OK, as unlikely as it is, how does a Trump v Sanders general election play out? Each would mobilize the extreme, and each would be so appalling to the opposite party that some of the more mainstream voters might hold their noses and vote for their party’s nominee, even though they themselves aren’t so extreme- that is, my extremist is better than their extremist, even if I would rather have a more moderate candidate.
Record low turnout? Record numbers for a third party?
What do you think?
HRC runs as an independent and beats them both. Or, if she doesn’t outright win, the election is thrown to the House since no one gets the required amount of Electoral Votes.
Most Democrats are perfectly ok with Sanders as the nominee, there would very little difference in turn out between him and Hillary. The biggest loss would be the “i gotta vote for the woman” women votes we would lose, which are probably not going to be insignificant, although they would be easily made up by the “holy fuck not Trump” votes.
On head to head match ups Sanders was beating Trump by good margins on many polls, more recently they were tied but now that voters are beginning to look closely Sanders is getting ahead of Trump again in a hypothetical match up.
I don’t agree with the premise that Trump and Sanders are extremists. At least, not in relation to the American people. Trump is more open with his antipathy to outsiders than other candidates but it’s not as if there isn’t plenty of xenophobia among supporters of both parties. Despite the propaganda, Sanders’ proposals are far from out of line with mainstream American opinion. In a more honest political environment he would be called a moderate. Instead we reserve that term for good little corporate stooges.
I remember seeing a poll that showed that nearly a third of Vermont Republicans have favorable views of Bernie Sanders and the recent Rasmussen poll on Trump shows that 19% of Democrats would likely support him in a “third party” bid. Both Trump and Sanders would start with some level of cross party support. Obviously that could change depending on how the election plays out.
IMO it all comes down to whether you think Trump really is as much of a buffoon as he seems to be or whether it’s mostly a clever act that he knows can get him votes with the moron section of the Republican Party. If you think the latter, then he can pivot back to center in the general election and would probably win a close election. Myself, I think he’s mostly for real, and don’t think he could pull that off. So I think he loses in a landslide.
Yeah, they’re not as parallel as this makes it sound. I actually suspect that more Republicans find Hilary appalling (because she’s a woman, or because she’s a Clinton, or because the Republican blowhards like Rush Limbaugh have been attacking her for so long). At any rate, I’ve personally heard a lot more vituperation of Hilary than of Bernie.
Meanwhile, there are a not insignificant number of Republicans who find Trump appalling.
Sanders is not an extremist and most Democrats are not ashamed of the man like many in the GOP are ashamed of Trump. If Sanders gets the vote, I still think he’d be Trump, though probably with a smaller margin than if Hillary is the nominee.
If this comes to be, the Bernie you see now is the Bernie you’ll see in the general election. Trump will be a completely different person. Not many Democrats will vote for Trump, a larger number may stay home in a snit because Hillary didn’t get the nod. Only a few more Republicans will vote for Sanders than Democrats who voted Trump, but the big difference will be Republicans who stay home. The true independents, those that aren’t actually tied to one party or the other, will be somewhat split, I think the regular voters will lean toward Sanders while the newcomers will go Trump.
You mean allow Trump to pull a 49-state sweep (Vermont will probably still go for Bernie and Clinton wins DC by virtue of the black vote)? Same but reverse if there’s a split in the GOP ticket.
This. For all Sanders’s radical roots, he was a very well-regarded mayor before becoming Vermont’s most popular Congressman and then Senator. He may be a pro-gay Socialist, but he’s apparently trusted if not beloved by dirt farmers and the working class most of the way across the line. He’s honest, consistent, and highly populist.
As I’ve said before, I think Sanders vs Trump in November would be wonderful. Two plain speakers, appealing to the two opposite American modes. The American people would have a stark contrast: rational thought and humanitarian values on the one side; fear, disgust and hatred on the other.
I’ve no idea how the election would turn out. A man caricaturized as “wild-haired commie loon” vs a filthy-mouthed misogynist buffoon? I’d guess that many voters would just stay home, or write-in a third name.
But I’d love to see that election, even if Trump were favored to win. After all, Trump would probably be a less bad President than either of the other top GOP candidates.
Sanders can’t land a punch to another candidate. He goes to debates and is known to say nice things about Hillary. Trump goes to debates and lies through his teeth, but beats the snot out of other candidates.
I think Trump would beat Sanders because Sanders is like Jeb Bush: he just can’t defend himself on the national stage, nor has he demonstrated any capability to go on the offense.
I think Trump wins this contest, assuming that it were to be a heads-up between the two.
I think this ignores that Trump is a target rich environment, while the hits he has received have been mostly infective at the primary stage when the main contest takes place those targets will affect him in a huuuuuge way.
Look, I think Trump is a worse liar than Nixon and would be the biggest disaster in American politics in ages. But let’s acknowledge that when he says something stupid, he isn’t paying a very big price for it. And you think Sanders is going to be the one to make Trump start looking bad? Are you kidding?
Trump clearly has the sort of appeal the WWE wrestling does: tune in to watch manufactured drama and the lowest common denominator of entertainment. Sanders has the sort of appeal that the New Yorker magazine does if you were to cut out all the cartoons. I’m not saying that WWE is better, I’m saying it is more popular. And elections are a popularity contest.
Bernie’s participation in the anti-GMO woo fest completely disqualifies him from consideration as both a rational thinker and a humanitarian. I don’t know how much it would hurt him in an election vs Trump though. The anti-vax and anti-GMO messages both seem to have traction in the ding-wing sections of both Left and Right.
And yet Sanders is outpolling Trump by > 10%. Trump maxes out at too low a number to win in the general.
This. Trump is a loser. If he is the GOP candidate it doesn’t matter who wins the Democratic primary. Hillary or Bernie or even that other guy would nail Trump’s hide to the wall. If the bogeyman of President Trump starts to get to you the thing to remember is that he is popular with about half of white people and hardly anybody else. So, not enough to win.
The only way I can explain the level of support that Donald Trump has is that it part of the same phenomenon that we see when people get online anonymously and make threats and say horrible hateful things. Mob mentality and anonymity are a powerful combination. We seem to be developing a trollish sub-culture which drives some people to say things they don’t even believe in or care about, driven more by how much they know it will piss others people off, than any principle or strongly held opinion. I think this explains some of the current popularity of trump in the polls, and voting booths are just as anonymous as surveys. I don’t know how to judge where the upper limit is on the influence of this trend.
So while I tend to agree with you, and would hope that you are right, I am in no way certain that you are.
Not kidding, you are forgetting that in the general election there will be about 1/2 of voters that are not in favor of Trump, then you have to add to that the women, minorities and moderate Republicans that were already weary of Trump, indeed those items that have not hurt Trump among the hard core will continue to affect many Republicans that even right now are not in favor of Trump.
Again, as 538 remind us, the popularity you are talking about is much less than 1\2 of the electorate. Getting about 30-40 percent support among Republicans is like 20-30% of the whole electorate. That they will vote for Trump is a given, but for other groups he will not become magically popular.