The case against Bernie Sanders

[The guy from the Vale]

I do.

I see the Republicans, in their current form, as incredibly toxic anyway. Even the apparently more moderate ones like Bush the Lesser tried to appear as have shown their zealotry; their economics has been shown to be smoke and mirrors for eight years now. But Cruz and Trump turn it up to eleven. Neither of these two should have any realistic shot at the presidency. I don't think they'd be likely to win... but there'd still be a chance if they are the nominees, and that is incredibly scary. We made that mistake over here 83 years ago, and it took almost the entire world to stop us. I don't think the world could defeat the USA in terms of conventional warfare today, and the alternatives are even scarier.

On a related note, Scot: say the election comes down to Sanders vs. Trump (don't think they'll be the nominees, but for arguments' sake). Would you vote for Sanders (after declaring earlier that you wouldn't do that).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TgftV,

I'm not sure, I've been voting Libertarian, Green, and write in for some years.  I'd be tempted to vote against Trump or Cruz.

[sologdin]

we need to make this the Scot for Sanders thread.

[Jen'ari]

Personally I hope one either Sanders or even one of the Repblicans gets in over Clinton.

[The Anti-Targ]

39 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

I do.

I see the Republicans, in their current form, as incredibly toxic anyway. Even the apparently more moderate ones like Bush the Lesser tried to appear as have shown their zealotry; their economics has been shown to be smoke and mirrors for eight years now. But Cruz and Trump turn it up to eleven. Neither of these two should have any realistic shot at the presidency. I don't think they'd be likely to win... but there'd still be a chance if they are the nominees, and that is incredibly scary. We made that mistake over here 83 years ago, and it took almost the entire world to stop us. I don't think the world could defeat the USA in terms of conventional warfare today, and the alternatives are even scarier.

On a related note, Scot: say the election comes down to Sanders vs. Trump (don't think they'll be the nominees, but for arguments' sake). Would you vote for Sanders (after declaring earlier that you wouldn't do that).

Apparently there's a poll, not sure how recent or whether it was nation-wide, that says Bernie Sanders currently beats trump head to head by 15%, and Hilary only beats Trump head to head by 10%. So perhaps for Democrats it doesn't matter who wins the primary if Trump gets the nomination. But what does matter is making sure they hold on to that 10% / 15% lead.

Not sure what the % difference is in a Cruz head to head though.

[Bonesy]

Lord Sidious is apparently unaware that he doesn't exist.

[TerraPrime]

4 minutes ago, Bonesy said:

Lord Sidious is apparently unaware that he doesn't exist.

Did anyone say that? 

Or did people say that people like that are not going to make meaningful impact on national elections? 

Because those are two very different viewpoints. 

For someone who evinced great frustration at other people dismissing his political view, you're doing yourself no favor in making such a rudimentary error in characterizing the other side's point. 

[Bonesy]

Fine. I'll try to balance that out with something constructive.

According to NATE SILVER at 538, the only candidate with a net positive favorability is Bernie Sanders.

[BookWyrm2]

On January 17, 2016 at 6:46 PM, Shryke said:

 

Yes. That is exactly what you are doing. As are others. Anecdotes are just anecdotes. They don't constitute even the mildest form of proof of anything. But you are holding them up as they must be true because why? Because they agree with what you want to be true.

Claiming a few people in a thread on the internet are totally more valid then published papers on political science is just a load of crap. It's just people saying "Well I feel this must be true because <anecdote> therefore you are wrong". To the point people feel fine shitting all over political science as a form of study altogether. It's really really silly.

Especially since the point of scientific study is to tackle exactly this kind of shit. To say prove and disprove what you totally know must be true via actual study.

 

If you looking for more on the issue, here's just a few quick things I found on the issue:

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/08/22/159588275/are-independents-just-partisans-in-disguise

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/20/the-mythical-swing-voter/

http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/independent-voters-are-generally-not-3560

This has been the fairly consistent result I've seen from papers on this issue. Independent voters and "swing voters" in the US are quite predictable and consistent in their voting habits for the most part.

