Would Bernie Sanders have won?

[Wayward son]

The guy who couldn't win when everyone treated him with kid gloves would have been able to win once the GOP stopped supporting him and began attacking him? How does that work?

The best I can come up with is that Putin might have stopped trying to undermine the election in favour of Trump if Sanders was the nominee, and wikileaks might have stopped trying to undermine the election in favour of Trump if Sanders was the nominee, and the FBI would not have tried to undermine the election in favour of Trump if Sanders was the nominee....

 

[BobTheCoward]

Ah! Okay, I get it. Yes, this is the problem with trying to do alternative history, I suppose.

If you move one piece what prevents you moving everything else?

I think it is more like your one piece in this case, Bernie beating Hillary, has a ton of ramifications because it is done by making the electorate a bigger fan of him than he was.

If we are trying to replicate everything but the primary outcome, that is super hard. You could say, "if hillary didn't run" but that improves the democratic position by removing any email talk. You could say, "Hillary had to pull out of the election" but that puts an additional shadow over the general.

 

[wareyin]

The best I can come up with is that Putin might have stopped trying to undermine the election in favour of Trump if Sanders was the nominee, and wikileaks might have stopped trying to undermine the election in favour of Trump if Sanders was the nominee, and the FBI would not have tried to undermine the election in favour of Trump if Sanders was the nominee....

I think Putin would have tried to undermine the election no matter who the candidates were, and since WikiLeaks was how Putin chose to do so, they would still have been used as well.

The FBI is the most likely one to have acted differently, but the reports of it being "Trumpland" rather lead me to believe there would have been some sudden announcement about an investigation into Sanders, too.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

The guy who couldn't win when everyone treated him with kid gloves would have been able to win once the GOP stopped supporting him and began attacking him? How does that work?

Well, I reject your 'kid gloves' premise so I can't answer that.

It feels like 'kid gloves' from the left because we tend not to fall for rhetoric and subjective emotional narratives as much and that's all the Clinton campaign could ever get to stick. I find it rather ironic that the best attack line they had was 'unqualified' and guess what happened to her in the general?

The demographics of traditionally 'progressive' voters are among those who showed a significant drop off this cycle. That would have made a big difference. The independents, as well, seemed to have no appetite for 'establishment' figures this go-around. About the only thing they could have hit him with in that sense is his length of time in public offices. But that's also true of Hillary, so it's a wash. The huge difference is that there wasn't 30 years of baggage to dredge up on him in nearly the same detail (and literally a dozen narratives -true, false or, otherwise- from very recent memory).

He'd have been able to hit back on any 'establishment candidate' claims by simply referring to his nonexistent media coverage from the primaries. In fact he could probably have even turned it right back around on them by comparing how much coverage Trump got.

But, regardless, this is a 'rearranging the deck chairs' discussion anyways. The results were close enough that basically any and every 'what if' would probably have changed the outcome. Each offered variable proposed as 'the' reason is just as true in that regard as any other.

 

[Cain]

Would Clinton have won if not for Comey's announcement eleven days before the election? Yeah, probably. Why should we go back months before the election to Sanders? How far back do we want to take it? Would the Democrats have won if my dad never ****** my mom?

During the primaries, there was no good reason to believe Sanders would have been a stronger candidate than Clinton, despite people repeatedly sighting hypothetical match-ups (because Republicans never turned the screws against Sanders; he was the GOP's pied-piper candidate). I find his positions and personality more amenable than Clinton, but in Machiavellian terms, a self-avowed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, stole electricity from his neighbor, wrote erotic fiction, and all of the other ******** oppo Republicans had on him, probably would not have won. Yes, he could've won... but probably not.

 

[wareyin]

Well, I reject your 'kid gloves' premise so I can't answer that.

It feels like 'kid gloves' from the left because we tend not to fall for rhetoric and subjective emotional narratives as much and that's all the Clinton campaign could ever get to stick. I find it rather ironic that the best attack line they had was 'unqualified' and guess what happened to her in the general?

The demographics of traditionally 'progressive' voters are among those who showed a significant drop off this cycle. That would have made a big difference. The independents, as well, seemed to have no appetite for 'establishment' figures this go-around. About the only thing they could have hit him with in that sense is his length of time in public offices. But that's also true of Hillary, so it's a wash. The huge difference is that there wasn't 30 years of baggage to dredge up on him in nearly the same detail (and literally a dozen narratives -true, false or, otherwise- from very recent memory).

He'd have been able to hit back on any 'establishment candidate' claims by simply referring to his nonexistent media coverage from the primaries. In fact he could probably have even turned it right back around on them by comparing how much coverage Trump got.

