Hillary Clinton v. Bernie Sanders 2016 Predictions

The race for the 2016 Republican nomination has always been seen as a giant scrum, a kicking, screaming, writhing mass of bodies composed of anyone and everyone from that side of the aisle with a hope, prayer or fantasy becoming President. On the Democratic side, the race was instead supposed to be merely the anointment of Hillary Rodham Clinton, cruising above the fray. But enter, stage left (far left), Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont, to challenge the unchallengeable HRC.

So, with Clinton and Sanders teed up for a head to head match, how do you think the 2016 Democratic Primaries will go?

I don’t think anyone sentient thinks that Sanders has any chance of grabbing the nomination away from Clinton, but the interesting thing will how his entry changes the race.

My speculation is that Sanders is running to bring some of his progressive issues into the national spotlight, and to see if he can get Clinton and the Democratic establishment to embrace them. Maybe he hope that he can get Clinton to move left in the primaries, in the hope that if she wins the general election, she’ll feel obliged to follow through with her primary promises.

I think, on the other hand, that Clinton will be best served by using Sanders as a foil, showing that she is centrist by differentiating herself from some of his farther left policies and positions. Obviously, there are a lot of positions that they share, but I think she will pick a few key points to say “that’s not where I want to go.”

The key to this strategy is that I don’t believe that there is a single Sanders primary voter that would not vote for Clinton in the general election. During Clinton/Obama 2008, there was a lot of talk of the “PUMA” (Party Unity My Ass) voters who claimed that they would walk away if Hillary weren’t nominated, but in the end, they all came around to Obama. As such, she has little need to pander to the progressive wing of her party if she can get the nomination by running to the center.

My prediction is that Sanders will get 30-40% of the votes in Iowa and 45% or so of the New Hampshire votes. Then he’ll pull off a win in one or two of the other early states, while polling in the 30s down the rest of the line. Of the Sanders’ voters, although a few of them will be true believers, 90%+ of them will be protesting against the inevitability of the coronation of Clinton. As I said, 100% of them will get behind Clinton in the general election, no matter which of the Republicans is nominated.

What this will do is get the media endlessly hyperventilating about whether this “wounds” Clinton, whether her campaign is falling apart, whether Sanders can take it all, how Sanders would do against the hot Republican of the moment, what this means for the Democratic party, and any other topic the round-the-clock commentators can think of. Everything that Clinton does in apparent response to her “weakness” against Sanders will be picked apart under a media microscope. Later when Sanders concedes, the they’ll get to do the warm and fuzzy reconciliation story. There will be a giant orgy of media coverage of the Democrats, who would otherwise be ignored in favor of the Republican steel-cage death match.

Although, in the end the Bernie Sanders challenge will be a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, because sound and fury (undoubtedly, told by an idiot) sells these days like nothing else, it will be a good thing for Clinton and the Democratic campaign in general.

I’ve followed Bernie Sanders career since he was the Mayor of Burlington. He’s not crazy enough to think he has any chance of getting elected President. Not in 2016 and not in 2020.

So I agree that he’s just running to get his message out. He’s one of the few genuine left-wingers in a high political office so he’s using a presidential run as a speaking platform. His goal is to put forth some ideas and hope that the public likes them.

Hillary Clinton will be watching Sanders’ campaign closely. If she sees that the public likes some of his ideas, she’ll jump on the bandwagon. And any of his ideas that become lightning rods, she’ll know to avoid.

Sanders has vowed to not run a negative campaign, and not do anything that might harm the eventual nominee. I think Hillary is probably pretty pleased that he’s running, and I look forward to their debates. An actual sort of sane conservative vs liberal debate, which we haven’t seen in quite a while.

Yep. I disagree with Sanders on a lot of issues, but I have to admire the guy. He’s a man of principle. And he’ll make the debates lively because he’s not afraid of saying what he thinks. It’ll be interesting when the debate turns to something like CEO pay and Hillary is asked why she thinks it’s OK for her and her husband to be paid 100s of thousands of dollars to make a speech somewhere, but not OK for CEOs to rake in the cash as well.

One other possible ramification: It occurs to me that Sanders having officially entered the race might make it easier for other Democratic candidates to also do so, candidates who actually do have a reasonable chance of winning. Sanders might pave the way for an O’Malley or Cuomo or Schweitzer to throw their hat into the ring.

Why is that an interesting question? CEO pay is set by boards that have huge conflicts of interest, and for many companies is large enough to meaningfully trade off with worker pay. Speaking honorariums are neither subject to the same conflict of interest nor anything more than a drop in the bucket for the entities that pay them.

I think you’d have to know very little about the actual criticisms of CEO pay in order to think there’s some hypocrisy there.

I see you don’t browse Reddit.

Reddit loves Bernie Sanders almost as much as they love cats and fedoras.

Actually, I don’t, but I’m not sure the state of opinions there contradicts my initial conclusion.

There are two points to a Sanders candidacy:

  1. To make Hillary run to the left. (Which does not mean she will govern from the left as POTUS.)

  2. To start something bigger. And Sanders has a good state-level track record there.

Hillary will have to debate Bernie six times . . .

. . . unless Bernie violates the exclusivity clause.

