Voting for Bernie Sanders is a Win-Win for Democrats

[Baobab]

Voting for Bernie Sanders is a Win-Win for Democrats

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-c-rutledge/voting-for-bernie-sanders-is-a-win-win-for-democrats_b_9548640.html


Excerpt:

Sen. Bernie Sanders was finally able to significantly cut into Sec. Hillary Clinton's pledged delegate lead in this past week's "Western Tuesday and Saturday" contests. Sanders' campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, has repeatedly said that after March 15th Bernie would chip away at Hillary's lead until ultimately surpassing her on June 7th when delegate-behemoth California finally gets to vote. However unlikely this scenario seems to some in corporate media, the only question democratic primary voters on the fence about Sen. Sanders should be asking is: "What do I have to lose?"

Bernie Sanders' stances on nearly every major issue are enormously popular among Americans of all affiliations. Large majorities of voters, especially democrats, side with Bernie on issues like raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, requiring employers to provide paid family and sick leave, opposing the Wall Street bailout, decriminalizing marijuana, raising taxes on wealthy and corporations, opposing the U.S. policy of interventionism and regime-change, and opposing the use of U.S. ground troops to defeat ISIS, to name a few. These are progressive values that appeal widely across demographics, but, unfortunately, not to Hillary Clinton. Her proposals on many issues amount to less-than-half measures and premature compromises which will translate to very little, if any, substantive change in the status quo. She is a hawkish neoconservative on foreign policy, a corporatist neoliberal on economic policy and a moderate centrist on domestic and social policy; not exactly the standard bearer for most democratic voters. (If you're curious which candidate best represents your views on the issues, take this quiz at isidewith.com)

Many in the democratic base prefer Bernie's ideas and stances on the issues to Hillary's, but choose to vote for her because they think she has a better shot at defeating the eventual republican nominee. This is false. For months, polling of hypothetical general election match ups between the democratic and republican candidates consistently show Bernie Sanders beating Trump, Cruz and Kasich by wider margins than Hillary Clinton. According to HuffPost Pollster's aggregated favorability polling, Bernie has a +8.7 rating compared to Hillary's -13 rating. In a recent Bloomberg Politics poll, Sanders pulled ahead of Clinton nationally among democrats, 49-48 percent. The same poll showed that 64 percent think that Bernie Sanders is the more honest and trustworthy candidate, whereas only 25 percent feel that way about Clinton. With ongoing scandals, including foreign government arms deals for Clinton Foundation donations and an FBI criminal investigation, it's easy to see why that distrust exists.

The other big reason given by democrats for choosing Clinton over Sanders is they think she has better foreign policy experience. Serving as Secretary of State for four years certainly gives her an advantage in that category, that is, until you look at her judgement during that time. In 2009, she legitimized the coup which ousted democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. That country is now one of the most violent in the world. In 2011, she played a central role in the ousting of Col. Muammar Gaddafi, later laughing about it saying, "We came, we saw, he died!" Libya is now a stronghold for ISIS and other terrorist groups. In 2012, she pushed hard for the Obama administration to arm the Syrian rebels, another blatant attempt at regime-change. Now she is calling for a no-fly zone in Syria and the possibility of U.S. ground troops. Apart from further entrenching our armed forces in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire, her proposals have a very real chance at sparking a war with Russia. Oh, and did I mention she voted for the Iraq war? That too.

[pacalo]

1. Why settle for a lesser-evil when the greater-good is staring you in the face...

You can choose to look at those supporters as petulant children if you want, although they would probably want to know why you are so eager to settle for such an unrepresentative lesser-evil when there is a greater-good staring you in the face. Clinton has adopted many of Bernie’s stances just since this past Fall, further suggesting that even she knows whose policies the people prefer. If you applaud her campaign’s evolution leftward out of political expedience, then imagine how devastated you will feel when she pivots back to the center-right for the general election.

[SunSeeker]

2. No. He's a win-win for Republicans. They are praying he's nominated. nt

[notemason]

3. So am I.

nt

[Chan790]

4. No, they're not.

They're absolutely dreading it. They are attacking Clinton in the hopes they can both damage her electability at the same time they strengthen the resolve of her supporters to push her upon the rest of us smart enough to not support her...so they can obliterate her in the GE.

The GOP wants a Clinton nomination. I know because I know their strategists...I went to school with most of them. They're my college friends and they often forget I'm not one of them so they talk freely around me.

[SunSeeker]

5. If they feared his nomination, they wouldn't be holding fire on the attack ads against him.

And they wouldn't be actually running ads supporting him.

And they wouldn't be imploring GOP voters to support him.

I know this because these are documented facts, not something some old college friend told me.

[Chan790]

6. Let's address those individually.

1.) That's exactly what they would do and I know that because it's exactly what I would do...not cast attention on a threat I'm actually concerned about where that attention could only increase the viability of that threat. They don't need to fire upon Sanders...Clinton is ahead and Clinton is firing on Sanders. Let her waste her energy and money doing the job for them. (This, if you didn't notice, is win-win...make Hillary waste her war-chest while turning-off Sanders supporters against her and if the ads work to harm Sanders campaign, it was a free gain for them.) Any attacks by the GOP can only strengthen him against Hillary by giving him more attention than he's receiving...the last thing you want to do if you're the GOP is have your ads and attention be the thing that pushes him past Hillary.

2.) I haven't seen even one such ad. I haven't even seen claims of any such ads outside of the Clintonite echo-chamber who insist they exist and can't provide them.

3.) I haven't seen any indication or evidence of this occurring in any organized fashion. Limp-balls and Annie Cult-horror don't count...they're not part of any political operation, they're idiots with pedestals.

SunSeeker, it seems to me that your "facts" are largely figments of your imagination and the collective imagination of Hillary's personality-cultists. I would put them a far shade less credible than the sort of shit political strategists and workers bullshit about over poker.

[SunSeeker]

7. Here you go.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/republicans-offer-unsolicited-support-bernie-sanders



See also, http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511276724 , a very informative thread.