Hillary Clinton’s Bernie Sanders Problem Is Bigger Than Anyone Realizes- Seven ways in which the septuagenarian socialist from Vermont actually presents a mortal threat to the Democratic front-runner.
Congratulations on the nomination, Hillary.
by John Cole| 87 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016
Hillary Clinton’s Bernie Sanders Problem Is Bigger Than Anyone Realizes- Seven ways in which the septuagenarian socialist from Vermont actually presents a mortal threat to the Democratic front-runner.
Congratulations on the nomination, Hillary.
Comments are closed.
Mary G
Yep, it’s over. All we need now is for Dick Morris to weigh in and we can have the party.
dmsilev
Hang on, let’s not be hasty. We still need to hear from Bill Kristol.
JGabriel
That’s so unfair, Cole. For all you know, this might be the one time per year that a stopped calendar / Mark Halperin is right.
JGabriel
@dmsilev:
Yes, that too.
redshirt
What does that guy who’s always wrong think?
Mike in NC
We need Ron Fournier and David Brooks to pile on.
cmorenc
And over on DKos, there are boatloads of hard-core progressives so ardently smitten with Bernie that the place is daily crowded with “diaries” along the theme of “Bernie is gaining rapidly on Hillary”, “Bernie Rising, Hillary Sinking”, Why Bernie is electable as POTUS” etc. And so for once (stopped clock being right and all that) – much of the uber-progressive community over at Kos actually agrees with Halperin’s analysis – though you might have to bind them and start pulling fingernails and toenails out to get them to admit they could possibly agree with ANYTHING Halperin says or writes, even this.
Turgidson
Need corroboration from Bloody Bill WRONG Kristol or (What a) Dick Morris.
Iowa Old Lady
@cmorenc: I don’t mind the “Bernie is gaining” or “Bernie is great” diaries. I do mind the “Hillary is evil” ones. Keep your eyes on the prize, people. Don’t drive away potential voters.
catclub
Almost makes me want to find out in what seven different ways Halperin is wrong. Almost.
kc
@Iowa Old Lady:
No kidding. The worst Democratic candidate is not as bad as any Republican. Unless people are cool with Scott Walker picking the next few Supreme Court justices . . .
Lavocat
Seriously, has Halperin ever been right about anything?
He’s given “The Costanza Effect” a whole new meaning.
And the IOKIYAR Award goes to …
Mike E
@Mike in NC: Speaking of, anybody heard from Doug Feith?
gbear
So when do they start to suggest that Saunders would make a great third- or fourth-party candidate? That’s when Hillary should start measuring the curtains.
dedc79
The GOP aim, over the past 4 years in particular, has been to get Hillary’s unfavorable rating up to or above 50%. Unfortunately, they’ve been pretty successful at that so far. In fact, it was close to 4 years ago that her favorable/unfavorable was 69/26. Now it’s at 45/48.
Sanders can’t beat her. But if she gets the nom with half the country viewing her unfavorably, that’s a serious problem.
piratedan
@dedc79: yet in just about every comparison in national polls that I have seen, she thrashes each and every GOP contender.
KG
why did i click through? and why did they publish that tripe? does no one think of the poor electrons lost?
Bobby B.
That’s Halperin? I’d assume it was Chuck Todd starting a new Meet The Press pundit panel.
Felonius Monk
As long as Halperin is pulling stuff out of his ass, maybe he could pull out a pony or, at the very least, his own head.
JPL
As Huckabee proved, there is no peak wingnut. He is fundraising because the President attacked him. f..kem
Betty Cracker
@cmorenc: Democrats: Fucking our own rats since 1968!
piratedan
@JPL: Obama didn’t even attack him, just called his hyperbole out for all to see in attempting to gain headlines from Trump.
Obama is right, what a sad person that Huckabee fella is.
kindness
Ever notice how true wingnutz always publish where comments aren’t allowed? It’s so manly of them.
JPL
@piratedan: They all are.
Germy Shoemangler
@kindness:
And I’ve never seen Lush Rimbaugh debate anyone. And he brags his call screener is the hardest working man in the industry!
Grumpy Code Monkey
Not necessarly the right thread, and it may have already been mentioned in an earlier thread, and it’s Politico, but…
Mitch McConnell has had quite enough of Ted Cruz’s shit.
Savor.
At this point, if Cruz managed to win the Presidency, he’d face as much opposition in Congress from his own party as the Democrats, and I don’t doubt McConnell can hold a grudge. I expect there will be a serious (and well-funded) primary challenger in 2018.
gf120581
We still need Halperin to weigh in on how this is good news for John McCain.