And if I remember correctly, this is only becoming more true as voters are becoming less and less likely to switch from one party to the other.

 

Washington Post and NPR don't come close to being peer reviewed science articles.

By the way the Washington Post also published this article which seems to contradict the ideas presented in the one you linked me to. Nice consensus but it seems a little like you're giving me anecdotes right now.

I have no idea how you are so adamantly against "anecdotes" but refuse to supply anyone with a healthy dose of peer reviewed papers noting a consensus (just in case you think a single paper a consensus makes) you consistently fall back on - as if it's somehow well known to everyone.

You're the one making the claim that swing voters don't exist and don't influence elections, the onus is on you to support the idea. Until you give me this mythical consensus you keep talking about you're the one giving out anecdotes.

Also understand what I'm saying: I'm not saying the swing vote is anywhere near 30-35% (just to use an arbitrary number). My example was the Green Party voters in 2000 who, if they'd voted democratic could've sent Gore to the White House instead of Bush. That's not much more than 2% or so of voters that year. It doesn't take a huge number of cross party voters to change the election.

Also note: since America has such low voter turnout it's almost impossible to really isolate a control in order to tell what's due to swing votes and what's a matter of partisan voter turnout. It seems obvious to me that both things are important.

 

Here's documented proof that people can and do in fact change the party they vote for:

https://web.stanford.edu/~tomz/pubs/TomzVanHouweling-2009-02.pdf

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0060554

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187704281205077X

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14799.pdf

https://my.vanderbilt.edu/larrybartels/files/2011/12/Issue_Voting.pdf

^ Those are all peer reviewed ^

 

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, Bonesy said:

Fine. I'll try to balance that out with something constructive.

According to NATE SILVER at 538, the only candidate with a net positive favorability is Bernie Sanders.

I wouldn't count much on that when it comes time to elect a president. Obama's approval ratings were only about 45% in 2012, yet he won reelection nonetheless. Come November, most Democrats are going to line up behind whatever Democrat is nominated, regardless of how they feel about her/him. I am sure there will be a few who make the strange judgment that a President Rubio (or whomever) is better than a President Clinton, but I suspect that, like the PUMAs of 2008, those will be outliers.

[Kalbear]

Bookwyrm2, I don't know if you bothered to read those articles but at least the first one linked has nothing to do with swing voters. It has to do with the value of ambiguous positions in politics. Which as it turns out is pretty relevant to saying why a lot of people like Sanders but isn't a refutation of swing voters being a big deal in the presidency.

By the way that's the tougher thing. Swing voters can often influence Congress elections (which often do not go by party lines) but the data we have tends to indicate that swing voters don't matter nearly as much as turnout overall. No one is saying they don't exist. They're saying that they aren't deciding factors.

And yes, gore would have won if the folks who voted Nader voted for him. He would also have won if he got the same turnout in Florida that Obama got, and he would have decisively won. It is possible under some really odd circumstances for swing votes to be the deciding factor, but it is usually due to low turnout (like it was in 2000).

And for 2016, at least so far, Democrats are very positive about both Clinton and sanders. Chances are good that the turnout will be fine. Especially since the current Republican candidates are basically loathed.

[sologdin]

gore lost less registered dems to nader than he did to bush in florida.  gore would've won if the state repubs wouldn't have scrubbed unlawfully many thousands of dems from the voter lists. nader is the #3 villain in that story.

[S John]

I would happily vote for Sanders, I really don't want to vote for Clinton.

If Clinton is the D nominee I'm exploring third party candidates, no guarantee she'd get my vote.  Sanders would.

[Gorn]

Kalbear,

Since numerous examples of swing voters from this thread apparently don't count, here is some data for you:

In a Clinton - Trump general election, 20% of Democrats would vote for Trump

[Gorn]

12 hours ago, Triskan said:

Limited posting ability due to phone only, but Chait has an interesting piece on why Clinton makes more sense that Sanders.  One point he makes is that Bernie's strength is in the areas in which he would most need Congress.  And his weaknesses are in the areas where the President would still have power like in foreign policy.  That said, I don't recall ever hearing as much talk about what the dynamic in Congress would be .

