Why I want to see Senator Sanders run for the Democratic nomination for President

[Jim Lane]

44. As I said, you have your facts wrong.

The graph you post shows the favorability rating for Clinton over several years. Better than just favorable would be favorable and unfavorable, because analysts often look at the net (be it positive or negative) as one important datum about a politician, but this graph is at least something.

What you have NOT posted is the comparable data (historical or even just current) for Sanders. The point is that "Bernie Sanders is the first choice of 8% of the Democrats" is not the same as "Bernie Sanders got 8% approval ratings." I'm sure there are plenty of Democrats who would say "Approve" rather than "Disapprove" about Clinton and Biden and Warren and Sanders.

Until I see hard polling data, I'll persist in my guess that Sanders has very low numbers for approval and for disapproval -- much lower than Clinton's in both cases. The current state of the polls reflects candidates' name recognition. The key question is where Sanders's net will be, compared with Clinton's, if his name recognition increases. (Of course, a related question is whether the corporate media will ever allow Sanders's name recognition to increase much.)