US Election: It's a post-TrumpDay world

[Kalbear]

The Sanders supporters that would currently not be voting for her will just see this as Sanders selling out. She can get his policies without getting him, and that'll be just as effective in getting those votes.

That being said, going more liberal on the ticket isn't typically good for the general. 

Liebermann was the first Jewish VP candidate. Didn't help a lot.

[TrackerNeil]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The Sanders supporters that would currently not be voting for her will just see this as Sanders selling out. She can get his policies without getting him, and that'll be just as effective in getting those votes.

Agreed. There are those Sanders supporters who are reasonably just looking for a candidate who's as far to the left as possible, and those "Bernie or Bust" people who are just part of a cult of personality. The former will come around to Clinton by November; the latter aren't going to persuaded by anything. In fact, I suspect those people will turn on Sanders once he endorses Clinton. (We saw the same with Clinton and the PUMAs back in 2008.)

[ThinkerX]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Perhaps they do, but perhaps said outside competition should be, ya know, more competitive before yelling about it. When said outside competition does the best in the least representative form of voting that exists it's not really all that reasonable to shout about voter suppression. 

If Sanders had had some kind of actual shot at the nomination - like, ya know, winning the popular vote or winning the most states or winning the most delegates (any of those, really) - and the superdelegates turned against him? That'd be one thing. But right now said outside candidate and a number of his supporters are suggesting loudly that the system should ignore the popular vote, the states votes and the delegate votes and instead vote for him. Which...is kind of the opposite of what he supposedly wants. 

Problem is, Sanders swept the majority of the youth vote.  Aka, the future.

 

To those people, Clinton represents a corrupt establishment.

 

And while not as young, the same attitude typifies the attitude of many Trump voters towards the republican establishment.

 

This much discontent leads to nowhere save disaster for the 'establishment' wings of the respective parties.  Neither Clinton nor Trump nor Cruz is going to have a second term.  Quite the opposite, to me, the odds of impeachment for any of them are pretty high.  I expect 2020 to be even worse for the establishment.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

That being said, going more liberal on the ticket isn't typically good for the general. 

Albeit that the last time a Democratic candidate chose a running mate more overtly left than themselves was Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. So we don't have much recent data on it.

I think the biggest issue with a Clinton/Sanders unity ticket is the age issue. A combined 144 years on inauguration day, never mind an average age of 80 it's a two-term presidency? Better for Hillary to find someone in their 40s or 50s. 

[mormont]

6 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Problem is, Sanders swept the majority of the youth vote.  Aka, the future.

True. But to be honest, most of the youth vote aka the future stayed at home and didn't vote for either Sanders or Clinton. And that is a problem for both parties and all of the candidates, but in the end, it would be odd to argue it's more of a problem for the candidate who's winning the votes of the demographics that do turn out (ie Clinton) than the one that needs the youth vote and isn't getting it in sufficient numbers (Sanders).

I ask as one who genuinely doesn't know: what is the Sanders campaign doing in terms of an organised effort to get out the vote among the demographics that favour him? Because doing that is absolutely the key building block of any sort of insurgent campaign.

[Shryke]

11 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Problem is, Sanders swept the majority of the youth vote.  Aka, the future.

To those people, Clinton represents a corrupt establishment.

Except not. Sanders is definitely winning the youth vote but that doesn't mean the youth hate Clinton or something. It just means they like Sanders better. Polling still shows, afaik, high approval for both candidates across the board. I mean, Clinton is crushing Sanders with the black vote WAY WAY worse but black people don't dislike Sanders.

You are again attempting to read your own narrative onto the results.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Also, let's assume that these young people who love Sanders somehow hate Clinton (unlikely - young voters have been heavily Democratic for some time. It's the elderly who skew Republican).

If having a bunch of young people angry at the Establishment was a recipe for "overthrowing the system" further down the line, I'd point you to the former hippies who were cheerfully voting Reagan a decade or so later.

[LongRider]

6 hours ago, mormont said:

I ask as one who genuinely doesn't know: what is the Sanders campaign doing in terms of an organised effort to get out the vote among the demographics that favour him? Because doing that is absolutely the key building block of any sort of insurgent campaign.

One of Sander's issues is that many of his supporters are not registered as Democrats and therefore, cannot vote for him in the primaries, as only registered Democrats can vote in those elections*.  That's one reason why his rallies are big but his turnout is small.

