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.