Agreed. Somehow I doubt the “Anybody But Sanders” vote would be anywhere near as big a deal.
I don’t think Sanders motivates the extreme. He’s very well liked by Democrats because he’s more traditionally liberal since our politics have shifted to center-right in recent years. Almost all of his proposals are popular with Democrats and the only sizeable group that would oppose him is extremist conservatives like the Tea Party.
Even the banker crowd I think more fears the unpredictable and potentially irrational loose cannon actions of Trump and what that could do to the world economy (and thus their interests) than to the known entity that is the self-described Democratic Socialist Sanders.
Then who would?!
Polling data suggests that Bernie would beat Trump by a bigger margin than Hilary would. At least it did a few weeks ago.
I suspect Trump would win against Bernie. If he becomes the nominee, he will stress his more moderate views in the general election and will generally be less of a buffoon. His New York values answer in the last debate showed his more reasonable side. Bernie OTOH will remain Bernie and I suspect will be highly vulnerable to a classic Atwater/Rove Republican attack campaign the likes of which he will never have experienced in his political career in Vermont.
I have to believe some people are salivating over making anti trump ads. He is target rich in ways we don’t even know the extent of yet.
What makes you think the likes of Rove and Atwater will even be on Trump’s side? They’re Establishment Pubs.
Not them specifically, of course. But their sort of campaign? Absolutely. Do you honestly think the RNC rank and file, “establishment” or not, will not support Trump if he wins the nomination?
My dream is that the establishment GOP wakes up and realizes a Trump presidency would be worse for them than a Dem presidency, and gives up on the election this year and helps the Dems. Its a nice dream
That won’t happen exactly, but many might decide just to sit this one out.
I hope that doesn’t happen-the last thing we need are more Country Clubbers and Rockefeller Republicans in the Democratic Party.
Surely they would be better than these Teahadist bunch? I want a sane GOP that I’m not terrified of getting power. Bring back the Country Clubbers and Rockefellers!
While that sort of pivoting, extreme for the primaries but more moderate for the general, is classic political theory, I’m not sure it’s still possible in this age of ubiquitous video recording. Try that now, and somebody is going to play back one of your earlier speeches at you, and ask you why you’re flip-flopping.
If Trump wins the nomination, the Republican party will largely fall in line. There are already signs of that happening. The idea that they would just give up on the election is delusional; that’s not how political parties work. In the general, Trump is certainly a rich target and I think Hillary will beat him quite easily. However I doubt that Bernie has the stomach to run the all-out negative campaign that would work. My guess is he will try to take the high road but after experiencing the full fury of the GOP onslaught, he will relent and run half-hearted negative attacks which will fail.
While I don’t think Trump will be able to completely redefine his image, I think he will be able to shift it significantly during 6 months of a general campaign not least because he has a genuinely moderate streak so it’s not something he would be faking. Voters have short memories and on election day they will remember what Trump has been saying in the previous few months more than all the crazy stuff he said in 2015.
Again, I agree that Trump has serious weaknesses in the general, it’s just I think Bernie’s weaknesses are bigger once the Republican attack maestros are done with him.
Bernie might not actually be so stupid as to think the high road will work. I haven’t followed him, but he’s been in politics for many many decades…
But it doesn’t take much. If the Republicans are less enthused, and that translates to a lack of votes, it doesn’t take much for that to lead to a Democrat victory. Not as long as the country is roughly divided in half.
Just a significant portion of the Evangelicals sitting out because they can’t vote Dem, but they can’t vote for Trump could be a loss.
What Sanders and Clinton do would just be on top of that. All they’d need to do is not fuck things up.
Not that I think Trump will win. The GOP response to the State of the Union was more anti-Trump than anti-Obama! Hating Trump seems to have bipartisan support.
One of the problems with a Trump vs. Sanders matchup is that Trump has an easy way to beat Sanders: just emphasize the fact that he’s a fairly liberal Republican, rather than a blowhard racist. It’s a lot easier for Trump to move to the center(especially since he’s already there on most issues) than Sanders.
Heck, this could all just be Trump’s master plan: throw red meat to the base in the primaries, emphasize his centrism in the general.
That would just lead to the far right staying home (and the down-ballot elections taking a hit).