If one wants to get out the vote, one needs to tap into Obama's machine from 2012, as Clinton is now doing.   Having volunteered on Obama's campaign in 2012, I know that the GOTV capabilities ran very deep. 

Sander's has the capability to get the type of volunteers needed to do that, but I don't see the organization from him so far.   Sanders should be in California right now pounding on doors and signing up vols.  In Calif there is support for him here, and not all of it among younger voters.

 

*most of the primaries are closed to members registered in the party only, but not all and the caucuses are different as well

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

If having a bunch of young people angry at the Establishment was a recipe for "overthrowing the system" further down the line, I'd point you to the former hippies who were cheerfully voting Reagan a decade or so later.

Yup. There is no sign that this revolution is incipient, or that anything like it has ever happened. I think Kevin Drum is right; making a difference is hard, usually thankless (witness Sanders supporters who think Obama is a disappointment) and always involves compromise.

[ThinkerX]

3 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Yup. There is no sign that this revolution is incipient, or that anything like it has ever happened. I think Kevin Drum is right; making a difference is hard, usually thankless (witness Sanders supporters who think Obama is a disappointment) and always involves compromise.

So you are trying to pretend the discontent behind the Sanders (and Trump) campaigns is some sort of illusion that will just fade away after the election?

 

5 hours ago, Shryke said:

Except not. Sanders is definitely winning the youth vote but that doesn't mean the youth hate Clinton or something. It just means they like Sanders better. Polling still shows, afaik, high approval for both candidates across the board. I mean, Clinton is crushing Sanders with the black vote WAY WAY worse but black people don't dislike Sanders.

You are again attempting to read your own narrative onto the results.

And Clintons high negatives come from where?  I note that even many democrats, including no few of her supporters on this board, are less than thrilled with her.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, LongRider said:

One of Sander's issues is that many of his supporters are not registered as Democrats and therefore, cannot vote for him in the primaries, as only registered Democrats can vote in those elections*.  That's one reason why his rallies are big but his turnout is small.

Right, but this can't have been a surprise to his campaign if they did any real planning for a serious run for the nomination. Getting young supporters registered as Dems should have been their number one aim.

11 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

So you are trying to pretend the discontent behind the Sanders (and Trump) campaigns is some sort of illusion that will just fade away after the election?

That's a leading characterisation. Let me ask you instead: what objective evidence do you have of the extent, depth and persistence of this discontent? How much of the electorate feels that there is a fundamental problem, how permanent and strong is this feeling, and most crucially, what is the evidence that they will feel strongly enough to do anything substantial about it twelve months from now?

Note: I'm very much not denying that there is such a sentiment, that many people agree with it and that for some people the system truly is fundamentally broken. I'm asking for figures backing up the idea that this is so widespread and so important to people that if politicians don't address it, there are real risks.

11 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

And Clintons high negatives come from where?  I note that even many democrats, including no few of her supporters on this board, are less than thrilled with her.

Put it this way: I doubt there's a Dem voter anywhere who wouldn't prefer to have Obama back, or another candidate of his quality. But there are none running.

Still, whatever one may think about Clinton's negatives, the Republican party would undoubtedly vastly have preferred to have someone like Clinton (complete with all her negatives) than either Trump or any of the busload of failed challengers who've crashed out over the course of their primary process.

[Shryke]

29 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

And Clintons high negatives come from where?  I note that even many democrats, including no few of her supporters on this board, are less than thrilled with her.

Republicans for the most part.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Republicans for the most part.

The Republicans cause the Clintons to have high negatives among Democrats?

[The Marquis de Leech]

13 minutes ago, mormont said:

Put it this way: I doubt there's a Dem voter anywhere who wouldn't prefer to have Obama back, or another candidate of his quality. But there are none running.

Not quite true. There's a fair few white southern Democrats who think Clinton might help them recover from 2010 and 2014 - Obama is electorally toxic in places like Arkansas and West Virginia. Whether Clinton can actually win in today's Arkansas is a debatable point, but I think it's likely she'll at least make an effort there.

[Altherion]

22 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

So you are trying to pretend the discontent behind the Sanders (and Trump) campaigns is some sort of illusion that will just fade away after the election?

