Why is the desperation to get Bernie out of the race so off the charts?

[CobaltBlue]

69. Skwmom—A New Day

The 2016 United States is not the same as 2008.

The country is more left than it has been in decades—and this is especially the case with Millenials.

Take a moment and refer to the Republicans and Democrats as not being political parties but businesses. Their business happens to be electoral politics.

The 18–29 voters are Democrats’ age base. (For the Republicans, their base is 65+.)

The youngest voting-age base represents what is likely to take shape American politics in the future.

In 2008, they gave Barack Obama nationally 66 percent of their vote. His 2012 re-election was an underperformance, compared to his first election (re-elected incumbents tend to perform stronger), but he still received 60 percent. (In 2004, John Kerry had just 54 percent of their vote nationwide.)

Between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, it is the latter who is winning the Democratic Party’s age base of support—he averages nationally over 70 percent; and his reaching 80 percent in not only Iowa and New Hampshire but in states not even exit-polled (likely those in which he received more than 55 percent of the statewide vote) plus Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, among others, are the level of numbers which are the dream of all Democratic presidential candidates.

Hillary Clinton, long-established the frontrunner, can lose this age group in the primaries. But, the loss should be around 55 to 60 percent at the worst. Her birth state is Illinois; she lost them there with 86 percent for Bernie Sanders, the second highest percentage of 17–29 voting support he has received according to states’ exit polls. (Bernie Sanders's home state, Vermont, which gave him 86 percent of the overall vote, resulted in him having carried 17–29 voters with 95 percent of their vote.)

His platform has won over the Millenials.

What does the long-established frontrunner do about this? That is, if she is going to win the nomination and get elected the 45th president of the United States, she has to have Bernie Sanders's primaries voters' votes.

Hillary Clinton cannot win the general election without Bernie Sanders’s primaries voters? She is not going to succeed in any effort to circumvent a plausible voting pattern by winning over a sufficient number of Republican-to-Democratic crossover voters, nationally, and conspicuously underperform the 18–29 vote.

Nevada was a power grab by that state’s Democratic establishment. Barbara Boxer just happening to stop in from neighboring California, and addressing Bernie Sanders’s voter to give up on Sanders, was her contribution to trying to set up Sanders/voters as unreasonable and troubling because Boxer and company hope that spills over into the California Democratic presidential primaries on June 07. And the “threats”—according to Nevada chair Roberta Lange, plus the “report” by Jon Ralston—is collusion from a Democratic establishment wanting to shut down Bernie Sanders and his voters, to claim victory for a Hillary Clinton nomination, and move on from Bernie Sanders.

What is politically foolish about this is that makes it possible that Bernie Sanders’s voters would decline in participation and Democratic Party support in the general election. Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 with 51.02 percent and margin of +03.86—and that is not tough to erase if the country shifts Republican. 2000 and 2008—party-flipping years for the White House—averaged about 09 points nationwide. To perform on par with that, a 2016 Donald Trump could win a Republican pickup of the presidency with a national margin of +05, retain all the 2012 Mitt Romney states (206 electoral votes), and flip the lion’s share from the following: Florida (29), Ohio (18), Virginia (13), Colorado (09), Iowa (06), New Hampshire (04), Wisconsin (10), Pennsylvania (20), Minnesota (10), Nevada (06), New Mexico (05), and Michigan (16).

Since it is likely the nomination will go to Hillary Clinton, it is up to her and her campaign with how to handle the general election—her overall campaign. But, no party wins without a key base. And it has been clear since Iowa, on February 01, that Hillary and her camp have been out of touch with the politics of the Millenials.