Bernie Can Win With Help of Party Insiders

[davidlynch]

It is now almost certain that the Democratic Convention will be contested. Although Bernie cannot win the nomination "fair and square" (i.e., through pledged delegates), he can win if party insiders (super delegates) purposely tip the scales in Bernie's direction.

Although this selection process would be undemocratic, it could nonetheless make sense for the Democratic party as a whole, because Bernie has a better chance of beating Trump.

According to recent polls, either Hillary or Bernie should theoretically beat Trump; however, Bernie would beat Trump by a wider margin, particularly if you ignore national polls and focus on state-level contests and the electoral college.

The key question for insiders is this: do we take advantage of the extra margin that Bernie provides, or do we accept greater risk of losing the general election by running Hillary?

We know that the party insiders would strongly prefer Hillary for many reasons, but given the math, they have to be thinking about this very carefully. They cannot be arrogant and assume that Trump is a moron and that Hillary will beat him hands down. Remember Regan and Bush?

If the insiders decide to run Hillary, I would not be surprised if she loses to Trump. But I would also not be surprised if Bernie loses to Trump.

However, Bernie has one huge advantage, and that is that he stimulates voter turn-out. Whether you support Bernie or not, the fact is that he is more effective at turning out the votes, particularly younger voters. Conversely, Hillary would have the opposite effect. Recent polls suggest that a solid 33% of Bernie supporters identify as "Bernie or Bust" meaning they won't vote for Hillary under any circumstances. If Hillary cannot make peace with that group of voters, her chance of winning the general election becomes extremely dicey.

Anyone that believes Hillary is a slam dunk against Trump is not paying attention to history or the math. Sadly there are no guarantees, for Hillary or Bernie. The point of this post is that looking at it from a strictly pragmatic standpoint, Bernie is a safer bet in the general election. Insiders will have to carefully weigh whether that extra safety is worth giving up their clearly-preferred candidate Hillary.

[IamMab]

1. From "revolutionary" to "safe bet." My, how Sanders has fallen... nt

[Sheepshank]

27. safe bet with party insiders?

They guy who can barely find peer support has insiders?

Are we to assume then that Bernie insiders beats Hillary insiders?

That's a new one.

[BootinUp]

2. This stuff is going to be funny fucking decades from now. nt

[griffi94]

3. I guess for many Bernie supporters the dream dies hard.

[NurseJackie]

4. Wow! I did not know that ...

However, Bernie has one huge advantage, and that is that he stimulates voter turn-out.

Well THAT explains his HUGE lead in votes and delegates! Who knew?

Bernie has a better chance of beating Trump.

Because the candidate who has fewer votes than Trump is the one who will defeat Trump? Got it!

[Jitter65]

8. THAT!! nt

[fun n serious]

51. Lol!!

Isn't it incredible that a Presidential candidate is leading his flock to believe this shit? LMAO

[Buzz Clik]

5. You giving odds?

[auntpurl]

6. "However, Bernie has one huge advantage, and that is that he stimulates voter turn-out." Whaaa?

How do you figure? Bernie is losing to Hillary by more than 3 million votes, and has received fewer votes than Trump.

He stimulates rally turnout, I'll give you that. Bumper stickers, yard signs turnout, sure. But voters? Not so much.

Edited to add: Also, thought Bernie was supposed to be the revolutionary candidate? Now he's a safe bet. The narrative, it is a-changing.

[grossproffit]

20. It's mind boggling and it gets worse by the day.

[thesquanderer]

36. Hillary is weak at stimulating voter turn-out OUTSIDE the Dem base... and you need that to win.

That's why it's a tougher contest with her against Trump. And why you see things like the poll that said that 24% of otherwise likely voters would stay home in a Clinton vs Trump contest. Both their unfavorables are so high among teh general electorate.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/24_opt_out_of_a_clinton_trump_race

[Gothmog]

61. Are Sanders general election polls fools gold?

These polls are worthless because Sanders has not been vetted by the media http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read-three-weeks-go-three-margin-error-races-n493946

Not surprisingly, Sanders' campaign is touting those general-election numbers. "There was fresh evidence on Sunday that confirms Bernie Sanders would be the most electable Democratic Party nominee for president because he performs much better than Hillary Clinton," the campaign blasted out to reporters yesterday. But here is a legitimate question to ask: Outside of maybe New Hampshire (where Sanders enjoys a geographic advantage), are Sanders' general-election numbers fool's gold? When is the last time you've seen national Republicans issue even a press release on Sanders? Given the back-and-forth over Bill Clinton's past -- and given Sanders calling Bill Clinton's behavior "disgraceful" -- when is the last time anyone has brought up the candidate's 1972 essay about a woman fantasizing about "being raped by three men simultaneously"? Bottom line: It's always instructive to take general-election polling with a grain of salt, especially 300 days before the general election. And that's particularly true for a candidate who hasn't actually gone through the same wringer the other candidates have.

