Essential "The Real Truth Is Wall Street Regulates Congress": The Offical Bernie Sanders CircleJerk Thread

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Afinal line of argument, exemplified by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, insists that Sanders’s platform is simply too left-wing for a “moderate” American electorate. Usually this is trotted out amid broad national surveys that find the country divided between ostensibly coherent blocs of “liberal,” “moderate,” and “conservative” voters.

But as political scientists Shawn Treier and D. Sunshine Hillygus have argued, two-dimensional surveys of voter ideology do not provide a useful guide to the American electorate. To the great disappointment of the Post editorial board, many self-identified “moderates” are not sober Beltway centrists but in fact “cross-pressured” by a mix of strong liberal and conservative beliefs.

The unstable and multidimensional identity of the “moderate” voter helps explain why Sanders’s own polling numbers have regularly confounded the prejudices of pundits. In New Hampshire, for instance, where expertsrepeatedly stressed his strength with “liberals,” Sanders actually did even better with “moderate/conservative” voters.

It might also help explain why Sanders polls well in places like Nevada and Alaska — states not known as liberal bastions, but home to a large number of independent voters.

Who are these independents and “moderates” voting for Sanders? It seems reasonable to believe that they are not confused centrists, but “cross-pressured” voters with a wide range of views, all drawn to Sanders’s left-wing economic message. In fact, Sanders has a long record of winning over these kind of populist “moderates.”

Consider Caledonia County in Vermont’s rugged Northeast Kingdom. Contrary to media cliché, not all of Vermont was a liberal paradise in the 1980s. Caledonia County twice voted heavily for Reagan; in 1988, Bush crushed Dukakis there, 61 to 38 percent.

Yet two years later, when Sanders won his first statewide election for Congress, he defeated the incumbent Republican in Caledonia County by eleven points. Over the next decade, Sanders ran well ahead of the centrist New Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore — in 2000, the same year George W. Bush carried the county by seven points, Sanders won it with 66 percent of the vote.

You can chalk some of this up to the quirkiness of rural Vermont. But as the primary campaign has unfolded, Sanders has shown an undeniable ability to connect with the same kind of lower-income and less-well-educated white voters all over the country, from Iowa to West Virginia to Oklahoma.

Democrats have been slowly losing these voters to Republicans since the 1970s; in the last decade, they have almost abandoned them entirely. But non-college-educated whites still represent over 40 percent of the electorate in key swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

Many of these poor and struggling voters — however “moderate” according to Gallup — seem very receptive to Sanders’s call for universal health care and a living wage. A Sanders campaign that made deep inroads with working-class whites across the Midwest would be well-prepared to defeat a Republican in November.

It’s difficult to find an equivalent category of voters where Clinton might outperform Sanders in a general election. Women? Clinton’s most recent favorability ratio with all women voters is strongly negative: 41 to 54 percent. Sanders’s mark stands at 44 to 41 percent. In a general election, those numbers might shift — but would it be enough to give Clinton a significant advantage?

Clinton’s strongest support in the primary campaign seems to come from the most loyal Democrats, including African-Americans. But in a bitter campaign against an ethnic nationalist like Trump or a right-wing Republican like Rubio, would loyal party voters refuse to turn out for the Democrats, just because Sanders rather than Clinton was the nominee? It doesn’t seem likely.

None of this is to suggest that Sanders should take loyal non-white Democratic votes for granted. That is exactly what Clinton-style New Democrats did when they pivoted to the center in the 1980s. In a general election campaign, Sanders would have to do the opposite, and build a populist coalition that depended on solidarity between black, Latino, Asian, and white working-class voters.

Unquestionably, it would be difficult work. But the opposition of an ever-more-reactionary Republican Party would surely help. And a successful left-of-center coalition would be well positioned — in both ideological and electoral terms — to mount the much larger, long-term struggle necessary to achieve even Sanders’s social-democratic goals.

Of course, it’s impossible to predict the particular contours of a general election campaign featuring either Sanders or Clinton. Much depends on the Republican nominee, and also, perhaps, on the exact proportion of narcissism and pragmatism in the mind of a certain Manhattan billionaire.

But there’s no question that Bernie Sanders can win in November — and there is good reason to believe he would actually be a stronger Democratic candidate than Hillary Clinton.

Last April in front of the Capitol, when the skeptical reporter asked Sanders if he really intended to contend for the nomination, he replied indignantly: “We’re in this race to win!”

Sanders then continued, insisting that it’s impossible to separate the question of “electability” from the question of democracy. “If you try to put together a movement which says, we have got to stand together as a people, and say that . . . our country belongs to all of us, and not the billionaire class — that’s not raising an issue, that is winning elections. That’s where the American people are.”

Far more than the elite media imagined, that’s where the American people have been, all campaign long. They’ll still be there in November.

The new issue of Jacobin is out now. Buy a copy, or a special discounted subscription today.


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@Darth Humanist
I lasted a week:francis:
 
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Pifferry

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Darth Humanist said:
:ohhh:


What happened? Did a Hillary stan report you? :lupe:
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I think the two things that did me in is that on the first day I joined I got into an argument with people over the validity of BLM/Black twitters beef with Bernie Sanders and said that the girl who stormed his stage was a short sited race baiter (I never use that term but I think I had good reasoning as to why I used it in that case and it wasnt because she was disrupting a political rally).
And the second thing is that post Nevada I said "I need a safe space to rant about the black vote", and sarcastically said "white people are right this election".
The reason why I said that is because any opinion other than every black individual sat down, looked at the issues, analyzed every possible thing, and made an educated decision to vote for Hilary Clinton over Bernie is beaten down while they can make whatever comments they want about the white electorate.
The last thing I did before being banned was respond to this:
12746161_1120470424651107_1472498765_n.jpg

With if you're going to not vote for Sanders than make sure its because you have policy/ideological differences which I've seen many people do, otherwise it's just pathetic on the persons part.
Got banned like an hour later:yeshrug:
 
Mr Rager

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So friends, what's the strategy going forward? IMO Super Tuesday isn't looking good for the Sandman, too many southern states filled with uninformed traditionalist voters :snoop:
They'll try to use those wims to make it look like Bern has no chance at winning.
 
winb83

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The media is already trying to bury Bernie. I know his path is that much more difficult. (Thanks to black people's loyalty to the Clintons) Let's be real here though Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate and Bernie is exposing it. Not only is he drastically eroding her leads but he polls better against all the potential GOP nominees.

We are facing a reality where Clinton wins the nomination and loses in the general and republicans rule all the branches of government. They'll stall Obama out and keep the Supreme Court, they'll have the Senate, House, and the presidency.
 
RickyGQ

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Pifferry said:
I think the two things that did me in is that on the first day I joined I got into an argument with people over the validity of BLM/Black twitters beef with Bernie Sanders and said that the girl who stormed his stage was a short sited race baiter (I never use that term but I think I had good reasoning as to why I used it in that case and it wasnt because she was disrupting a political rally).
And the second thing is that post Nevada I said "I need a safe space to rant about the black vote", and sarcastically said "white people are right this election".
The reason why I said that is because any opinion other than every black individual sat down, looked at the issues, analyzed every possible thing, and made an educated decision to vote for Hilary Clinton over Bernie is beaten down while they can make whatever comments they want about the white electorate.
The last thing I did before being banned was respond to this:
12746161_1120470424651107_1472498765_n.jpg

With if you're going to not vote for Sanders than make sure its because you have policy/ideological differences which I've seen many people do, otherwise it's just pathetic on the persons part.
Got banned like an hour later:yeshrug:
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To be fair, that poster is right. Most Bernie supporters fukking suck.
 
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