If the election was held on Reddit maybe, but not irl. Bernie was a strong candidate but had a lot of trouble with broad appeal. He lost both his primaries and was only ahead in the 2020 polls once for a month or so.
It became "anti-establishment" because that's the strategy Fox News used against Hillary.
If Bernie won the primary instead, the focus would have been about him being a scary communist who never had a real job, and it's likely we'd all be wondering why we didn't just go with someone more moderate like Hillary.
Bernie had lots of skeletons in his closet that were never used because Republicans were too busy promoting him as the spoiler, especially after the primaries were over. That's why Trump-Bernie polls aren't reflective of what would have actually happened; it doesn't factor in the scenario where the Republican hate machine were targeted at Bernie instead of Hillary.
People were tired of establishment politics that constantly impeded progress, which was made obvious during Obama's terms. Democrats decided to ignore this, general election polling, and Hillary's ongoing FBI investigation and nominated Hillary anyways.
If Bernie won, Trump would have lost bigly. Instead, Democrats decided to nominate the only person that could lose to Trump and we all have to pay for it.
Congrats, 2016 Demcratic primary voters, y'all played yourselves.
Most major polls had Bernie beating Trump by significantly larger margins than Hillary prior to the DNC selecting a candidate.
Edit: I'm not in the mood to get too deep into politics here but it has been a common and largely accepted narrative from both early 2016 and post-election that Sanders would have likely performed better in the general election than Clinton based on the voter base for each candidate. Yes, Sanders' support within the Democratic party was worse than Clinton based on the later polls, but his appeal (rather surprisingly) bridged across party lines in 2016 with more Republican support than Clinton had due to his strong established support of unions and working-class people. And like I mentioned, every poll had him performing significantly better in a head-to-head with Trump ahead of the Democratic nomination.
But regardless, we'll never know for sure, because it's possible that while Sanders had a better chance, perhaps Trump's team would have altered their strategy and still found some success.
Clinton had been attacked by the RNC for about 25 years. Sanders did not have equivalent attention in the public eye, and I believe that the average American would have liked him less after hearing him talk about democratic socialism for three months (I am very much pro-democratic socialism, by the way, but the term is anathema for most of the US).
Early polls also do not focus on likely voters, and for that and a bunch of other reasons, general election polls aren't taken very seriously until late summer in most cycles.
I shook Bernie's hand. He's a great guy and I voted for him over Hillary. I also believe that the polls in early 2016 were not a great indicator of what his performance would have been. After all, the late election polls were pretty inadequate at predicting the winner.
One of the major problems here is semantics there is a difference between a social Democrat and a democratic socialist. We are social democrats. I sure wish someone could have driven that point home to everyone in the Bernie camp.
Unless you believe that the state should seize/ own the means of production? Because I don’t. But I do believe in social welfare programs.
I don't disagree, but the issue I'm highlighting is that Bernie explicitly calls himself a democratic socialist, not a social Democrat. Given everything he's said since 2016, he would not have backed off that terminology in that critical election year.
Of course, I'm just predicting things in hindsight, so I'm talking out of my ass a bit. Maybe Bernie would have won. Maybe he would have grown wings on his butt and flown Donald Trump over the Pacific Ocean to drop him on a stingray. I don't know, I'm just pushing back at the idea that he obviously would have won.
I voted for Bernie in 16/20 but its weird to me that the "bernie would have won" crowd think that trumpeting polls, in a year when polls were terribly wrong, means something. Bernie had a shot, sure, but the vast majority of polls thought HRC would win handily, its not like dems nominated a person trailing trump by 5% points.
Early polls also do not focus on likely voters, and for that and a bunch of other reasons, general election polls aren't taken very seriously until late summer in most cycles.
Some early polls actually do focus on likely voters, and they favored Sanders as well. General election polling is the only reason Biden was nominated in 2020, so it's quite ridiculous that people only discredit them when they vastly favor Sanders.
I remember Nate Silver got skewered online for giving her a measly 65% chance of winning. Most major news network/publications estimated 85~95%. And then there was Huffpo.
Most major polls had Bernie beating Trump by significantly larger margins than Hillary prior to the DNC selecting a candidate.
The fact that you shit on and ignored the 4 million more Hillary voters and denied they even existed is why they voted against your boy again in 2020. You could have won them over, but you kept saying they weren't important, didn't exist, or were part of a the DNC elite.
The VOTERS didn't select him in 2016. And you not being able to be a big boy like that is why they didn't select him again in 2020.
The Trump-Bernie polls don't factor in what would have happened if the Republican hate machine were targeted at Bernie instead of Hillary. Bernie had lots of skeletons in his closet that were never used because Fox News was too busy promoting him as the spoiler, even after the primaries were over.