But, regardless, this is a 'rearranging the deck chairs' discussion anyways. The results were close enough that basically any and every 'what if' would probably have changed the outcome. Each offered variable proposed as 'the' reason is just as true in that regard as any other.

That the "unqualified" remark is the worst we can remember proves my point about kid gloves.

Trump used anti-Semitic language and imagery against Clinton, would he not have against Sanders? Do you think Sanders history on Communism, Cuba, honeymooning in Russia, etc would not have been used against him? Trump effectively pinned lack of progress on Clinton, do you think he would not have been able to do so against a career senator?

 

[pantsorama]

http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

So what would have happened when Sanders hit a real opponent, someone who did not care about alienating the young college voters in his base? I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart. And while Sanders supporters might delude themselves into believing that they could have defended him against all of this, there is a name for politicians who play defense all the time: losers.

Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is A-OK. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it—a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.Then there’s the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words “environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.

Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 crime bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system. His pitch for universal health care would have been used against him too, since it was tried in his home state of Vermont and collapsed due to excessive costs. Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, “Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,’’ while President Daniel Ortega condemned “state terrorism” by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was “patriotic.”

The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.

I urge you to read the whole article. It serves to illuminate how the Bernie or Bust folks got played like a fiddle by the Trump campaign. And it also shows how easily that hate machine could focus on keeping Clinton voters at home.

I think Putin would have tried to undermine the election no matter who the candidates were, and since WikiLeaks was how Putin chose to do so, they would still have been used as well.

The FBI is the most likely one to have acted differently, but the reports of it being "Trumpland" rather lead me to believe there would have been some sudden announcement about an investigation into Sanders, too.

Yup. When variables are highly co-correlated, moving one has a huge effect on all the others. And when Trump won by such a razor thin margin - 80k people in 3 counties, by some estimations - the idea that any one factor alone can be held to account is extremely spurious. Statisticians call it the Simpson's paradox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

 

[Bob001]

.....
They are against the odious regulations on that corner hardware store or motorcycle repair shop they dream of owning one day.
....

"Regulations! AAAUGH!" is a long-running Repub theme. Without digressing too far, why don't you tell us what regulations interfere with those dreams (about which I have some doubts)? Zoning requirements about what can be built where? Business licenses? Sales taxes? Health and safety standards? Wage and hour laws? Fire codes? What would your ideal non-regulated business look like? What do you think your experience there as an employee or customer or neighbor should be like?

 

[ahhell]

Something to note, Putin also undermined Trump. His interference was a win for him no matter who won. Hillary was tarred directly and Trump looks like a Russian tool. Certainly, he preferred a trump win but he wasn't taking a risk doing what he did.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I think it is more like your one piece in this case, Bernie beating Hillary, has a ton of ramifications because it is done by making the electorate a bigger fan of him than he was.

If we are trying to replicate everything but the primary outcome, that is super hard. You could say, "if hillary didn't run" but that improves the democratic position by removing any email talk. You could say, "Hillary had to pull out of the election" but that puts an additional shadow over the general.

Of course the whole question requires vaticinium ex post facto. Seems to me rather than to answer it the way you have, what matters more is whether there might have been an ideological advantage Hillary didn't have. I don't think so personally. Opinions vary though.

 

[twinstead]

I've always wondered how many of the people who voted for Clinton in the general election would have voted for Trump had Sanders won the nomination instead

 

[Red Baron Farms]

"Regulations! AAAUGH!" is a long-running Repub theme. Without digressing too far, why don't you tell us what regulations interfere with those dreams (about which I have some doubts)? Zoning requirements about what can be built where? Business licenses? Sales taxes? Health and safety standards? Wage and hour laws? Fire codes? What would your ideal non-regulated business look like? What do you think your experience there as an employee or customer or neighbor should be like?

Of course it is a long running Republican theme. It is one of the defining core platforms.

Just so you understand, a book was written you might try reading.

Everything I want to do is Illegal
War Stories from the Local Food Front

Of course that's just one industry. The phenomenon is pervasive though. The book does address some of those broader philosophical issues.

 

[Wayward son]

I've always wondered how many of the people who voted for Clinton in the general election would have voted for Trump had Sanders won the nomination instead

Probably not many. Bloomberg made it known that if Sanders and Trump were the candidates he would run as an independent. Many people I know who voted for Clinton said they would have voted for Bloomberg long before they would have voted for Sanders.

 

[Bob001]

Of course it is a long running Republican theme. It is one of the defining core platforms.

Just so you understand, a book was written you might try reading.

Everything I want to do is Illegal
War Stories from the Local Food Front

Of course that's just one industry. The phenomenon is pervasive though. The book does address some of those broader philosophical issues.