These match up polls are not meaningful at this stage

[sufrommich]

7. I'm going to take a wild guess that the Sander's campaign strategy of

trashing the democratic party while running for the nomination of democratic party isn't going to end up being the bold stroke of genius that he must have imagined it would be.

[auntpurl]

9. legit lol nt

[Sheepshank]

29. ok...that just made me chuckle out loud. n/t

[NCTraveler]

10. Truth: "Bernie cannot win the nomination fair and square" You nailed it right there.

"However, Bernie has one huge advantage, and that is that he stimulates voter turn-out."

No way that line was typed with a straight face.

[wildeyed]

11. I thought this was going to be a joke post.

OMG, the IRONY! Bernie courting the insiders, the dreaded ESTABLISHMENT, asking them to overrule the will of the people and appoint Bernie Sanders as the winner!

None of that other stuff you types is true.

- No one has run negative against Sanders yet, so we have no idea how that will turn out.

- I dunno where you get the 33% number. Seems high, but it probably includes a bunch of people who had not voted before and were not planning to vote in the GE. I could know this for sure if you provided a link to verify any of your statements.

- Bernie does NOT stimulate voter turnout for a significant portion of the Democratic base. That statement is just wrong. Who do you even call "the base"?

"Clearly preferred candidate"? WTF? He got fewer votes. Clearly preferred BY YOU, maybe, but that is not how democracy works.

[davidlynch]

12. It Is Ironic and Disturbing--BTW Hillary is the clearly preferred candidate (updated OP)

[Peace Patriot]

13. Clinton has a constituency within the Democratic Party and nowhere else.

So those upthread who cite the votes she's gotten within the Democratic Party as evidence that she'll win the GE are omitting the most important fact about the GE: Independents now comprise 40% of the electorate and they mostly loathe Hillary Clinton. And, overall in the electorate, her numbers on trustworthiness and favorability are extremely low.

This is the problem of the Democratic Party--of which I've been a member for 50+ years. "Closed" primaries, stacked primaries and vote suppression favored an establishment candidate whose negatives are extreme. Further, the American people are in rebellion--a rebellion that's been boiling beneath the surface for some time. Both Sanders and Trump have tapped into this latent revolution. Is the Democratic Party going to let it pass them by? Is it willing to risk Trump benefitting from the unrest in this country? Sanders beats Trump by twice the margins that Clinton does, and has been doing so in polls since January. Her margins over Trump are only just above the margins of error. Sanders slaughters Trump.

[JudyM]

15. And while some will jump on this comment, a good deal of her margin over Sanders will have

no value at all to the party in November -- it is an illusion to those who think it matters. There are some states we simply will not win despite her greater popularity there relative to Sanders.

[mythology]

22. As opposed to states like

Oklahoma, Idaho, and Utah? You can't discount red states Clinton won but count red states that Sanders won and be intellectually honest.

[JudyM]

23. Talking about the numbers, not just the states themselves.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

46. She walloped the Vermont independent in OH, VA, NC, and FL

Those have been the most coveted swing states in the past several elections.

[JudyM]

55. Trump wasn't that strong in OH or NC.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

57. I don't see a path to the White House for the GOP without NC and OH.

In fact I don't believe the GOP has won the White House without OH in generations.

[JudyM]

59. Not disagreeing here. Just that he won't be tough to beat in those states.

[Gothmog]

62. Sanders has not been vetted yet because no one thinks he will be the nominee

The premise of Sanders' lame claim that he should stay in is that he is a better candidate in the general election. That claim is simply false. Sanders has not been vetted which means that Sanders is very vulnerable to attack ads. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/04/19/some-republicans-see-socialist-bernie-sanders-as-the-weaker-opponent/

But allow me to highlight what I think is an under-appreciated aspect of this whole “electability” argument.

This current situation is in many ways unprecedented, and makes it harder than ever to gauge which candidate is more electable this fall. We have one Democratic candidate who has been a major national figure for 25 years, and has been subjected to unrelenting national attacks for just as long, and one Democratic candidate who legitimately is significantly more liberal than many in the party.

