Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Here's why Hillary won the primaries on her second try, but Bernie probably won't. [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)and want different things. Neither you (I assume ) nor I would have attacked Obama or Hillary viciously while supporting the other one, and neither you nor I viciously attacked someone we'd supported the election before once someone we liked more arrived on the scene. But that is what happened. In 2016, they had a white male populist leader to rally to, and they turned on the mainstream-liberal woman they'd supported against mainstream-liberal Barack Obama.
(Remember, a majority of those who respond to calls to populist antagonisms and resentments are at least somewhat socially conservative, and Sanders and Nader both style(d) themselves as populist leaders, as well as more radical left leaders. Not all are socially conservative by any means, but domination by those are is critical to understanding populist movements.)
Anyway, interviews and other studies say they mostly are the same people. Think behaviors instead of candidate labels, and the similarities from one election to another become very striking. Both the PUMAs and sandersistas/bros behaved so badly in 2008 and 2016 (and in the same ways) that the behaviors themselves became national stories. The striking similarity with the behaviors of trumpster populists also holds.
Of course they would also have manifested in populist/dissident followings before Nader. Ross Perot as a conservative populist rouser comes to mind. He must have drawn the same sorts back in the 1990s, when today's older sandersistas and trumpsters would have been younger. But the national destabilization was just beginning then, including the toxic internet and media subversion, and they weren't given so much attention. Or I just don't remember them; Perot himself was flabbergasting. Imo, his populist charisma and rhetorical delivery would have swept Sanders off the stage, and possibly Trump too. "It's simple, folks. You open the hood and fix it. Case closed!"
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden