First National Poll Shows Bernie Up Over Clinton

I always thought it would be Sanders vs Trump.

Clinton wouod lose against Trump thought she’d win against Cruz.

The GOP in the end will have to back Trump beaxuse the Dominionalist Cruz is unelectable, there are simply not enough rght wing mad Christans in the US.

I suspect when it comes to the election that many commentatrs will be surprised just popular Trump really is, though Sanders wll beat him

It reminds me a little of former Ontario conservative leader Tim Hudak’s proud campaign of “I will lay waste to the public sector” which was so mean and crass that voters returned to Wynne’s Liberals despite the obvious weariness with them and desire for change.

A small part of me admired Hudak for not lying about his intentions, if he’d won voters would have very little cause to complain, as he was absurdly honest about what he was going to burn down. Hillary is not promising anything so extreme, but her theme of “no you can’t have your cherished goals, Democratic primary electorate” is quite amazing.

Hillary’s campaign website was pretty clear on seeing Congress as a continuing obstacle to any progressive moves; basically her pitch was: We need the Supreme Court to turn before much movement is possible in federal policies.

That said, she seems unambitious. “Vote for me and I’ll hold the line.”

The trend doesn’t look good for HRC, but it isn’t over until it’s over. We’ll see.

Once we get to the general, I think things get tougher for Bernie if he does take the nomination for several reasons:

1) By essentially having pulled off a hostile take over of the Democratic party, he’ll have badly alienated a lot of elites, elected officials, career politicos etc. The question is, do they play ball and support him in spite of that, or do they sit on their hands? They may collectively be mostly a bunch of assholes, but without their support it could get tougher.

2) Sanders will face a massive onslaught from the right. They’ve left him alone until now but I doubt his favorable numbers hold up after months of non-stop screeching about socialism, how he wants to take away your hard earned dollars and give them to etc. Young people may be warming up to the idea of socialism a bit, but young people aren’t the only ones who vote (and tend to vote less) and for older Americans socialism is a dirty word.

3) Both problems 1 and 2 will be exacerbated by the open hostility of the news media and punditocracy.

Maybe he can overcome all this, but I think it’s a pretty heavy lift. In a Sanders vs Trump race I suspect Trump wins.

That said, I don’t think HRC is “more electable.” She’s shown herself time and again to be an awful candidate with a political tin ear. I’m not sure she will do much better against Trump.

Interesting times, to be sure.

As with the general election, the total of popular votes is unimportant. It’s about delegate count, and Hillary still has a considerable edge on that measure. Bernie is gaining, but he is by no means ahead, especially considering the superdelegates.

Hillary is the candidate of “I am why you can’t have nice things.” Her pitch is not that simple, however, as she appeals to fear. “If you go with someone who tries to get you nice things he might fail, and then not only will you not have nice things, but the other side will give you ugly things.”

She advocates the safe way, don’t try because if you do you might fail, appealing to fear, which is what this nation has become. Paul Krugman spells it out for her, “I advocate policies which can actually be implemented.”

I agree with Ian in that things may get very interesting. Sanders still faces an uphill climb, but his campaign represents the economic interest of most voters. The longer he stays in, the more people like him. As a result, he’s dangerous to elites. ( see Lloyd Blankfein’s referral to the Sanders candidacy as ” a dangerous moment ” ). Hilary’s campaign faces intense pressure from her donor base to finish off Sanders now, once and for all. This early in the primary season , however, she doesn’t want to alienate the Sanders voters who she will need to win in November.
If Sanders remains in the race as a viable threat, Pachachutec is correct, the heavy artillery will come out. Anything goes, including the prospect of super delegates handing the nomination to Mrs. Clinton, overturning the will of the voters. Bernie Sanders is unacceptable to elites as the Democratic nominee, and even if Hillary has to enter the general election as severely damaged goods, the Democratic elites would rather lose to a Republican than win with Bernie Sanders.
There will be concurrent pressure on the Sanders campaign to yield to Hillary, rendering his campaign a ” sheepdog ” candidacy ( see Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report for details ), where the Democratic base gets fired up for Sanders only to have Sanders bow out and encourage his supporters to back Hillary Clinton in the general. This script, however, is getting played out. People are wise to it and it’s losing its effectiveness.

Hillary Clinton designed her 2016 campaign as a coronation, as she did in 2008.

Hugh, I don’t think I agree. I’ve too have found her campaign baffling, but I think I’ve decided that what she really has done is designed her campaign so she doesn’t lose to the same forces she did in 2008. Obama was essentially funded by hedgies and others on Wall Street. Essentially, as corporatist as she was, she wasn’t corporate enough and so they found some one else and backed him, denying her the nomination (with a dose of sexism, no doubt in the mix). So now, she goes full in with the very people who funded Obama, to prevent that from happening again.