And so, it’s at least possible that two decades of attacks on Clinton are baked into her polling against the GOP candidates. Nor can the possibility be dismissed that some of Sanders’s positions (middle class tax hikes as part of a transition to single payer, which he defends on the grounds that Americans would benefit overall) could be made into liabilities, if Republicans prosecuted attacks on them effectively. There is a danger in being too risk averse, of course, but that doesn’t mean there is no chance that Republicans could successfully use these positions to paint Sanders as an ideological outlier, as those GOP strategists suggest above.

Of course, the fact that Sanders is a relative unknown nationally, at least compared to Clinton, could conceivably play in his favor — if he could successfully rebut GOP attacks on his proposals and background, he might arguably end up having less baggage in a general election than does Clinton, given her dismal personal ratings. And the rise of negative partisanship — in which voters are motivated more than ever by dislike of the other side — could also help mitigate any negatives about Sanders.

The point is that gaming out the electability argument — either way — is made harder than ever by the fact that the juxtaposition of these two particular figures has created such a strange and unique situation.

Match up polling is meaningless unless both candidates are fully vetted. Sanders is not vetted and is very vulnerable

[DemocratSinceBirth]

41. Because the Republicans have left Sanders alone, Drumpf is practically hugging him.

[hootinholler]

14. Hillary will also stimulate voter turnout

The problem with that is she will stimulate Republican voters to turn out.

[JudyM]

16. That was the pivot point for me, initially. Recognizing the emotional drive many rethugs will

have to vote *against* her, where they'd otherwise just as soon sit it out.

[grossproffit]

18. 3 of my Republican girlfriends are already phone banking for Hillary.

They started right before the Arizona primary.

[grossproffit]

17. Yeah, he stimulated voters to both turn out and vote for Hillary.

[OilemFirchen]

19. Dude, I LOVE your movies.

I see that you've taken up surrealistic writing as well.

From a fan... stick to the film.

[Tarc]

21. You really do not know what the word "contested" means, in the context of a convention

particularly the Democratic convention.

[davidlynch]

24. Hillary and Bernie Have Opposite Effects on Voter Turnout...

These points really come from other posts, and I think these are important observations:

1. Bernie will turn out more independents than Hillary.
2. Hillary will turn off independents discouraging them from voting.
3. Bernie is disliked by Republicans, but he's not hated.
4. Hillary is hated by many Republicans, she will enrage them, encouraging them to vote.

[fun n serious]

26. Hillary has already PROVEN she has a better VOTER TURNOUT!nt

[BreakfastClub]

31. Bernie would lose every state but Vermont when the GOP was done with him. You

think republicans hate Hillary? They would despise Bernie after they find out he's a "socialist" who wants to take their money and give it to lazy bums who don't work. THAT is what they will say. That and a whole lot more. Thankfully, we're not going to have to watch that nightmare unfold because Hillary will be our nominee.

[thesquanderer]

33. re: "Bernie would lose every state but Vermont"

I seem to remember hearing that kind of thing around here about the primaries, too.

Sure, Bernie will be beat up about things (socialist, etc.). So will Hillary, from emails to Clinton Foundation to Bosnian sniper fire to the golden oldies. At least Bernie is starting from a much lower set of unfavorables to begin with, plus he's not under any cloud of investigation by the FBI.

[COLGATE4]

48. Can't you see the Willie Horton-type ads now:

View" Highly Unflattering photo of Sanders, with discreet little Stars of David and Hammers and Sickles strategically placed. Text about him 'honeymooning in Russia', segue to how the 'Socialist Commies who supported the Commies in Nicaragua and Cuba are now comin' to 'take yer guns', 'take yer money' and -segue - give them to all the welfare queens and gay cross-dressers who want to use your child's bathroom'. And that would only be the first ad.

[fun n serious]

25. "Voter turnout" you say?

Bernie has NOT proved he has this advantage.

[Agnosticsherbet]

28. So Sanders is now a Party Insider running against an outsider?

And insiders will fix the election for him.
LOL...

[Firebrand Gary]

30. Oh my, my, my...

[MisterP]

32. and the factor of self-preservation: even if she wins the delegates and honchos have failed her

her world is black and white, either a 101% unconditional loyalist or a plant, stooge, rival, intruder, slanderer, backstabber

if she wins she'll see the party as having failed her by letting it get so close--they're betraying her, and it's on a personal level

she'll win, they'll be punished, they might not even have careers any more

[Ferd Berfel]

34. If the Party "Elders" want to beat Drumpf and re-populate the Senat and House

they'd better figure this out quick.

