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

[jeff47]

162. You don't need to be well-liked by the party. The party will be turning out no matter what.

You need "marginally-attached Democratic-leaning voters". They turned out for Obama in 2008, and to a much lesser extent in 2012. They stayed home in 2010 and 2014.

The difference? Obama 2008 ran as a "change" candidate. 2010 and 2014, the national strategy was "Republican-lite". 2012 was a combination of disheartened teabaggers and a few dregs of "change we can believe in".

"But the vast middle is unrepresented!!" is crap from the lazy media. "The middle" consists of two groups, a left-leaning group and a right-leaning group. They will never vote for the opposite party. They will stay home or vote depending on how much the Democrat or Republican inspires them to vote - either for or against.

Clinton will be inspiring a lot of right-leaning voters to vote against her, because Clinton is Satan incarnate to them. Sanders and O'Malley won't be able to inspire as much hatred. Even the "socialist" label won't be as effective, because they already think all Democrats are socialists.

At the same time, 2008 Clinton is not inspiring to the left-leaning group. They're starving for change and 2008 Clinton was more status-quo. It's way too early to know if 2016 Clinton can tap into this "change" mood, but it's a much harder task than Sanders. Sanders will get it if he can get media attention. Clinton is going to have to work hard to get it.

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

The argument is phrased as "Clinton is tested". A large part of that testing is her Senate victories - otherwise you're left with claiming she's tested because she didn't curl up into a ball when attacked as First Lady or SoS. That's not exactly a high bar to get over.

"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

We still are "coming off that". Warren is a freshman Senator that was catapulted into the leadership. That is unheard of. It was done because the country is seething with rage at the status quo, and Warren was in a perfect position to exploit that against the status-quo-embedded leadership.

So running as a "change" candidate should be extremely effective.

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

My personal response is pretty meaningless. Clinton will not be able to win NC. NC is a few deep pools of neon-blue in a shallow sea of neon-red. Low-to-moderate urban turnout means the Democrat loses. High urban turnout can overwhelm rural turnout, but Clinton hatred will be a massive boost to rural turnout while having trouble getting high urban turnout.

So I'll have the luxury of a meaningless vote (To be re-evaluated much closer to election day).

But thanks for bringing this back around to loyalty oaths.