Can someone give me a serious answer: How does Bernie Sanders win? [View all]

[brooklynite]

I worked on my first political campaign at the age of 8. I became a Ward Committeeman in Philadelphia at the age of 20. I have worked on different political campaigns for people I believed in for decades. And most of them lost.

Now, that didn't blunt my enthusiasm for causes I believed in, but it did teach me to separate my hopes and dreams from my view of reality. And now that I provide funding for a LOT of candidates, I've taken to looking at their prospects in a harsh light: do they have a realistic chance of winning? Because it might make me feel good to support someone who agrees with me on everything, but if the choice is a candidate who agrees with me on most issues who can win, and a candidate who agrees with me on all issues who cannot, I'm going to go with the realistic choice.

Here at DU, we've apparently lurched into a full-on discussion about the prospects for the 2016 Presidential nomination, which currently seems to boil down to Clinton vs. Sanders (despite the hopes of a few, the reality that she really doesn't want to run seems to be sinking in).

As a supporter of Hillary Clinton, I could point to a number of factors which I think support her ability to win the nomination, and to win against most if not all the likely Republican candidates: the 17 million votes she racked up against a very popular and well-known opponent in 2008, her ability to win against Republicans in the 2000 and 2006 Senate races in NY (reminder that NY kept a Republican Senator in office until 1998 and a Republican Governor until 2006), her profile as a US Senator from a major State and as Secretary of State for the Obama administration, and preliminary polling match-ups between her and the Republicans.

Now, I've met and had dinner with Bernie Sanders. He's a nice guy, and I'd be hard-pressed to point to an issue he supports that I oppose. But when I study him as a candidate, I don't see the same strengths. He is:

-Untested: Bernie gets re-elected with about 250,000 votes in one of the most liberal States in the nation. To win the Primary, he will need to prevail in more moderate States with a more conservative bent to the local Democrats. To win the General Election, he will need to win a host of Purple battleground States. We have an electorate which is right now approximately 23% liberal, 34% moderate and 38% conservative (http://www.gallup.com/poll/166787/liberal-self-identification-edges-new-high-2013.aspx). Democrats win by grabbing for Liberals and Moderates; Republicans win by grabbing for Conservatives and Moderates. The more to the fringe the Republican or Democrat is, the more voters the other side can reach for. Now it's possible that the Republicans will nominate Ted Cruz or Ben Cardin, in which can any Democrat might be able to win, but I'm not prepared to go out on that limb. So, what abilities does he have to appeal to enough voters in enough States to pull together 270 EV?

-an self-described socialist: Maybe Americans should be more informed about political labels, and maybe they should have greater awareness of European Social Democracies, but they don't. The more time Bernie has to spend explaining what this means and what it doesn't, the less time he has to take on the Republicans.

-Old (76 on election day): Yes, Hillary is getting up there as well, but Bernie LOOKS old in a way Hillary doesn't and quite frankly in a way Reagan didn't. Doesn't bother me personally, but a lot of voters make decisions on very subjective and peripheral issues.

All that said, I have no objection to his running in the Primaries (and I think you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone else here who does). If he wins the Primary, I'll support him. But I truly don't see a path that show's he's electable. So, what am I missing?