2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumIf legit polls said Hillary would lose to Trump but Bernie would beat him?
Why would you support Hillary? Be they scandals with merit or not, she's going to be blasted from now till November. And God forbid that one of these scandals have teeth and lead to something.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)To Hillary...and in the general sense of whose opinions actually influence the recipients of their avalanche of bribes...er...contributions.
Gothmog
(145,129 posts)No one including people who like Sanders think that he has been fully vetted or that he is really electable http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/24/bernie-sanders-is-crushing-donald-trump-head-to-head-and-it-doesn-t-mean-a-thing.html
While hes all but called Clinton a harlot, shes barely said a word about him, at least since the very early days of the contest. And while Republicans have occasionally jibed at him, like Lindsey Grahams actually quite funny remark that Sanders went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon and I dont think he ever came back, in far more serious ways, Republican groups have worked to help Sanders weaken Clinton.
That would change on a dime if he became the nominee. I dont think theyd even have to go into his radical past, although they surely would. Michelle Goldberg of Slate has written good pieces on this. He took some very hard-left and plainly anti-American positions. True, they might not matter to anyone under 45, but more than half of all voters are over 45. And then, big-P politics aside, theres all that farkakte nonsense he wrote in The Vermont Freeman in the early 70s about how we should let children touch each others genitals and such. Fine, it was 40-plus years ago but its out there, and its out there.
But if I were a conservative making anti-Sanders ads, Id stick to taxes. An analysis earlier this year from the Tax Policy Center found that his proposals would raise taxes in the so-called middle quintile (40-60 percent) by $4,700 a year. A median household is around $53,000. Most such households pay an effective tax rate of around 11 percent, or $5,800. From $5,800 to $10,500 constitutes a 45 percent increase.
Sanders will respond that your average family will save that much in deductibles and co-payments, since there would be no more private health insurance. And in a way, hed have a pointthe average out-of-pocket expenses for a family health insurance plan in 2015 were around $4,900. But that is an average that combines families with one really sick person needing lots of care with families where they all just go see the doctor once a year, who spend far less. Theyd lose out under socialized health, which Republicans would be sure to make clear.
But all the above suggests a rational discourse, and we know therell be no such thing during a campaign. Itll just be: largest tax increase in American history (which will be true), and take away your doctor (which also might be true in a lot of cases). Theres a first time for everything I guess, but I dont think anyone has ever won a presidential election proposing a 45 percent tax increase on people of modest incomes. And the increases would be a lot higher on the upper-middle-class households that tend to decide U.S. elections.
Bah, you say. Bernie can handle all these things. Plus, hes going to get all those white working-class votes that Clinton will never get. Its true, he will get some of those. But every yin has a yang. How is Sanders going to do with black and Latino voters? They wont vote for Trump, obviously, but surely some percentage will just stay home. This will matter in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, maybe Michiganall states were a depressed turnout from unenthused voters of color might make the difference. The media find discussing this a lot less interesting than they do nattering on about the white working class, but its real, and Trump is smart enough to get out there and say, Remember, black people, Bernie said your votes werent legitimate.
General election polls dont reflect anything meaningful until nominees are chosen and running mates selectedthat is, July. They especially dont reflect anything meaningful when respondents know very little about one of the candidates theyre being asked about. Superdelegates know this, and its one reason why theyre not going to change. I dont blame Sanders for touting these polls; any politician would. But everyone subjected to hearing him do so is entitled to be in on the joke.
Sanders has not been vetted and would be a horrible general election candidate
Arkansas Granny
(31,514 posts)They would bring up dirt on him that even he has forgotten about.
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Gothmog
(145,129 posts)Sanders has not been vetted and so these polls are worthless. 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
Watching Sanders at Monday nights 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 doesnt 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 dont 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 thats my definition of democratic socialism.
But thats not how Republicans will define socialism and theyll have the dictionary on their side. Theyll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. Theyll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldnt be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists dont 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, youre 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 its demagogic to say, oh, youre 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 didnt quarrel, saying, P eople want to criticize me, okay, and F ine, if thats 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.
On Wed May 25, 2016, 02:20 PM an alert was sent on the following post:
Democrats would be insane to nominate Sanders
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2050560
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Gothmog
(145,129 posts)One issue is that some posters keep making the same wrong argument that Sanders is the stronger candidate due to worthless match up polls. Match up polls are only meaningful if both candidates have been fully vetted and in this case Sanders has not been vetted at all. The continued citing of worthless match up polls is not going to change anyone's opinion as to whether Sanders is a viable general election candidate.
George II
(67,782 posts)Tarc
(10,476 posts)My goodness, the Bernifans have been on this tangent for months.
firebrand80
(2,760 posts)Tell a very, very small part of the story, especially while the primary is sill going.
Did Bernie's supporters freak out over polls conducted 6 months before Iowa?
pampango
(24,692 posts)I would still support Bernie. Polls six months before an election as no basis for selecting a candidate. A candidate's principles and policies matter much more at this point in time.
Beacool
(30,247 posts)First of all, polls are like photographs, they only reflect a moment in time. Hillary is currently being attacked on two fronts, by Sanders and by Trump. There's also the fact that people don't really start paying attention until after Labor Day. If Hillary was polling poorly in October, then it would be a matter of concern.
bobbobbins01
(1,681 posts)He hasn't been vetted say the people who bashed him for the past several months. If there was anything substantial to hit him with, rest assured Hillary would have used it way before now.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)...is iffy at best.
How will the numbers change, one might wonder, when Sanders and Clinton are campaigning together, and when Trump has picked Kid Rock for veep?
Too much remains to be seen for May polling to be a guide to November.
brooklynite
(94,501 posts)Could it be that polls, at their most accurate, are expressions of intent? And are subject to change depending on the candidate, the negative campaigning against him, the campaign organization he's got and the financial resources available to him?
randome
(34,845 posts)Why do you think we should not fight back against the GOP?
Why do you think Sanders has failed to be endorsed by the electorate?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)And so on and so forth.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512045907
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)A majority of Democrats already picked Clinton in the only "polls" that matter: voting contests.
beachbumbob
(9,263 posts)Trump would win the election in a Coke walk....