this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
60 points (100.0% liked)
Politics
10186 readers
749 users here now
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't know for certain if he would have won, but I'm guessing that he would've done a whole heckuva lot better than Kamala.
I doubt that. He wasn't even able to convince Democrats beyond young, white colleges educated men - who are outraged by the mere thought that his appeal starts and ends with them (edit: called it), who dive head first into conspiracy theories that have one thing in common: They all ignore this simple fact.
Look, he's among a small handful of truly incorruptible American politicians and he deserves respect for this, but he has never been presidential material and never will be.
The polls disagree, no one ever polled better against Trump than Sanders.
As a youngish, college educated white man who voted against Bernie in 2016, his appeal certainly extended beyond that demographic, all my queer POC friends loved him. He polls horribly with the stable, comfortable middle class Democrats who reliably vote for sure, and I doubt he can/could ever make it through a Dem primary, even if the DNC leadership pushed him. But he does do really well with the same groups trump does, the disaffected and marginalized. In an election matchup, Trump wins the extremely bigoted voters, and Bernie wins the leftists and targeted minority groups and drives much higher turnout in them. The moderate Republicans who swung to Biden and Kamala probably vote third party or abstain, the establishment Dems probably hold their nose and vote Bernie. I think it would be very close, and if there were third party centrist candidates they would get more votes than expected, but I think turnout general would be a lot higher than 2016 or 2024
Bernie would have won the fuck out of 2016.
Hillary almost won, and she had essentially nothing to bring beyond being blue, a lady, and continuing the status quo. On top of that she is too fake for politics, which is a high level of fakeness. Bernie would have been an upgrade to everyone who doesn’t work in DC.
How he would have done as president, I have no idea. But he absolutely would have won.
She was one of the most experienced and qualified candidates for US presidency in history. The kind of political illiteracy you're proudly displaying is a fundamental issue that many democracies have to tackle, not just the US.
Edit:
Some numbers from 2016 support my earlier claims:
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/15592-age-and-race-democratic-primary
What were her big accomplishments in the senate again?
Here's Bernie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#Legislation_2
I'm not against her because she is blue, or a lady. Those are both good things. I'm against her because she was the last wave of the Clinton-era conservatism that poisoned the Democrats and lost them supporters which led in large part to our current catastrophe. For more, see the source article.
She was experienced in the executive branch instead of the legislative branch of the government, which matters in this context, because she was a candidate for the highest office in the executive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton%27s_tenure_as_Secretary_of_State
A bit misleading, given that Sanders has been in office for much longer. He's old, almost five years older than Trump, by the way.
She's a moderate, always has been, which in the increasingly polarized political landscape is so outrageous to some people on both sides of the aisle that they feel the need to smear her by accusing her of being the other side's extreme. Please don't do this. It doesn't exactly make you look level-headed. Her voting record is in stark contrast to her husband and more liberal than Obama's, which doesn't exactly support your claims either.
I think a lot of it hinges on what a “moderate” is, in the American political frame of reference, and whether one of those is good enough for most of the American people who don’t live in Washington or NYC to ever have a chance of living a decent life.
You’ve got a point, I guess, about some of it. But I still mostly stick by my statement that Hillary fucked it, when Bernie would have crushed it, on economic policy and sanity in our Israel policy among several other key issues where the majority of people feel very differently than the people in DC and on the news do.
As long as a majority of Americans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, Sanders' economic policies have less mass appeal and offer more opportunities for attack ads than you think. It needs to be stressed that people voted for Trump not just because he's a loud-mouthed racist and sexist and they like that, but also because he inherited the (irrational) image of Republicans being better for the economy.
Public opinion on Israel was, even among college kids, very different in 2016, before the current wave of massed anti-Israel propaganda from Russian, Chinese and Iranian bot farms sweeping over social media - and even now most voters (as in: people who actually vote) are still more pro-Israel than pro-Palestine (which makes sense, given how important of a partner Israel is to the US) - and it's still not high on the list of priorities for most, not even remotely high enough to be mentioned side-by-side with economic policy, which is and almost always has been the number one priority.
Are you saying that the polls are completely wrong? What are you basing the idea on that the "majority of the people" (reminder: the majority of voters just elected Trump - he actually got the popular vote this time, which is deeply, deeply troubling) have left-leaning positions on the economy and Israel?
You think his appeal is only to white college educated men? What a fucking wild take.
Bernie certainly had/has more support than young, white, college educated men. In 2016, so many people from different ages and walks of life were at the two of his rallies I attended and basically all the people I knew voting blue were more interested in Bernie that Hillary.
I see that he got shafted by media and the party more than he was not as popular.
He's also not popular with the stable, middle class democratic electorate who make up a plurality of their consistent voters. I think they'd vote for him in the generals if he won the primaries but I don't think even with media hype he can win those primaries without a massive wave of independents voting in them