Hillary Clinton
Related: About this forumI realized why Bernie polls higher than Hillary in the GE polls
It's because the Hillary supporters tell the pollstesr that they will vote for Bernie if he's the nominee, but the Bernie supporters don't tell them they will vote for Hillary.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)Trenzalore
(2,331 posts)Hillary has treated him like a mouthy little brother and really has yet to actually hit him.
Gothmog
(144,890 posts)Sanders has not been fully vetted yet and so these polls are worthless. Dana Milbank has some good comments on general election match up polls https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-would-be-insane-to-nominate-bernie-sanders/2016/01/26/0590e624-c472-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-for-wide-side_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Watching Sanders at Monday nights Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump or another Republican nominee would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.
The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the socialist label and requested that Sanders define it so that it doesnt concern the rest of us citizens.
Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who dont want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top thats my definition of democratic socialism.
But thats not how Republicans will define socialism and theyll have the dictionary on their side. Theyll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. Theyll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldnt be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists dont win national elections in the United States .
Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases one of the biggest tax hikes in history, as moderator Chris Cuomo put it to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that hypothetically, youre going to pay $5,000 more in taxes, and declared, W e will raise taxes, yes we will. He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that its demagogic to say, oh, youre paying more in taxes.
Well, yes and Trump is a demagogue.
Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government bigger than ever, Sanders didnt quarrel, saying, P eople want to criticize me, okay, and F ine, if thats the criticism, I accept it.
Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.
Match up polls are worthless because these polls do not measure what would happen to Sanders in a general election where Sanders is very vulnerable to negative ads.
Basic LA
(2,026 posts)They'll battleship him!
OKNancy
(41,832 posts)among other things...
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)I could see the RW smear machine doing, is taking his Russian honeymoon, for example, and twisting that.
Cha
(296,775 posts)Tarheel_Dem
(31,220 posts)You guessed it. Another Tad Devine debacle. They went to work on Dukakis after he accepted the nomination, and the rest is history.
book_worm
(15,951 posts)SharonClark
(10,014 posts)a republican guy on MSNBC tonight said it - makes sense to me.