I imagine that Halperin is still in shock at how Trump is still in first after trashing McCain. How can that be? Doesn’t the whole country love McCain as much as Mark does? ;)
gf120581
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I have my doubts Cruz even runs again. He is not a guy who’s planned for a long Senate career, not with the number of colleagues he’s pissed off. He’s always planned to come in, make a big splash and then run for the WH.
This has been Cruz’s M.O. his whole life, going back to college. He attracts a small but devoted following, while everyone else, if they came across him washed up drowning on the beach, would turn the fire hose on him full blast.
Germy Shoemangler
Here is a blogger who says Hillary makes a horrible impression.
http://clarissasblog.com/2015/07/27/hillarys-disapproval-ratings/
Aimai
@dedc79: no its not.
LWA
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I was really hoping that the actual title of the Politico article would be “Mitch McConnell has had quite enough of Ted Cruz’s shit. “
jl
I note that Halperin lists the dreaded ‘Sanders will pull HRC to the left!!’ mortal threat first. With this tripe offered as content:
” In recent months, Clinton’s political and rhetorical message has boiled down to an Old-Democrat, big-government, Pelosi-Reid-AFL-CIO-pleasing stew that a skillful Republican nominee could exploit, shoving Clinton out of the vital political middle in the general election. ”
Concern trolling that thousands of schlubs could have pumped out in their sleep.
samiam
Jokes about “Good news for McCain” Halperin aside. Wr0ng way Cole has clearly drunk the Dkos “Sanders is surging and like totally gonna win” Koolaid.
Can always count on Wr0ng way Cole to go the wrong way.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@LWA: That would have been Rolling Stone.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Heaven forfend Hilary should be in tune with the legislative leaders of her party and big labor.
Betty Cracker
@Germy Shoemangler: She lost me here:
Nope.
jl
Skimming through this dreck a second time, I think it is really a thinly disguised hit piece against HRC and ‘Democrats in Disarray’ generally. Items 4 to 7 are a confused repetitive mishmash of the same ideas, split up into numbered points, I guess to gull the reader into thinking there will be some new idea popping up somewhere.
Why can’t I make a lot of money pumping out dreck like this. This is real write as u type and push send job.
mellowjohn
@kc:
scott walker will never pick the next few SC justices.
the koch brothers will do it for him.
raven
Cool, Ed Schultz is just fucking hammering Hillary.
Turgidson
@jl:
And further proof that Halperin still think it’s the 1990s. Fortunately for us, Hillary appears to realize that it is not, in fact, still the ’90s and isn’t running such a campaign.
Hopefully, Hillary’s team has learned the same rule of thumb the Obama campaign learned in 2008 – if Halperin says you’re losing, you’re winning (and vice versa).
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker: That’s pretty much where she lost me as well.
Trump comes off as a lot of things; sincere is not the first word that jumps into my mind
cminus
It’s hard to draw a conclusion from the Halperin piece, because it lends itself to two interpretations. Halperin claims Sanders won’t get the nomination, but that he’ll make enough of a run for it that he’ll ruin Clinton’s general election chances.
From this, we can conclude that either Sanders will get the nomination, or else Clinton will get the nomination and win the general election.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@samiam: You can’t read, can you?
Good God, it’s 2015 and there are people in this nation who cannot read. And yet they still manage to post on the internet. How is this possible?
RaflW
@catclub: I hear ya. But I will not click. The Village trud-polishers still can’t fathom Trumpmentum, so what the *&^ do they know about the Dem side? Bupkus.
Thoughtful David
@Iowa Old Lady:
I’m a long-time reader of the GOS, and have seen some good stuff over there as well as bad stuff. But the Bernie Sanders fanbois have made it unreadable–I’ve largely quit going over there in the last few weeks.
Not that I dislike Sanders nor that I’m all-in with Hillary Clinton. Those Sanders fanbois at Kos, though, are in as big of a information bubble as the most devoted dittohead or Faux news fan. They are totally hysterical all the time, and losing touch with reality.
dedc79
@Aimai: You think her unfavorables will go back down? Or that people who view her unfavorably will vote for her anyway? Or is there some other reason this doesn’t concern you?
RSA
@Betty Cracker:
That’s so sad it’s funny. Trump has spent his entire life as a salesman, basically selling himself. Of course he’s going to appear to be sincere… to some people. He’s worked on it for decades.
