The Biden/Klobuchar ticket beats Trump. Trump beats Bernie and whoever.
Trump beats Bernie no matter what. I think Biden can beat Trump with the right VP, he can’t pull a Hillary with the VP pick.
Russia.
Interesting - I got the exact opposite crystal ball. Biden loses handily to Trump, Sanders crushes him in a landslide.
Biden’s only pitch is “Not Trump, not exactly”. Sanders actually has policies and ideas and shit, including a lot of things that a majority of Americans (Republicans included !) want - taxing the cocks off the rich, M4A, maybe possibly doing something about climate change eventually, possibly probably not being a sex creep enabling other sex creeps… I think anybody with a brain would vote for him ; the only question being “how many Americans do not, in fact, have a brain ?”
Then again I thought the same about Jeremy Corbyn, so cum grano salis it all up.
The single individual most likely to win is Trump. The party most likely to win is Democratic. I can’t say that Sanders (or Biden) is most likely to win, because even if he would probably (but not certainly!) beat Trump in the general, he still has to win the Democratic nomination first, and right now, that looks pretty close to 50-50 between Sanders and Biden. So overall, maybe something like 40% Trump, 30% Biden, 30% Sanders (plus assorted other candidates who aren’t completely eliminated yet, and of course with wide error bars on all those numbers).
Trump vs. Biden - Trump. Narrowly, but the incumbent has the edge when the economy is doing well.
Trump vs. Bloomberg - Trump. Somewhat less narrowly - nobody does bombastic New York billionaire like Trump.
Trump vs. Warren - Trump, rather easily. It’s not fair to beat up old ladies, but who said anything about fair?
Trump vs. Sanders - Trump, and it wouldn’t be close. Bernie’s best bet might be to have another heart attack during a debate and hope for the sympathy vote.
Regards,
Shodan
I wish people would understand that seeking a fair distribution of wealth is not “taxing the cocks off the rich.” People need to understand the distinction between “the rich” and “the billionaire class, gigantic multinational holding companies, and ultra-high-stakes stock gamblers.” They need to understand the difference between someone like … oh, let’s say, the richest individual that they are likely to personally know, and someone like Mike Bloomberg.
Picture the richest person you know. Here, I’ll describe the richest person that I know. He has two absolutely amazing estates with spectacular houses, in two different countries; he built (and then sold) two very successful businesses, he dabbled in the entertainment industry, and for the past 20 years he has done essentially nothing other than travel around all over the globe hunting, fishing, and skiing. His name is virtually unknown to the public, but he is close friends with numerous A-list musicians and actors, and he has partied with Bob Dylan and Hunter S. Thompson. Imagine “the high life” and this guy has lived it.
Compared to Mike Bloomberg, he is nothing. NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING. Compared to the amassed wealth of even someone with ONE billion dollars, his net worth would be considered pathetic. PATHETIC! And that’s compared to someone with ONE billion dollars. Let me show you a graphic of Mike Bloomberg’s wealth versus the other candidates. Take a good long look at this. Look at that really goddamn good and hard and let it sink in.
THAT is the wealth that Bernie wants to redistribute. And calling it “wealth” isn’t even doing justice to what it represents. It’s POWER. Like, Superman level power. Zeus and Thor level power. It goes way, way, way, WAY beyond “the rich” and taxing their cocks off.
My thinking is like this:
Bernie would lose to Trump. Why? Because if he’s in the race, he represents a stark choice between his brand of “socialism” and Trump’s brand of… whatever it is, but it’s not socialist. A LOT of people are going to be turned off more by Bernie than they already are by Trump- Bernie represents turning over the applecart in some ways that Trump does not. And for ***most ***people, Trump’s real impact has been in all the sewer gas coming out of his mouth, not in the actual actions. So Bernie will represent a real unknown to them and his whole platform is based on change, and as most people fear the unknown and change, they’ll vote Trump.
Any moderate Democrat might well beat Trump. Why? Because assuming all else is equal vs. 2016, the moderate Democrat has two large advantages Hillary did not. Number one, that person is NOT Hillary. She was a very polarizing candidate due to a lot of her baggage from being First Lady, a Senator and Secretary of State- to a whole lot of people, the election was as much voting against Hillary as it was voting for the GOP or Trump. Second, there’s a considerable number of people who may have voted for Trump under the assumption that the GOP party apparatchiks and organization would rein him in and show him how to be a proper President. The exact opposite has happened, and he’s proven himself a crook, a liar and a generally all around odious character, and this contingent of people won’t vote for him again.
