DESPITE What Corporate Media TELLS YOU, Bernie Sanders’ POSITIONS ARE MAINSTREAM

[JonLP24]

11. He supports expanding social security so do 80% of Americans

On that I always remember mainstream Democrats were running around pushing a payroll tax cut for the third year in a row because it makes Republicans look like hypocrites on tax cuts during elections which Obama himself used for rhetoric Bernie Sanders was talking about "lifting the cap" which used to be a traditional Democratic policy and Bernie Sanders seems to be one of the fewer traditional Democrats still around.

The coward strategy or hiding from the truth isn't helpful while liberal policies won the midterms but there is always a drop-off a turnout when the Presidency isn't at stake and will only get worse with Republicans finding creative ways to decrease turnout while Democrats scold those who didn't turnout while Bernie Sanders could inspire turnout.

--



Who turns out to vote and why is of much more than academic interest. In an era of increasingly polarized politics, campaign strategists must decide how much effort to put into persuading independent-minded voters to come out and support their candidate without antagonizing their party’s core supporters, who are more likely to vote anyway. Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were largely due to his campaign’s success in expanding the electorate — inspiring new voters and increasing turnout among blacks.

<snip>

Though political scientists long have noted the midterm dropoff, they don’t agree on precisely what it means. In an influential 1987 article, James E. Campbell theorized that “the surge of interest and information in presidential elections” typically works to the advantage of one party or the other; that party’s partisans become more likely to vote, while those of the disadvantaged party are more likely to stay home during presidential elections. Independents, “lacking a standing partisan commitment…should divide disproportionately in favor of the advantaged party.” Midterm elections lack that “wow” factor, according to Campbell, and turnout among both partisans and independents return to more normal levels and patterns.

A recent paper by Brown University researcher Brian Knight seeks to evaluate that surge-and-decline theory, as well as two competing explanations of why the president’s party nearly always loses seats at the midterms: a “presidential penalty,” or general preference among midterm voters for expressing dissatisfaction with the president’s performance or ensuring that his party doesn’t control all the levers of government, and recurring shifts in voter ideology between presidential and midterm elections. Knight concluded that while all three factors contribute to what he calls the “midterm gap,” the presidential penalty has the most impact.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/24/voter-turnout-always-drops-off-for-midterm-elections-but-why/

It is interesting what people "identify as" but on the issues Americans are solidly liberal -- Republicans use a lot of disinformation & propaganda BS the sit by the radio Rush listeners and Fox News viewed as "most trusted" by the most people out of 24/7 news channels and big 3 stations if they told the truth and they're so desperately clinging to the "tax and spend liberal" label.

Record Number of Americans identify as liberal in 2014



http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/01/09/3609934/more-americans-liberal-2/

I'm interested in probability, numbers, polls, etc as a side hobby so I do see Bernie Sanders as the most mainstream candidate but the media are going to push relentlessly he isn't for so long he wasn't even worth mentioning by the media as a candidate it was always the Bidens or O'Malleys or somebody treated more seriously.