CNN did a nationwide poll and Trump has 60% unfavorables. Also, everyone loves Bernie:
Sanders beats Trump by 12 points, Cruz by 17 points, and Rubio by 8. Clinton beats Trump by 8, and loses to Rubio by 3 and Cruz by 1.
If it’s true that Sanders scores so well in this poll because nobody has really gone negative on him, isn’t that also true for Trump? Rubio just started calling him out for having a small penis a few days ago, and Sanders and Clinton have made a few remarks, but he hasn’t endured anything like the treatment that Clinton has been getting for most of her political career. I can’t see that 60 going anywhere but up.
If Bloomberg becomes the Third Man, he hurts Clinton more than he hurts Trump, according to this poll. That’s because the anyone-but-Trump Republicans will pull for Clinton if they must, but someone else if they can.
SFAW
But he keeps telling us it’s YUUUUGE!
DanF
Donald has potential to hit the magical 27% crazification number of supporters – but not before he has clinched the nomination.
p.a.
Both prospective (presumed?) primary victors with negs >50%. Late October sales of rubber gloves and precaution gowns spike in anticipation of election day.
Napoleon
Trump has gone negative on Trump simply by being Trump, so your point doesn’t quite hold. To put it another way he is so well known everyone’s opinion of him may, more or less, already be “priced” into his numbers.
low-tech cyclist
1) Hillary. Hillary’s been in the public eye for 24 years. Her numbers aren’t going to move much. They may improve slightly during the year, because most people’s impressions of her are formed by what they’ve heard about her, rather than hearing her. The conventions and the debates will change that. That still probably won’t pull her up to even, but it should pull her a few points in that direction.
2) Trump. Yeah, that 60% negative has room to grow, when people start absorbing what he really stands for.
3) Bernie. Most Americans haven’t thought about him for very long, or in any sort of depth. Those numbers would mean nothing if he became the nominee. And there would be a lot more money behind the attacks on Bernie than on the Donald, and they’d come from a lot more directions. If he came out of the primaries as the presumptive nominee, his numbers would be Trumpesque by August.
John Cole
@low-tech cyclist: We’re a year into the election- the very poll you are citing state that only 4% have never heard of him. Why do you people keep saying no one has thought about him? Everyone in the country knows the two democratic candidates are Clinton and Bernie.
Eric U.
@low-tech cyclist: I agree, nobody has gone negative on Bernie yet. And the negative attacks would be stupid stuff, as usual, not anything about his positions. I’m sure the republican tools in the media would have a field day if he was the candidate. The horrible way they treated Gore would look like child’s play. Obama taught me not to worry about things like that when I vote, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a really likely scenario
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@low-tech cyclist:
Yeah, I really think those Bernie numbers are a function of him flying under the radar for so long. The more you get a good look at him though, he gets more irritating with his one note scolding in that heavy New York accent. Two shouty old white men vying for the white anxiety vote when one of them is a genius at marketing to white anxiety gives me no confidence in Bernie’s numbers.
DanF
Four or five percent of HRC’s negatives are Bernie supporters (and I’d be surprised if the reverse weren’t true for some of Sanders negatives). That’s a pretty common dynamic in contested primaries. Once the primary is over, I would expect her numbers to pull closer to 50/50.
C.V. Danes
Me thinks that the Republican establishment might start surfacing some more dirt on Trump, ala Trump University, etc.
I wonder if Trump ever patronized the Emperors Club…
Oatler.
As I type this “Democracy Now!” is playing the title song of Black Sabbath’s first lp to footage of Trump’s rally.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’s a sweeping statement. In the run up to South Carolina, MSNBC interviewed a group of middle aged white GOP primary voters. One Kasich supporter had to be reminded of his name, another mispronounced it.
ETA: @DanF: I agree, what the fancy people call negative partisanship will kick in at some point
mistermix
@Napoleon: I agree that Trump is a negative ad against Trump every time he opens his piehole but I still think that people who are positive on Trump right now can be turned by showing that he’s basically a business failure and a bullshit brand.
magurakurin
@John Cole: what does it matter? Sanders isn’t going to be the nominee. Maybe, just maybe, how “favorable” someone is actually isn’t the main reason for a vote. If it was, Bernie and Ben Carson would be the run away winners right now.
Luther M. Siler
I really don’t see how any third-party candidate has time to get into the race at this point.
C.V. Danes
@John Cole: Exactly. And the numbers are meaningless anyway. If Trump gets the nomination, the Dems are going to rally behind whoever wins on the Dem side. I really don’t see that happening on the Republican side much beyond the wingnut 27%.
If Bloomberg enters the race to save the Republicans from themselves, however, who knows what will happen? Personally, I think that’s the only credible scenario in which Trump wins.
butler
@John Cole: There’s a difference between vaguely knowing his name and thinking about him with any depth.
4% admit they don’t know him, while another 6% admit to having “no opinion”, which is often shorthand for “I know that I should know who this is, but I don’t really, and I’m trying to save face”. So that’s 10% right there who are willing to admit to a pollster not having much of an opinion about him. I would bet a decent portion of those who gave an actual answer couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. That would change with the exposure of a general campaign, but at this point I doubt those numbers are very solid.
Napoleon
@mistermix:
I am interested in how the Trump University thing may hurt him.
Applejinx
@Eric U.: The only reason anybody knows anything about Bernie is that he’s the Socialist running for President.
There’s like nothing else TO know about him. It’s all he talks about. The idea that the Republicans, the widely-hated Republicans, are going to call him an oogy boogy socialist and suddenly America goes ‘gasp! can’t have that!’ is completely ludicrous.
Everybody knows already. That’s baked into his numbers at this point, and only a super high ‘haven’t heard of him’ could change that. And that’s not the case.
It ain’t over until one side has way more money left than the other. In this Dem primary, that’s not the case: they both have roughly comparable money and WILL CONTINUE to be evenly matched on money, so the beatings will continue until morale improves :D
This also suggests Trump could flame out if it gets too expensive for him to keep up…
NR
@low-tech cyclist:
At the last debate, the Republicans all agreed that the Clinton Foundation was going to be Hillary’s biggest weakness. The Republicans have barely even mentioned it so far, and the media has only just begun digging into it, but what they’ve found so far with the pay-to-play arms deals doesn’t look good, to put it charitably.
The near-religious faith that Clinton supporters have that her negatives can’t possibly go any lower is really something else.
Cacti
@Applejinx:
Uh huh.
The reason the GOP money machine is holding its fire on Bernie is because they know how ineffective calling him a socialist will be in the general.
What color is the sky in your world?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Applejinx:
Massachusetts is the real test for Bernie. He’s not viable nationally if he can’t convince this deep blue state.
Shell
Didn’t any of these people remember that Bill Clinton isn’t RUNNING FOR ANYTHING?
NHCT
@p.a.: I could actually see Hillary’s negatives going down at some point. Once the primary is ended, Bernie supporters should change from negative to positive on her. Plus, it seems like the only press she has received for the last year has been negative. The campaign will soon launch a sustained positive ad campaign that could also push her favorables up some.
Applejinx
@Cacti: The shit brown of globalism, pollution, Third Way neoliberalism and the steady erosion of all our prospects even for survival, much less success.
And yours? :D
Chyron HR
@NR:
Gosh, when you put it like that it’s obvious that she’s doomed.
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: He is behind in most of the polls that I have seen.
magurakurin
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: we will know in short order, but it looks like Mass is in the bag for Clinton.
schrodinger's cat
@Chyron HR: NR is a Republican troll, he is always spreading doom and gloom about Hillary while mouthing Republican talking points.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If I only knew John Katich from the last couple months of national media coverage, I wouldn’t know he’s a union-busting, fetus-fetishizing, abrasive jackass {ETA: And New Deal hating, forgot New Deal hating].. I’d probably have a positive opinion of him. If I only knew Bernie because of Larry David, I might have a positive opinion of him.
NR
@Chyron HR: Way to ignore the substance of what I said.