SHe will not get Independents - she can't with without independents. Bernie can.

[davidlynch]

35. Whenever I see Drumpf I imagine Arianna Huffington saying it...

Her accent is perfect for it!

[Ferd Berfel]

38. HAven't heard her but

I still la every time I think of John Olivers segment and the hat

"Make Donald Drumpf Again"

[brooklynite]

37. Please call your Superdelegates and try to convince them based on national head-to-head polls...

They've been working hard and will enjoy a good laugh.

[davidlynch]

40. National polls don't matter, look at state-by state polls...

Listen to Bernie's recent press conference and he goes over the percentages state by state. In key swing states, Bernie has a bigger margin, typically 5-7%

[DemocratSinceBirth]

44. Since you are data driven

Dr. Larry J. Sabato is the founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He is also the University Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, and has had visiting appointments at Oxford University and Cambridge University in Great Britain. A Rhodes Scholar, he received his doctorate from Oxford, and he is the author or editor of two dozen books on American politics.

Prof. Sabato directs the Center for Politics’ Crystal Ball website, a leader in accurately predicting elections since its inception. In 2004, the Crystal Ball notched a 99 percent accuracy rate in predicting all races for House, Senate, Governor and each state’s Electoral College outcome. In 2006, the Pew Research Center and the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Project for Excellence in Journalism recognized the Crystal Ball as the leader in the field of political predictors, noting that the site “came closer than any other of the top ten potential predictors this cycle.”
In 2008, the Crystal Ball came within one electoral vote of the exact tally in the Electoral College, while also correctly picking the result of every single gubernatorial and Senate race across the country. In 2010, the Crystal Ball was the first to forecast a solid Republican takeover of the House. While others were predicting a Romney victory in 2012, the Crystal Ball forecast a substantial Obama margin in the Electoral College, and ultimately missed just two states. The Crystal Ball had a combined 97% accuracy rate in forecasting the Electoral College, Senate, House and gubernatorial contests.
Earlier this year, the Crystal Ball won a “Beast Best” award from The Daily Beast as one of the top political sites on the web.
In 2013 Prof. Sabato won an Emmy award for the television documentary Out of Order, which he produced to highlight the dysfunctional U.S. Senate. In 2014, Prof. Sabato won a second Emmy award for the PBS documentary The Kennedy Half-Century, which covers the life, assassination, and lasting legacy of President John F. Kennedy.
In October 2013, Prof. Sabato and the Center for Politics unveiled the Kennedy Half Century project. The project consisted of a New York Times bestselling book, The Kennedy Half-Century PBS documentary, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available on Coursera and iTunes U, an app with the complete recordings and transcripts from Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63, and a website (www.thekennedyhalfcentury.com).
Prof. Sabato is also very active on social media. His Twitter feed (@LarrySabato) was named by Time Magazine as one of the 140 best Twitter feeds of 2014.

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/staff_sabato.html

And if that doesn't convince you:

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/winner



And if that and that doesn't convince you:

I should note that the polls have been telling us this information for some time. In the first half of March, Clinton led Trump by a median of 9 percentage points. Using an SD of 4.5 percentage points, her win probability would come out as 93%. So today’s estimate has been knowable for several months.

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/05/01/what-do-head-to-head-general-election-polls-tell-us-about-november/#more-15484

[DemocratSinceBirth]

39. Hillary Clinton's 3,000,000 vote lead comes from women and people of color.

The Democratic party is not going to steal the election from their most stalwart supporters. The notion they would is fantastical.

[tonyt53]

52. Thank you for a voice of reality

[DemocratSinceBirth]

53. You also can't compare a candidate who has been vetted to one who hasn't

The GOP has given Hillary a virtual colonoscopy. They have given Bernie Hosannas.

[johnp3907]

42. davidlynch?

Good screen name, considering the surrealist quality of this post.

[firebrand80]

43. Rage for the Machine nt

[workinclasszero]

45. Sanders can beat Hillary with party insiders? ROTFLMAO!

For one Sanders condemned doing that very thing a few months ago so that would make him a liar and a hypocrite.

Sanders allies warns superdelegates to not 'thwart the will of the people'
By ELIZA COLLINS 02/11/16 10:23 AM EST
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-superdelegates-219126

And I want to see the list of pretty much life long dems foolish enough to flush it all down the drain for a guy that views them as corporate whores, enemies of democracy and has publicly expresses his disgust and hate for the democratic party many times over the years!

