For Sanders fans who plan on sitting out if Bernie is not nominated

Politics & Elections
1

I suggest taking an on-line preference poll. You might be surprised at how close Hillary and Bernie are. Here are a couple, I’m sure there are more of them out there.

When taking them be sure to note how important each issue is to you. The first poll has extra questions to get more detail from you. I did those as well.

On this one, I scored Sanders 97%, Jill Stein (Green party) 94%, Clinton 90% and O’Malley 88%. The highest Republican was Kasich at 43%. (I don’t recall exact numbers, but Cruz and Trump were at the bottom.)

In this one, Sanders 93%, Clinton 88% and Cruz 0%.

Those results occurred a couple of months ago and I didn’t note the entire set.

I strongly advise doing this for strong Sanders supporters who are doubtful about Clinton. (And I suppose for Republicans contemplating sitting out if their guy isn’t nominated.)

It concerns me that Bernie fans, by sitting on their hands, might very well throw the election to a very bad choice - any Republican. In the year 2000 I posit there were at least 500 Floridian Nader voters who wish they’d picked Gore.

2

I don’t think there are enough Bernie or Bust supporters to influence the election. They’re certainly loud and all over social media. But many of them aren’t reliable Democratic voters and Bernie isn’t running as a 3rd party in the general election. They’ll do what they usually do: On Election Day they’ll either throw their vote away on a 3rd party candidate such as Jill Stein or else they’ll stay down in mommy’s basement eating ramen and taking hits off the bong.

3

I vote as a Californian. You’ll have to work a little harder to convince me that my sitting out the election will give California to the Republicans.

In 2012, the results were 7,854,285 (60.24%) D, and 4,839,958 R (37.12%).

If the numbers are at all similar, my little protest would have to be joined by 3,000,000 other people, or 17% of the registered voters in the state (by 2015 numbers), and nearly 25% of the voters who actually turned out for the election; if my math is right, that would be 40% of the Democrats.

In the unlikely event that 40% of the party’s voters sit out the general election because they don’t like the candidate, the other party deserves to win. But I think my little protest will be consequence-free.

4

Don’t think of it like that. There will be plenty of close state or local elections where your vote would count big for the Democrats if you vote.

5

As an American who lives abroad permanently, I am only supposed to vote for federal positions. That said, “not voting for Clinton” ≠ “not voting at all.”

6

It’s good to prepare your excuses early.

7

California voter here, and for the first time in my lifetime, there is no candidate for president from either party that I can stomach. I often leave a particular race blank if there is no acceptable choice, but this is the first time it could be the top of the ticket. As **Dr. Drake **says, I’m not particularly concerned about influencing California’s presidential vote. In any case, I will still vote for my local supervisor, school board representative, dogcatcher and 17 or so particularly amusing San Francisco propositions.

8

A lot of the Bernie crowd doesn’t care about the issues, they only care about the cult of personality surrounding Bernie. Some of these people were even on the Ron Paul bandwagon four years ago.

9

I’m in New York and voted for Nader in 2000. Since I was sure Gore would win NY without my vote I didn’t worry about it. Had I lived in any remotely competitive state, I would have voted for Gore.

My whole point is that folks should examine how closely they and the various candidates compare on the issues. It’s a worthwhile exercise in my opinion.

10

Okay. I’ve taken this before, but I see they’ve updated the questions:

94% Bernie Sanders
88% HR Clinton
next highest mainstream candidate:
23% Ted Cruz.

Not a surprise, though.

11

Remember that “trade a vote for Nader” thing? Dem voters in safe states like NY would pledge to vote for Nader as long as they were balanced, one-for-one, by Dem voters in toss-up states like Florida voting for Gore. The main idea was for Gore to win, but for Nader’s Green Party to reach some threshold (5%? Can’t remember) at which the party would get public funding for the next cycle. Neither wish came true, alas.