Napoleon
@butler:
In the last couple of months I saw a piece done by Kimmel or Fallon (or someone other than Colbert’s) show and it was asking people on the street some kind of gibbish questions about something or other and they managed to get enough footage (though you really don’t know if they spent a week of 24/7 being on the street) of people offering their opinion on stuff it is impossible to have an opinion on.
Greg
I don’t think Bernie’s favorable/unfavorable numbers would matter particularly, even if he were to become the nominee. He’s got the old white-haired true believer guy thing going for him, and that stereotype is a kind of armor. In our culture it tends to separate your feelings about _him_ (which will be generally positive) from your feelings about what it is he believes and talks about (milage may vary).
I don’t think that Republican attacks would hurt his personal favorability as much as people fear. But I do think that it wouldn’t be hard from them to completely crater his “does he seem presidential” / ability to do the job numbers by turning him into Old Man Yells at Clouds.
max
If it’s true that Sanders scores so well in this poll because nobody has really gone negative on him
Maybe. It depends on what kind of negative they go – they couldn’t go after him for dishonesty, could they?
isn’t that also true for Trump?
Not really. The same media that talk about how terrible he is, is the media that’s giving him all this free air time. (Not to mention a TV show and lots of other free media.)
I can’t see that 60 going anywhere but up.
Maybe. I can see ways for him to drive them back down – in particular by shifting his approach, which I fully expect him to do.
Operationally flexible, very quick off the dime tactically, keen to please people, tons of free media, and no ideological ties to bind him. Throw in the worship he’ll be getting at Fox News and I can see that going down. In particular, if he’s the sole channel for people’s unhappiness with the current elite paradigm, then he can channel the lightening.
And that makes him dangerous, even with all his weaknesses.
max
[‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you don’t like him for reason X, that then everybody else won’t like him for same reason. And don’t duplicate Pauline Kael’s mistake either.’]
Applejinx
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yeah, but Clinton is an insanely brutal competitor. Her people are willing to seize control of the Onion and Twitter to make things fall her way. I don’t think the Republicans have had that kind of power in decades, and they hold Congress hostage.
So you’d be right, but for very perverse reasons. I’m not going to argue Clinton is weak. I’m more concerned with what the hell she means to do with the country once she seizes it. On the bright side, I really like her focus on opposing racism and sexism. I do wonder if she can pull off a ‘only Nixon could go to China’ thing w.r.t Wall Street, or if she even wants to. Warren might be waiting to see if she can take point on that one, which would be appropriate and a nice sort of power-brokery scenario. I’d love to see Warren go in for Clinton IF it meant she had the backing of that powerful machine, and license to regulate and tax ’em.
You could have a Good Witch/Wicked Witch dynamic going on there. Couple Warren with Sanders, and I would totally not mind Hillary positioning herself to be the good cop with Wall Street. She would be able to fund social services for centuries just by asking nicely while holding back that big mean stick.
magurakurin
@Applejinx: Money does not equal delegates. Just ask Jeb. Clinton will emerge tomorrow with a 100+ lead and Sanders probably out spent her in Feb.
Calouste
@John Cole: Two of the candidates, Clinton and Trump, have been in the national spotlight for more than 20 years. People know them. The three others, Sanders, Cruz, and Rubio, are Senators either in their first term or from one of the smallest states in the nation. That is a massive difference. Before this election season, not many people outside of their own state had even heard of them, and they certainly haven’t gotten to know them in the last year in the way that they have gotten to know Clinton and Trump over the last few decades. Sanders, Cruz, and Rubio are far less well-defined in the public eye than Clinton and Trump are, and their favorable will be a lot more volatile as a result. If you would read your own blog, you would have seen that Cruz dropped from +40 to +4 for “honest and trustworthy” among GOP voters in the space of 7 weeks. And he did that to himself mostly. Rove and co will do the same to Sanders if he were to become the nominee.
Bill E Pilgrim
Speaking of disapproval, WSJ, wringing its hands about the rise of Trumpolini:
To be fair, the subheading is “Donald Trump gives credence to the left’s caricature of bigoted conservatives.”, but the entire rest of the article gives you the impression that the writer’s “it would be terrible to think the left was right about the right” is figuratively followed by “therefore it’s better to stay in denial and pretend that the bigotry and ugliness only appeared with the rise of Donald Trump and was never there before”.
By the way, anyone who’s tempted to buy this mythologizing about the halcyon days of gentle, non-bigoted intellectual William F. Buckley clearly hasn’t seen this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8
Calouste
@Applejinx:
I hope you left a trail of crumbs when you headed into CT territory.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
The last 5 polls in Mass have showed Clinton up anywhere from 2 to 11 points, with late movement breaking her way. FiveThirtyEight projects her odds there at 94%.
The only good polling news I’ve seen for Sanders was that Oklahoma looked to be moving his way late. The mystery of the day is the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses, where there hasn’t been any polling data for months.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good god. I’m still not convinced this one isn’t an elaborate spoof, but I think there’s a good chance s/he means this.
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
Well, that and his unshakable conviction that racism is just a symptom of “economic inequality” and that black kids keep getting murdered by the police because they don’t “participate in the productive economy”. But that couldn’t possibly hurt him at the polls (even though it demonstrably has).
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, but tightening I think as of yesterday. A really big enthusiastic turnout for Clinton in Boston yesterday – the pics I saw were of every color and age group – and looked like likely voters. You know, Democrats. My youngest daughter just voted for Hillary here too – living in Kendall Sq. in Cambridge, she said she got absolutely no contact from any Sanders outreach person, like she did from Hillary. Bernie will probably win Cambridge anyway, but still, it’s ground zero of his kind of supporters.
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx: There’s a certain amount of truth to your point because for 8 years we’ve been hearing about the Kenyan Marxist Anti-Colonialist Socialist in the White House. It’s the Chicken Little Syndrome, Sooner or later people realize the sky isn’t falling.
Calouste
@Bill E Pilgrim:
To quote Harry Truman: ” I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.”
Applejinx
@magurakurin: I didn’t say she wouldn’t. But Jeb’s money is like Clinton’s money: it was PAC money.
And Jeb turned out way, way, WAY, WAY more stupid and ineffective. Hillary’s been awe-inspiringly smart and ruthless, the whole time. It does prove that she’s formidably on the ball, and I respect that.
Again, my concern is her intentions, and some seem good, others are more ambiguous.
Napoleon
@NR:
Oh, and the Republicans would never float a substance free attack like that with no actual facts to back it. At this point only an idiot would take a bet that anything floated like that by the right actually has some kind of factual basis that will hurt. In the case of Hillary we have been listening to the same old-same old for so long that even if the Republican’s do find an actual scandal it would have to be pretty clear cut and easy to understand to get people to buy it. Off anyone Hillary’s negatives are fully priced.
raven
There is no one that doesn’t change when they walk in that door.
Cacti
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
The last 2 polls there actually showed things breaking Clinton’s way late. Emerson College (02/26-02/28) had her +11, and Suffolk University (02/25-02/27) had her at +8.
Amir Khalid
I really have no idea what these favourable/unfavourable numbers mean. When my foreign self thinks about whom I’d want to be POTUS, I think about relevant knowledge and skills, and on that score Hillary beats Bernie hands down. Either of them would make a better POTUS than the leader of any troop of wild champanzees. Any chimpanzee troop leader would make a better POTUS than any of the final five Republican candidates. Unfortunately, the chimpanzee would be ineligible for the presidency because not born in the USA.
NR
Also interesting to note that this poll was taken before the David Duke/KKK controversy. I wonder if that will hurt Trump’s numbers. I think he might be down to just the hard-core racists already. It’ll be interesting to see if he drops further.
Applejinx
@Chyron HR: It will hurt him with Deep South black Dem voters, no argument there.
I am sorry to say it, but the general election electorate would RATHER believe that than the truth. I’m not sure how much Bernie truly believes it: I think so. Anyone not Bernie making that argument ought to wake up, because racism is not just a phenomenon of income inequality.