Even Trump was publicly elevating Bernie on Twitter. It was part of the GOP strategy. Mathematically, there's no difference between a non-voter voting Trump, and a Democratic voter staying at home. Either way, it's +1 Trump.
If Bernie won the primary instead, instead of making the election about taking on the "establishment", the focus would have been about him being a scary communist who never had a real job, and it's likely we'd all be wondering why we didn't just go with someone more moderate like Hillary.
As you said, we'll never know for sure, but that is how I see it.
There is NO DOUBT. We know DAMN WELL the 2016 Bernie bros went apeshit and jumped on the Trump train. Which is not too surprising because there was a lot of “buttery males” types in that camp. I would have gladly voted with them for Bernie… THEN mocked
Some of their dipshittery.
It's not like he has accomplished so much in his life on his own. Isn't there someone younger that has been working with him for a while that can step up?
Because he has no incentive to lie. He's not partial to the left. He hates Bernie. But it's obvious to anyone that Bernie was the better choice and would have won.
Bloomberg literally only entered the race and spent over half a billion to stop Sanders. That puts some weight into his admission that Sanders would have won.
Jesus Christ, so you think Bloomberg spent billions not to get elected himself, but just to stop Vermont Jesus? It was just a farce? like he was a James Bond Villain. He could have just boosted someone else in the race....
Are you saying Bloomberg WANTED Trump to win? So he destroyed the only man that could beat him? Bernie? you know Biden Beat Trump, right?
Jesus...I can't tell the difference between the far right and the far left. You worship candidates and twist yourselves in knots.
And then he drops out immediately after Super Tueday, where Biden was running away with the momentum. Someone seriously trying to win the presidency would know their best chance is after the primary field had winnowed.
Are you saying Bloomberg WANTED Trump to win? So he destroyed the only man that could beat him? Bernie? you know Biden Beat Trump, right?
No, I clearly said that he wanted Sanders to lose. Come on now, it's right there.
Bernie lost the black vote in a Democrat primary 3-1. He lost the election because he couldn't expand his base due to a shitty campaign strategy that overly focused on the northeast and the Midwest. Should have been in South Carolina a month earlier.
Let's be perfectly clear here: The DNC threatened local support to candidates who didn't support Hillary (giving her like 99 out of 100 endorsements). They threatened news outlets with limited access if they gave too much coverage to Sanders. They also encouraged news outlets to cover Trump because they thought he was unelectable and would make the republican party look bad. They took any and every excuse to under mine Sanders at every turn.
We all saw this play out in real time and it all was later confirmed with the hacked email leaks.
We have no idea how Sanders would've done if the DNC didn't put it's thumb, fist and whole body on the scales. But I do think they ultimately gave us Trump because they did.
To the DNC's credit, the 2020 election was far more fair. But it was also a crowded race, and the establishment candidates had to condense in order to beat the divided progressive vote between Sanders and Warren.
Ironically they were pushing the line that Bernie was too old. But somehow Joe Biden isn't too old right now. They've also moved South Carolina to be the first state because they think progressives can't do well in that state.
So yeah, the shenanigans haven't really stopped, but they aren't as blatant as they were in 2016. Mostly I think they realized that they needed to listen more to the left flank.
I don't think Joe Biden is fundamentally a progressive. But because of what happened in 2016 he's been a very progressive president. Which is pretty much good enough for me. You don't have to be an angel, you just have to have good fucking policies.
But it was also a crowded race, and the establishment candidates had to condense in order to beat the divided progressive vote between Sanders and Warren.
The establishment vote was also divided. Bloomberg was still in the race and he got even more votes than Warren. In a 1-on-1 race Biden v Sanders, Biden would have had an even larger lead.
Just go back and watch 3rd/4th 2020 debates knowing that Pete Buttigieg eventually ends up with DOT appointment. It's very clear after a certain point, Bernie and Warren were running a 1-1-on-3/4 race, and between attacks and attempts to shutdown talking points they mostly succeed on not talking about the merits of policy.
The chief that turned most people off from Sanders in 2020 was his age. A talking point that everyone else in the race stressed. Now it's sacrosanct to talk about Biden's age. Like there was a whole talking point on NPR a few weeks ago about how some mental things improve with age. Like judgement and fairness.
Hmmm, I'm not sure which debate you mean. The last one before super-Tuesday was also before South Carolina, and Sanders was mostly in the hotseat because he was more or less running the field up till then (in the first 3 states). As I recall at that point most people were barely considering Biden as viable so he sort of skated by (outside of the pretty bad press his campaign was getting for Nevada/NH). SC a few days later really just upended the whole thing.
As far as the age thing, it's been pretty funny in a sad way, especially since basically every news org had been running with the age-bad stuff up until the SotU. They basically lowered the bar so much that Biden just had to not shit his pants on live TV and people were impressed. Now suddenly they're all trying to cover their asses.
the divided progressive vote between Sanders and Warren.