GregB
It’s amazing that Halperin can hit the computer keys at all. What with his nubby fingers covered in the ball sweat of Joe Scarborough and the rest of the Republican nut house menagerie.
RaflW
Oh, and “the vital political middle” does not exist. (h/t to whoever did click over, I still can’t/won’t)
As has been hashed out here and in other decent corners of the internet, the vital middle is a load of hooey. OK, there are some undecideds in any election, but its much more a turnout game than a persuasion game. But the Village storytelling must go on…
BillinGlendaleCA
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I blame Obama.
the Conster
@Thoughtful David:
I haven’t read Kos in a long time, but we got a little taste of Berniebots in a BLM thread. Good grief, they suck. I’d like to see a Greenwald/Snowden/Sanders supporters Venn diagram.
RaflW
@raven: You mean last-in-his-demographic, laboring along on barely watched MSNBC Ed Schultz? Because I’m pretty sure you care but might be one of his few viewers (while he lasts).
I’m not trying to offend you, raven. But he’s flaming out on a flailing and failing network. I am not happy that MSNBC is failing. I think MHP and Maddow and a few others should have a platform. But the network has 1) done a shitty job and 2) progressives don’t medicate on TV the way Fox oldsters do.
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, on what planet does Trump look sincere?
jnfr
@Iowa Old Lady:
Amen to that.
Iowa Old Lady
@Thoughtful David: It’s occurred to me that some of those people might be R plants, sent to diminish Clinton’s chances.
Or do I sound like the Rs who think Trump is a Democratic mole?
Mike E
@dedc79: Concern is its own reward. Apparently.
RaflW
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Ooh. I will rarely say this about Politico, but man that was a fun read. Cruz is clearly hated by his Senate colleagues. When he isn’t the next president, he’ll be heading out on the wingnut welfare circuit, certainly. He has poisoned his place in the GOP caucus.
chopper
@cmorenc:
I need to head over to the GOS. I haven’t heard about how many glorious shits bernie sanders has taken today. glorious, glorious shits for the workers
Ruckus
@Germy Shoemangler:
That industry is the limpballs positive relations staff. It’s one 40 yr old guy in his moms basement with an unlisted number on his rotary phone. He’s hard working all right but you really don’t want to know at what.
Mike in NC
@RaflW: Cruz will accept a lucrative job heading up Club for Growth or Americans for Prosperity.
dedc79
@Mike E: Well I’d like us to win, so it does concern me. I took a look at Obama’s favorable/unfavorable in the year leading up to the 2008 election. The only time Obama’s unfavorables ever approached 50 were in a few Rasmussen outliers (and remember how awful they were/are?). More often they were were in the 20-35 range.
So much of the criticism of Clinton is unfair, and I’m sure that’s a large part of what’s driving this, but it doesn’t make me feel good about her prospects. The best thing we have going for us is that the eventual GOP nominee is likely to be way less popular than she is.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
Looking sincere and being sincere are two entirely different things. If the two weren’t different no one would ever get paid to work as a used car salesman. And it also depends on the recipient the sincerity is aimed at.
T Rump has made an art of selling something of no value, his name, for decades. Now not everyone is buying it, but there are enough suckers in this world willing to pay him for absolutely nothing. The same exact thing can be said of his campaign, most won’t buy it but some are will to give him their vote because they believe in him. He is the ideal grifter, he sells crap but that’s OK for him, he’s found a bunch of crap buyers. He’s just trying to close the deal.
Mike E
@dedc79: I hear you but honest to gawd I can’t worry myself over this shit since there’s not a good goddamm thing she can do about except what she’s doing (not?) now, which is nothing, fucking 15 months out. Too.
eemom
My son just asked me if I’d vote for Joe Biden.
His grandmother is visiting and has CNN on the teevee.
ruemara
@the Conster: based on my fb feed, same people.
shell
@Mary G: You beat me too it. What is it, over six months to the very first primary in NH, and these clowns think they have it all guessed out.
dogwood
Of all the politicians I have loathed thought my life, both democratic and republican, Ted Cruz is at the top of my list. He edges out a few other loathsome characters for the simple and superficial reason that I find him physically repulsive.
eemom
@dogwood:
According to his college roommate, he smells bad too.
dogwood
@dedc79:
Do you think if we nominated someone else, the republicans couldn’t drive down their numbers? And I think democrats will be able to do some damage to the republican nominee if the GOP primary season doesn’t take care of it. Benghazi was the beginning of the republican strategy on Hillary. They didn’t even make an honest effort at pretending it was about the President. Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections. There is no reason to expect anything different this time around. She’ll also have two of the most effective campaigner in history stumping for her. She’ll be fine.