I think their conversation is about the Sanders campaign alone and indeed, taken in isolation, neither the Sanders nor the Trump campaigns would mean much -- there is almost always a populist element in politics and it's not unusual for a representative of this element to rise to the level of a second-best contender. What is interesting about this election cycle is that we have both Trump and Sanders at the same time. The status quo is currently protected by the fact that their followers hate each other more than they hate the establishment, but this need not remain true.

21 minutes ago, mormont said:

Let me ask you instead: what objective evidence do you have of the extent, depth and persistence of this discontent? How much of the electorate feels that there is a fundamental problem, how permanent and strong is this feeling, and most crucially, what is the evidence that they will feel strongly enough to do anything substantial about it twelve months from now?

Extent and persistence are fairly easy: US polling companies conduct general satisfaction polls and the number of those satisfied hasn't exceeded 40% for a decade (zoomed in poll). Note that this is not a permanent discontent: in the first link, the numbers routinely reached 60% and occasionally even 70% in the 1990's and early 2000's. Of course, whether anyone will actually do anything about it and, if so, when they will do it is virtually impossible to predict. So far, the reaction has been limited to a variety of minor movements (the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, etc.) which are extremely unlikely to ever unify into something that can enact wide-scale social change.

[ThinkerX]

50 minutes ago, mormont said:

That's a leading characterisation. Let me ask you instead: what objective evidence do you have of the extent, depth and persistence of this discontent? How much of the electorate feels that there is a fundamental problem, how permanent and strong is this feeling, and most crucially, what is the evidence that they will feel strongly enough to do anything substantial about it twelve months from now?

Note: I'm very much not denying that there is such a sentiment, that many people agree with it and that for some people the system truly is fundamentally broken. I'm asking for figures backing up the idea that this is so widespread and so important to people that if politicians don't address it, there are real risks.

Remember how overwhelming unpopular the TPP was among ordinary folks - yet it got passed anyway.

Likewise, I note that minimum wage increases have passed in several states despite lackluster democratic party support and republican disdain. They defied the establishment without significant external support and won, or at least forced acknowledgement.

Plus, while not as solid, I see very little support for illegal immigration, and a great many ordinary people in both parties dead set against it. 

Trump and Sanders each included at least some of these items plus others in their campaigns.  Trump is effectively destroying the republican party as it stands based on his stances, something COMPLETELY unthinkable even a year ago.  Sanders went from a nobody to a significant threat to the democratic party establishment on a campaign based on these items.

Both Trump and Sanders are unlikely to become president.  However, only a complete fool would think the issues they campaigned on, the issues that caused major havoc in the political establishments, are just going to fade into the background.  Yet that seems to be what at least some of the people on this board are doing.

 

 

 

 

[TrackerNeil]

3 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

So you are trying to pretend the discontent behind the Sanders (and Trump) campaigns is some sort of illusion that will just fade away after the election?

I'm pretending nothing. I'm pointing out that there are no real examples of the kind of revolution Sanders describes, in which Republicans abandon their opposition to single-payer health care and universal pre-K in the face of a voter uprising.

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The Republicans cause the Clintons to have high negatives among Democrats?

Yes, in part. The Republicans investigated the hell out of the Clintons in the 90s, and unfortunately the major media often take a where-there's-smoke-there's-fire approach to reporting this stuff. Instead of pointing out how many millions were wasted on investigations that yielded no wrongdoing, they talk about the Clintons besieged by "scandals."

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The Republicans cause the Clintons to have high negatives among Democrats?

Yes. Absolutely, yes. When my supposed Democrat friends are posting videos with "Clinton is a LIAR" that came directly from conservative blogs, yes, they're precisely coming from a lot of those high negatives. Karl Rove recently came out and said that his whole social media campaign was to target liberals with anti-Clinton stuff. 

[Kalbear]

Quote

Likewise, I note that minimum wage increases have passed in several states despite lackluster democratic party support and republican disdain. They defied the establishment without significant external support and won, or at least forced acknowledgement.

Where is this 'lackluster democratic support'? Part of the Democratic national platform is a minimum wage increase. Obama has led the charge on this too. Now, there isn't widespread agreement on how MUCH it should be, so some people argue with Sanders about it - but the entire Democratic platform is for minimum wage increase. 

 

You might have a point if minimum wage increases had been passed in republican-leaning states, but they haven't. They've been passed in democratic-leaning states quite often. There isn't a whole lot that Obama can do with a house and senate that are entirely opposed to anything he says on principle. 

[Commodore]

wrong thread