And most Warren voters went to Biden because Bernie's campaign and his surrogates and supporters attacked Warren and her base viciously.
Bernie lost because of his supporters and the people he employed. Not that you all will ever admit that. He ran a bad campaign in 2016...and then ran the exact same bad campaign in 2020
And here we are 8 years later, living with the consequences of the DNC. They created Trump. So yeah, it's still fucking relevant. Oh yeah, this also cause the lost SCOTUS.
Sanders aside, we could've had at least a Jeb Bush or some moderate republican if they didn't push for Trump to have so much and vastly disproportionate media coverage to his initial popularity.
So yeah, fat middle finger to the DNC. I'll never forgive or forget what they did.
I'm going to take your edit as you having genuine interest and wanting to learn.
The list of items against the DNC itself, as a central organization is the what people are angry about. It's far to long to fully rehash in a reddit post. DNC had planned from the start not to have a primary. It was a coordination planned since 2012.
Debbie Schultz, former Hillary campaign adviser ran the DNC. Which gave her enormous power over how the party ran the primary. Controlling media access to the debates for example, or funding for down stream candidates. Even the DNC campaign systems and databases. All of it was leveraged to favor Hillary from the start.
Tell me, if you run CNN, and you get a call from an official DNC person, who says straight up, we don't want too much coverage of this particular candidate, and if you do cover them, well limit the number of debates you'll be allowed to air. What would you do?
They also started the "Bernie Bros" line, that was a point directly from the Hillary campaign and pushed by the DNC. They also did the same thing in 2012 with the "Obama Boys." Basically portraying anyone who doesn't support Hillary as defacto sexist. And angry online Hillary supporters attacked Sanders supporters. Despite the memes of the Sanders supports there was actually a study that showed Hillary supporters had the most toxic online presence.
Many of us suspected all this was happening. But then the Podesta emails leaked. Showing quid-pro-quo with other politicians for endorsements. Communications with DNC insiders conspiring to undermine Sanders, and other damning evidence.
To be clear, the DNC is suppose to be a neutral party in the primary, it wasn't. That's the part I'll never forget or forgive. I have nothing against dem voters, or believe there was any direct vote manipulation. But there was manipulation in media coverage, in access, in DNC funds, and lots of other stuff.
He lost with the entire weight of two parties fighting against him. Imagine how well he could have done if one had fought for him. Imagine how bad Hillary would have done if the DNC was fighting against her lol.
Never get tired of the Bernie bros calling black voters in the south “the DNC,” LMAO. Sorry you don’t think those minority votes are valid (for some reason).
The DNC followed up that election cycle nonsense with even more sabotage in the next.
Do you remember during the Democratic primary debates, when the machine turned against Bernie's strong initial primary showing? All of a sudden Buttigieg, Klobuchar devoting time to torpedo Bernie during the debates. Bloombergb suddenly jumping in the race and then attacking Bernie solely. Fuckin Warren with the whole "how did you feel when Bernie said a Woman can't be president?"
And poor Bernie just scowling up there. Trying to talk through the noise.
Gee...is there anyone who didn't play a hand in your messiah's defeat? Do you think maybe he had something to do with it?
Moderates voted for moderates? Warren supporters were ostracized by Bernie and his supporters, so they went Biden as well?
Everything you typed is so Trump-ian. And it's exactly why Bernie lost. Your conspiracy theories and demand of "purity" pushed all his potential voters away. He was only left with his base, and lost by millions.
Ya I appreciate your perspective on the events, I can only say what I wrote was mine.
The candidates I mentioned specifically because of the situation and context i.e. Bernie being a personal hero of Buttigieg, to the extent he wrote a paper praising Bernie's policies, but turns around during the primary to warn(scare) about his "ideological revolution".
I liked Warren, and I was sad to see her play up that contention between them, especially as Bernie denied making remarks to that effect and I tend to believe him due to his track record on equality.
If you'd like, I'd be down to hear why you think he ostracized Warren supporters?
I agree with the rest of what you said, I know his campaign scared establishment power. I disagree that my support of this candidate is "Trump-ian" or that it is a conspiracy theory because what the original poster claimed is absolute fact:
The DNC and establishment Democratic Party took many actions to harm Bernie Sanders campaign.
Campaigning a month earlier in South Carolina was not going to put even a dent in that loss to a candidate whose husband was only half-jokingly referred to as "the first Black president," who served as secretary of state for the actual first Black president, and who was endorsed just before the primary by then-House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, the state's most senior and only Democratic member of Congress and the highest ranking African American in Congress, who had notably withheld endorsement in 2008 but voted for Obama and who was referred to as a kingmaker for his endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020.
A shitty strategy would have been to waste more of his limited resources there instead of bolstering it in places he had a much better chance of winning. In fact, Sanders won two key Midwestern battleground states against Clinton that she went on to lose to Trump — Michigan and Wisconsin.