And yet, it would actually help him with clueless white voters who don’t really want to deal with the realities of racism. It’s like happy bullshit, and happy bullshit delivers votes.
japa21
Look, I have a positive opinion of Bernie, but he was number 3 on my list of Dem primary candidates. A favorable opinion has nothing to do with votes.
Everybody talks about his being a “socialist” as being a knock against him. It may well be once the general comes around if he were the nominee. Not everybody knows that about him. The socialist tag hasn’t really been used against him.
I do think there is another aspect that could be more crippling. He is Jewish, which would only be a minor problem, but my understanding is that he is also an atheist. That wouldn’t be a problem for folks here, but in the real world it would be. So yes, I see his favorable coming down. I also see Hillary’s going up.
Before she became an official candidate, hers were much higher.
cmorenc
@Shell:
But he IS running…for first laddie.
OzarkHillbilly
@NR: Innuendo as substance. I like that.
Rhoda
The thing that keeps me from pulling the lever for Bernie is simple – the inevitable ads about how he’s going to raise the taxes on the middle class. It’s simple, it’s true, and it’s devastating.
He’d beat Trump; but that’s about it IMO. And we don’t know, taxes might trump racism. Wouldn’t surprise me.
He hasn’t been hit on that and once the “he’s going to raise your taxes sky high” thing comes in; it’s going to go south IMO. Also, I don’t think Clinton loses to Rubio or Cruz. No way. The Obama coalition would come out for her and their immigration position is devastating. Polls had Obama losing to Romney too. Then, the campaign happened.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Applejinx: You’ve made a few good points before, but lumping the fucking Onion in with the rest of the Irredeemably Corrupt Establishment is not one of them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Yup.
Thoroughly Pizzled
It’s a shame that you can’t will yourself to forget things, because I’d like to briefly experience the mind of someone who’s never heard of Bill Clinton.
Applejinx
@japa21: Well, that’s a good point. You’ve got Hillary citing Corinthians (wanna bet it’s only in the Deep South, and she puts on a hint of a drawl to do it?) and Bernie’s not going to be playing up religious arguments.
On the other hand, if Bernie runs against Trump he’d look like freakin’ Jesus, so I’m not sure how much that matters. The scary one would be Bernie against Cruz, in a race that went all-Jeebus all the time.
Stillwater
@John Cole: Why do you people keep saying no one has thought about him?
Well, because a Clintonista has to provide SOME account for her numbers: her Trump-like unfavorables are function of her name-recognition and have nothing to do with her politics or personality.
gene108
@Applejinx:
When people “politely” point out the huge tax increase everyone will be hit with to fund his single-payer Scandinavian* utopia, I think the numbers will change.
Right now he comes off as a loud, opinionated, but lovable uncle.
When people start pointing out about tax increases that everyone will be hit with it will be a different story, in my opinion.
When the opposition can run ads proclaiming, “Bernie will double your taxes” and you have to respond with a power point presentation explaining that “yes taxes will go up, but see this graph, you overall spend on healthcare goes down” you will easily lose the argument.
* As much as liberals look at Scandinavia and think “ooooh, want”, many Americans would be offended at the idea that America needs to copy what a foreign country, let alone effeminate European countries, are doing. And not all of these are dedicated Republican voters.
Cacti
@Rhoda:
Sanders’ policy proposals are based on the largest peace time tax increases in US history.
His opponent would club him with that like a baby seal in the general.
superpredators4hillary
Sander fool all the like with curmudgeon fu.
gene108
@Stillwater:
The amount of Facebook meme’s I’ve seen mimicking Rush Limbaugh, from Bernie supporters, goes beyond friendly disagreement into Clinton Derangement Syndrome Territory.
Example
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You beat me to it. “Socialism” doesn’t even need to enter into it (though it will), that’s just gravy on the “He wants to raise your taxes!” main dish. His response, “Yes! But for your own good!” is even worse.
Gvg
I noticed 1% had never heard of Bill Clinton. I find that odd, especially since it was 0% hadn’t heard of Hillary.
I have recently seen a poll that showed Hillary had higher numbers right up until she declared she was seeking the Presidency. Said historically her approval numbers were higher when she actually had a job but during campaigns her numbers always dropped. Also said the pattern applied to other prominent femal polititian’s such as Warren. Some sort of sexist effect in other words.
schrodinger's cat
I like Bernie as a Senator from Vermont and as a person but think that Hillary would make a better President. Hillary is smart and capable if not particularly likable. Of all the candidates on both sides she is the best candidate this cycle. That’s all that matters really. Even if she is the evilest witch that has ever witched, she is a survivor and a fighter. I respect that.
satby
@Calouste: These were my favorites:
Only analogy for women is witches? They couldn’t be good / bad cops?
And when Clinton “seizes” the country by being elected?
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: She’s likeable enough.
? Martin
@Amir Khalid:
Broadly speaking they tell us how much maneuvering space a candidate has. In races, outside candidates like Sanders and Obama in 2008 start off with low fav/unfav and a lot of uncertain/no opinion. That gives the candidate (and opponents) a relatively blank slate to work from. Sanders was well served in this race by Clinton not running negative ads intended to drive up his unfavorables.
Generally speaking unfavorables are difficult if not impossible to fix. If you dislike someone, you aren’t going to give them an audience to make their case for why you should like them. Favorables can more easily become unfavorable through a scandal, gaffe, or particularly effective line of attack.
Clinton’s 55% unfavorables are very troubling. The only comfort comes from Trump’s being worse. The upside is that because she has been in politics for so long, it’s unlikely those will get worse, and contrasted with Trump they could get a little better. Sanders likely has more downside risk than Clinton does, but he’s starting in so much stronger of a position that he can afford to lose some ground.
That’s all based on how things in the past tended to work. There are apparently no rules this year, so who the fuck knows what will come of it all.
Applejinx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You guys making fun of controlling things like Twitter/Facebook/the Onion: try reading up on Goebbels sometime.
People have trusted media, and untrusted. Right now, almost everything in traditional media is wildly untrusted. They tried like hell to turn off Trump, and the opposite happened. Same could be true of Bernie.
But things like Twitter are trusted as they’re supposed to represent unfiltered discourse of the people. And so, it gets controlled and new plans are in place for a more weighted display of tweets (not time based but ‘what we think you’ll like’, something Facebook’s done for ages) and it’s really the ideal propaganda medium, especially if userbase and network effects make it, like Facebook, structurally unavoidable.
Points to the Clinton people for figuring that out, none of the Republicans did. I am giving points for ‘being like Goebbels’, and that’s horrible, but Goebbels WAS RIGHT and his plans worked, to the tune of utter genocide.
We aren’t planning genocide but the same techniques will still work. We might see the result in a Clinton landslide, and again I hope some of you trusting folk are half right about the lady, because I’m not sure you have a choice at this point. We’ll see.
eponymous coward
The Republican party line in November on Bernie is trivially easy to do: “Bernie Sanders is a socialist who wants to raise everyone’s taxes”.
It’s trivially easy because a) it’s true* and b) Republicans have been running on and winning against that platform since time immemorial.
*Don’t give me a bunch of crap about how Bernie’s just soaking the rich. Yes, it’s true he does do that. It’s also true that single-payer, free college, paid time off + sick leave, and all the other stuff Bernie wants us to to be Denmark cannot possibly be paid for JUST by soaking the rich. Pretty much everyone who’s working pays more. Rich people pay a LOT more.
The proposition that there is right now a working progressive national majority in the United States dedicated to adding about 5-10% of national GDP to government in tax receipts, in exchange for single payer/free college/paid leave/infrastructure is, to put it mildly, untested. And that is what the Republicans will run against if Bernie’s the candidate- “no, we don’t want to hand Washington DC a few trillion and see what we get for it”.
It is of course an axiom of progressive faith that there’s a YUUUUUGE voting majority out there once we hand a bunch of lower-class whites a Thomas Frank book liberalsplaining what their economic interests really are. Given how anti-tax initiatives fare in my blue state when they end up at the polls (regularly enacted into law), I am nervous about committing the party to the proposition without some evidence backing it up (like, say, Sanders actually proving he can take Clinton out in a contested primary- it would seem to me if there’s a real, true groundswell for socialism that’s a necessary condition).
