Right now the burden of proof is on those who argue that Clinton would be a stronger candidate than Sanders.
According to current polling aggregates, Sanders would defeat Cruz in a general election, while Clinton would lose to him. Both candidates would lose to Rubio and defeat Trump.
These numbers only exist as they do because the Republican machine hasn’t dropped more than a half ounce of attention on Bernie. Hillary’s numbers come after more than 20 years of negative, focused anger directed squarely onto her head. All things considered, she’s doing fine.
Mano-y-mano with the eventual GOP candidate, I’m not sure Bernie will hold up as well. You want proof? Well, absent being able to look into the future, I’m not sure what you want.
The big if, maybe impossible, is “if he can get the American public to look past a socialist label and think about his policy”.
I look at socialism like risk. That is, a lot of people think of those as a yes/no when they are really on a scale. Anything we want the government to do for us versus doing it our selves is a degree of socialism. I’m not sure Bernie is advocating moving us very much on that scale but the label carries a lot of weight.
Very few people are in favor of eliminating social security and “social” is right there in its name. Taxing working people to support retirees is socialism.
Bernie is not advocating state control of industry which is the extreme that most people think of when they say they don’t want socialism.
Its is similar to those surveys where people like the ACA but hate Obamacare.
Won’t be very long before we know. A few more races in the more conservative areas will give us the answer about Bernie’s electability. Bernie is smart enough to read the handwriting, and if he sees it isn’t going to work, he will “suspend” and ultimately endorse. I doubt very much that he is the kind of asshole who will risk handing the election to the Forces of Darkness simply to press his ideological distinction.
And if he is, fuck him, and the horse upon which he rode in.
No, there is no chance that Sanders might be elected, fortunately.
If the impossible happens, as long as Congress remains in GOP hands, it wouldn’t be too bad - he would veto everything, Congress would reject everything he tries, and that would keep both of them too busy to get into trouble. That’s domestic - foreign policy would be a disaster, but no more so than now.
The problem is that anything that will deep six Hillary is going to have some spill over to America’s view of Democrats in general, which is going to make Sander’s job difficult in the general.
I still think he could probably beat Trump if that ends up being the Republican nominee, but he would have a very hard time against Cruz, and no chance against Rubio.
I think there is a significant middle-but-conservative population who hate Clinton because they’ve had years to develop a distaste of the ‘Clinton’ brand, Benghazi, or whatever.
I also think that some of those people could be moved by an authentic left-of-center Democratic nominee who is sincere and explicitly interested in fighting for the ‘little guy’ against big monied interests.
My personal feeling is that the ‘undecideds’ who won’t vote for Hillary because Clinton is a larger group than who won’t vote for Bernie because Socialist.
I don’t think Sanders will win the nomination. I hope he does, but his chances are slim.
I do think he’d do at least as well, if not better, than Clinton in the general. Recent polls bear that out. And, yes, he hasn’t been targeted by the GOP attack machine yet but if all they’ve got is “he’s a socialist! he honeymooned in Russia!” that’s pretty weak sauce. They already call Obama a socialist and he won handily, twice.
There’s no evidence at all that Clinton would do better than Bernie, just conventional wisdom. If people start listening to policies instead of labels, he’ll be at no disadvantage. Plus he won what, 84% of the under-30 vote in Iowa? If he brings millennials to the polls (which admittedly is easier said than done) he’ll be all right.
That’s mostly because most moderate-right folks realized that Obama was nothing close to a socialist that it was a lame attack. Also after 8 years of Bush, they would have voted for Lyndon LaRouche if it meant the GOP was out of the White House.
I want more Hillary supporters to be like you and acknowledge that this is a question which reasonable people could be “not sure” about, and that difference of opinion isn’t evidence of imbecility…Hopefully even be open to re-evaluating their position based on evidence.
Granted, there is less correlation between Presidential and Congressional election results than you might think; the Democrats lost only a few seats in 1972, for instance.
Still, any realistic scenario in which Sanders wins involves significantly increased voter turnout among core Democratic constituencies of young, poor and/or minority voters, which seems like it could hardly hurt Democratic candidates in general.
I don’t think Sanders is less likely than Clinton to beat the Republican, and I do think that, if elected, he is more likely to have long coattails.
No generation ever makes up the majority of an electorate. Even the Baby boomers didn’t make up a majority.
I think generation X might surprise you. We have high rates of volunteerism and civic mindedness. The largest reduction in racism and homophobia occurred with Gen X.
I wouldn’t judge your generation’s future progressiveness by its current progressiveness. Much of your attitude is attributable to your age. You may still end up more progressive than us but AFAICT, the baby boomers were more relatively liberal and radical than the millennials and ended up more selfish and self centered than their parent’s generation.
I know that the conventional wisdom is that Sanders is not electable, but the general election polls at Real Clear Politics seem to belie this idea. He polls as well against all of the GOP guys as Clinton does and in some cases, better, and has for some time. What am I missing here?
I’ve seen discussions of studies showing Millennials are less homophobic than their elders, less racist, and have many more atheists and agnostics among them than older generations. Those kinds of attitudes are unlikely to change with age, at least, not to a statistically significant degree (of course some individuals will undergo religious-conversion experiences – and others fall away from the faiths they were raised in).
Obama won (in large part) because his candidacy inspired people who usually don’t vote, to get out and vote.
And the same phenomenon could bring us a President Trump, by the way. Lots of people who seldom or never vote because over the years they never see candidates with whom they can identify, will actually make the effort when they finally do see a candidate they believe represents their values and views.
Yes. And what indicates that Sanders will inspire the ‘usually don’t vote’ people?..the rallies? It’s true that Sanders rallies have been large and enthusiastic. But most of them have taken place in college towns, with college kids who…may vote, or then again, may not vote. And even if they do, college-age voters aren’t numerous enough to give a candidate the Presidency. As yet, we have no good reason to believe that Sanders will accomplish what Obama did (in bringing to the polling stations mass numbers of usually-don’t-vote folks).
Yep. Sanders has been treated with the most velvety of velvet gloves by the 1% so far, because they love the way he’s bloodying Hillary.
If he wins the nomination, they will turn him into a combination of laughing stock and bogey man. Easily.