Bernie Sanders's Successful Insurgency

[Red Oak]

Win or lose, the Democrat has already accelerated a major generational shift within the Democratic party.

“This thing is not going to go away,” insisted Robert Borosage, the co-director of the progressive Campaign for America’s Future. Borosage served as a senior adviser to Jesse Jackson’s landmark 1988 outsider presidential campaign and says the party has “not seen this kind of insurgency, this kind of strength” since then. “It’s even bigger [than Jackson],” Borosage said, “because it’s this younger generation coming into politics and moving with their own energy.”

-snip-

But none of that obscures what Sanders has already achieved, and how it may change the Democratic Party. At my request, the veteran electoral analyst Rhodes Cook, publisher of an eponymous political newsletter, compiled figures comparing Sanders’s performance with previous outsider challengers. Those numbers show that Sanders is on track to win more total votes, and a higher percentage of the primary vote, than any insurgent Democrat in the modern primary era.

Through Wisconsin, Cook calculates, Sanders has won about 6.65 million votes across 21 primaries, some 41 percent of all ballots cast. That means Sanders has captured a greater percentage of the total primary vote than such previous insurgents as Howard Dean in 2004 (6 percent), George McGovern in 1972 (25 percent), Jackson in 1988 (29 percent), Gary Hart in 1984 (36 percent), and Ted Kennedy in 1980 (37 percent). In actual primary votes, Sanders has already soared past Dean, McGovern, and Hart and is guaranteed to top Jackson (almost 6.7 million) and Kennedy (just under 7 million) after the April 19 New York primary alone. Measured by the share of available delegates he’s won (nearly two-fifths, including super delegates), Sanders also seems likely to outshine all these predecessors except McGovern, who captured a majority and the nomination. Only President Obama, in his 2008 primary victory, outperformed Sanders on all those fronts, and as a former keynoter at the national party convention who drew support from key party leaders, Obama doesn’t seem perfectly analogous.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/sanderss-successful-insurgency/477249/

[amborin]

1. Bernie will win! The nomination and the presidency!

[pacalo]

2. It does no good to rebuild the party base if the party itself refuses to evolve.

A government of the people, by the people, & for the people is the draw, as well as the tireless candidate who is not only willing, but anxious to get started making it happen.

[flamingdem]

3. I think Bernie has to lead whether or not he gets the nom

He was the only one who filibustered about the tax cuts, the only one brave enough to be an Independent. No other leaders like him have emerged. We need him for a while longer as potus or not. He has really focused the issues, a thought leader.

[pat_k]

4. kick 'n' rec!

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Red Oak.

[PATRICK]

6. Hitting nail on head

when it might be better to send it crashing on the thumb of the party organization set firmly on the scale to cheat itself out of democratic victory so that money privilege can be turned more aristocratic. Any beginner with low name recog would have to cede
early advantage and with active party leadership opposition to this extent it points only to one thing. As long as the insurgency keeps growing it is painfully obvious he should be the nominee and that the party is blowing its own feet away with the Clinton double-barreled shotgun.

No, this is not a nice accomplishment for the history books. It is a critical take down of the democratic process with disastrous consequences beyond the birth of a sanity movement.

[denbot]

7. A Kick

And a Rec.

[snowy owl]

8. Interesting and thanks.