If Sanders was such a great choice, his fans wouldn't have to resort to lies and conspiracy theories

[RichVRichV]

196. I understand the statistics behind polls just fine.

You can argue an online poll has no meaning, and by itself it doesn't. But just like random sample polls, they can show trends. The online polls have favored Bernie since he first declared. They have consistently favored him without fail. That is called a trend.

Maybe you think there's been some effort from the very beginning to manipulate every poll by Bernie's machine. Maybe you believe that Hillary supporters are smarter and avoid every online poll as a monolith..... Or maybe there's just more fervent Bernie supporters than Hillary supporters.

I get that Bernie actually being ahead in something would shatter your universe. I'm truly sorry for that. But the evidence is pretty compelling at this point. Right now Hillary has more people willing to vote for her. Bernie has more people willing to support him. That's called enthusiasm. And no amount of spinning will change that.

Also, while polls don't predict the future with absolute precision, what they can do is give an accurate snapshot of the opinions of the population (provided they are conducted scientifically). For example, they can help answer questions like "who do most people think won the debate" in a way that online polls cannot. They do have some predictive value, moreso when the election is near, but at this point the most useful predictive tools are betting markets.

Once again. polls can give a snapshot of the here and now. They can even be trended to extrapolate probabilities (based upon what we can measure). They cannot predict the future. Never could, never will. A week from now a candidate (any candidate) could commit an act or say something so vile that even their most ardent supporters reject them. Or a world event could happen that dramatically changes peoples priorities. At that point all current polling becomes invalidated. These are but two extreme examples of why polls can't predict the future. And anyone that relies on any poll to decide how they should vote is easily manipulated.

Regarding endorsements, yes, endorsements are perfectly "valid." Endorsements are important, that's why politicians seek them. They aren't polls, and nobody claims that they are. What an endorsement by a politician or a union or other group means is simply that that politician/union/group thinks that candidate X is the best qualified. Also, as Nate Silver and others have documented, endorsements have predictive value, often more even than polls.

Not only did you not acknowledge the hypocrisy between your positions with online polls and endorsements, you doubled down on them. There is no difference between someone in power saying they endorse a candidate and someone in an online poll saying they endorse a candidate. They're the exact same thing. Both are done with the intent to influence. Once again, we can't predict the future. Endorsements don't predict, they influence. This is simple causality we're discussing here.

First of all, SuperPACs don't contribute to campaigns.......
......Funny, it never bothers people when Bernie associates

I could take these one at a time and we could go round and round, but there's no point in doing so. Individually you can try to explain them away forever. However, when judging a candidate you have to do so with the net view of their beliefs and stances. At some point the sheer volume of evidence has to mean something.

None of it, either individually or collectively, comes anywhere close to proving that she's "in it with the corporations."

Yes. If she comes out and says "I favor the well-being of corporations over the well-being of people", that would prove it.

You've already proven that you won't believe anything in a negative light about Hillary. You expect us to take everything she says on her word. You expect us to believe her when she says she's truly against the TPP. You expect us to believe her when she says she's against the KXL. You expect us to believe her when she says she's against corporate donations and not under their influence (all the evidence to the contrary). Despite all that we're supposed to take on faith, when she says she's "guilty of being a moderate" you don't believe her. You still believe she's a liberal. How do you expect anyone to have an intellectually honest debate with you when you set different standards for each side?

In some other countries, she might be considered center-right on certain issues, but not in this country, which is the one we live in. Calling her a Reagan Republican is just silly -- Reagan ushered in supply side economics, cut domestic spending, hugely increased the military, drastically cut taxes, was nakedly anti-environment and anti-union, nominated Scalia and Bork, etc. Please be serious.

I'm very serious. Barrack Obama stated in an interview that he would be a Reagan Republican if it were the 80s. When asked how her presidency would differ from Obama's in the debate, Hillary said she's a woman. She literally had nothing of substance! Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law, which has caused millions of lost jobs in this country. Obama is trying to push through the TPP (among others), NAFTA on steroids. Hillary supported NAFTA and helped negotiate the TPP. None of these people have disavowed supply side economics. None have put a dent in the military spending. When it comes to economics they all share the same third way beliefs.

Sure they're all a lot better than modern Republicans. That's not a bar we should be setting our views to. We should expect and demand more than we're getting, or else we'll never get it.

The only lens that matters is the lens of current American politics. And by that lens, she's clearly a liberal. In case you've missed it, a lot of people on DU are talking about not even voting in the general if Bernie loses because they think that Hillary is not significantly better than the GOP. Believing that requires some serious cluelessness.

Actually virtually no one is saying it anymore, because doing so can get people banned from this site. But it still amazes me that on one hand Hillary supporters can point out how many people would refuse to vote for her and how much Republicans hate her and attack her, then on the other hand keep saying Bernie is the unelectable one in the generals. There's a disconnect there a mile wide.

Finally, it doesn't really matter how far left someone's policies are, what matters is how effective that person will be in fighting with the GOP. Neither Bernie nor Hillary are going to get half of what they are proposing passed into law, the GOP is going to obstruct it all. The same way they've obstructed Obama. The fact that Bernie supports single payer, for example, will make no difference whatsoever in terms of what policies his administration will actually be able to accomplish. In fact, the only way the single payer will make any difference is if that if he actually tries to pass it, in which case he will fail catastrophically, and leave him weakened politically and more vulnerable to the GOP.

This is where Hillary supporters fail to see the real issue. It's never been about which candidate can work with the other side. It's about which candidate can replace the other side. By all accounts, the Democratic party should be dominating. We have the superior message, the sane candidates, Demographics favor us. As people have rightly pointed out, the Republican party should be practically dead. And yet the opposite has happened. Republicans are taking over states left and right. They've taken both chambers of congress (even they can't gerrymander their way into the senate). So why is this happening?

The answer is simple. The Democratic party has spent so long triangulating that we no longer have a strong message to counter theirs. Yes their message might be nuts, but they wear it proudly and loudly. People go with Republicans because only one side is showing strong convictions to their beliefs. What we need to do is switch from a party focused solely on winning to a party focused on fighting.

People are fed up with the middle class disappearing. People are fed up with unions becoming non-existent. People are fed up with losing their jobs over seas. People are fed up with skyrocketing health costs. People are fed up with the staggering bills to get an education. They're no longer responding to smooth talking politicians who spend more time on how their message sounds than what their message means. What people want is someone to fight for them.

You can try to claim Hillary is that person but she's not. She's continuation of the same status quo that hasn't worked for us for the past 35 years. Whether Democrat or Republican the rich keep getting richer and everyone else keeps falling farther behind.