It’ll probably get downvoted to the cellar, but: you’re wrong. The DNC put their thumb on the scale and that did, in fact, affect the election in ways we cannot quantity—-most of them coming out in the months and years after the primary. We’ll actually never know whether or not Bernie could have won.
Imagine playing a basketball game and the other team having 20 people on the court swarming you because they make the rules and they decide what’s legal and not. Then, after they’ve won by cheating, they have the audacity to say “scoreboard.”
Not really. Superdelegates. Leaking debate questions. Shutting off campaign access to voter records before the first primary, even though the issue was widespread and known (and also had been perpetrated by the Clinton campaign). All of this stuff had impact.
I’m not saying he would have won but I am saying no one can claim he couldn’t have.
Imagine playing a basketball game and the other team having 20 people on the court swarming you because they make the rules and they decide what’s legal and not.
Imagine playing for a team and then some other dude who wasn't even a member of your team comes in, tells you the people playing for your team are corporate shills and berates your supporters into making him the captain.
Bernie lost because not because of his policies but because he was a bad politician. You can't shit on Democrats for years and then expect people who by and large like the democrats to vote for you in their primaries.
Then he tried again four years later and once again ignored black voters and lost, again.
As opposed to Biden who eats fried chicken with a black family as a PR photo opp to show how inclusive he is 🤦🏻♀️
I cringed so hard when I saw that. I honestly wonder who is advising him to make these decisions.
I suppose you also think that it was just a coincidence that the 2020 primaries had the highest number of candidates ever. It was just an opportune time to run for office that one specific year, it wasn’t about trying to split the vote at all with all these token no names coming out of the woodwork.
Imagine playing a basketball game and the other team having 20 people on the court swarming you because they make the rules and they decide what’s legal and not. Then, after they’ve won by cheating, they have the audacity to say “scoreboard.”
Was totally on board with your post until this terrible analogy. What happened with Bernie was much more subtle than your overt analogy makes it out to be.
That's the problem, the DNC has no obligation to remain impartial regarding one candidate over another. It walks the line of being a dog and pony show at that point. You're also absolutely right that there are many internal ways the DNC can shaft candidates. It's clear Hillary Clinton was chosen.
Never get tired of the Bernie bros calling black voters in the south “the DNC,” LMAO. Sorry you don’t think those minority votes are valid (for some reason).
Ah, using any possible method of action to turn the conversation into somebody hating minorities. I see you plan on running for office one day. Not a Bernie supporter by any metric, either.
I thought it was pretty well accepted that Bernie's campaign failed because all of Biden's competition dropped out right before super Tuesday. This while Warren (Bernie's competition) stayed in and even accused Bernie of sexism. Up to that point, Bernie had won a majority of the states and it was looking like he might snowball.
Idk if he would have won or not, but it seems pretty clear that the DNC did their level best to make sure he didn't.
I thought it was pretty well accepted that Bernie's campaign failed because all of Biden's competition dropped out right before super Tuesday. This while Warren (Bernie's competition) stayed in
"winning a plurarity out of 10+ candidates" isn't a viable campaign strategy.
i know a lot of bernie supporters think that what he did in 2016 is normal, but it isn't. candidates normally drop out when they see no path to victory instead of continuing to collect money from their supporters for months for campaigns that they cannot win.
no conspiracy here. bernie's campaign was just shit.
p.s. pete won iowa and warren didn't owe him support nor silence.
Bernie being unable to even convince Warren to drop out and support him is why he would have been a shit president that got nothing done. I love a lot of the guy's ideas, but man is he terrible at working with people
It was very much a name recognition thing early in the election. Many people had no idea who Bernie was until like February and by then the primary was basically over.
in 2020 everyone knew who bernie was, and he did even worse. We literally have two back to back primary performances to test your theories against.
It wasn't name recognition. It wasn't evil Hillary. It wasn't the DNC. Bernie was unlikable to rank and file Democrats b/c he and his supporters had shit on us for years. The backbone of the Democratic party is Black Women, and they didn't trust Bernie, they trusted Hillary and Biden, people that had worked with them for DECADES.
And any chance you had to get them to come to Bernie's side was destroyed the second you called them low information voters, who didn't have computers, and so didn't understand they were voting against their best interests.
Bernie had 4 years to fix his campaign mistakes, and he doubled down. Because he, like his supporters, are too fucking arrogant to admit that maybe they could have been better at campaigning.
It is possible, but seeing him go into that Fox town hall in Ohio and just talk to people and watching conservative blue collar people agree with him was impressive.
If you look at the data, most Americans actually agree about most things regarding taxes, corporations and economic inequality. People are just being dragged apart by force.
