Bernie is winning the nomination race and here's whyFollow

If you changed facts she'd be doing horribly. Brilliant deduction.

Better than what? Shill for a candidate because the Republican candidates might not have been frothing-at-the-mouth bonafide lunatics? Actually, that probably wouldn't help Bernie any more than the field actually being filled with Arkyum Asylum escapees now.

Edited, Mar 30th 2016 1:09pm by lolgaxe

Come on, now. Do better than that.

Nah, there's no chance he wins a general election. Can't really see that stopping him from becoming president though.

If Donald Trump didn't take up all the attention and Hillary was suffering from the negative media, Sen. Sanders would not be in the lead. The establishment would flood the race similarly to the GOP. You seem to forget that Sanders does not represent the establishment.

If the DNC were to go progressive, it wouldn't be Sen. Sanders, it would be Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Clinton is not a weak candidate in any meaningful sense. She's beating Sanders decisively and polling to beat Trump and Cruz.

I suppose there's some magical place where the candidate beating every other remaining candidate is the "weak" one, but it's not in reality.

Edited, Mar 30th 2016 5:35pm by Jophiel

They cleared the field because she was "owed" it by the party. Don't think this was anything more than political payback for her losing to Obama last time around, and being assured that no such thing would happen again this time. Heck. Even her stint as Secretary of State was entirely about a consolation prize from the Obama's in return for her and her husband's support in the general in 2008. It was clearly intended to give her some extra foreign policy experience to make her a stronger candidate along the way, but I think it backfired a bit.



So if your first assumption is true then it proves your second? That's not terribly compelling logic.



She should have locked the nomination up like in late February. That an eminently unelectable candidate like Sanders is even remotely in the running is and should be a massive warning sign about Clinton.



I'm saying that it only became apparent how weak Clinton was when Sanders started actually polling well against her. When she didn't just automatically dominate all the polls, that was the big sign. Remember that none of the candidates put against her last summer were supposed to be serious. They were there because they were issues candidates who were safe to put on a podium next to Clinton, because they were no threat at all. They got to say their piece in front of a national audience, Clinton got to look really presidential next to them, and the DNC got to not look like they were so obviously gaming the nomination.

It was like late October to mid November when it became apparent that Sanders was not only not dropping out, but was actually picking up momentum on her, as others did drop out. Far far too late at that point to field another candidate. I guess what's surprising to me is that I seem to recall us having this exact conversation back then, complete with you talking about how the DNC could put another establishment candidate in place if needed, and everyone else pointing out to you that it was too late. So why don't you understand this now?



Um... Do you get that both of those assertions could be wrong? The "establishment" isn't going to support anyone else unless Clinton is actually indicted and ineligible for nomination. What Sanders and/or Trump do has no bearing on that. If Trump were not in the race, Clinton might actually be doing better, not worse (no way to be sure though). I honestly think that at least some of the numbers Trump is getting are from Democrats and left leaning moderates realizing that Clinton is a lock for the nomination, also realizing she's weak, and intentionally voting in GOP primaries to try to make the weakest candidate on the other side win so as to give their side the best chance in the general. And the fact that Dem primary participation is down significantly (like 80% of normal), while GOP primary participation is up massively (like 170% of normal) suggests there's at least some truth to this (and a bunch of other folks who don't normally participate at all flocking to vote for Trump).

Not sure how that affects the actual general election, but I'm just pointing out how Trump being in the race could result in better primary results for Sanders, not worse. And that this could be the result of Clinton being weak, not in spite of it. And again, the establishment could not possibly have known what would happen until it was far too late to put another candidate in the race, so that's not remotely a consideration here.

Edited, Mar 30th 2016 4:53pm by gbaji

You just don't understand how compelling and thought provoking "if things were different they'd be different" is.

Probably not much. Primary participation is based mainly around how competitive the election is and how much you care who wins (i.e. differences between candidates). The Democratic side isn't very competitive ("Clinton is going to win so why go out?") and not a lot of difference ("Eh, they're both good I guess"). The GOP side is the opposite with a real chance at a contested election and active fighting between the camps of the campaigns ("We won't vote if Trump wins!" "We'll riot if the establishment steals this!", etc)

That said, primary participation isn't really indicative of general election interest. I understand the value in pretending otherwise for the GOP though so it's become a popular rallying cry. As for Trump's numbers being up because of Democratic "strategic" votes, nothing has given evidence to this. In fact, Trump has often done better in exit polls among "very conservatives" than Cruz.

Edited, Mar 30th 2016 7:25pm by Jophiel

Sure. And you'd have a point. Except we're talking about Sanders. Not Warren, or Obama, or even Biden. Bernie freaking Sanders.



Um... Except that Sanders is no Clinton. Right? You get that you're comparing a candidate you just said had no chance in the nomination to one that most assumed had it locked in 2008, and to the one who actually won in 2008. You kinda can't have it both ways. Either Clinton is so much stronger than Sanders, or she's not. If she is, then why is she not leading by far far more than she is? Your best counter is that the race between Obama and Clinton was closer? The one that Obama won?

I'm not sure how any of this points to Clinton's strength. I'm not just talking about Sanders sticking around in the race long after he can't win. I'm talking about him even being remotely close to her in delegate count. If we take away the super delegates, she has less than a 300 point lead on him. If we swapped the super delegates from one to the other, he'd be leading by 200 delegates. I'm not at all saying that Sanders will win. I'm merely pointing out that Clinton's lead is not nearly as large as it should be.

She should have double his pledged delegate count at this point. At least. Using the Clinton/Obama contest of 2008 as a measuring stick is silly, since that was actually a hotly contested race between two equally strong candidates (um... and one which could also indicate a Clinton weakness even then). To put this in perspective, Kerry won the nomination with about triple the delegates as Edwards in 2004. Romney beat Santorum by like 6x the delegates in 2012. Bob Dole creamed Buchanon in 1996. I could go on, but the pattern is pretty clear. Close contests in primaries are pretty rare, and presumably the result of two or more candidates in the race splitting the votes (for any of a number of reasons). So if this is even remotely close, it's because Sanders is splitting voters from Clinton. We can speculate about *why* that might be happening, but it has been and still is happening.

That's either a sign that Sanders is much stronger than anyone thought, or that Clinton is much weaker than anyone thought. I tend to place more weight on the latter possibility. Given Clinton's issues stemming from her stint as Secretary of State, that just seems like a much better bet than "I guess voters are ready for open socialism in the US". Heck. Even if that were the case, most smart voters would place better odds of that agenda being pushed by an establishment Democrat than a firebrand like Sanders. All signs point to this being something negative about Clinton. Again, we can speculate about what that is, but voters don't appear to be that enthused about her as a candidate. More reconciled to the reality from what I've seen. And that's not so great.

If a meteor landed on her, Sanders would have all the delegates!

Damn, yours is better.