There’s one thing I need to point out, though. At this point it seems that the Democratic nomination is down to Biden or Sanders. If Sanders is nominated, and ends up losing in November, we already know that the Democratic establishment will say that it was obvious he had no chance to win, and therefore the loss is his and his fans’ fault. But one thing I’ve noticed looking through these threads on the SDMB is that if Biden is nominated, and ends up losing in November, many people will blame “Bernie Bros” staying home instead of going out to vote for Biden. So no matter who the Democratic nominee is, if he loses, it’s Bernie Sanders’s fault. (I guess that if Biden wins, his personal qualities will have been what put him over the top, while if Sanders wins, it will have been because Trump was so odious that anybody could have won.)
It’s hard for me not to view this as an example of partisanship. Sanders is no friend of the Democratic party, he’s run as an independent for most of his political career and has been very critical of the Democratic establishment. This, more than the socialism, means partisan Democrats don’t like him and are willing to blame him for any defeat they’ll suffer. But if Biden gets the nomination, then it’s his job to unite the Democratic party and run a campaign that’ll convince Americans to vote for him. It’s perfectly possible that Biden will end up being a terrible candidate or run a terrible campaign and lose against Trump, without it somehow being Sanders’s fault.
2000 years ago there was a prominent Jewish socialist and you know what they did to him.
I think with Sanders. . . the truth is, he’s really not very well known right now, at least when compared to Trump. If he gets the nomination he will get a MASSIVE amount of exposure really quickly. And when he does, some of the statements he’s made and how they are perceived by the MASSES could change his appeal. I mean the things he’s said about the Cuba literacy program, The Boston Bomber’s vote, Bread-lines are a sign of prosperity, etc. . . . he talks a lot. I think we’ve yet to hear the full-depth of what’s he’s said, but we will when he becomes THE candidate. And that could change things.
I almost wrote “This, more than the socialism, means partisan Democrats don’t like him and are willing to use him as a scapegoat for any defeat” but then decided against it.
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I continue to have no fucking clue. None.
Elected him senator from Vermont? Has he been in office THAT long?
Trump will win.
Trump is who we are, and who we will be until a real crisis (not some rando virus or economic downturn) bashes some reality into our collective heads and we refuse to indulge charlatans. Biden is boring. He can put us back to where Trump took over, IF congress will cooperate with him. But where Obama left us was “in the mood for Trump”, so screw that. Sanders is who we need AFTER a real crisis bashes some reality into our collective heads. His way requires cooperation and personal sacrifice, but we as a society are…Trump.
I’m not sure who can beat Tramp because much can happen before November. I AM sure that Tramp fears Biden WILL beat him, and he thinks he can trample any other Dem underfoot. Thus the orange terror will keep pushing Bernie and trying to destroy Biden. Don’t be surprised if DoJ pursues Biden relatives.
At the moment I think Trump wins against all the remaining potential democratic contenders - but out of all of them, Bernie may come closest to defeating him.
Anybody with a brain knows that Bernie’s policies will be dead before he ever takes the oath, and so there’s no point in electing him.
Like you, I suspect many people don’t have a brain, and so they’ll vote for him based solely on the promises.
Trump either way.
Sorry, but I think Trump will beat Biden senseless, if Biden has any senses left by then. I mean, seriously, he’s always been a gaffe machine, and now he’s a senile gaffe industrial complex. Can his VP pick invoke the 25th amendment before the election? And my feeling is if Biden does not win the nomination COMPLETELY cleanly, there will be chaos in the party and the vote will be depressed.
Bernie has made a mistake by identifying himself as a socialist, democratic or otherwise. I mean, the damage is done, there’s really nothing he can do about that now except hope that the Republicans don’t message that effectively. He is banking on there being massive new turnout to win, and so far there is little evidence that’s happening.
Obviously there isn’t a single thing about Trump that isn’t baked into the cake already.
This is of course completely up in the air if there’s a brokered convention. All hell will break loose and who knows what will happen.
Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be the “Saffron Strongman.” The Democrats are NOT filling me with hope that their “champion” can defeat the Mango Menace.