Bernie Sanders approval rating average: -3.
Donald Trump approval rating average: -11.
Boris Johnson approval rating average: -12.
Jeremy Corbyn approval rating average: -40.
Donald Trump approval rating average: -11.
Boris Johnson approval rating average: -12.
Jeremy Corbyn approval rating average: -40.
People are replying to this tweet by asking me to explain why Corbyn's ratings are so low, and that's (a) a hard question and (b) a question any answer to which is going to make lots of passionate smart people yell at me, so I'm not going to answer it right now.
(I have some thoughts on the question, of course, but they're tentative and partial. Many people are much smarter and better informed than me on this.)
But suffice it to say that "Boris is kind of like Trump and Corbyn is kind of like Sanders so tonight's results mean that Sanders would be a bad nominee" is a profoundly silly and unserious take.
Also profoundly silly: Taking this thread as an invitation to tell me what you dislike about Bernie or Corbyn. That's not what this thread is about, and—and I'm sorry if what I'm about to say is painful to you—I don't actually care.
I like some things about each of them, and dislike other things. But again, that's not what this thread is about.
(The approval rating averages for Trump come from 538, for Sanders come from RCP, and for Boris and Corbyn are my own average of December approval polls.)
And since folks have asked, RCP currently has Biden at -3, Warren at -4, and Buttigieg at -1, which given the distance from the election and the volatility of the polling, all amount to basically the same thing—and the same as Bernie.
(Buttigieg is slightly higher, but only slightly, and with far lower name recognition. For the purposes of this thread, the four leading Dems are currently a wash.)
And if your position is "Bernie is like Corbyn because once the MSM turns their sights on him he'll drop in the polls like Corbyn," you should be aware that you're making a circular argument. The second half of it may be right or wrong, but it's a circular argument.
As of right now, the polling evidence suggests that all four leading Dems are likely to do about as well as each other against Trump, and far better than Corbyn did against Johnson. You may have theories as to how or why that might change, but the current polling is what it is.
As I said in another context a couple of weeks ago:
In my experience, electability arguments are almost exclusively deployed to support pre-existing candidate preferences, and because they're only persuasive in that context, they virtually never change anyone's mind.
"Your candidate is unelectable!" is pretty much always a waste of energy and a turn-off, particularly in situations—such as the 2020 Democratic primary race in December 2019—in which the objective evidence, such as it is, provides very little support for any electability theory.
(I have electability-based worries about some of the candidates myself, but since they happen to align pretty precisely with my pre-existing preferences, I tend to discount them as essentially useless hunches.)
