General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 87% of African Americans view Hillary Clinton favorably [View all]DemocratSinceBirth
(101,756 posts)NV and CO are heterogeneous states.
I was thinking of historical parallels to Bernie's candidacy in our generation (1984-present) and which candidates occupied the same political if not ideological space as Bernie, i.e., an outsider... In 84 you had Hart, an outsider, who did quite well but he was an incredibly charismatic guy with a cowboy aura however he couldn't beat the insider Mondale because of his strength among traditional Democratic constituencies and it was probably even harder for Mondale because Jesse Jackson stripped him of a significant Democratic constituency, African Americans... The 88 race is a little fuzzy to me now... I just remember Dukakis and Jackson. In 1992 you had Tsongas running an outsider race and while he did well with elites he eventually got crushed by Clinton because of his appeal to more traditional Democratic voters... 00, the insider Gore crushes the outsider Bradley for roughly the same reasons his boss vanquished Tsongas. In O4 the insider Kerry beat the outsiders...In 08 you had a lot of insiders; Obama, Clinton, Dodd, and Richardson and Obama emerged victorious.
I enjoy our conversation.