2nd Bernie volunteer at my door just now! Wow.
This one was from a different organization. I told them they should coordinate with the other groups (the 1st one was apparently the campaign itself) so they don’t cover the same area, but he said that that would be illegal.
This kind of enthusiasm is an awfully good sign from the Bernie campaign.
I’m not paying any attention to polls until October either in NC or national polls.
That’s also fair.
If someone lives in California, or in the other direction, Mississippi, and the result in their state is not at all in doubt, then voting third party for president and voting local how it matters, is a reasonably ethical choice.
North Carolina last time was polling tied going into election day and Trump won the state less than the number of voters who went third party. It is more of a potential swing state than Ohio and Florida anyway. And while the GOP won both House special elections there 9/10/19 they did by smaller margins than they should have by “partisan lean”: the 9th in particular moved 11 over from its partisan lean.
North Carolina’s swing to hard right was pretty recent. It was Obama in '08 and actually according to Gallup in terms of affiliation has a 44 to 39 D (and leaners) advantage. Same as PA and more than WI or NH. If only turnout is there and depending on which way those without leans go. (17% of voters report no lean.)
Odds are great that October 2020 will have polling in North Carolina within several percent.
Bijou Drains … your voting choice, and your encouragement of others in your local circles, even if it does require holding your nose, likely will matter much more than what many of the rest of us do.
I thought Kamela Harris could have been this cycle’s John Kerry, the guy who seemed absolutely finished by December 2004 and who made an extraordinary turnaround that had all the short-sighted handicappers dashing around trying to explain how they always knew Kerry was of course inevitable.
But she got out too soon, and thus missed the chance for all the old fogies on the SDMB (hey, I’m one too) to get all panicky about Sanders and Biden and which of the two Trump is gonna eat for breakfast, and if only there was another option who was not damaged by whatever panic-point kept you up last night (Too old! Too young! The DNC thinks he/she is wildly out step in terms of DNC-approved brownie points! Trump will call him or her a hurtful name! Etc!).
Myself, I’m all in for Warren (whose potential for a Kerry-like surprise comeback is absolutely possible; certainly she’s a better campaigner than Kerry or for that matter Harris ever was) but if Bernie turns out to be the nominee, that’s fine too and I absolutely give props to him and his tireless and motivated supporters for making it so. Crazy world, huh? And either Liz or Bernie can win, and if you like their politics but insist that someone more Hilary-like is the only road to victory, then fine but just remember that the mooks and frowny-faces that hang out on SDMB do not necessarily make up the sum total of the engaged body politic and that perception is pliable and received wisdom is for mooncows and jabbernowls - we’re not those, are we?
Harris simply ran out of money. She built too big of an operation too soon and put way too much into apathetic South Carolina. She (and Beto) withdrew around the first of the month which tells me they just didn’t have enough money to pay the staff on the nest paycheck.
The Kerry comeback was helped by the Gephardt/Dean fight. If Buttigieg and Biden were at each other’s throats and fistfights were occurring, ok.
I think you are forgetting the “outsider” appeal of Sanders. Many people are sick of party politics and whomever the party chooses.
Trump and to some effect Obama had this. Bernie has this.
I actually think he could pull it off.
The only way Bernie can overtake Biden at this point is if he suddenly starts hitting home runs nonstop and Biden chokes with gaffe after gaffe on the trail.
2500 at a rally in Des Moines yesterday and Bernie wasn’t even there.
Stadium at capacity of 8600 tonight in Cedar Rapids. Bernie is in attendance at this one.
People have been ‘sick of party politics’ since Jefferson vs Adams. Bernie has his 25% and probably 35-40% in a two person race.
Can I use this for my sig?
To the OP, probably. 538 now has a 74% chance that one or the other will clinch a delegate majority before the convention; plus another 16% chance of a contested convention, which of course could also result in one of them being the nominee.
Unless one of the underdogs can throw a Hail Mary in Iowa or NH, it’s going to be down to 2 candidates. I guess Bloomberg could make a run, but he’d need to pick up a large majority of the voters who aren’t already supporting Biden or Sanders to be competitive. Current 538 average has Biden 27, Sanders 22.
Daily Mail (not the most reputable of papers, so take it for what it’s worth): A Bernie nomination could see many Democrats vote for Trump, or not vote, in November.
I can see religious black voters stay home if Sanders is the nominee , a few might vote for Trump
Just about every head-to-head poll I’ve seen shows that Biden’s got about a 1% lead over Sanders in their vs.-Trump matchups. That’s not nothing, but it’s pretty close to nothing, and makes me look with rich skepticism on alarmist calls about all the Democrats who would vote Trump over Sanders. There just aren’t that many of them out there, as near as I can tell from actual polling.