Indeed, so much of her campaign is a re-hash of Obama 2008. The running on biography. Being so light on policy specifics. More or less avoiding interactions with actual voters. This was O’s playbook. The problem, of course, is that it won’t work for her. First, because unlike Obama, she can’t even claim to be a blank slate (he wasn’t one, but people were willing not to look and you had to actually look). Second, it’s not 2008. Our problems are much, much worse and that’s to a large extent because Obama failed to address them. What else can all this anti-bank rhetoric be if not an indictment of Obama’s failure to deal with the banks post-crisis. She can’t split from O because 1) she was in his cabinet and 2) she’s afraid of alienating African Americans (indeed, the constant pretending by both Clinton and Sanders that Obama is some sort of wonderful progressive President in order to attract AA voters is one of the more unpleasant aspects to this election, IMO).

So she’s running a re-hash of 2008 and re-hashes are never as good as the original, especially after 8 years of a terrible economy under a Democratic President instead of a Republican one. And she’s run into the kind of opponent that would cause the most problem to this type of campaign. Remember, she ran to Obama’s left on domestic issues in 2008 and got more votes than he did, so even in 2008 an O-type campaign was vulnerable from the left and Bernie, needless to say, is considerably to the left of where Hillary was in 2008.

So I think what we’re seeing is a campaign that learned all the wrong lessons in 2008.

Still don’t think Clinton ran to left of Obama. Where it mattered (Iran) she was considerably to his right, and it shows in this primary fight; Clinton is running far to the right of Obama on Israel (as if that’s possible). I also don’t agree domestically she was to his left. In the end I supported him over her because I thought he’d bring in new people. Seeing as they brought in the same for domestic operations, I imagine they’d have operated the same.

She also didn’t win more votes, unless you count Michigan and Florida, and then don’t count caucus states. You have to really strain yourself to say she won the popular vote.

Nonetheless, I think Axelrod said it well: “When the exact same problems crop up in separate campaigns, with different staff, at what point do the principals say, ‘Hey, maybe it’s US?'”

I’m not a Sandernista, but I’m certainly voting for him on Super Tuesday just for the sake of potentially ending the Clintons’ poisonous influence.

Hell, Trump is running to Hillary’s left on at least some domestic issues. If I could be persuaded he really would fight for Single Payer healthcare and repeal NAFTA, well that’s more the Comrade Carebear managed in over 7 years.

Correct, Escher, which is why I backed him over her. I’d need specific examples of her campaign promises that were to his “left” on domestic policy. They were fairly indistinguishable during the campaign (domestically). And then Obama brought in their (DLC) people anyway (Summers, Geithner, Rahm) — people who wanted to drop the ACA (Rahm) at the 90 yard line because of Scott Brown winning in MA.

Anyway, irrelevant. She’s running to the left of where she ran in 2008 now, but no one believes her (for good reason). She’s making a dash to the right on FP (Israel, Syria), where she will always be no matter what the conditions on the ground; it’s just who she is. Not like Sanders is exactly a dove or anything. No one who wins the presidency would be dovish enough for me unless Henry Wallace continued on as FDR’s VP in 1944. He has made statements in the past of cutting the Pentagon in half (be still my beating heart if that ever happened, which it won’t) and eliminating US nuclear weapons, but that was back in the 1990’s.

Something of a revelation to me has been the sudden emergence of anti-Bern, Democrats-leaning pundits — and the particular arguments they make — I am thinking of Krugman of course and Ezra Klein and also a few less well-known examples like the young New Yorker correspondent Corey Robin singled out at Crooked Timber. Noah Smith and Mike Konczal loom large on my particular horizon because they have dismissed B’s “Glass-Steagall” bumper sticker.

Partisans of Clinton are inevitable — a built-in feature. What was surprising to me, but maybe should not have been, was how readily they reversed previous lines of argument to declare themselves opposed to reform. Neither Clinton nor Sanders have elaborate policy plans. But, Sanders has a couple of “bumper stickers” that entail radical structural change to the economy: health care reform built around single-payer and financial reform built around some variation on Glass-Steagall separating different kinds of financial firms (commercial from investment banking from insurance).

What surprised me — and I readily see in the same revelation that I should not have imagined otherwise — is that these people do not want fundamental reform of the system in which they have been successful. They have wanted to be identified as astute critics, to be identified with empathy and prosocial values.

In the U.S. at least the system is holding together. The discontent is driven by the steady decline of real income hitting the middle even with unemployment low and gas prices low and war still a distant albeit constant background hum. But, elites are still doing well for themselves. Their insecurities are theoretical. The leftish elites, like the whole elite, want things to go on as they have, even as they protest policy as if it were a matter of taste and manners only.

Bruce Wilder,

Yes, that’s been exactly my experience with upper class liberals, and it’s prominently on display this primary season.

To borrow a phrase that’s been bouncing around certain corners of the internet lately, 90% of what goes on can be explained by vulgar Marxism.