John Revolta
@dogwood: Hmmmm…………were you around for Spiro Agnew? Just askin’.
dogwood
@eemom:
I love Joe, but since he didn’t decide to be the first out of the blocks, running now poses some problems for the party. If a Biden candidacy looked serious and gained purchase, it would be tricky for other candidates to run against him without running against the president. They could certainly do it, but I’d bet they wouldn’t want to.
dogwood
@John Revolta:
Yes I’m old. Are you suggesting I’m a nattering nabob of negativism or I’m responding to such? If you’re referring to something else, then I guess I’m not familiar enough with Spiro Agnew. Nonetheless, just mentioning Agnew is a reminder that the rotten apples of the contemporary Republican Party didn’t fall far from the tree.
mai naem mobile
You forgot Karl Roves special math.
Turgidson
@dedc79:
It’s definitely a mixed bag, but one of the things that makes Hillary a formidable candidate is that there’s only so much the GOP can do to her at this point. She’s so well-known and most people’s minds are made up about her. Throwing shit at the wall doesn’t have the same effect with her as it would with someone who is not as well-defined.
The flip sides, of course, are that she starts with high unfavorables and they are unlikely to come back down more than a few points, and consequently she might have a hard time really delivering the electoral savaging the GOP needs. High floor, low ceiling, in other words.
I hope that she’ll benefit from record turnout among women voters (this is based on nothing but a hunch, but I have a feeling there will be a decent number of suburban/exurban moderate GOP-type women quietly pulling the lever for Hillary, given how appalling the GOP nominee will likely be on women’s issues etc. and how we know the GOP will not be able to help but make sexist and ageist remarks at regular intervals) and she’ll succeed, with Barack’s help down the stretch, in mobilizing and turning out the Obama coalition in numbers approaching 2008/12. If she can pull those things off and has some help from a decent economy, she could nail down a win bigger than Obama managed. Ways to go yet, of course.
John Revolta
@dogwood: Oh just wondering. Agnew would probably top my personal Loathsome List. Cruz would def be up there though, I just haven’t seen him enough. (And let’s just keep it that way, yeah?)
dogwood
@John Revolta:
I’ve always been thankful that Agnew was a crook. Can you imagine more than two years of an Agnew presidency? The only good thing about the Nixon years was that it gave us Betty Ford.
gelfling545
@Germy Shoemangler: Just sincere(ly) deranged.
John Revolta
@dogwood:If you mean the Clinic, I believe an Agnew Presidency would’ve sent me there, whether it existed or not.
Kathleen
@Grumpy Code Monkey:John Boehner. Word. This is how we do it (this is how we do it).
Bobby Thomson
@Germy Shoemangler:
Actually, no I didn’t, either. I always thought he sounded like a smarmy frat boy telling the rubes what they wanted to hear, and was disappointed in them for falling for the con so hard.
Bobby Thomson
@Iowa Old Lady: To the contrary, I think some of them are the very same Republicans posing as faux purity trolls who were fragging Obama in ostensible service to Clinton in 2008.
Splitting Image
@dogwood:
And John Paul Stevens.
Although I can never decide if Ford putting Stevens on the bench makes up for his pardon of Richard Nixon.
Bobby Thomson
@Splitting Image: Also, too, Harry Blackmun. And as ideological conservatives go, Bill Rehnquist (not to mention Warren Burger) makes Sam Alito look like Karl Marx.
Shana
@Mike in NC: Or his wife could go back to Goldman Sachs, if she ever left, and he could stay home with the kids (do they have any?). Imagine running into him after this is over at the local park watching your own kids on the swings….
BubbaDave
@dedc79:
That was in 2008– I seem to remember them being quite a bit higher in 2012. That’s the nature of our polarized polity, I think.
ASV
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR BERNIE!!
artem1s
@Turgidson:
Hillary’s unfavorables don’t matter. the only thing that matters is will she be able to help in the Senate races enough to take back the Senate and make the right choices when it comes to SCOTUS nominees. this is what the GOP is trying affect. No way Reince is betting on winning the WH with this set of Klowns. They are focused on the state races and hoping the slander and redo of Clinton fatigue will stave off any major policy initiatives. It was a fairly effective strategy with Obama. They just couldn’t do anything about his SCOTUS appointments and that was where all his wins were really solidified.