My take would be something nearer to semi*nude free-for-all Jell-O wrestling.
*For the sake of sparing the imaginations of Dopers of delicate sensibilities.
Obama was not a ‘novelty’ candidate, any more than Hillary herself is. Neither is Bernie, who is, by all accounts, taking this entirely seriously. Yes, he’s a dead long-shot. But he’s clearly a more viable candidate than Lincoln Chafee or Mike O’Mally - both serious candidates, themselves.
He’s not a clown, or a preacher, or a pundit, or a surgeon. He’s a career politician and life-long political thinker. He has spent the last forty years working to make life better for his constituents. How many in this election can make a similar claim?
Any R? Of the R’s who are likely to be running against the nominee, this year? Hardly.
I have a hard time believing that there is a silent majority of Dems of who would rather have anyone from the Republican Clown Car than Bernie. Oh - there are definitely people who think like you do, LSL, but I don’t believe you’re anything like the majority.
At the same time, I also believe that there is a significant faction of Dems and “Independents” who would vote for anyone rather than a Clinton. OR a woman. OR a Clinton Woman. It’s dumb, but those people are out there, too.
In otherwords, I’m not convinced that that the group of people who will never vote for the socialist is bigger than the group of people who will never vote for the Clinton Woman. I know Hillary is pushing that Electability button for all she’s worth. But I’m not yet convinced that it’s going to get results.
If she can’t find a way to win young voters to her cause, then she’s not the Electible Inevitable that she’s claiming to be.
Bernie’s troubles with black voters (and the entitled sounding Bernie bros swarming online spaces) are at least as much of a problem.
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It remains to be seen how much of a problem with black voters Sanders will have. Hillary’s supposed lock on all of her Hispanic voters in Nevada seems to be evaporating. But even most of if the Black voters break for Hillary - and they might - I don’t think it’s something that Hillary can just take for granted.
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All of the sexism from bad acting “Bernie Bros” won’t make anyone forget overlook the sexism coming from Hillary’s own supporters toward younger voters. Again - Hillary needs to find a way to win younger voters.
You know what Bernie’s response was to the sexist Bros was? He told them he didn’t need that or want that.
You know what Hillary’s response was to her Old Sexist Lady Supporters was? Handwaving and batting her eyelashes.
I’m not saying Bernie’s going to win this. I’m just saying, Hillary takes far too much for granted.
The Bernie bros are not just repping sexism but also white male insensitivity. The popular NPR call-in show On Point recently featured a political reporter who described his impression of Bernie fans feeling that it was not necessary to take on racism as an issue, because Bernie’s socialist policies will clear such problems away indirectly. Problem being that black Democrats don’t dig that attitude.
That show always gets a disproportionate number of Bernheads calling in, so I thought for sure they would swarm the lines complaining that this was a distortion of their positions. Instead, a young-sounding dude immediately called and said “yeah, that’s true–what’s wrong with it?” Combine that with Bernie saying in exasperation that he “said ‘black’ 51 times now”, and it’s not really a good look.
Do I lament Hillary’s very poor numbers with young voters? Absolutely. Would I trade her demographics for Bernie’s? Absolutely not. This is a Democratic Party election, not a Nielsen TV rating where only 18-49 counts. All the gray haired Hillary supporters may not show up online or give the campaign a hip, youthful vibe, but they are loyal, steadfast voters and their votes count just as much as anyone else’s. And white people under 35 are just not that huge a proportion of the Democratic electorate in upcoming states.
You may well be right. We shall see.
By “novelty” I didn’t mean somebody playing the outsider (or buffoon) in the mold of Trump or Carson. Rather that both Obama then and Sanders now were/are largely appealing to folks who historically hadn’t voted. They fired up a reservoir of eligible non-voters and turned them into eligible actual voters. In addition to having some measure of mainstream support within their party. But their power came/comes from the newbies.
As such, conventional wisdom was surprised by the outcome in 2008. It has less cause to be surprised this time. Provided Bernie completes Obama’s trick by actually getting his newbies to vote, not just twitter. It may happen, it may not. We shall see.
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You’re quite right that no silent majority of Ds would prefer an R over Bernie or Hillary. But history shows us that vast numbers of voters who have a stated candidate preference are willing to abstain if they aren’t enthused, or if it’s snowing on election day, or if their preferred primary candidate didn’t win the nomination or …
The corresponding issue also applies this time for the Rs.
To win the general, each side will need a bunch of their voters to vote for somebody they don’t much care for, rather than airily declaring they’re preserving their ideological purity, protesting the corrupt system, or some such nonsense by “voting” for “none of the above” by lazily staying home.
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Yes, There is a hefty bunch of people (including Ds) who won’t vote for the woman in general or won’t vote for Hillary in particular. It is the Ds extreme bad luck not to offer an uncontroversial low-baggage Sensible Party candidate on the leftish side of the Overton window this time. Had they done so, this election would be much more comfortable for the Ds.
As you suggest, Hillary is a deeply flawed candidate. It’s her good fortune to be competing against mostly non-mainstream players all around. Whether that fortune will be enough to overcome the flaws is the $64,000 question.
IMO both nominating races and the general will be nail biters with twists and turns worthy of a over-written HBO movie.
Like I said, Trump can’t lose.
Seriously, if he can bash Bush over 9/11, and bash the Pope for questioning his Christianity (after he’s done the same to Obama), then I guess he takes Teflon to a whole new level. And god help me, I’d rather see him in the White House than either Rubio or Cruz, who are now pretty clearly the only viable Rep alternatives. Only 5% reporting, but Bush looks like he’ll be lucky to get 10%, and if that’s all he can get in South Carolina, then he’s done. And Carson and Kasich are even lower.
It’s really, really important that Dems get out the vote this year.
ETA: they just updated the returns to 13%, and now Kasich has overtaken Bush for fourth. He’d certainly be better than the top three, although much worse than HRC or Bernie.
As pourmecoffee noted on Twitter, Trump did almost the exact opposite of what the 2012 GOP postmortem advised. That a candidate could do that and be successful in the primaries is not surprising. I do agree though that taking on the myth of 9/11 is more amazing.
I think Trump may be immune to charges of being liberal because as demented as some of those voters are, they do instinctively understand that a true liberal would not say the offensive (or “non-PC”) things that Trump does.
Not really. There’s more old people and they actually vote.
Right. As I keep saying, this is not like the Nielsen ratings where 18 to 49 is all that matters. The millions and millions of people eligible for AARP membership swamp out the relatively small number of whites 18 to 30.
I would like Hillary to at least get 30 or 40 percent of white voters under 30, but even if she remains at 15%, I would rather have her voters than Bernie’s voters.