player in the 1992 election receiving 19% of the vote and ostensibly taking some support away from Clinton in a race against an unpopular incumbent Republican.
NAFTA was in 1994. After that.
Yes, in 1996 Perot ran again, but he didn’t take much support away from Democrats at that point (or the Republicans for that matter since he got less than eight and half percent at the polls).
Assuming you are correct, since Bill didn’t need them to win by over 8 points (and 220 electoral votes) what makes you think Hillary needs them in 2016? And with an electorate that is a hell of a lot more diverse than it was two decades ago?
She is ahead in most of the polls and the demographics of the electorate and the fact that we use an electoral college to decide who wins is very favorable to any Democrat against any Republican. And that polling took place before Obama just endorsed (and will campaign for) Clinton and before Sanders has officially left the race and started voicing support for her (which he will).
Hilary may not be “any” Democrat but neither is Trump “any” Republican. Nate Silver says at this point Clinton has a 75% chance of winning. There’s a reason for this.
Now, the election is five months away. A terror attack on US soil or a huge economic downturn could happen and that will make it harder for Clinton to win. Fortunately those are not likely to happen; also it’s not likely that Trump will be able to go five months without saying something stupid or racist or horrible that he loses some support he might have otherwise received.
There is no reason to be as definitive that Clinton will lose at this juncture in the race. There is far more evidence to think the opposite but even I caution those who say that the election is in the bag for Hillary that such a statement is premature.
Anyone who feels the opposite feels that way because of dogma, not actual facts. Which explains your stance perfectly since the few “facts” you posted above were wrong but I am sure that won’t dissuade you.
Facts rarely do dissuade True Believers. It usually emboldens them. So have at it, but know that you’re actually wrong about almost everything.
Nate Silver said Trump had very little chance of getting this far so I would not put too much stock into what he says now. But I agree for now Clinton is favored.
The problem is, Trump is like some kind of exotic matter that does not obey the known laws of physics. But Clinton is normal baryonic matter that does.
Nate has adjusted his predictions as we went along. It’s not at 25% based on what we know. Trump may still overcome some trends but it will be tough for him to overcome the built-in Democratic advantage:
His track record for early in the primaries is not great. His track record for general elections for President is superb. He hasn’t started predicting this general election yet, but when he does, I’ll listen.
I’ve supported Sanders, not so much because I thought that he could win the primaries, but because he could change the conversation. He ended up doing much better than I ever thought he would.
Because of my support, I’ve associated with a number of Sanders supporters both online and face to face, and lately I’ve become more and more disgusted with some of them.
They talk about principles as if they had a clue about real principles.
Real principles mean that you act in ways that have a chance of achieving the best plausible outcome, not in some sort of self-righteous destructive “I’m above it all” manner that achieves nothing and possibly helps in achieving the worst plausible outcome.
They love to say that “choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil”. Well guess what? Many, if not most, of life’s decisions consist of a choice between greater and lesser evils. If you insist on all or nothing, then you’ll usually get nothing.
How can someone claim to have true liberal principles but then risk having a right wing SCOTUS for a generation? I’ve heard some say that they couldn’t sleep with themselves if they voted for Hillary. Yet they can sleep with themselves if they risk the leftward gains that have be fought for for decades?
The Republicans love the “Bernie or bust” attitude. They understand our dysfunctional electoral system. I wish more on the left did.
I have a feeling that Trump’s wonderful, loving personality will bring out enough extra minority and women anti-Trump voters to more than counterbalance the Bernie-or-bust crowd, or what’s left of it come November. Add in the small minority of ethical and informed Republicans who will vote against him.
