We had polling data that showed Sanders would probably win and Hillary would [del]almost certainly[/del] more likely lose. [ETA: I’m walking that back. She very probably would have lost to anyone but Trump.]
There was no such polling data. General election polling generally showed Hillary with a small national lead, which was accurate, even if a few states had less accurate polling. And general election polling for relatively unknown candidates, like Sanders during the primary, really tells us nothing. We don’t know if he would have won and we probably never will.
No, we had polling data that showed that at certain points, Sanders would have won a larger % of the Popular vote. But that Clinton would also win- the popular vote. Which she did.
But again, Sanders was not a GOP target, in fact they did everything they could to help him.
I was referring to the popular vote in the primaries, not to the total delegate count. You are correct that it has been historically rare for the race not to be decided before the convention (although I don’t know how you missed counting 1972). However, over time, reforms have lessened the influence of bosses, and there has been movement away from winner-take-all primaries, so the chance that a failure to win a majority of votes will result in a failure to win a majority of delegates is greater now than it has ever been in the past.
I think most Sanders supporters would agree that “Bernie bro” is a slur. I agree that you weren’t directing it at me personally, though.
The polls had Sanders winning by about 10%, and Clinton winning by about 1%, well within the margin of error. That’s a significant difference.
The Democratic voters did indeed choose Hillary, and earned President Trump’s eternal gratitude for doing so. My argument is that the voters should have been smarter, not that unelected superdelegates should have swooped in to save the party from itself.
I’d really like it if this thread could be about the changes in the nominating process, rather than yet another relitigation of 2016.
Yes, well Popular vote is different than having a actual brokered convention. Because a HUGE majority in say, California will give you a popular vote boost, but winning a bunch of primaries will actually give you the delegates. We haven’t had a actual brokered convention in my lifetime.
If I applied “BernieBro” to all Sanders supports, yes, it would be. But the majority of them were honest “progressive” voters, energized by Bernie, but voting for Hillary in the end.
The group I call “BernieBros” are a small minority of mostly white males, who bought every lie from Rove and the Kremlin hook, line & sinker, and continued to spread those lies and half truths vs Clinton even after the primary election was decided- and they still do. They claimed Hillary “stole” the nomination- and they still do. They also voted for a 3rd party candidate or stayed home during the general election.
Trump would have won in a landslide vs Bernie, sad to say. And if they did so, they would be pissing on the Democratic process- and still would have lost. Badly.
No, it wasn’t “absolutely true”. It was a hypothetical speculation about a counterfactual situation, which can’t be meaningfully evaluated on the basis of “truth”. I could equally well say that it is “absolutely true” that once Sanders had the platform of the general election to make his case to the public for socialist policies, he would have won 70% of the vote, and it would be just as “absolutely true”.
You might say that one hypothesis seems dramatically more plausible than the other, but “absolute truth” isn’t a term that has any place in this discussion.
Well, the last sentence is certainly true, except for the inclusion of the word “probably”. And certainly a poll about a hypothetical matchup several months in the future shouldn’t be taken as seriously as a poll about the real election happening next Tuesday. But “relatively weak data” isn’t the same as “no data”, so your first sentence is false. And Sanders’ lead in these hypothetical polls held up throughout the primary season, right up until he dropped out, at which time I think it would be a stretch to call him “relatively unknown”.
So, you’re counting on the GOP to play fair and not spread Rovian lies and election tricks? It is to laff.
OK, well…I don’t dispute your characterization of the second group as being fools, but in my experience not everyone on Team Hillary is as scrupulous as you are in drawing that distinction between wackos and Bernie voters in general. Therefore, I tend to be suspicious of the motives of anyone using that term. Remember that it is the members of a group who get to decide if a term used to describe the group is offensive. Your point could have been made just as well by using a term like “fools” or “morons”, without the risk of your motives being misinterpreted.
This isn’t the Electoral College. Almost all Democratic primaries now allocate delegates proportionally. So winning a HUGE majority in California will in fact earn you many more delegates than just barely winning would, and just barely winning won’t get you more than just barely losing would have. It will also get you a lot more delegates than winning ten tiny States would. In other words, it works the way it’s supposed to.
It keeps getting ignored by those who find it inconvenient, but Sanders had a *higher *percentage of the delegates at the convention than in the vote totals that got him there. Higher. And some *still *claim it was rigged against him.
The will to believe is invincible.
What the fuck are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about the GOP at all. I’m sure they would have flung all the mud they could at Bernie. Neither of us has any way of knowing how much of it would have stuck.
Just like neither of us knows how much more effective attacks on Trump’s integrity might have been coming from someone whose own integrity wasn’t widely doubted.
Yes, those people are silly. So what do you think about the new rules on superdelegates?
Just window dressing, an attempt to cut off the whining. It might even do that to some extent.
Yes, there are no longer any “winner take all” Democratic primaries (altho the GOP still has quite a few).
Except those that still have caucuses. Where you can win the states delegates, or a large %, even tho the popular 'vote" goes the other way. Which is why Hillary was winning the popular vote strongly vs both Obama and Bernie.
If the voters had been smarter they would have picked Clinton over Trump.
This is simply not true yet you and others here keep spreading it. While we can never know for certain all available evidence suggests Sanders would have beaten Trump.
On the flip side Sanders had some of the highest favorability ratings of any politician and lowest unfavorable ratings.
Clinton had a problem with turnout to her rallies where Sanders was pulling in huge crowds. This matters because turnout for Clinton in the general election was lower than Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Sanders also did well in states where Trump did well (rustbelt states). Indeed Sanders beat Clinton in Michigan and Wisconsin. States Trump took and needed to win. Sanders’ working-class politics would have appealed to workers in those states. People Clinton lost. These states is where Clinton lost the election. Sanders probably would have taken them.
Polls consistently showed Sanders beating Trump in a hypothetical race. He polled better than Clinton did in this regard.
Finally, Trump’s own pollster believes Sanders would have won:
As to the OP many in this thread have dismissed the effect superdelegates had on the race. That is true only when you look at the final outcome at the convention.
The whole “Clinton stole the election from Sanders” bit has been done on this message board and it is clear the DNC had its thumb on the scale for Clinton all along and not even just a little bit. The issue with the superdelegates was after a primary and Sanders was still in the race and a contender the media would report the delegate count and include the superdelegates which made it seem as if Clinton had the race all locked-up. This would have a chilling effect on people coming out to vote. Why would they go to vote for Sanders if it is a lost cause already?
This was such an issue the DNC formally asked the media to stop doing this. The media ignored them and did it anyway.
Clinton lost to a dark horse candidate with Obama. There was no way in hell she was going to let it happen again with Sanders and she managed that by tilting the playing field. The use of superdelegates was one of those (but not the only one).
Right, but caucuses are on the way out, which is a good thing. BTW, Hillary’s popular vote advantage over Obama was only 0.7%.