Czarcasm wrote: “Bullshit. This imaginary world were he could have gathered together the Democratic Party and run roughshod over Trump and/or the Republican Party never could have happened. Do you really think they didn’t think about how to handle Bernie, that they didn’t have a big “He’s A Socialist” campaign ready to go?”
Yeah, by the time that the GOP propaganda machine got done with Bernie, folks would have thought he wad Josef Stalin.
Well, maybe. They tried that with Obama, and he won twice.
I used to be in the “Sanders wouldn’t have won either” camp, but I have to admit that the Electoral College results do give me pause. The states in which Sanders’s message would have resonated most loudly are the very ones Clinton lost by a whisker that cost her the Presidency - Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We can’t re-run history to experiment, but it is not impossible Sanders could have carried those states as well as the ones Clinton did carry. Maybe even Florida too, which allows him to lose something Clinton won, like Virginia. There is also substantial evidence that Clinton really did fail to elicit any sort of excitement surge, if you will. That might have helped Sanders make up some ground.
Again, we can’t know for sure. But it would have been possible.
So we can’t say “jig” because it might offend somebody who thinks it sounds like a racial slur?
Does this mean I shouldn’t say that I think that is one dumb trigger?
That depends-what the hell is a “dumb trigger” and why would you call someone that?
jig is a dumb “trigger word”. Thought that was implied by the context.
I wonder about that, too. Unlike Obama, who is only a Marxist or socialist in some sort of alternative fact reality, Bernie does seem to be a flavor of socialist. I never thought he could win for this reason, but, like you, I do wonder now,
Sanders would have lost some number of “Aaaagh! Communist/Socialist (and Jewish, to boot!)” voters. He would have gained a number of “anyone but Hillary” voters. I suspect the second number is larger than the first, but we may never know.
But you are not factoring in how nasty the Trump/Republican campaign would have been against Bernie, I think. It would have gone far beyond just “He says he is a socialist!” rhetoric.
The campaign against Clinton was that she was a criminal that Trump promised to put in prison, with a few veiled suggestions that she be assassinated. How could the campaign have been nastier?
He would have nailed the bed-hair vote.
Not any nastier, objectively speaking. But subjectively I do think the “socialist! marxist! communist!” lines of attack would be rather more impactful on a Sanders campaign. As above, could be wrong. But…I think he would have a rough time of it in a different way than Clinton did. Who was a more toxic candidate is closer to being a toss-up than I once assumed, but neither was a particularly strong choice.
It wouldn’t have to be as nasty a campaign because, numbers-wise(no matter how you look at it) he just wasn’t that popular a candidate-you don’t get more votes just because you are more enthusiastic about your candidate of choice. His campaign reminded by a lot of the Perot campaign-loud, raucous and full of (vague) promise…but low on actual votes.
Ever wonder how many tighty-righties voted in the Dem primaries for Obama, figuring he would lose?
I just consider that the first round of (a very successful) Operation Deny-HRC-the-White-House.
Yes, I’m sorry too that he did not fix the Republican FUCK UPS fast enough. Too bad that an obstructive Republican congress hampered him in every way.
That’s how it went in your mind? Obama was a fearless advocate for cutting the deficit, only to be stymied by an adversarial Congress with Republicans insisting that, “no, we can’t possibly cut spending, we need to maintain current deficit-spending levels”?
No, what he should have done is borrow a buttload of money to buy concrete, steel, and all that good stuff to fix shit. Plus, hire all the workers required to fix shit. Because now, after even a feeble recovery, we still have to fix shit, because we didn’t! And its going to cost us more to borrow the money, pay the workers, and buy the concrete and steel.
There are times when borrowing money is the only responsible thing to do.