For me, at the point when Bernie were to get a lock on the nomination, that would be time for me to go into turtle mode. Send a few bucks to the DSCC, do my duty on Election Day, then steel myself to peek at the results late that night. Too depressing to watch the all-too-predictable beating he will be taking in the polls, and I don’t believe in running down the nominee once we have one.
Then if the result is a Republican president and Senate, I will continue to avoid political news for at least a couple years, just as I did starting right after Bush’s reelection.
The Republicans will make every effort to sell the Democratic nominee that way, granted. And it hardly needs to be mentioned that it will be total bullshit. But the customer base for that sales attempt will, of course, be the vast pool of “swing” voters, who don’t already align as (D) or (R).
I’m among those who believe that the Pubbies’ sales pitch would be more effective against a Sanders candidacy than against a Clinton one.
Right. I keep hearing this refrain from Bernheads: “It doesn’t matter: the GOP will paint any Democrat as a wacko commie”. Huh. Okay, then: so a ticket of Noam Chomsky and bell hooks would be just as electable as any other? Really?
It’s true that, especially on far right talk radio, at Breitbart, and in the email forwards your great-uncle Roy constantly plasters on Facebook, any Democrat will be red-baited something fierce. And it’s also true that for hardcore right wing partisans, media attempts to correct this misinformation will fall on deaf ears. But these are not the voters who will decide the election.
Among voters who may lean one way or another, but who are actually open to voting for the other party if they become uncomfortable enough with the nominee of one they lean toward (think of Roy’s wife, Great-Aunt Dorothy, who unbeknownst to Roy votes for Democrats 60-70% of the time), the actual truth–or lack of same–of the attacks really does matter. If a right wing super-PAC runs a “commie” attack ad against Bernie and the Politifact Truth-O-Meter has to rate it at least “Mostly True”, that is going to leave a serious mark.
If the right were warned they’d have to run against a populist lefty, but were allowed to design said lefty’s personal background to their tastes, it’s hard to imagine them coming up with a more perfectly cartoonish straw man than this cranky old Vermonter with the Brooklyn accent and “fellow traveller” stamps in his passport.