I would say that foreign policy is Clinton's weakness, not Bernie's. In case of Iraq and Libya wars, her judgment was proven disastrously wrong, while Bernie's was proven correct. Clinton's position on Syria no-fly zone is neocon nonsense which, if implemented, risks WW3 with Russia. The foreign policy positions of her campaign are basically indistinguishable from those held by Bush, Rubio, Christie or the rest of the Republican neocons. She has been conspicuously silent on the Iran nuclear deal when Obama needed support the most. Her tenure as Secretary of State was mediocre, especially compared to Kerry's.

Here's a question for Clinton supporters: what major accomplishments did she have as Secretary of State? It's a genuine question since I tried remembering and can't think of any.

[Shryke]

24 minutes ago, Gorn said:

I would say that foreign policy is Clinton's weakness, not Bernie's. In case of Iraq and Libya wars, her judgment was proven disastrously wrong, while Bernie's was proven correct. Clinton's position on Syria no-fly zone is neocon nonsense which, if implemented, risks WW3 with Russia. The foreign policy positions of her campaign are basically indistinguishable from those held by Bush, Rubio, Christie or the rest of the Republican neocons. She has been conspicuously silent on the Iran nuclear deal when Obama needed support the most. Her tenure as Secretary of State was mediocre, especially compared to Kerry's.

Here's a question for Clinton supporters: what major accomplishments did she have as Secretary of State? It's a genuine question since I tried remembering and can't think of any.

Her position on Syria involves a no-fly zone with Russian cooperation. She has backed Obama's Iran deal, which on it's own proves your whole "indistinguishable from the GOP candidate's" statement wrong. She's been the architect of much of the Obama admin's work to fix US soft power after the GWB years. She was part of the quite successful pivot to asia, which has improved US relations in the region in counterbalance to the Chinese. The softening of US policy towards Iran began under her term as SoS. That's just off the top of my head.

Her recent book (Hard Choices I think?) goes into more detail on the nitty-gritty of all that apparently.

In general she seemed to be quite good at her job and her performance in the debates has shown a good grasp of the issue at hand. One should expect that from a former SoS.

 

Sanders' position on the whole Syrian situation alone strikes me as somewhere between naive and uninformed. The more he talks about Saudi Arabia, the less I feel he understands the region.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

Kalbear,

Since numerous examples of swing voters from this thread apparently don't count, here is some data for you:

In a Clinton - Trump general election, 20% of Democrats would vote for Trump

Who the fuck are Mercury Analytics? What was the methodology?

Cause the most I could find was "online questionnaire" and "dial test" which is highly questionable and vague as fuck respectively.

And 538 don't even list them in their rankings.

[TrackerNeil]

9 hours ago, S John said:

I would happily vote for Sanders, I really don't want to vote for Clinton.

If Clinton is the D nominee I'm exploring third party candidates, no guarantee she'd get my vote.  Sanders would.

Well, your vote is yours to cast, but keep in mind that Clinton and Sanders would very likely govern in much the same way. So if you share Democratic values, it doesn't matter very much which one gets into office; he/she will deliver the goods. If you are simply voting in favor of Sanders as some kind of personality thing...well, I imagine Bernie would tell you to vote for the Democratic nominee instead of putting President Cruz or Rubio in charge.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I doubt Clinton would lose many voters who would pull the lever for Trump or Cruz, I think the bigger chunk of voters would be those who would show up to vote for Sanders, but would stay home or vote third party over any Republican candidate.  No, I don't have any data to support this.

 

Edit:  At least among young white voters.  I keep hearing that Sanders would also lose some turnout amongst blacks and latinos.

[aceluby]

The real question about the general election should be what kind of #'s (and more importantly WHERE) would Sanders lose to minorities not showing up if he's the nominee and what kind of #'s would Clinton lose in the young white crowd if she were the nominee?

I think that if Sanders won the nomination it would be much easier for the Obama campaign machine to get the vote out in minority communities then it would for the same machine to get young white kids to come out for Clinton.  I don't have any data to support this theory, but that's my gut feeling.