I hope we have a lot of trolls here at DU.

[jeff47]

154. Fucking polls and their right-wing bias, right?

Clinton is not polling well among Democratic-leaning independents. Very large deficits in likeability and trust. (They usually don't poll independents for primary votes, on the assumption they can't or won't vote in the primary. So we've got to go with secondary traits).

Democrats are about 30% of the electorate. Democratic-leaning independents are about 20% of the electorate. Republican-leaning independents are about 20% of the electorate....but they will never vote for a Democrat. True "swing" voters that will vote for either party are a negligible fraction of the electorate.

So, if we only get Democrats, we lose. We have to get Democratic-leaning independents.

They will not "fall in line". They are not Democrats, so you can't rely on party loyalty.

They will not vote based on "Republicans bad". That's why their turnout was abysmal in 2014, 2010, 2004 and 2000. It's also why their turnout went way down in 2012 compared to 2008, but Obama managed to get enough of them out to win.

They are also to the left of the median Democrat. "Pivot to the center" is exactly the wrong thing to do in order to get there vote. Pollsters will often pretend independents are a monolithic block, but they aren't. Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning independents are very different. Treating them as one block creates the illusion that they are centrists, because you are effectively averaging pseudo-Democrats and pseudo-Republicans.

Clinton as the nominee is extremely dangerous in the general election. The bigger issue is Team Clinton doesn't seem to think that there is even the possibility of a problem, much less have a plan for dealing with it.