As terrible as a nasty, Bloomberg/Sanders, Capitalist vs Socialist battle till June scenario @jheiljust laid out sounds its better than a contested/brokered convention.
Of course, polarization means w/ or w/o this: Trump's floor & ceiling are still about 46-48%, respectively
Of course, polarization means w/ or w/o this: Trump's floor & ceiling are still about 46-48%, respectively
Given the almost complete inelasticity of Trump's expected two-party vote share, in theory, @TheDemocrats could survive anything other than 3rd party candidates that make the above plurality a winning vote margin, as it was in 2016 in all the key swing states. Ds can def cause
their own destruction if they fail to rally around their own nominee. 1 side IS going to lose. If its the Bernie people- they'll be forced to swallow their personal moral outrages to save the lives of brown people. If its the mainstream, they will be forced to do something Dems
are known to struggle w: behave strategically & rally into Sanders, not runaway from him. In any other situation, I would be beyond doubtful the national Dem Party & its various state chapters had it in them to accomplish this. It is antithetical to everything (strategically)
they've ever done. They're not the GOP. As my lovely neighbor put it, the Republicans don't take a turd & polish it- they take the turd & pick it up, hug it, & say, "that's MY turd! I love this turd! This is the best damn turd in the world!" They do that bc the party, the whole
party is ,made up of forest people. They will hug a turd bc they know that unless they do, they will lose. They will operate on the assumption that they can win w a turd until they are proven wrong on election day. Dems are not like this. They abandon winnable races all the time
when they *think* they have the wrong nominee. They have an entire universe of consultants & strategists w terrible track records that get rehired every cycle somehow. I think it is not only possible, it may even be likely, that the national Dem Party will write off Sanders under
the erroneous (that means wrong) belief that he simply can't win when in fact, if the party from top to bottom strategically rallied around him & made lemons out of lemonade, polarization virtually guarantees a close election. BUT its is imp that elites signal to voters a nominee
acceptable. And for God's sake, I want to make something clear, Sanders is an ideologue-yes. He's a radical- absolutely. Socialism, like all the other isms is a terrible ism, but most of them are & democratic socialism, can be normalized bc across the Atlantic & up North, it IS
normal. Sanders is not a "turd" like Trump (so don't jump on me).He seems like a nice guy- I've never seen him say or do anything crazy, which is light years better than the current POTUS. Against Trump, anyone would be electable. Hell, Omarosa looks reasonable. But the reason
I specifically made mention of Sanders as a nominee in my forecast bc of the real threat that the Democratic Party's apparatus, and all the down-ticket candidates, will fail to appreciate that it would suicidal NOT to embrace Sanders if he's the nominee. They are, after all, Dems
If that was to happen, it would be a disaster for democrats and would create the very situation the people who recommended were trying to avoid. They really ought to catch up on the poli sci polarization lit.