12

Look, this is really simple: Hillary Clinton is a centrist, right-leaning, Third Way neoliberal who’s owned by Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex. She’s been dead wrong on every major foreign policy issue since her idiotic vote for the Iraq War Resolution and she’s far, far too conservative in her domestic policy proposals for there to be any recovery for the 99 percent if she were elected.

She says she’s never changed a vote because of Wall Street’s influence, but that’s just semantics. She did change her position on bankruptcy protection for consumers when she became a Senator representing Wall Street and voted with the banks and against ordinary Americans. She is taking their side over our security in refusing to reinstate Glass-Steagall protections, refusing to break up the still-too-big-to-fail banks and in refusing to support a $15 minimum wage, which she’s now got her hedge fund buddies making ads to oppose (though she’s happy to take credit for being its champion when it passed without her support in NYC).

She insanely wants a no-fly zone over Syria and continued sanctions on Iran, which further endangers Americanswho get captured and imprisoned there. She’s Dick Cheney in a lady suit.

But worst of all worsts, she’s actually willing to compromise with Republicans on restricting women’s right to control our own bodies, having said just this past September that she’d work with them on restricting abortion if they’d agree to an exception for the health of the mother or child. That’s obscenely unacceptable for a Democratic candidate for president, more so from a woman, let alone a woman who’s been endorsed by NARAL and Planned Parenthood.

Republicans hate her guts, so the notion that’s she’d get fuck all accomplished other than stripping away abortion rights and possibly some tax cuts for Wall Street and billionaires is downright laughable.

Now, since this thread isn’t about why Bernie Sanders is head and shoulders better than her on every conceivable policy issue as well as his potential ability to “get things done” with Republicans, I’ll just leave it here: Hillary Clinton wouldn’t get my vote even with a gun to my head, no matter how many theoretical issues on a survey we might match up on (which, by the way, are significantly fewer that I match with Bernie on: 83% vs 98% for the record).

She’s wrong for the Democratic Party and she’s wrong for America. I’m just glad America is finally waking up and we’re going to defeat her in the Primaries again, just like we did last time, so this whole issue will be moot anyway.

13

Did you really mean to say this? Wow.

14

How many issues do you suppose you match up with on your little survey when it’s you vs President Cruz?

Look, you’re right about Hillary. She’s everything you say she is, sadly . But when Ruth Bader Ginsberg kicks it, Hillary wouldn’t replace her with the animated corpse of Antonin Scalia and the Republican candidate will.

Nothing else matters this year but getting the right to pick Bader Ginsberg’s replacement.

15

RBG could live another 10 years and I think after her husband died awhile back any chance of her retiring went down immensely. She lives and breathes the court, and has no life outside of it. I think if she believes herself incapable of continuing she would retire, but as long as her mind still works she won’t retire. She has been under “light” pressure to retire while a Democrat was in the White House before and rebuffed it, she would obviously want a liberal to replace her but she isn’t willing to game her retirement to guarantee it.

16

Yes I did; so what? She’s the female version of Dick Cheney. You’d be happier had I just called her Margaret Thatcher? No. It calls for a comparison to another American war monger. There is no light between Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheery. None.

Which is *all the more reason * to abandon this loser now before it ever comes to that. In poll after poll after poll, Americans are telling you that [Hillary loses to every Republican and Bernie **wins **](Check out @jillwklausen’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/jillwklausen/status/701117023665856512?s=09). So don’t put up a loser; it’s as simple as that.

17

That’s the essential fact as far as I’m concerned.

18

Learn how to link those lame twitter feeds, Shayna.

19

I’m always amazed at the vitriol folks within a party spew on someone that they agree on a majority of issues with. I may not like Hillary or Bernie, but to sit on my hands enabling the opposition to waltz into the WH and start rolling back the ACA and so much of what Obama has earned is self-defeating and cray cray.

20

I don’t know if this is what Shayna was looking at, but the latest Quinnipiac poll does indeed show Sanders matching up better against various potential Republican nominees, than Clinton.