2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: My head is spinning [View all]Gothmog
(169,210 posts)Your opinions are amusing but are only opinions. You have no support for any of your claims. I hate to break it to you but many Jewish voters do not like Bibi and still rejected Sanders. I disagreed with Sanders attacks on President Obama and I rejected Sanders proposal because these proposals were based on a silly claim that there would be a revolution of new voters who would force the GOP to be reasonable. There as no revolution and the premise of Sanders platform was unrealistic in the real world Bernie Sanders just admitted that his so-called revolution is a failure. Sanders was unable to motivate and get poor people to vote which doomed his so-called revolution http://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/11497822/sanders-political-revolution-vote
The problem with Sanders saying he's losing because "poor people don't vote," though, is that this wasn't a sad truth that he and his campaign discovered over the last several weeks. It or rather, the possibility of fixing it was at the core of his entire theory of winning.
Sanders isn't just running on his policy agenda. He's running on the idea of a "political revolution" that will allow him to accomplish that agenda. The theory of the "political revolution" is that Americans are so eager for free college and Medicare for all that they will not only sweep Bernie Sanders to the White House if he's nominated, but will elect more, and more progressive, Democrats down-ballot will then vote to pass Sanders's agenda through Congress.
Among people who typically vote, these policies aren't that popular. The "political revolution" is only plausible if it's about changing the composition of the electorate: bringing new people to the polls who don't normally vote, even in presidential elections.
But on those grounds, the "political revolution" theory is quite plausible. As Vox's Dylan Matthews pointed out earlier this month, 30 percent of eligible voters aren't registered to vote, or aren't accurately listed in the voter databases that campaigns use. Those voters are basically ignored by candidates. And, just like the nonvoting population as a whole, they're more likely to be poor than voters are and more likely to support liberal policies on government spending.
A candidate who can figure out how to reach out to that 30 percent of voters could actually make a political revolution happen or, at least, bring the median American voter to the left.
Bernie Sanders isn't the candidate who can make the "political revolution" happen
It's hard to mobilize that 30 percent of could-be voters, though. And it's pretty clear, at this point, that Sanders hasn't pulled it off.
Sanders hasn't been pulling in remarkable numbers of first-time primary voters. His base looks a lot like the existing progressive wing of the Democratic Party the people who voted for Howard Dean over John Kerry and Bill Bradley over Al Gore.
The premise of Sanders' so-called revolution is that he would be able to motivate millions and millions of new voters which Sanders has failed to do. Many voters like myself were turned off by Sanders unrealistic platform and by the complete failure of his so-called revolution
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