Now that Bernie Sanders got the most votes in both the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, the media has gone into overdrive to try and find ways to explain why those results don’t mean that he is the current leader in the race. The main one is that he only got about 30% of the vote (true) and thus 70% of the people must have voted against him (false), showing that the majority dislike him. The latter is a false inference that implies that all the people who voted for the other candidates would unify behind any single alternative.
Sanders falls to last place in new national poll when all of his opponents are added together into a single, non-existent candidate. pic.twitter.com/zEfXM03dDu
— MSDNC – Commentary & Satire (@MSDNCTV) February 12, 2020
But a new poll undermines that narrative because it finds that in head-to-head matchups, Sanders beats every other candidate, most quite handily.
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Sen. Bernie Sanders would defeat each of the other Democratic presidential candidates in a one-on-one race — in many instances by double-digit margins.
Sanders won the most votes in Iowa and New Hampshire and now leads in national surveys. Yet mainstream Democrats seem to think the democratic socialist from Vermont is a weak frontrunner who would be easily dispatched if only the rest of the party stopped dividing its vote among several candidates and consolidated around a single, more moderate alternative.
The Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests they may be wrong.
In a series of hypothetical head-to-head matchups, Sanders ran ahead of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg by 15 points (53 percent to 38 percent); ahead of former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 17 points (54 percent to 37 percent); and ahead of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar by 21 points (54 percent to 33 percent). Sanders’s closest competitors were former Vice President Joe Biden, who trailed him by 4 points (48 percent to 44 percent) and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who trailed him by 2 (44 percent to 42 percent).
I posted before about how long-time Democratic establishment operative James Carville said that Sanders is bad for the party because he is an ‘extremist’ and an ‘ideologue’ and that his ideas are not ‘practical’. When asked to respond, Sanders dismissed Carville as the political hack that he is. Carville revealingly reacted by accepting the label of being a hack but said that it is better than being a ‘communist’.
“Last night on CNN, Bernie Sanders called me a political hack,” Carville said. “That’s exactly who the f— I am! I am a political hack! I am not an ideologue. I am not a purist. He thinks it’s a pejorative. I kind of like it! At least I’m not a communist.”
Trump also recently referred to Sanders as a communist.
That remark alone should be enough to show how ignorant Carville is, since the ‘democratic socialism’ that Sanders touts is undeniably part of the capitalist structure and is mainstream in many European countries and is very different from even just socialism and nowhere near communism. Carville’s nonsense is laughable but is a sign that establishment Democrats are willing to stoop to any level of name-calling even to the extent of adopting the attacks made by Trump, while clutching their pearls over ‘Bernie bros’.
These are the people who have shaped the identity of the Democratic Party since the early 1990s, and they’re the reason it’s such a grotesque mess: https://t.co/NDaZIv934K
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 14, 2020
Sanders also hits back at the ‘Bernie bros’ narrative that the media loves to advance, saying that you can always find supporters of any candidate that will say inflammatory things on the internet and that his campaign has nothing to do with such sentiments.
FINALLY —Bernie knee caps the Bernie Bro narrative pic.twitter.com/VwAqbiRNzZ
— Dilan (@dilanpcook) February 14, 2020
The supposedly ‘liberal’ MSNBC has been in the vanguard of the anti-Sanders movement and its chief political news host Chuck Todd has said that he cannot understand why Sanders is considered the front runner in the Democratic primary, and this was after Sanders had got the most votes in each of the first two contests. Todd even hauled out a quote from a conservative commentator comparing Sanders supporters to Hitler’s brown shirts.
Casually invoking Nazi slurs was too much for the Anti-Defamation League and it rebuked Todd.
As we enter a contentious campaign season, it is incumbent upon leaders & pundits to refrain from using offensive comparisons to the Holocaust. Doing so only diminishes the memories of the 6M Jews who were killed by Nazis & Nazi sympathizers. https://t.co/iZT8QWLbu7
— ADL (@ADL) February 11, 2020
As Glenn Greenwald points out, Todd is not the brightest light on the media holiday tree.
The good thing about Chuck Todd being one of TV's most devoted anti-Bernie propagandists is that Chuck Todd is really, really dumb.
Also, he just got denounced by the @ADL for anti-Semitic insensitivity: https://t.co/xy2IpV2UzP
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 13, 2020
If Sanders should win the next contest in Nevada next Saturday, it will be interesting to see what Todd and his ilk come up with.
The argument is also easily reversed. If the arguer truly believes that to be a reasonable conclusion, then choose their preferred candidate and point out that they only received say 20% of the vote… surely that means 80% of the people voted against them.
Yup. Still waiting for anything more substantive than ‘some Bernie fans are aggressively argumentative’, which has been promulgated even on these fair shores.
I’ve linked to the fivethirtyeight primary model/forecast in an earlier thread, but I’ll mention it again. It’s the closest thing we have to a decent answer about the primaries.