Linda Featheringill
I’m expecting the elections today will bring me a lot of pain. But I will say this: I am heartened by the crowds that Bernie is drawing in Texas and Oklahoma. Both states are my home stomping grounds and I know, and Goodness knows, those people really need to hear that there are alternatives to what they have now.
Sometimes Bernie reminds me of Johnny Appleseed.
Edited.
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Or the coup de grace:
“He wants to raise your taxes to force a healthcare plan that his liberal home state rejected!”
And the response will be some variation of “Yeah, but…”.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Indeed!
Thoroughly Pizzled
Bernie would be pilloried for increasing taxes, and just as importantly, I’m not sure if he could effectively handle that criticism. Not if he’s implying that people who don’t vote for him are stupid.
Hillary, when she’s not being reflexively paranoid, is capable of letting stupid attacks roll past without comment.
LesBonnesFemmes
Note to self: Stop reading mistermix posts.
japa21
@Applejinx: I like the fact that Bernie can sometimes be brutally honest. I am not sure he knows how to pander. But that doesn’t win campaigns and it doesn’t equate to being a good President.
I fully understand your concerns about Clinton. Not as a campaigner but as a President. I don’t think she is anywhere near the war-hawk corporate stooge like some of Bernie’s supporters paint her, but I understand the concerns.
BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodinger’s cat:
She’s likable enough.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: You type too fast.
Applejinx
@satby: The good cop does not wave his wand and shower magical sparkles over you, giving you all manner of glittery presents with a lovely smile that shows how very much he loves you.
Wall Street desperately wants to believe Hillary is Glinda the Good who will intercede for them if they fuck up, so the Good Witch analogy is perfectly relevant: and they do look on Warren and Sanders as Wicked Witches. Good Cop/Bad Cop doesn’t really go far enough to illustrate how it is.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Rhoda:
The first thing Trump bellowed the night of the NH primary about Sanders was “He’s going to give our country away folks! We’re not going to let him!” What wasn’t said but many many people heard was “to those people”. I don’t know why this keeps having to be repeated, but raising middle class taxes to pay for socialist policies for anyone other than white people is not going to happen. We can’t even get Medicaid fully expanded. The refusal of liberals to acknowledge that the barrier to implementing any of Sanders’ pie in the sky is not fucking Wall Street, is a huge fucking problem.
Hal
Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for so long, and so much of what people have written and said about her has been so negative (both deserved and undeserved) I’m not surprised about her negatives. Having said that, I just do not believe she would be beaten by Cruz or Rubio. Both have an advantage right now of much lower national profiles, but Cruz is reviled even by his colleagues and Rubio is a sweaty mess who buckled under pressure.
Plus, my completely unprofessional opinion is that Sanders positives are highlighting Clinton’s negatives. How many of the folks who really want Sanders are dinging Clinton, but in the end, will still vote for her? I think her positives will go up once the general election is set. At least that’s what I hope. We’ll see.
magurakurin
@Applejinx: most bizarre Godwin ever?
schrodinger's cat
@Applejinx: Step away from the key board, no more internetting for you today. You have stopped making any sense.
satby
And the point about misogyny flies right on by.
BTW your constant insistence you know Hillary Clinton’s inner thoughts border on the ridiculous.
Applejinx
@eponymous coward:
That’s a really good point. I think it’s important to push as hard as possible with Bernie, but you’re right when you say that AT BEST implementing all that would be down to the very same DNC hacks driving some of us bonkers, and (we hope) the very same Congresscritters heavily afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome and a really perverse, Villager-type worldview.
I’m not at all sure I trust them with the mandate ‘go forth and build us a Newer Deal’. I only know something of that nature has got to be done, and promptly, and we have limited options either to decide to do it, or to get it done.
schrodinger's cat
@satby: JC is not immune from the Hillary hate either, thank God Sully is not blogging anymore.
Calouste
@satby: As has been predicted here by various people, the sexism against Clinton will be as bad as the racism against Obama (or maybe even worse). The problem for the GOP is that 53% of the electorate is female, and all the sexist males vote for them anyway.
Applejinx
@schrodinger’s cat: Only to go vote! :D
Toodles. And I think some of you should be grateful your candidate’s learned so much more about history than you have… if you can’t manipulate the most trusted media you can reach, you got nothing.
I see the ‘Democratic Party’, shall we say, making huge huge advances in doing this. Nobody said it had to be pretty, or that it had to be original. It’s so, so, not original… as I said.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@schrodinger’s cat: Christopher Hitchens would have been killed off by this primary if the cancer hadn’t already gotten him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’s an understatement. Can you imagine the front page rant if an HRC supporter had pulled that phony Warren-endorsement on Facebook?
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx: No.
Mike J
I think a lot of Hillary’s negatives are because she’s the enemy. She’s been the enemy to Republicans since 1992, so of course they hate her with the heat of a thousand suns. On the left, there are too many people who decided that they had to hate her because she was running against the person they like. She’s been the most admired woman in the world for decades (according to Gallup), but during the silly season, the easiest way to show fealty to one side is to denigrate the other. I hope after she wraps up the nomination most of those people will drop the act.
Just Some Fuckhead
People will only get a negative view of Bernie Sanders by thinking about him in-depth. If you don’t believe me, ask any other Clinton supporter.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: Aren’t all his proposed tax increases on people making > 125K a year?
Cacti
@Paul in KY:
No.
ETA: His proposed payroll tax hike is across the board.
Bobby Thomson
@low-tech cyclist: Clinton’s numbers aren’t that good in 2000 or 2008. Then they turned around completely when she was Secretary of State. Then they went back into the shitter.
Sanders and his advisors can increase her net favorable rating by 15 minutes minimum. The question is whether they will.
Matt McIrvin
@? Martin:
Those numbers are not currently stable, though. She was way net positive until she quit the State job and started clearly preparing to run for President, and her negatives have been increasing almost linearly since then. If the trend continues along that line, she’ll be more disliked than Donald Trump by sometime in the summer.
What I’m looking for to figure out whether she’s got a floor is the post-Super-Tuesday polling. The decline in her popularity over the past few months has been in a period dominated by coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire, both states where Clinton was strongly expected to underperform her national numbers, and did (though she eked out a win in Iowa). So far, there have only been a few polls even since South Carolina, and that was the first time in the entire race that she got “big winner” media coverage. Usually, an eventual party nominee’s favorables start increasing when they rack up primary wins.
We’re really in uncharted territory here. Hillary Clinton is near the bottom of major-party presidential nominees in favorability ratings. But Donald Trump is off the bottom of the chart; he doesn’t look like a normal nominee at all.
schrodinger's cat
@Paul in KY: That’s not going to be enough for getting Scandinavia in the United States. He is also proposing transaction taxes. I am not sure whether he wants to increase capital gains tax too.
Just Some Fuckhead
Hopefully the HRC campaign will run campaign ads of every day people explaining away her high unfavorability numbers. Nothing turns out the voters like being accused of misogyny, being secret Republicans and of a conspiratorial mindset.
randy khan
@NR:
When the Republican candidates agree on something, we all should assume it’s wrong. Most of them also probably think she’s *this close* to being indicted for the email server.
While I won’t disagree that the media will decide there are things about the Clinton Foundation that are hinky, my little contact with the reporting on that versus reality suggests that the media will get the story wrong. (For instance, there was some story about how the Clinton Foundation spent a lot of money but didn’t give much away – when you look at the Foundation’s tax returns it turns out that it spends something like 10% on admin and fundraising and 90% on its programs, which is really, really good, particularly for such a large organization.)
C.V. Danes
@Applejinx:
She will govern marginally to the right of Obama. And the outliers that support her (progressives, minorities) will find themselves sacrificed in the name of pragmatism.
Chyron HR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t have a conspiratorial mindset, I just think she secretly controls Twitter.