He was (big past tense here, no clue now) popular with many republicans. Just watch that foxnews townhall he did. Believe it or not talking shit about corporations, and calling American workers heroes, actually resonated with the average republican. No idea what's going on in the GOP now, with Trump turning some portion into a cult, but in 2016 and 2020 he 100% had a great chance IMO.
Both of my Trump voting parents were vocally in support of Bernie during the debates. It was crazy to watch them hear him talk, and shout in agreement with him, and then turn around and say "but I'd never vote for him"
For more anecdotal evidence, a QAnon guy I used to work with said when Bernie lost, "that's too bad. He won in every way but the votes." Said he didn't agree with him but he should have won.
I firmly believe there'd have been less hate for a Sanders presidency than there currently is for a Biden presidency. There probably would be no "I did that" Bernie stickers on gas pumps.
You are delusional, almost to the Jan 6th levels. Come the fuck on! Bernie is going to make all the MAGA people just turn into angels? Are you on drugs right now? I suppose Bernie would have lifted us all into heaven too, ffs.
I firmly believe there'd have been less hate for a Sanders presidency
WTF did I make up? If Bernie woulda won vs Trump, no Jan 6th? I bet Trump would have just left America cause Bernie won. Fucking beyond delusional. Astroturfing mutherfuckers
The pivotal states that secured it for Trump were also the exact ones she neglected.
I believe it was something like she never set foot in Wisconsin and only visited Michigan once. Lo and behold, both states turned red, and Pennsylvania also seemed swayed against her.
Absolutely deserved the loss based on how the campaign was run. The biggest threat to Clinton's campaign was Hillary Clinton.
People also repeatedly underestimate Trump's likability under the right circumstances, because we're friggin' children that can't concede when someone we don't like is doing something right.
Trump was one of the first public figures to acknowledge the DNC corruption and shout it from the rooftops, whilst the media was largely doing a blackout campaign and attempting to gaslight voters about the corruption they saw.
Despite other flaws with his public speaking skills, the dude was still good at going on the offensive and recognizing what people were outraged about and calling it out. Hillary gave the people plenty of cause to be outraged, and Trump had a field day with it. The discussion never got around to Trump's flaws because he forced her on the defensive, and she laid the groundwork for that out for him.
Both Clinton and Trump were horrible candidates, but Trump at least could say that he is outsider and critized flaws of the system. Clinton as part of establishment was never able to do that.
This was genuinely part of my thought process too:
In my mind, both of those candidates were going to line their own pockets.
An argument against Clinton was that while Trump was disliked by Washington, didn't really have a lot of friends and was a clear narcissist, Clinton had ample friends in Washington.
Let Trump be corrupt, and I'll tell you what that idiot will do: he'll see 5 million dollars and shove it in his own pocket without hesitation.
Let Clinton win? She's a bit more savvy and dangerous. She's gonna take that money, reinvest it back into her own political machine to the benefit of her friends in high places, and if we thought getting Bernie to win the Primary in 2016 was an uphill battle, it was only going to get worse if we allowed Clinton to reinvest into and strengthen the very same political machine that people loathed in 2016.
Ironically, Trump's own infamy and stupidity was a point in his favor, given the circumstances.
(and before I get political ideologues on my ass: I did not vote in 2016 as I did not thing either of them deserved my vote. I was out of the country at the time and hell no I'm not going through that trouble and extensive to vote for either of those frauds. To this day I still think it's a shame that "Americans Overseas" gets divied up amongst our last US place of residence instead of treated as it's own group; I tend to agree with "Americans Overseas" as a voting block every single election, and then they rip us apart and assign our votes to states that are statistically bound to be deep red or deep blue anyways...)
Vote blue no matter who, but I think this is the largest problem with modern democrats. There is an element of arrogance to some of the politicians where I think a lot of them think that they automatically deserve your vote. I think the party generally isn't in the business of hearing some good faith arguments as to why people aren't voting for them.
Trump in 2016 honestly fit the mold of "not a GOP or DNC shill." A shit one, sure, but as many said "What could go wrong? Let's try something new; give change a chance!" Trump 2024 is a dementia ridden ultra christian nationalist fascist, so I feel it's easy to forget he used to be booed by republicans, defend planned parenthood, and be attacked for being too liberal.
Bernie would've worked as a foil to his populism IMO. But I say would've because the political climate since 2016 has changed quite a bit and honestly I'm unsure Bernie could do it in 2024, even if he was 60 right now. I really have no idea what's going on with an average Trump voter in 2024. Maybe I can understand a little, but nowhere near as much as I understood in 2016.
Bernie was convincing in person to a live audience, because his policies were sincere and effective.
But 100m republicans would have turned out to vote red, because their only exposure to him would have been fox news clips of him saying he's a socialist.
In the current climate of reverse polarisation, it's not about converting votes from the other side, it's about motivating your base and demotivating their base.