I'm not buying a self-described "Christian libertarian lunatic's" book. I do note that "regulations" don't seem to be preventing him from operating a thriving business. And I suspect that if one of his neighbors poisoned the groundwater that his well draws from, or someone sold him bad feed that killed his livestock, or his house burned down because contractors didn't vent his wood stove properly, he might well ask why regulations and enforcers didn't protect him.

The whine behind the anti-regulation crowd seems to be "I'm a good guy. I'm not hurting anybody." But many people will do whatever they can get away with to make a buck or save a buck, and that's why people die in coal mine collapses and factory fires and exploding cars and lose their life savings to shysters and get poisoned by fake drugs etc., etc., etc. Bernie Sanders said it best: These are protections for all of us, and the Repubs want to take them away.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I'm not buying a self-described "Christian libertarian lunatic's" book. I do note that "regulations" don't seem to be preventing him from operating a thriving business. And I suspect that if one of his neighbors poisoned the groundwater that his well draws from, or someone sold him bad feed that killed his livestock, or his house burned down because contractors didn't vent his wood stove properly, he might well ask why regulations and enforcers didn't protect him.

The whine behind the anti-regulation crowd seems to be "I'm a good guy. I'm not hurting anybody." But many people will do whatever they can get away with to make a buck or save a buck, and that's why people die in coal mine collapses and factory fires and exploding cars and lose their life savings to shysters and get poisoned by fake drugs etc., etc., etc. Bernie Sanders said it best: These are protections for all of us, and the Repubs want to take them away.

I didn't ask you to agree, I suggested you read to understand, since you obviously don't.

Joel's self description is a purposeful troll to highlight the concept he doesn't fit into any molds and calls himself contradictory mutually exclusive descriptors to make people examine their own belief systems. You should try it. Might make you reconsider your belief, "These are protections for all of us" .

PS The full descriptor is “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer”.

 

[Delvo]

ANY Democrat who wasn't Clinton would have won. Trump's unexpectedly large turnout was driven by disdain not for Democrats in general but for Clinton personally, and even she still beat him by 3 million.

 

[Bob001]

I didn't ask you to agree, I suggested you read to understand, since you obviously don't.

Joel's self description is a purposeful troll to highlight the concept he doesn't fit into any molds and calls himself contradictory mutually exclusive descriptors to make people examine their own belief systems. You should try it. Might make you reconsider your belief, "These are protections for all of us" .

PS The full descriptor is “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer”.

I understand the philosophy pretty well: "Lemme do whatever I want to make as much money as I can any way I can, and if you don't like it screw you! Freedom!" But you haven't cited a single regulation that would prevent you from operating a legitimate business, like millions of others across the country. And if you could point to something, your customers, your employees, your neighbors and even your competitors might call it protection. We don't live in caves. Living in communities requires rules. And the people who claim we don't need them are often the ones who most need to be restrained.

 

[xjx388]

I know he wasn't in the race. That's why I am asking a hypothetical question.

I don't think I have denied that Sanders lost the primary.

Well sure, but all we can go on is what we know: Sanders couldn't even get enough Democrats to vote for him. In a GE against a candidate who had mobilized enough of the Republican electorate and enough of the swing states in general, I think it would have been harder for Sanders to win. I just don't see enough Democrats lining up behind him as they did for the all-but-elected Clinton.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I understand the philosophy pretty well: "Lemme do whatever I want to make as much money as I can any way I can, and if you don't like it screw you! Freedom!"

That statement is evidence you don't. Again, read the book. You'll find a multitude of examples where so called "protections" actually had the opposite effect. If you are unwilling to read my reference, that's fine too. But being unwilling to read my reference is in no way evidence I haven't provided any.

I provided the reference. You refuse to read it because you think you know what it contains without even reading it. Your post proves you don't know. You are no skeptic. I don't know exactly what you are, but skeptic ain't on the list.

Have a nice day.

 

[PhantomWolf]

ANY Democrat who wasn't Clinton would have won. Trump's unexpectedly large turnout was driven by disdain not for Democrats in general but for Clinton personally, and even she still beat him by 3 million.

Except that Trump's turnout wasn't "unexpectedly large" in fact it was smaller than Romney's turn out in 2012 while Clinton's was almost the same as Obama's turnout for 2012. The issue was that Non-College Educated Whites turned out for Trump, and the swing states that went his way happened to have have a large demographics of them, whereas if you look a swing State that Clinton won, e.g. Colorado, most whites there have a college education and as a result Trump did poorly.

One thing I will hand to Trump is that he nailed his demographic early when he said "I Love the Poorly Educated", they won him the election.