Brachiator
This is not even fantasy league level speculation. It’s good for political operatives and fund raisers, but not much else. It’s too early still, for any of this to be meaningful. Also, at a basic level, national level polls are inherently a waste of time. We don’t vote nationally for president.
Including Bill Clinton and Melania Trump is funny, but irrelevant.
Also, that a favorable rating translates into a vote is a fallacy.
I still cannot imagine a world in which a Bloomberg candidacy is possible, though I suppose it would hurt Clinton (or Sanders) to a small degree if it could ever happen.
The number of anyone-but-Trump Republicans who would pull for Clinton is statistically insignificant. Most of these people are deeply conservative Republicans. Hillary Clinton represents everything they hate. She is not getting their vote.
Bobby Thomson
@mistermix: novel idea.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cole is in his hart still a Republican. Disregard for facts that don’t suit him, easily fooled, specially by men with good hair, like Mark Sanford. He’s just still pissed of about being so easily fooled when Jeb! rubbed his nose in it with the Schiavo affair. The good thing is that he now knows that he can be easily fooled, and by whom, the bad thing is that he often doesn’t realize it still happens, specially if it is by someone who is not one of the usual suspects.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: He fuckin better want to raise Capital Gains! That should be number 1 on the Left.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: But weighted, though? People in higher brackets would get them raised more, etc.?
C.V. Danes
@Rhoda: I’m pretty far to the left, but I really just can’t see anyone center left voting for Trump. I really can’t. Hillary and Bernie can be polarizing, but next to Trump they’re like a dwarf star next to a supernova.
Bobby Thomson
@max: Kael never said that.
Calouste
@Bobby Thomson:
Sanders is not a Democrat, and for his advisors Clinton becoming President means that there won’t be a primary season in 4 years time, and consequently no big fat payday. Yeah, I’m cynical.
singfoom
@Paul in KY: Bernies Tax Plans from his site
%0.2 Payroll tax hike across the board. Doesn’t seem like a massive tax increase to me.
schrodinger's cat
I think Republican party will fall in line and support Trump once it is clear that he is going to win the nomination. They will try to get a Cheney like figure as the VP.
C.V. Danes
@Cacti: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Under normal circumstances I would agree with you, but we’re talking Trump here. The guy has the backing of the KKK. People might hate tax cuts, but they hate the KKK more. I have to believe that.
Cacti
@singfoom:
You missed his 2.2% healthcare premium tax on individuals.
Shell
Just how late can a potential candidate practically leave it before announcing he’s definitely running?
BillinGlendaleCA
@singfoom: Plus 2.2% payroll tax from employees and 6.4% from employers for single payer.
Amir Khalid
@C.V. Danes:
I hate to break this to you, then …
Weaselone
It seems strange that the same people who have large enough imaginations to conjure up conspiracy theories about Hillary taking over Twitter and the Onion, have so little vision when it comes to the attacks Republicans would launch on him if he were to win the nomination. They seem to think that Republicans attacks would consist of calling Bernie a Socialist, running radio adds stating that Bernie is a Socialist and buying TV spots where Bernie’s image would appear on the screen followed by Socialist written in large white or red block letters on a black background. Let’s go through a couple of obvious scenarios that would likely come up.
1. Bernie was actually a Russian spy who used his position to undermine the US at home and abroad. They will underscore that as the basis for his leftist social, economic and military positions. They will also dig up anyone with the remotest contact with Bernie who has died within the last 25 years and suggest he had them killed to keep his secret.
2. It will come to light that during his time as Mayor of Burlington that his office was a veritable brothel. Several women will come forward indicating that he made unwanted physical advances. They will tie this in with his having had a child out of wedlock.
3. They’ll slam his economic progressive credentials hard and paint him as a tool of the wealthy liberal elite. You’ll get images of wealthy people schmoozing and plotting. It will then be noted that multiple times Bernie came to big money donor events on Martha’s vineyard and conveniently voted against regulating derivatives. They might even throw in his votes granting immunity to gun manufactures.
4. Naturally, they will also want to drive down minority and women votes, so they’ll probably launch an add with all the BS his surrogates have been spouting in the primary and tie them to him.
5. They have control of the house and Senate, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see a congressional investigation into one of the above issues, or perhaps something else like accepting donations from overseas sources, or donors exceeding their individual contribution limits.
singfoom
@BillinGlendaleCA: @Cacti: Yes, was replying about the payroll tax specifically, but yes, those are there.
C.V. Danes
@Amir Khalid: ok, those are people who are deeply Republican. Not representative of the majority.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Shell: What I find crazy and irritating is that the only Clinton scandal with any legs, after years of investigation, is Bill’s womanizing. So of course the blame for said scandal seems to be reflected in…his wife’s approval ratings.
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: Yeah, this. Why are capital gains even taxed different from income? And yes, transaction taxes and you know why? Because high frequency trading is complete video-game bullshit! There is NO possible market benefit to turning computers loose on each other in this way. It’s like improving bathtime by replacing rubber duckies with piranhas. It doesn’t even make NONsense.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Shell: I thought he said he’d only get in if Bernie was the Dem nominee. Since that’s probably not happening, I doubt he jumps into the race unless is ego absolutely demands it.
Cacti
@C.V. Danes:
I believe that history has shown us that when it comes to economics vs. racism, a substantial majority of white Americans will vote for racism, always.
Civil rights were the rock that broke the New Deal coalition and it hasn’t changed in 50+ years. What has changed is that the non-white vote has steadily increased its share of the population over the past 3 decades. Rather than acknowledge that, Sanders is trying to reclaim the Reagan Democrats.
Nah guh happen.
eponymous coward
@singfoom:
The taxes to do single payer are a tax increase because they are payroll taxes. Yes, “it comes from the employer”, but in the real world, this will depress wages.
People DO get single payer, and that largely will benefit poor/lower class working people. There will be substantial tax impacts in upper middle class people (in other words, people who are more likely to vote and might be unenthusiastic about a large tax increase that won’t really do much for them if they’re covered via their job).
The bottom line is that for a progressive, the idea of “I’m going to jack up taxes on people making 60 or 80k a year so everyone is getting good single payer health care” seems axiomatic, but changing the US’s tax regime to Denmark or Sweden is not a small ask. It’s 5-10% of GDP. You can’t possibly get there by just jacking income tax rates to 90%+ punitive levels on income/estate taxes. It means getting a large amount of the US to swallow those kinds of changes. Anyone think the South is rooting fort yuuuuuge tax increases?
Robin G.
Honestly, I’m not worried about Clinton beating Rubio or Cruz. I think she’ll make Rubio look like a child. And Ted — well, anyone who likes him simply hasn’t spent much time with him. I’m with Josh Marshall on this one: Cruz is the only one who could lose worse than Trump.
People who thinks the upcoming “Old Communist Jew” attacks won’t destroy Bernie’s numbers are kidding themselves. He hasn’t begun to face that buzzsaw. And the “He’s not a communist, Dad, he’s a socialist!” comeback just doesn’t have a lot of punch behind it.
Matt McIrvin
@C.V. Danes:
I can. All it takes is for them to be scared of Mexicans. I know some people who insist that they’re as commie hippie liberal as they come, but completely flip hard-right nationalist when you start talking about immigrants. However, many may think of themselves as “super liberal” because they live in deep-red states, in which case it might not matter.
singfoom
@eponymous coward: Yeah, I think that’s a hard row to hoe too even though I support Sanders. I don’t see the makeup of Congress changing enough to get those changes passed. And no, I don’t think the South is rooting for anything other than blaming the other.
I agree with some of what was said upthread, capital gains taxes needs to match W-2 taxes. Just enrages me that hedges that make more than a billion dollars pay a lower rate than myself and everyone else.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@C.V. Danes:
That’s the problem right there, and why we’ll never have nice socialist things.
Paul in KY
@singfoom: Thanks for the info!
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: They are taxed differently because the rich people who have Capital Gains got it changed.