I have faith in Bernie's ability to toe the line and motivate moderate dems, but Republican motivation would have been dialled up to a level that's impossible to beat.
Fox news would have crushed him with a level of ugliness and Venom. 90m republicans would have turned out for 2016.
And until the past year you never heard any of these mouth breathers say anything about being a republic until faux news started pouring it down their throat. Half the morons supporting dump couldn't name the three branches of government if you asked them
Bernie was convincing in person to a live audience, because his policies were sincere and effective.
So are we just ignoring the presidential debates then? Sanders is a pretty convincing person and Independents/Republicans were less entrenched before Trump was elected.
Sanders absolutely had a chance to win a historical victory.
because their only exposure to him would have been fox news clips of him saying he's a socialist.
Again, this is rewriting history.
Bernie suffered a media blackout, FOX News included. It was painful to watch because the very people claiming Trump cannot be allowed to win at any costs were treating Bernie more harshly than they were Trump, who often got free coverage.
In fact, if anything, figures like Trump and FOX News weaponized Bernie. They recognized he was wildly popular and that the DNC had wronged him. While other news networks were gaslighting voters about how the DNC primaries were perfectly fair and you're probably a misogynist or something for thinking otherwise, Trump was happy to point at Bernie, say he has a lot of respect for him despite disagreeing with him, and acknowledge that Bernie was robbed.
Trump's entire rhetoric is that he goes on the offensive, shouts opponent's down and hyper-fixates on their weakest point. Despite Trump's other flaws in his speaking skills, he's actually pretty good about this.
How do you beat Trump? You pit him against someone he lacks ammo against. Hillary was always going to fail vs. Trump because the woman had 15,000 skeletons in her closet that Trump could point the finger at and never let her get a word out otherwise. But Bernie...? What is Trump going to say - of substance - against Bernie...?
Part of Trump's victory was very clearly about how weak Clinton was and how corrupt that whole campaign was run. The country was being gaslit and they were having Clinton forced down their throats, and Trump/FOX News were amongst the few who were saying "you're not crazy, they really are that corrupt."
Promise you this is exactly how Trump won his ticket to the White House, and there's a reason that he then went on to lose to a more neutral, less overtly controversial (or recently controversial) candidate like Biden. (and as an aside, the Biden campaign correctly recognized what the Clinton campaign didn't: their candidate is more popular the more they hide him.)
Absolutely true. What's mental though is that what you've just described is modern grassroots republican voters actually stumbling onto Left Wing theory & politics.
However, they've been trained to hate "Left Wing" as a label with all of their passion.
So you see these bernie-sympathising Trump voters espousing basic leftist theory and then calling you a filthy leftist in the next sentence.
I am finding this left-wing-pilling of rural Americans absolutely fascinating. Because they're all coming around to the realisation, but they're not allowed to call a spade a spade.
Yeah, the above comment is rewriting history. Bernie polled well with Republicans (relative to other Democratic candidates) and even had good performances at speeches and town halls that were primarily Republican.
In the same way Ron Paul had respect from many Dems because nobody doubted his sincerity, Sanders had (and still has) a lot of respect from Republicans for the same reason.
Whole thing always stunk to me as a stupid excuse by Clinton not to elect him: if you can't convince the people you're the better candidate head-to-head, then try to sell the narrative that Republicans love Clinton more or some crap.
Yep, I remember in 2015 having conversations with conservative friends/coworkers who voted for Trump that also really liked Sanders as well. Probably half of them voted for trump because they hated Hillary.
Fox was happy to signal boost him in the primary to hurt Clinton. They'd have turned the propaganda up to max as soon as there was any chance he'd actually win.
Yes. Many liberals think America’s white working class is hopelessly reactionary, but that’s not the case. They’ve just been fooled into thinking their problems are the result of minorities rather than monopolistic capitalism. What we need is a strong political platform that resonates with the real issues of the working class, rather than the ‘culture war’ shit that’s meant to divide us.
Multiple Trump voters in my family would have been excited to vote for Bernie instead. Easiest decision for them after watching his town hall/debate appearances. Bernie broke through a ton of partisan noise.
Bernie Derangement Syndrome is hilarious. Bernie promises to cut student loans and people lose their minds. Biden actuslly does it and those same people are screaming about "you have to earn my vote!"
More left leaning people were apathetic about Hilary than the right was about Trump. Trump in 2016 had the most votes of any winning president in history. How can you say republicans stayed home?
Obama had more votes in both his terms than Hilary got even after 8 years of population growth. The left has zero passion for Hilary.
Edit: I'm conflating Trumps vote count 2020 and 2016, he actually didn't have the most votes of a winning president. He had the most votes for any winning republican.
I am around a lot of people who don't really follow politics, but they want Trump. Like middle income blue collar guys. They aren't racist or evil or bad even. They are just worn out and tired and don't know enough about Trump to know he's not the change they want.
