2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Just an FYI - An injection of a third set of numbers makes shenanigans difficult. [View all]Time for change
(13,714 posts)Polling should be done to explore the possibility, and I suspect that he could win in a landslide.
Democracy is in great trouble when there is a two party system and so many barriers to founding a third party. The Republican and Democratic Parties are both minority parties (26% and 29% respectively). By far the most popular candidate in the race has been unable to obtain a lead in the Democratic primaries, because of all sorts of barriers, including election fraud.
Something similar was the case in 2008. Until the personal scandal that caused him to drop out of the race, John Edwards was by far the most popular candidate running nationally, and his agenda was closer to Bernie's than any of the other candidates. But he too could not get much traction within the Democratic Party.
What kind of democracy do we have when the most popular candidates nationally cannot get enough traction within the two major but minority parties?