I’m sure there was some kind of BS reason they floated, but above is really why.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
I agree with you that the GOP will fall in line and enthusiastically support Trump.
However, I could never see Trump agreeing to a puppet master for VP. Never. Gonna. Happen.
But I would bet good money that Little Rubio and Nikki Haley will be on the short list of VP candidates.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@C.V. Danes: Why? Seems to me you’re dancing with willful ignorance by taking such a stance. It’s obviously not true.
The problem the GOP has with Trump is not that he’s racist, it’s that he’s not conservative enough. They keep telling people this. Why doesn’t anyone believe them?
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: My 90 year old mom is a lifelong Democrat (at least since she hit the U.S. in 57). She emigrated & jumped thru the various hoops, etc.
She get’s extremely bent out of shape on illegal immigration. She’s a stickler for rules & remembers her travails & gets grrrr.
I tell her time & again about quotas (big one for UK, miniscule for Mexico) and she don’t care. If we’d been born poor Mexicans, I assume we’d genteelly starve down there…
FlipYrWhig
@japa21:
What is “everyone is corrupt and brainwashed except the good souls who vote for me!” if not pandering?
Another Holocene Human
@Chyron HR: Oh no, Chyron, the learned minds at LGM assure us that nobody does or can possibly know why Sanders failed to win over African Americans in South Carolina, although they nodded sagely and stroked their beards and uttered something about institutional advantage.
The fact that Sanders referred to youth of color hanging around on street corners in 2016 (!) has gone straight down the memory hole.
singfoom
@C.V. Danes:
Can you explain the logic underlying that conclusion? Have you seen video of any of Trump’s rallies? The people supporting Trump don’t hate the KKK, they’re out and out racists themselves. Why would they hate the KKK? The whole appeal of Trump as far as I can see is that they want to go back to the fever dream 1950s that never existed where USA was pure and “those people” knew their place.
Could be wrong though…
Tegdirb
Those numbers are great news for future President John Kasich!
Frankensteinbeck
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Because they’ve never been honest about their motivations before. See deficits, for one particularly sharp example. I think a few conservatives sold themselves so hard on the dogma they forgot it’s a substitute for racism. I think the rest of his opponents are just mad he won’t let them pretend they’re not racists.
Another Holocene Human
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Bernie’s kind of supporters are starting to sound like the guy who comes to all the meetings and talks about how radical he is, but always dips out when there’s hard work to be done, and also never listens when people with info he probably needs come in the room.
I live in a Bernie ground zero and some really good activists are into Bernie or at least Bernie curious, but I’m kind of shocked out how shitty Bernie’s ground game seems to be given the sort of people who are into his campaign.
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
This. It’s the thing that sticks in my craw about the Sanders campaign: the overarching idea that if not for Wall Street and billionaires making income inequality and fomenting racial discontent, The People would be able to forge a better world. The symptom and the disease and the means and the end are all jumbled up.
Brachiator
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Yeppity yep. Yep.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
The candidate who loves to go to college campuses and declare his support for free college doesn’t know how to pander. Nope, nosir.
gogol's wife
Rubio cannot beat Hillary Clinton. You can show me all the polls you want.
Trump I’m not so sure about, because he is a rip in the space-time continuum.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
This opens up room for Trump to appeal to otherwise Democratic Party voters.
The official unofficial platform of the Dems is open borders compassion. The battered working class see this as a betrayal, even if they want to be compassionate.
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: Way to avoid the issue, buckeroo.
Toss the shovel aside and stop digging. For the love of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Brachiator
@gogol’s wife:
This is a funny, irrational statement.
Right now, I don’t believe that Rubio can beat Hillary Clinton, but an accurate poll cannot be ignored. Ask Karl Rove about that one.
Another Holocene Human
Can we not do the gendered attacks on Hilary Clinton on a liberal blog? She is a politician. Can we invect* away without attacking all women in the process? Sheesh.
*-or, rather, inveigh?
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: Ask President Romney about those early polls vs Obama
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: The Democratic platform is anything but open borders, but by ranting about walls and border security (beef it up–again!) the Republicans can make it look like the Dems are against a controlled border. (“I had no idea our border was so insecure!”)
This shit is PURE propaganda. Big business wants people on visas that they can exploit. Working people aren’t quite so dumb as you think. AFL-CIO stance has been shifting, and labor people have been lobbying side by side with DREAMers.
FlipYrWhig
@Weaselone: I don’t even think it has to be that byzantine a scheme. All Republicans run on the idea that Democrats are n1&&er-loving pu$$ies. Hillary Clinton has been made into One Touch Biyotch for 25 years. Bernie Sanders is susceptible to being tagged a wild-haired crunchy-granola hippie who’d probably rather join hands and levitate the Pentagon than order SEAL Team 6 to wipe out a terror cell in Ass-istan. No one has even tried to hit him on that yet, because it’s a caricature of something that the left side of the Democratic Party _actually likes_, his antiwar roots and skepticism about military intervention. Meanwhile, Donald Trump wants to shoot Muslims with pork bullets. If it’s Trump vs. Sanders, there’d immediately be a really serious (projected, imaginary) strength-and-toughness gap. That possibility makes me super nervous.
Chip Daniels
I just wonder how effective the “ERMAGERD, TAXES!” stuff is anymore.
I’m an middle class white collar professional, i.e., prime tax hike target, and I am less concerned about taxes than I am about my son’s college debt, general economic anxiety and insecurity, retirement and health care.
Telling me I might pay a few thousand more in taxes, compared to the tens of thousands for all that stuff otherwise, just makes me shrug.
FlipYrWhig
@Another Holocene Human: You’ve inveigled me into inveighing against invidious invective.
oldgold
There are lies, damn lies and then there are polls.
If Sanders were to be our nominee, after the GOP meat grinder is done with him, his negatives in November would be higher than Trump’s. I do not think he would win 4 states [Vermont, Massachusetts and maybe California].
Kay
This was my idea :)
He’s perfect. He’s a great advocate for economic issues AND he was great on voting rights back when he did that and Republicans will use that against him, which will highlight the best issue for Democrats- we protect voting rights.
Chip Daniels
@FlipYrWhig:
The most amazing thing to me , which I never would have expected, is how little the “SOCKULIST” thing has mattered.
It just doesn’t seem to have resonated- and its not for lack of trying.
The rightwing has tried to tar Hilary with guilt-by-association, yet it just doesn’t seem to have done any damage to either of them.
I think the people who still have a problem with it were never the persuadables anyway.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: I think our position should be: Lets enforce all the laws against hiring illegals, by properly staffing the enforcement agencies. Those who make it here illegally & are caught should be deported.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
Jumbled up is a good word for getting it completely backwards. The frustration is that when I mention that the way to dismantle the oligarchy is to dismantle racism, the response is “what politician can do that”? Instead of, yes – that needs to happen so I’ll work on myself and call out my friends and family on their racist bullshit and why they always vote against their own economic self-interest. There’s no real broad white constituency for broad social programs any more – actually, since the Voting Rights Act was passed. Democrats haven’t won the white vote in any national election since then, but… Bernie’s going to change that because reasons.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
The above is why its hard to make heads or tails of Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement yesterday.
Her biggest criticisms of Obama, Clinton, and Kerry have been that they’re not hawkish enough and that their references to our foes aren’t sufficiently Islam-specific. So she quits the DNC to endorse…Sanders?
Que?
Another Holocene Human
@C.V. Danes:
Based on what.
Rovian turn there–Sanders keeps saying he doesn’t need to worry about police violence against Blacks, institutional racism, and so on because taxing the banks will solve everything. So who threw who under the bus?
Meanwhile Clinton is proposing small, achievable changes that would improve the lives of working class people, a group to which African Americans disproportionately belong. You can’t accuse them of not voting their interests. You can’t eat purity or an epic last stand.
chopper
@Applejinx:
that makes even less sense than the last one.
Kay
This is Perez testifying at the insane and racist “hearings” the GOP held on voting rights and “the New Black Panther Party” where they yelled at him for 4 days.