In addition to the overall picture, they also break it down for each state and territory (via the drop-down menu at the top of the page). Currently, the forecast is that Sanders is the most likely to win the most delegates in nearly all of them, with a few exceptions. (Note, the percentages below represent odds, not votes or delegates):
Alabama: Biden 37%, Sanders 33%
Delaware: Sanders and Biden tied, 38% each
Minnesota: Sanders and Klobuchar tied, 34% each
…. Other home states of the main candidates, since that’s also worth mentioning:
Massachusetts: Sanders 46%, Warren 21%
Indiana: Sanders 40%, Buttigieg 24%
New York: Sanders 41%, Bloomberg 29%
Vermont: Sanders 92%, Biden 3%
All of these highly-electable uniters of the party are not looking great so far, unless you’re in the small, wealthy, white, highly-educated, old, East Coast class of journalists/pundits/politicians/donors/lobbyists/think-tank-thought-leaders/etc. who are allergic to reality and have been losing tons of elections for Democrats for decades, against some of the most obviously corrupt and incompetent politicians who ever walked the Earth (no, this time I mean the Republicans). If they are the ones who know the way to go and understand our lives better than we do, there is no evidence whatsoever to support that…. not that this has ever stopped them before. One day, we should probably just stop listening to them.
Anyway, the margins aren’t very big in some races, but a win is a win. Whatever happens, Sanders supporters should not act like we have this settled until after the convention, because unfortunately they will definitely fight this to the bitter end. Do you think Sanders is leading by 50 points in your state? Go and vote for him anyway, and bring your friends with you.
I have never understood the US system with its criss-crossing the country for months or a year. Why even have a convention if all the delegates are predetermined?
Canadian political party conventions changed in the last 17 years. Before that, potential leaders came to conventions to encourage delegates to vote for them.
When it came time to vote, a leader was chosen after obtaining 50% + 1 of the delegates. If no one had enough, candidate(s) were eliminated by finishing last or below a certain percentage, then they vote again. Between those votes, candidates would negotiate or try to attract delegates from eliminated candidates. The one with the most in an early round could still lose if there was an “anybody but *them*!” movement. That would be an interesting way to hold a US party convention.
I will definitely be voting for Sanders in the primary (March 10th) and against Trump in the general election. I would much prefer to vote for someone in the general, but I fear that, even if Sanders has a majority of the pledged delegates going into the convention, there’s still time for the party hacks to change the rules and allow superdelegates to vote on the first ballot. (I hope I’m wrong.)
<aside>
There’s currently a discussion going on over at Pharyngula about how awful Bloomberg is. I suppose it’s possible that he’s not quite as awful as Trump since that’s a really low bar.
</aside>
@ 3 Intransitive
I have never understood the US system
I used to think that one had to be born in the US or arrive before the age of six but Mano seems to understand it and he was an adult when he arrived. It may be like cricket, some strangers manage to figure it out.
Wait a minute, Mano is a cricket fan. It may be that after mastering cricket, theoretical physics and even the US primary/electoral system may have been fairly easy.
I still have not figured out how the Republic and Democratic Parties exist. They do not seem to have memberships or any of the things we expect in Canada.
And I still do not understand how one becomes a registered party member. It seems that each state maintains some kind of list. Weird.
What about Taiwan? Is it close enough to Canada’s to understand?
#3
An even better system would be to hold a vote, simultaneous across the nation, with preferences. And no delegates -- a vote is simply a vote to be tallied.
jrkrideau (#5) --
I don’t know how parties select candidates, but in a physically small and densely populated country, there’s undoubtedly a lot of face to face meetings and conventions (2 hours from Taipei to Kaohsiung by high speed rail). Protest movements tend to form and move quickly.
Taiwan went from a single party fascist country to a two party system initially (while the KMT still dominated). Chen Shiu-bian was the first DPP president, but he wasn’t much better (organizing a fake assassination attempt to gain sympathy votes). The Sunflower Student Movement of 2014 caused a major change, the DPP surpassing the KMT and NPP becoming a prominent third voice.
In areas where Aboriginal people live, a significant number of seats are set aside ensuring they are represented, somewhat like the BQ in Quebec. The difference is that they still belong to the established parties, not one of their own, but they are definitely represented by their own people. Imagine First Nations people (5% of the population) having the power to vote for MPs directly representing them rather than be swallowed up and ignored by the large parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement
@ 3 Intransitive
I’m not sure that I totally understand it either. 😎
I live in Missouri’s second congressional district which is gerrymandered Republican to the extent that, for down-ballot races, the Republican primary is the only election that actually matters.
In 2016, we had separate presidential and down-ballot primaries, so I was able to be a Bernie Bro (in the primary, not the general) while voting for those I thought would be the least objectionable Republicans for offices like St. Louis County Executive etc. I don’t whether that will be the case again this year…we’ll see.
@ 3 Intransitive
I’m not sure that I totally understand it either. 😎
I live in Missouri’s second congressional district which is gerrymandered Republican to the extent that, for down-ballot races, the Republican primary is the only election that actually matters.
In 2016, we had separate presidential and down-ballot primaries, so I was able to be a Bernie Bro (in the primary, not the general) while voting for those I thought would be the least objectionable Republicans for offices like St. Louis County Executive etc. I don’t know whether that will be the case again this year…we’ll see.
Sorry for the double post. I was trying to edit a comment I had already posted.
(Did I just make it worse with a third comment?)