The best explanation I have seen of why the pundits are wrong, & Bernie is winning

[peacebird]

http://www.secularnirvanablog.com/what-the-pundits-and-experts-fail-to-understand-about-the-bernie-sanders-phenomenon/

There is something very interesting happening in American politics today, something which has the potential to drastically shift the direction of the country for decades to come. The longest serving independent congressman in U.S history, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, is running for president… and boy is he making waves. As he campaigns across the country he has been amassing crowds that would make any political figure jealous. His first trip to the west coast posted an impressive 11,000 supporters in Phoenix, 15,000 in Seattle, 28,000 in Portland, and 27,500 in L.A. Well over a hundred thousand people have attended his rallies in a relatively short period of time.
...
Political races are (sadly) covered and analyzed in an almost identical fashion to sports or horse racing. Although the mainstream media takes the lion’s share of the blame for this, it can also be attributed to the tired but mostly true adage that all politicians are the same. Different candidates have different strengths and weaknesses, but they more or less play the same game. Under these conditions every political statement becomes a strategic play, and experts have to analyze the “attributes” of each candidate in order to identify statistical advantages. Hillary’s gender gives her an edge with women, Bush’s wife gives him an edge with Latinos, Rubio’s age gives him an edge with young people, etc. Once you account for those margins in relation to current demographics and add how much each candidate was able to raise in order market themselves, you have a model which can reasonably predict the outcome. This is what the experts do, this is what they are good at. And to be fair, more often than not, this is the correct approach. So why not now?

Let’s take for example the issue of campaign finance. If there is one political topic in which you can find bipartisan agreement among most Americans, it is the disastrous effects of money in politics. Both republicans and democrats understand that the current system in the United States essentially amounts to legalized bribery, and they aren’t happy about it. Yet politicians and pundits proudly tout the massive sums raised by each Super PAC as a statistical strength. And its true, if your Super PAC raises $60 million and mine raises $40 million, by all accounts you have a $20 million dollar advantage. But what happens when a candidate who’s Super PAC raised say $50 million goes up against a Sanders campaign which raised $15 million dollars in its first quarter without a Super PAC and an average donation of $33.51?

[cantbeserious]

1. No Citizen Need Settle For The Lesser Of Two Corporate Evils - Go Bernie Go

eom

[FreakinDJ]

3. Sounds like a campaign slogan

[djean111]

2. Excellent article. Thank you.

it is ALL good.

[True Blue American]

4. The Only Reason

The Media began to talk about Bernie is because his huge crowds forced the Corporate media to notice.

Our media is a dollar late and a dollar short.

When Andrea Mitchell pressed Bernie 4 times to say something hateful about Hillary, finally brinigng out an obscure poll ,Bernie told Mitchell flatly he was not playing her game.

Others need to do the same on gotcha questions. Trump does, but he is too vindictive to be believed.

[Flying Squirrel]

8. The crowds didn't force them to take notice

I've seen too many huge crowds for things the MSM doesn't support, completely ignored.

The polls, OTOH, cannot be ignored. The polls are their own game, they can't afford to ignore them.

[jwirr]

5. This is one of the most important insights that we have gotten so far regarding the

pollsters.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. Yes. This is brilliant

It's almost like most pundits are using maps of a two dimensional political world with carefully drawn warnings about where the edges are beyond which the abyss surely lies, while this piece explains it with a globe. Really insightful.

[Uncle Joe]

7. This is an outstanding analysis!

Thanks for the thread, peacebird.