But that doesn’t mean Sanders and Biden have an equal chance, because things can and will change.
As I see it, Biden is better than Sanders on background, but worse on campaigning.
Personally I much prefer Sanders’s background to Biden’s: Sanders has a long progressive history that warms the pinko cockles of my heart, and he’s been very consistent in holding these views even when it was politically disadvantageous to do so. A lot of the gossippy “nobody likes him” trifling is based on this, IMO: he refuses to play nice with folks whose policies are causing harm. Biden is a consummate nice-player, and boasts about how chummy he was with avowed segregationists.
That said, I think Biden’s past is gonna play a lot better in the general than Sanders’s. Sure, Biden made some fairly conservative moves over the last half-century; but those would only alienate people who already loathe Trump, and as we all know (or should know), the single most important item you can bring to the voting booth is a clothespin for your nose. Sanders, on the other hand, has some straight-up problematic shit in his past, especially that weird-ass essay on sex. That, combined with his Soviet honeymoon, are gonna be like cocaine-laced potato chips to the Fox crowd, and are a genuine weakness for Sanders.
However, on the campaign trail, Sanders is a 100% known quantity, the Big Mac of stump speeches. He is going to campaign tomorrow, and in March, and maybe in October, exactly the way he campaigned in 1990. He is solid and steady and reliable. Biden tomorrow might give a decent speech, or he might drop his pants to compare penis sizes with an Iowa truck driver, or he might tell attendees at a black church that single mothers and Cosby record player if they read more and Jim Crow wasn’t a friend but work across the aisle.
I’m biased toward Sanders, and I fully recognize that might color my conclusion, but I’d rather have a solid candidate with some weird shit in his past than an unstable candidate with a more conventional past.
General election polls this early are not very accurate, IMO. And Sanders and Biden are almost at the same spot in these early general election polls. With that in mind, my gut feel tells me that we need enthusiasm to have the best chance to win this election, and Sanders is much more likely to bring and inspire enthusiasm than Biden. In addition, I think Sanders is better on the issues, especially recognizing the brokenness of our system – that we really need big structural changes because our system so massively favors the wealthy and powerful.
I’m not yet 100% sure who I’m voting for in the primary, but I’m about 95% there, and right now I’m strongly leaning Bernie.
Sure. Credit for the “mooncows and jabbernowls” part goes to W.C. Fields.
(An immaterial aside, but looking at 538’s list most of the more recent well rated national head to heads have Biden doing 2 or 3% better than Sanders … and a couple the other way.)
While to be sure head to heads tell us only a little bit at this point a real 1%, especially 1% in particular states, is far from nothing. 1% in each of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, for example would have been lots more than next to nothing. New Hampshire was within 1% too. 1% in Florida would have been huge in the past too.
Those aren’t the only states that matter but they are among only several that small margins can make or break the election.
Yes, Democrats voting Trump over their non-preferred choice is probably extremely small, but some staying home or going 3rd party? Maybe a bit less small … in each direction, from some hard Sander supporters to those who fear a promised more “revolutionary” approach. I am not convinced that either would have a bigger or smaller impact on D turnout overall … but maybe different in different subgroups which could have differential impact in specific states.
Plus to Biden is that he has few unknowns on the trail. His flaws (and they are real, mainly his penchant for foot in mouth) are all already baked in. I don’t see his overall favorability and unfavorability being moved much. Sanders’ campaign style is a known thing but what a no holds barred negative campaign could bring is completely unknown factor, as is his ability to deal with it since he’s never had to. I see more potential for him to be hurt by negative campaigning against him.
I’d love to read me some quality analysis of how each, and heck throw in Bloomberg and Warren, would appeal against Trump specifically in the fairly few states that matter most.
Bernie volunteers set a goal of making 10,000,000 calls in January–and made it!
The problem with a Bernie nomination is that it shifts the focus away from Trump’s problems towards Bernie’s problems. With Biden vs. Trump, all the focus would be on “how bad a president Trump is.” But with Bernie vs. Trump, suddenly the election is all about “how will Bernie’s democratic socialism and other ideas work? Will they bankrupt us? etc.”
Enthusiasm runs both ways. There will be people willing to crawl over broken glass to vote against Bernie.
You, and many of Bernie’s supporters may like the promise of big structural change. There are also plenty of office workers in office parks in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that spend 40 hours a week crunching numbers on spreadsheets and don’t have the pitchforks and torches ready and want to ‘burn the mother fucker down!!!’
