12th February 2020, 10:27 AM
Quote:And yes, I do think Bernie would lose badly. Yes, right now he polls decently against Trump, but a lot of that is because the Republicans have spent four years now 1) saying nothing negative about Bernie and 2) bashing any other leading Democrat. There's a reason for their behavior, they want to face Bernie because they know that as soon as he becomes the nominee they can open the floodgates on him and destroy him with a massive negative ad campaign hitting him for his socialism, etc, etc. Messing with the other party's primaries in order to try to get a preferred candidate is a common political practice both sides have dabbled in here and there, and that is absolutely what the Republicans are doing with Bernie once again, just like they and the Russians both did in '16. Sure, you could say that Bernie would win anyway, but seriously, socialism still polls pretty badly in this country. I am highly skeptical. Look up, for example, how in '12 Claire McCaskill ran ads saying how Todd Akin was "too conservative for Missouri", hoping that the Republicans would pick him. They did, then he said that "legitimate rape" line, and presto, she managed to extend her political career for six years longer than it otherwise would have gone.
In other words, they'll say the same things about Sanders that they do about literally every Democrat ever.
We had Matt Bevin running ads in Kentucky last year accusing Andy Beshear of being a socialist who wants to take away everyone's health care and that goober is as close to a Republican as you can be without actually being one.
This is why Democrats don't win elections, they run scared from attacks instead of punching back. The strategy is always to maximize gains from the existing base instead of ever making a meaningful attempt to grow their voter base by trying to reach out to the roughly half of all Americans who don't see any good reason to vote and give them one. You pretty much need to be a registered and engaged voter to care about anything establishment Democrats sell, but absolutely anyone understands the nightmare of living paycheck to paycheck and facing the reality of financial doom from even a minor hospital visit.
The New Deal was a different Democratic Party, which did what it wanted to do and didn't care if the Republicans didn't like it. That was a Democratic Party which was not afraid to attempt "socialist" policies. That was such a miserable failure in this deeply conservative country that they literally had to amend the Constitution because FDR couldn't stop winning elections. And that was 80-90 years ago!
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