Why Bernie May Have a Better Shot at Winning in November Than Hillary

[Ferd Berfel]

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/why-bernie-may-have-better-shot-winning-november-hillary

The nomination remains an uphill fight, but Sanders’s victory in Michigan demonstrates his unique ability to mobilize working-class voters.


(snip)

But Tuesday’s Michigan primary made me rethink my beliefs on the relative strengths of the Bern and the Hill. A key reason for Sanders’s Michigan victory was his record of opposition to the trade deals of the past quarter-century, the deals that decimated the once-industrial Midwest. Sanders’s credibility on this issue can’t be challenged; voters understand that it’s part and parcel of his opposition to any policy that benefits capital at labor’s expense.

Nearly 60 percent of voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary believed (correctly) that trade deals had eliminated more jobs than they created. For that matter, 55 percent of voters in the state’s Republican primary believed the same. And not surprisingly, Sanders captured the lion’s share of the trade skeptics in the Democratic contest, as Donald Trump did in the Republican one.

Not just because they were misled by the polling, many in the media expressed surprise at the level of anger in both parties directed at the nation’s free trade policies of the past three decades. But the widespread rage at the offshoring of American manufacturing should have been apparent to anyone with a modicum of interest in how the other half lives. Even for those who didn’t wish to subject themselves to tours of abandoned factory towns, there have been surveys. This January, a poll conducted for the Roosevelt Institute and the Democracy Corps by Stanley Greenberg’s firm found that the percentage of independents who viewed NAFTA unfavorably exceeded those who viewed it favorably by 27 percent. Independent voters also opposed the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership by a margin of 29 percent. Among Republicans, the negative views exceeded the positive ones by 23 for NAFTA and 33 percent for the TPP. No wonder Trump has brought new voters into the GOP primaries: He’s the first Republican candidate since the 1930s to voice an opposition to trade deals, even though that opposition is shared by a clear majority of GOP voters.

[hack89]

1. Moot point if he can't convince Democratic voters to make him the nominee. nt

[longship]

2. The polls agree, as Cenk Uygur explains.

Cenk Uygur justifiably in high dudgeon.