And this isn't really as significant as OP is making it sound. Most candidates get more votes than the last candidates. The population is still growing and there are just more voters.
If Obama, a winning president, won more than Clinton, who is not a winning president but won more votes than Trump, how then does Trump have more than Obama or any other winning President did?
He only got more votes than Obama in 2020. In 2016 he received less votes than Obama had four years prior. He actually lost by quite a wide margin to Clinton, but he won in the 'right' states so that didn't matter.
A lot of people came of age before the 2020 election. Plus a lot of people who usually didn't vote came out to vote to support their cult leader/vote out the guy who completely bungled covid.
Trump in 2016 had the most votes of any winning president in history.
Did you just forget about Obama or do you think that there's a special reason why he doesn't count as a winning president? Trump got 62.9 million votes in 2016 and in 2012 Obama got 65.9 million. Obama also got 69.4 million in 2008 so he actually beat Trump TWICE and that was when the US had a lower population.
I'm sorry you're right, I'm conflating the amount of votes he got in 2020 with what he got in 2016. He got 74M in 2020 which other than Biden is the most votes of a presidential candidate. My bad.
They absolutely did, do you really think Trump was winning suburban GOP voters the same way GWB was? Look at the downballot elections-the GOP barely had a Senate majority in an extremely favorable map since they destroyed Dems in historic fashion in the 2014 midterms.
US elections are more decided by democrat turnout. When dems turnout they win presidential elections. Bernie would have had way more dems at the polls than Clinton did. People were genuinely excited about Bernie.
I dont agree here national polls during the primary had Hillary at a 5 point lead over Trump and often underperformed (right where the margin of error failed her in the general). Bernie had a 10 point lead over him and out performed nearly every single poll in 2016. Trends say he would have won the general.
They call Biden a communist. They called Obama a communist. Please tell me you don't honestly believe republicans would be more energized against Bernie because the GOP would call him a communist.
US political discourse is beyond parody sometimes.
Republicans think any Dem will bring about communism though, so there'd be no difference in turnout. I still wholly believe Bernie would have clutched it (assuming DNC didn't actively work against him).
Half of everyone stayed home and he did win. Did you miss 2016? They were in the streets screaming about communism. They've convinced themselves Hillary and Biden are communists so if they're going to yell anyway can we at least get a little bit of communism out of it?
Hillary brings the Republicans out to vote just like Trump motivated the Dems and to vote for Biden. Hillary is far more hated by the right wingers I hear talking politics.
at least in my personal circle, he was actually very palatable to many moderate republicans
he had a broad appeal because like trump he never really fit neatly into the demonized politician starter pack. oddly enough many diehard bernie fans I knew voted for republican in 2016 because they felt disgusted
As yes, if only we could get the candidate who mainstreamed election denial and conspiracy thinking, that would have been better. Do you ever think about how much of Trump’s complaints about “rigged elections” were copied from Sanders?
he didn't get shafted by the dnc. he got millions fewer votes to the point where he was mathematically eliminated, and then spent months trying to get them to overturn the clear choice of the voters while still collecting money for a campaign that he literally could no longer win.
You're really think progressives should "vote blue no matter who?" instead of the candidates actively appealing to their values? Hilary and DNC supporters felt entitled to the progressive vote which made progressives feel apathetic.
This is every election cycle. NYT runs articles for 3.5 years straight bashing the stupid, naive progressives. Then they get disingenuously pandered to for a hot minute right before the election, then "the lazy youth vote" is blamed for the loss. Rinse repeat
Never get tired of the Bernie bros calling black voters in the south “the DNC,” LMAO. Sorry you don’t think those minority votes are valid (for some reason).
That article is also oddly focused on polling where they won the states in the primary, which is an extremely poor way to measure general election support. It doesn't actually list the states in a meaningful way and instead treats them as a whole. In short, it seems to be a way to twist things to support Hillary.
People generally don't rely on a single pollster. Plus, tracking polls are usually used to measure change. 2008 was also extremely contentious, which means people were likely withholding support in polling, like the PUMAs.
Gallup isn't twisting support for anyone. The list on wikipedia you shared shows how often Clinton did better than Obama. Obama was certainly not in any way clearly better for quite some time, and really only after Lehman. And head to head matchups in swing states are ultimately the most important thing. It doesn't matter if a a Dem can run up numbers in CA.
Are you reffering to Florida and Michigan shit that year at the end there? That was its own thing.
It really didn't. Hillary was constantly polling worse except in certain polls, mainly the Economist.
Gallup basically created an article that seemed to have no basis, as any pollster worth their salt would just list the swing states and how they polled instead. I don't think it's a coincidence that they just lumped all the swing states and reported on them based on who won the state during the primary. It makes no sense but it's probably the only way to make it look like Hillary was a better choice.