WTF?!

One of the best part of Bernie’s run is that it makes it harder for the Republicans to paint Hilary as a scary, extremist, Liberal. Oh, I mean, they’ll still try. But with Bernie standing right next to her, it makes Hilary’s positions look less extreme (because they are).

I’m thinking seriously about voting for Bernie when I get my chance. I’m not convinced that Hillary is electable in a general election, although I’m sure she’d do a fine job if she got the post. I don’t know that Bernie’s electable either, but I guess we’ll see how things look six months from now. Bernie more closely matches my position on issues but ultimately, I’ll vote for whoever I think is mostly likely to beat the Republican.

Oh, you want a prediction? I like predictions.

I predict that Bernie Sanders will finish fourth, behind O’Malley and Webb, assuming both get in the race and run serious campaigns(O’Malley probably will, Webb, who knows?)

Sanders will do a little better than Kucinich did, which is remarkable since he’s probably way to the right of Dennis Kucinich despite his “socialist” moniker.

You’d have to know very little about the politics of CEO pay to think that any of that matters. Politicians are not making a nuanced argument about CEO pay, and Hillary is jumping on the populist bandwagon:

*(Reuters) - Hillary Clinton, under pressure from the left wing of her Democratic Party to aggressively campaign against income inequality, voiced concern about the hefty paychecks of some corporate executives in an email to supporters.

Striking a populist note, Clinton, who announced on Sunday she was running for president in 2016, said American families were still facing financial hardship at a time “when the average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes.”*

If she’s asked why it’s OK for her to make as much as she does for speaking engagements, as soon as she starts talking about boards of directors and conflicts of interest, people are going to tune out and hear that she wants one rule her and another rule for everyone else. And she certainly isn’t going to claim that the money she makes is a “drop in the bucket” to anyone. That would not play well in Peoria.

Besides, I’m not sure I understand why you think limiting CEO pay is going to make the average worker richer by any significant amount. Those CEOs making “outrageous” salaries are in companies with 10s of thousands, often 100s of thousands of workers. Divide up a few million bucks among 100,000 workers and they all get maybe $20 or $30. Besides, limiting CEO pay does not guarantee that any of the savings will go to workers. These are publicly traded companies for the most part. Maybe the excess $$ will be paid as dividends to the stockholders.

No, the average Joe just sees fat cats making lots of money, and it doesn’t matter so much how. And do you think Bernie Sanders isn’t going to bring that up if Hillary tries to out-populist him on this subject? Of course he will, as well he should!

I’m not saying it’s going to lose her the election-- I was just point out something of entertainment value. I like watching politicians squirm, and I’m thinking we’ll get a little bit of squirming out of Hillary on this subject.

well ya see, making speeches is valuable work and the prices Bill gets for speeches are entirely appropriate given the value he is for the companies hiring him.

Oh wait, that actually sounds worse.

I think you underestimate Hillary if you think she’s not easily capable of distinguishing speaking fees from CEO salaries without lapsing into wonkery.

I don’t think limiting CEO pay would make the average worker richer. What I said was that CEO salary is “for many companies large enough to meaningfully trade off with worker pay,” which is absolutely true. Indeed, the worst offenders for CEO pay tend to be smaller companies subject to less scrutiny and often headed by founders or people who played a big role in selecting the board. There’s a reason that stories like this are part of the CEO pay narrative.

I doubt the “average joe” feels that way. I’m sure a small number of economic populists feel that way, but they are a distinct minority. A much larger number, a substantial minority of Republicans and perhaps a majority of Democrats, think that the growth in the disparity in CEO/worker pay is both bad in itself and a symptom of larger maladies.

I don’t think I’m underestimating her. I know she’s smart. Very smart. But she’s not that great a campaigner, as we saw last time, and I’m looking forward to her telling us how she deserves to paid oodles of money for speaking in front of people, but CEOs don’t deserve it when they are actually running corporations that make things. That is all.

That is such a huge outlier that I don’t think it’s a useful data point. How many companies have CEOs willing to reduce their pay that much? I think it makes more sense to look at the aggregate and what reducing CEO pay across the board would do to affect the pay of workers. Are you saying that there is a workable policy out there that would limit CEO pay and make a significant increase in worker pay? If so, can I see your math? N.B.: Not saying you’re wrong, I’ve just not seen it, and maybe I’ve just not read the right articles.

And they think Hillary is just the person to tackle that problem? They think that her raking in the dough on the lecture circuit puts her on the side of the little guy? I don’t think so.

There’s also the fact that her Wall Street friends and donors understand that she has to say certain things. Probably doesn’t help that they say so publicly, but hey, that’s why they aren’t politicians.

If any of them for a minute thought she actually mean to cut their pay and raise their taxes significantly, she’d be as well funded as Bernie Sanders.

This idea about pivoting left or whatever is not so much an issue for her. I have no doubt she will say whatever she thinks she has to say to win the election (she’s got the nomination) and then govern however she wants. That’s pretty much what they all do anyway.

But… it will be interesting to see what she says about the Trans Pacific Trade Deal. Obama is pushing for it, Sanders and Warren are pushing hard against.

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, is against it.