[Nonhlanhla]

47. Here is how the Democratic Party will lose a ton of votes:

Women and People of Color (especially African Americans) are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and its most reliable voting blocks. Hillary is a woman (in case you missed that) and would be the first female presidential candidate for a major party. She has won the most pledged delegates to a large extent because of the votes of People of Color, and she is running on the record of the nation's first African American president.

Bernie is a white guy - to be sure, Jewish and not particularly religious, both of which would be historic firsts. But he is still a white guy, and he is from a lily-white state. He has, moreover, gained most of his delegates because of white male votes (yes, I know women and People of Color have also voted for him, but white males is the only demographic group that he wins outright within the Democratic Party, unless you want to count the youth vote separately as a demographic group - but that is not a very reliable voting group, sadly).

So let's take the nomination from the woman who has won the majority of delegates based on a diverse coalition, and give it a white guy with fewer delegates and whose coalition within the Democratic Party is far less diverse. I'm sure that will go down REALLY well with the Democratic Party's most reliable voting blocks.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

50. The race in 08 was so close, given the mess in FL and MI, that the Supers could have went with...

The race in 08 was so close, given the mess in FL and MI, that the Supers could have went with either candidate. This race isn't nearly, nearly...nearly as close. However the Supers weren't about to spit in the eyes of African American voters who gave Barack Obama his bare majority. It would have been collective suicide.

[Nonhlanhla]

54. You are absolutely right

The idea that the superdelegates would go for Bernie is absurd. Not only is the race not close at all, but taking the nomination away from the first female candidate to give it to a man, and taking it away from someone who won based on the votes of PoC to give it to a white man whose supporters tend to be white? Not good optics at all, and the supers know that.

[Gothmog]

63. Democrats would be insane to nominate Sanders

Sanders is not the stronger candidate. The match up polls cited in the OP are worthless because Sanders has not been vetted Dana Milbank has some good comments on general election match up polls https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-would-be-insane-to-nominate-bernie-sanders/2016/01/26/0590e624-c472-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-for-wide-side_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.

Watching Sanders at Monday night’s Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump — or another Republican nominee — would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the “socialist” label and requested that Sanders define it “so that it doesn’t concern the rest of us citizens.”

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don’t want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: “Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top — that’s my definition of democratic socialism.”

But that’s not how Republicans will define socialism — and they’ll have the dictionary on their side. They’ll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They’ll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn’t be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States .

Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases — “one of the biggest tax hikes in history,” as moderator Chris Cuomo put it — to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that “hypothetically, you’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes,” and declared, “W e will raise taxes, yes we will.” He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that “it’s demagogic to say, oh, you’re paying more in taxes.”

Well, yes — and Trump is a demagogue.

Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government “bigger than ever,” Sanders didn’t quarrel, saying, “P eople want to criticize me, okay,” and “F ine, if that’s the criticism, I accept it.”

Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.

Match up polls are worthless because these polls do not measure what would happen to Sanders in a general election where Sanders is very vulnerable to negative ads.

[Nonhlanhla]

64. Oh, I absolutely agree with you.

There really is no reason to nominate Bernie. He has fewer pledged delegates than Hillary; nominating him in place of the party's first female candidate who has been supported overwhelmingly by PoC will send a BAD message to the party's core constituents; and as you rightly point out, and GE polls at this stage are utterly meaningless.

In short, the Bernie camp is delusional if they think this will happen.

[Codeine]

49. If he was that effective at turning out younger voters

hed bloody well have the nomination in hand. Youth voting hasn't had nearly the jump I anticipated after all the hype.

[WhiteTara]

56. Bernie packs rallies but doesn't necessarily turn out voters

or he would be winning.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

58. .

:large

[Gothmog]

60. The match up polls cited in the OP are worthless

These match up polls are worthless but they are all that Sanders has to make the electablity argument. Here are two good threads talking about these worthless polls See http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511821988#post4 and http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511038010

The reliance on these polls by Sanders supporters amuse me. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/harrys-guide-to-2016-election-polls/

Ignore hypothetical matchups in primary season – they also measure nothing. General election polls before and during the primary season have a very wide margin of error. That’s especially the case for candidates who aren’t even in the race and therefore haven’t been treated to the onslaught of skeptical media coverage usually associated with being the candidate.

Sanders supporters have to rely on these worthless polls because it is clear that Sanders is not viable in a general election where the Kochs will be spending $887 million and the RNC candidate may spend an additional billion dollars.

No one should rely on hypo match up type polls in selecting a nominee at this stage of the race. Sanders would be a very weak general election candidate