2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders Allows He'd Lose The Democratic Primary If Held Today [View all]Kentonio
(4,377 posts)Not for all of them sure, but its at the very heart of many of the troubles harming the country. It should be the focal point of most peoples worldview, because it is genuinely that important. With crime, education, housing, debt and many more it sits at the centre of these issues.
As for the HRC/Sanders vitriol, there was plenty of that in both directions despite how much you might want to revise that particular history. For every person critisizing Hillary, there was another calling Sanders supporters deluded and naive. Maybe you need to spend a little time in the Hillary group and see exactly how much respect is shown there for their fellow Democrats. It's a damn sight more vicious than the Sanders groups is, a place where the criticism is usually reserved for the candidate rather than calling opposition supporters deluded, insane, stupid, sexist, racist and god knows what else. That's been the chief difference here, Sanders supporters have chiefly attacked a politician and Clinton supporters have chiefly attacked supporters of a politician. How exactly do you expect people to react to that kind of thing? Again Sanders supporters are far from blameless, and a lot of the 'Why don't AA voters get it?!' stuff has been tone deaf and idiotic, but there's mud flying both ways.
As for message, you can keep repeating what he should be doing, but the simple fact is that his strategy so far has been effective. For an outside chance candidate like Sanders to focus on the job he did as mayor would do nothing more than reinforce impressions that he was a small time candidate. It would also leave an easy opening for Clinton to just respond with 'Well Bernie, you did a great job up there in your little town in Vermont, but running the country is a much bigger job'. Hell even O'Malley could just respond with 'Burlington? Great, but Baltimore was a bit more of a challenge'.
As for your last point, his message is good enough that from 3% of the Dem vote, he's now polling around 35% and rising. His support is also rising among non-white voters as he gets increased name recognition and learns to tailor his message to different communities. That's exactly why he brought in strong qualified people to head up his AA and Latino efforts, and that is starting to pay off, as his rise from 6% to about 21% amongst AA voters in South Carolina shows. Now if you want to be lazy, you can point at that 21% and say 'Only 21%? Pathetic, how can he win when he's so low?' but to understand his campaign you have to realize where he started, how completely unknown he was to most voters and consider the momentum that is continuing to drive his campaign across the country.
It may well not be enough to catch Hillary, she's an extremely skilled political operator and has a very impressive campaign machine, but up until now he's outperforming the most optimistic forecasts for his candidacy. Despite what he said the other day, he almost certainly isn't going to win South Carolina, but then again he doesn't need to. If he picks up at least 2 out of Iowa, NH and Nevada and turns out a respectable defeat in SC then the race is wide open.