Perez was in the voting rights section of the DOJ for that period. No one paid attention because the Tea Party were screeching so loud, but he had to listen to this nonsense for days. He should be VP just for that :)
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: She’s a loon.
Weaselone
@FlipYrWhig:
True, but that’s not as amusing to think about.
My main issue is this idea that everyone knows Sander’s is a socialist, so the Republicans can’t hurt him by running adds that call him a socialist. Even if it’s not a negative now, the Republican adds will spin his socialism in a way that makes it an issue. They also as you noted won’t limit there attacks to his socialism, they’ll attack other relative weaknesses, or the appearance of weakness. It’s almost certain, that they’ll attack his perceived strengths as well. They’ll make him a liar, tarnish his purity and call into question his economic progressiveness.
Another Holocene Human
@chopper: I saw some Berniebots on twitter saying that twitter was “in the tank” for HRC because twitter made a memory (like storify) of Al Giordano calling out Clinton and Sanders for failing to teach their campaign workers how to organize.
Bernie is above criticism.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Yawn. I am not a huge Bernie supporter, but I have zero concerns, zero, nada, zilch, about negative GOP campaigning or some imagined Trumposaur mangling of Sanders, or Clinton.
But then again, the “who’s most electable” noodling always says more about a pundit’s or commenter’s fears than reality.
Betty Cracker
@CONGRATULATIONS!: True of the hardcore GOP base, sure. True of the majority of Americans? Nah.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: Is she a new agey Hindu?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Are you sure? :)
superpredators4hillary
@Cacti:
Quotes? Links? Anything?
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: I don’t think that’s “electability,” though. That’s the infamous “commander-in-chief test,” which The Clintons invoked in 2008 against Obama. Obama responded by talking about how he’d authorize military action in Pakistan without their government’s approval and other shows of smart toughness. And as president he’s often been more inclined to be an interventionist than the people who voted for him would have liked. How does Bernie Sanders handle these things? He’s impassioned about economics and redistributive justice, but I don’t see that fire when it comes to warfare and counterterrorism, and Donald Trump is the _least_ bloodthirsty among the major Republicans _and is still hella bloodthirsty_. I think it’s a huge issue for him. In the event of some massive terror attack, Hillary Clinton can credibly say, “We’re coming to get you, you bastards.” It’s easy to picture. I think it’s much, much harder to picture Bernie Sanders doing that. And I’m a liberal Democrat.
Origuy
I heard a piece on the radio yesterday where they asked people what Leap Day was. Several of them had no clue. These were adult, English-speaking Americans. Some of them probably will vote.
Lurking Canadian
As a statement of Sanders’ proposed plans, this may be (probably is) true. Since Sanders is not likely to be elected, and would have zero chance of doing it anyway, that’s not interesting to me.
What is interesting is that, actually, this argument (which shows up all the time), though a true statement of political realities, is not a true reflection of economic realities, because it understates just how fucking rich rich people are. If Piketty’s estimates are correct, the total accumulated wealth in the US right now is about 500% of GDP. The total budget of the US government is about 20% of GDP. Thus, a 1% wealth tax, as outlined by Piketty, would provide 1/4 again as much funding as the US government currently spends in a year.
It could never, ever happen, but I think it’s important to keep mentioning it, to keep track of just what “all the growth since 1980 has been captured by the 1%” actually means.
Mandarama
@Applejinx:
Uh, no. I’m in the South, and grew up in the Deep(est) South. I saw Clinton speak on Sunday. She sounded exactly like a midwesterner, and she mentioned being a Methodist in a joke about one of our locals. She’s actually lived in the South before and has been married to a Southerner for a mighty long time, and she knows that faking some drawl or some evangelical attitude would not fly.
She seemed like herself. No fake charm or persona, just a tough, confident worker bee. The one thing that slipped out a little was the sense that she’s really enjoying watching the opposition step on their own dicks, if you’ll pardon the rude expression.
Tractarian
When Hillary wraps up the nomination and Obama starts stumping for her, her numbers will go way up.
Trump, if and when he does secure the GOP nomination, will also see his numbers rise. But not nearly as much.
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
Again, party rhetoric makes sounds as though Democratic Party leaders care more about illegal immigrants than citizens and residents. The perception is the weakness that Trump can exploit.
There ain’t no such thing as controlled borders. Desperate people will get here by boat, by air, by tunnel, whatever. The long term strategy is a North American federation that sees improvements to Mexico’s economy in partnership with the US and Canada. But this is too nuanced for any political figure to try to sell for now.
, but by ranting about walls and border security (beef it up–again!) the Republicans can make it look like the Dems are against a controlled border. (“I had no idea our border was so insecure!”)
Big business doesn’t want to exploit people on visas; they just want to pay them less than American workers. And I never said that working people were dumb. I said that they were desperate. Trump promises them something tangible. The Democrats waffle. On the other hand, I am not sure that the AFL-CIO carries as much weight as you appear to believe, especially with people who might be unemployed or under-employed.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: The interesting thing to me is the unreality of the whole debate. Obama’s actual policy has not been open borders compassion, which is part of the reason Latinos are so hungry for some kind of immigration reform, and there is actually no wave of Mexicans streaming over the border. That all happened years ago! And the people are mostly still here, but they’re people who have been here for a decade or more, not new arrivals.
That changes the whole nature of the problem. It also makes it harder to deal with politically, because it’s not simple and anything you say about it is going to bother some Democratic constituency.
Matt McIrvin
@Tractarian: I hope you’re right. Some of the Democratic voters I’ve talked to lately are actually really unenthusiastic about both Clinton and Sanders, but they hate Trump so much they’d do anything to vote against him.
But some seem to have fantasies of somebody, possibly a moderate Republican, jumping in as a third-party candidate so they don’t have to vote for Hillary Clinton either. Of course, if the vote gets split like that, that basically means Trump wins.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin:
Because the people who think illegal immigration is a pressing social problem are mentally counting everyone with a brownish complexion who speaks Spanish better than English as “illegals.”
agorabum
@low-tech cyclist: I wonder how much of hillary ‘s nberg’s stem from the left deciding to slag her so hard this primary season…once the bitter fight over small differences ends, hopefully they will tick up.
TallPete
@japa21: it’s the UNfavorables that matter more than favorable. You might vote for any favorable candidate but would never vote for an unfavorable. THere are some “hold my nose” and vote, but I think there are more who would sit out or write in a candidate then vote for someone they consider unfavorable.
This is where HRC has a problem. High UNfavorables combined with almost 0 no opinion/don’t know = tough to get elected.
El Caganer
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t know about new agey, but she’s got some interesting affiliations.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/curious-islamophobic-politics-dem-congressmember-tulsi-gabbard
John D.
@Lurking Canadian: This drives me bananas.
How do you pass a tax on *wealth* in this country? It’s absolute political suicide for any politician to try to implement. “You worked hard, saved for retirement, and now [x] wants the government to take it all away.”
The only current tax we have that is anywhere close to this is property taxes, and that is only because you can’t pick the fucking land up and move it. We tax transactions. Income. Sales. Dividends. You implement a wealth tax and that 500% of GDP squirreled away will vaporize overnight and land in accounts not under the control of the USA.
Tractarian
@Matt McIrvin:
Describes me to a T…
I actually disagree; I think, if there is a third-party run, it will come from a social/religious conservative who is convinced Trump is pro-abortion/closet liberal. In that case, the benefit redounds to Hillary.
My reason for thinking there will be no moderate conservative running as a third party is that, all kidding aside, Hillary is basically a moderate conservative when it comes to financial issues. Establishment GOP donors and power-brokers realize this and, therefore, do not fear a Hillary presidency as much as the GOP grass roots (fixated on social/cultural issues, where Hillary really is a liberal) does.
Tractarian
@John D.:
Estate tax
TallPete
@Tractarian: capital gains tax too
schrodinger's cat
@El Caganer: Enough said. BJP is bad news through and through. Tells me what I want to know about this Tulsi person.
eponymous coward
@Chip Daniels:
My state hasn’t gone for a Republican at the Presidential or gubernatorial level since 1984. We also have a loon who runs anti-tax initiatives every year. They win pretty much like clockwork (he loses when he goes to other issues, but they win when it’s just “vote to cut taxes here”), and then get struck down in the courts.
