Just for conversations sake, lets say 75 year old Sanders wins the 2016 Election...

[Orrex]

161. I haven't seen anyone make that claim about Clinton, though.

Other claims are made, to be sure, but no one is putting all of her eggs in that basket. She's generally well-liked by the party--even by liberals, and she has decades of experience in the spotlight, not to mention foreign policy experience. Importantly, she's immediately recognizable even by disengaged voters outside of the base.

I haven't heard anyone argue that her weakly-contested election to the Senate is evidence that she can win the general election.


Sanders, however, is a different case. Although he's understandably adored by pretty much every Democrat who knows his name, he has had minimal public visibility on the national stage, just about zero foreign policy experience, and almost no recognition at all outside of the party faithful. And when this is pointed out, Sanders' supporters say "Yeah, but Vermont elected him in a landslide."

Sure. He scored 208,253 votes, slightly more than the second-place finisher in Philadelphia's 2000 mayoral race.

"But wait!" people say. "Obama was an outsider with little foreign policy experience in 2008." Sure. And if we were coming off of eight years of a despised adminstration that stole two elections, started two disastrous wars and destroyed the economy, not to mention squandering international good will following the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history, there might be value in comparing Sanders' chances to Obama's.

As it stands, the comparison is close to meaningless.


On the off chance that Sanders doesn't score the nomination and win the general election, what will be your response?