To the Anti-Sanders folk: Who do you like?

[thesquanderer]

36. Answering your question

Last edited Thu Sep 18, 2014, 11:12 AM - Edit history (1)

Your question: Who here has expressed anything that can be construed as anti-Sanders?

First, to be clear about what I meant by saying anti-Sanders: While the headline was made concise to fit, I explained in the first line of the OP that I was specifically talking about people who are "trashing the idea of Bernie Sanders running to become the Democratic candidate for President"

Examples of people expressing that POV would be VanillaRhapsody and Thinkingabout, whose comments I had responded to in other threads.

As for your comment that you believe he has no chance of being elected, I have two thoughts on that:

(a) it's awfully early to say that. A lot can happen in 2+ years. We don't know which Democrats he would be facing in a primary. (We don't know for certain that Hillary will run, and don't know who else may be in the mix.) We don't know what events may occur over the next 2+ years that shift public perceptions of people. We don't know who the Republicans will put up in 2016. etc. Related to that, as mentioned earlier, lots of people would have given Carter, Clinton, and Obama no chance if you were asking about them 2+ years before the election.

(b) even if you believe he has no chance of winning, I think there is value in having him (or someone with similar progressive positions) run for the nomination, because this country needs all the high profile conversation on these topics as it can get. And even if he trails during the whole process, maybe he does pull the front-runner to the left, and maybe having the conversations helps pull the country further that way as well.

So let me turn that around: What is a good reason that he should NOT run for the nomination?

I wasn't assuming that everyone who doesn't want Sanders to run was looking to protect Hillary, but it is obviously one likely rationale. But that's what led to this OP. Asking the question, whether there are other candidates who are supported by people who would prefer that Sanders didn't run. And yes, as you can see, people did list some.