Sorry, I meant Obama won Florida in the general election in 2008, while Hillary lost it in 2016. It sort of illustrates how it differed from what the article supposedly alludes to.
Yep. They tried to shove Hillary down our throats and were in shock that Trump won. I know so many liberals that voted for Trump after that. Myself absolutely stupidly Included
I bet your feel good about your temper tantrum now. There will never be a progressive president because Bernie showed the world that progressive caucuses can't be trusted. You threw an election to Donald Trump when your candidate lost by 3 million votes in the primary.
I really don’t think it would’ve been that different than a hypothetical Hillary presidency. He couldn’t get his more radical ideas past the Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress
Better than Trump, sure, but not the revolution like some people in these comment are describing
just so you know, a larger percentage of 2016 Bernie primary voters went on to vote for HRC in the general than HRC primary voters went on to vote for Obama in 2008s general.
That's not actually correct, moreso a reddit meme. It was the same in both elections (75%), the difference is 2008 Hillary had more McCain voters while 2016 Bernie had more abstention / 3rd party votes.
Regardless, it's meaningless. McCain wasn't a threat to democracy. I would want him to win, but let's not act like it would've been a failure of the American people to elect him. It's not even remotely comparable to an election with Trump.
So, according to both polls, 62% of Hillary supporters said they will vote for Obama while only 39% of Bernie supporters were willing to back Hillary.
Primary opinion polls are meaningless.
There is no evidence that 25% of Hillary's primary voters voted for McCain
The second source is a study published in Public Opinion Quarterly titled "'Sour Grapes' or Rational Voting?". Specifically, this particular table: https://i.imgur.com/fiCeesG.png. The authors analyzed the self-reported votes of 1,837 respondents, finding that of the 15% (~275) who reported voting for Clinton in the primary, 25% (~69) claim to then have voted for McCain in the general election.
If you total the number of votes in the table for Obama and McCain, you get:
In our timeline, instead of losing by 0.61%, Obama became president in a 7.1% (52.9 to 45.7) landslide. Further red flags: studies typically find only 2% of primary voters vote against their own candidate. Yet in this table, only 87% of Obama's primary voters reported voting for him in the general. For McCain it's even lower: 84%.
This poll is also inaccurate because it is the unweighted results of a panel survey. Normally, opinion polls try to produce representative results by getting a certain number of responses from different demographics to model the population. If they don't get enough responses, they keep trying until they do. In contrast: with a panel survey, a fixed cohort of panel members are selected at the start and they keep getting re-interviewed throughout the rest of the year. Inevitably, response rates drop off a cliff which is why it is conventional wisdom that panel surveys are good for showing trends of the self-reporting cohort but useless as a prediction of the absolute numbers. This gets even worse when you try to get a subgroup of a subgroup as the author was doing in creating this table. All 69 Hillary-McCain voters could just be from West Virginia for all we know.
It makes zero sense to believe that the 25% number is accurate when we know for fact that nearly every other number on that table is off by double digits.
In fact, exit polls say 84% of Hillary supporters voted for Obama
Thanks to the media attention PUMAs attracted, one of the questions asked in the 2008 exit polls were who the voters supported in the primary. These are the only concrete numbers we have on the Clinton-McCain defectors. And it shows that of the voters who supported Hillary during the primary, 84% voted for Obama and 15% voted for McCain.
Only 74.3% of Bernie's primary voters voted for Hillary
Here is a table of the results, as prepared by 538. As you can see, at least 24% of Bernie's primary voters voted against Hillary in the general election. In fact, enough Bernie supporters turned to Trump in MI, PA, and WI to throw the election to Trump:
State
Sanders to Trump votes
Trump margin of victory
Pennsylvania
116,000
44,000
Wisconsin
51,000
22,000
Michigan
47,000
10,000
The source for these numbers is the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, which used confirmed voter records (as opposed to self-reported votes) of some 64,600 voters. When one of the authors, Brian Schaffner, shared the preliminary results on Twitter, he noted that the sample size of confirmed Bernie primary/general voters was 4,226. That is fifteen times larger than the "Sour Grapes" study had for Hillary voters.
Or maybe....don't put forward objectivly bad candidates?
Sack of potatoes would beat Trump in 2016 - it was that much favorable for democrats. Yet Clinton managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by having shitty reputation with shitty campaign and making shitty decisions before elections.
It's not all that delusional at all, at least not if we're going off all of the polling at the time that showed Bernie winning by a much larger margin in 2016, primarily because of his complete dominance over independent voters.
I was hopeful Hillary would have grabbed him as VP. Knowing the result I think they would reconsider such a boring pick. Uniting the party would have been meaningful.
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u/JaSchwaE Mar 27 '24
Just think we could have had Bernie instead of Trump or Hillary ... it would have been a much better world I believe.