Outside of a number of deep blue states, “let’s tax ourselves like Denmark” isn’t a winner. And quite frankly, if Sanders gets the nomination, Trump is going to be all over his tax plans.
Now, this is to say it couldn’t ever possibly BE a winner, but the spade work isn’t there at the national level yet. And let’s face it, Bernie’s home state flinched at the last minute when they got the bill on single-payer. You’re telling me that there’s a nationwide consensus for 5-10% of GDP tax increases when you can’t get it over the hump in Vermont?
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Ah, yes, the good old days when Hillary was slinging the BS that just being in the White House was her commander-in-chief apprenticeship. I agree that Obama showed smart toughness. Great description.
I can only hope that Clinton learned more from Obama than from Bill Clinton here. And Sanders appears to lean toward pacifism and non-aggression, but who knows. Hillary Clinton has never had to govern at a national level, so both she and Sanders are untested, but I think that her time at State indicates that Clinton knows how to listen to and evaluate advice.
On the other hand, I have no faith, none, in Trump, when it comes to foreign policy. And to the extent that he has mentioned foreign policy advisors at all, they are still from the idiot neo-con stable. Right now, I can see Trump over-estimating his ability to make decisions here and doing something incredibly stupid and damaging to the country. Right now, he is Sarah Palin level incompetent.
Bob In Portland
Does attacking Trump’s penis sway voters? This sounds a little like the stories about Hitler having one ball.
Bob In Portland
@Brachiator: The deal that Trump will be offered from the elite will be to allow him to continue to be the self-glorifying ass he is on the biggest stage in the world. In exchange for his need to fluff his ego bigger than his hair he has to leave his hands off the actual government. Since JFK the foreign policy has not been in the President’s hands. He’ll be fine after he gets the talk.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Oh, yeah, don’t get me wrong, I think Trump is a total catastrophuck in the making. But he’s got swagger. I don’t think Bernie Sanders is capable of swagger. God love him, but that’s not his thing. And I’m afraid that its not being his thing will be a huge liability in a general election. Think about how badly it jacked up Michael Dukakis.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin: There have been new arrivals, but you’re right that we are dealing with people who are here and who have been here a long time. This adds to the hardened idiocy of the GOP response, leading their base to think that people are going to be magically rounded up and dumped on the other side of a wall.
But the question is whether the Democrats can talk people down from the ledge of Trump’s easy and false solutions.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Swagger don’t mean shit. The Democrats are going to have to unleash some of that famous Goldwater commercial implying that the GOP would destroy the world. Trump tries some swagger and the North Koreans unleash a nuke.
Trump knows nothing about foreign policy and has not shown any desire to learn. But he can’t delegate this to someone else. And nobody is going to give him time to learn.
The GOP base is laboring under the delusion that a white man with swagger will force the world to bow down and obey. This bullshit balloon needs to be popped early.
Trump reminds me of Cheney, a man who talked a lot of tough shit, but who to this day must deny all of the horror that was unleashed because of his … swagger.
Bobby Thomson
@superpredators4hillary: she’s one of those “say Islamic extremism” fetishists. A Fox News Democrat. Also very anti-“homosexual extremist” until very recently. She actually attacked Ed Case from the right.
C.V. Danes
@Another Holocene Human:
Clinton is proposing small, incremental changes when we need bold, transformational changes. The ship is sinking around us and you’re suggesting we settle for spoons to bail with. If that’s all we have left, then we should be breaking out the life rafts instead.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
That’s great. It was OUR idea, Betty!
I followed the Fake Hearings on the Fake Black Panther Threat so I was aware of him. I thought he would run for something – I was hoping governor but this is good.
Brachiator
@Bob In Portland:
If you really believe this, then it doesn’t much matter who we vote for.
I guess this also means that the Iraq disaster was not really the fault of Dubya and Cheney.
Paul in KY
@John D.: You tax income & bump up rate on Capital Gains.
C.V. Danes
@singfoom: @CONGRATULATIONS!: I think you guys are being overcome by the hype. All these images of rallies is just marketing, abetted by the media. The reality is that less than a third of the public approve of Trump, and it’s a particularly nasty third that most people don’t want to associate with.
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: See, I think the ship is leaking and Clinton wants to hand out spoons while Sanders wants to ponder whether we should have invented supersonic hydrofoil technology by now so we could have avoided the whole leaky ship problem in the first place. It’s a valid point in the abstract, but we’re already on the damn ship, Bernie, grab a fucking spoon.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
I guess I have to fess up that I am an amnesty guy.
In my ideal world, we increase the budget and modernize equipment so that we can process the applications of those who have been waiting to become citizens and residents.
We crack down on employers who hire illegals, but we also create a path to citizenship or residency. I do not want to create an un-employable underclass who cannot get any jobs or who would be exploited as cheap labor who had to accept under-the-table wages.
And I would work to improve the Mexican economy so that Americans would want to cross the border and work over there.
NickM
@Chip Daniels:
Same here. What I’ve never been able to get is the people who are more scared about terrorism and the tiny odds of dying quickly in an attack vs. loss of health care and the pretty reasonable odds of dying slowly as you see others getting adequate care you don’t have access to. Haven’t any of these anti-ACA nimrods — who mostly seem to be mid-40s and up — ever had a health scare? How can they support the pre-ACA shit system after that? I’ll never get it.
Matt McIrvin
@Tractarian:
In the techie circles I run in there are a lot of people who think of themselves as centrist post-ideological “vote the person, not the party” types. They voted for Obama but might support, say, a third-party run by Mitt Romney over Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, they’re smart enough to be receptive to strategic arguments about the danger of splitting the vote.
Mayken
@raven: This. A thousand time.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: That actually all sounds fantastic to me. Unfortunately it’s probably an electoral loser.
shomi
Would you numb skulls please get over this Bernie nonsense. Yes there are 2 people still technically in the race until….tomorrow. However, Bernie is the ONLY person Republicans have a chance of beating in the general. Doesn’t matter which one of those clowns you pick.
Also polls now and polls close to a general election are 2 completely different things. This reminds me of that idiot move by Cole to show the stock market down the day after Obamacare was signed to prove that it was a failure.
That should tell you something but only if you stop going (LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU) with your fingers in your ears.
I expect serial wrong on everything people like Mistermix and Cole and EVERYONE on the Orange Satan site to still be going on with this nonsense because they don’t have the sense to know better. The rest of you have no excuse.
John D.
@Tractarian: That’s still a transaction tax, not a tax on wealth. It requires someone to die to trigger. Pretty easy for someone to shift the bulk of their estate elsewhere before it hits.
@TallPete: Also a transaction tax. If you do not sell the asset, the tax never gets triggered.
@Paul in KY: See above.
FlipYrWhig
@NickM:
They support a system whose reforms help _them_, but they emphatically do not support a system that dishes out welfare-like goodies to not-them. They don’t want other people to have adequate care at a reasonable price if they feel like they themselves are somehow being forced to pay for it.
singfoom
@C.V. Danes: Maybe you’re right and maybe it’s just hype.
That said, if 1/3 of the public approve of Trump and historical voting turnout is somewhere around 60% that’s a problem. I worry that he’s going to get the out and out racists and assholes who usually don’t care to vote to vote for him.
Historical Voter Turnout Rates
Cheers
Lurking Canadian
@John D.: As I said, it could never, ever happen. I just have a kind of reaction anytime somebody says “We can’t just tax the rich! They’re not rich enough”.
Actually, yes, they are exactly rich enough. That’s the entire problem.
It’s not *that* crazy. People pay property taxes on their primary residence. For a lot of people, that’s the bulk of their wealth, but they pay it year after year. There’s no principled reason why your house is taxed but your IBM holdings aren’t. There are a lot of practical reasons, of course.
Anyway, my preferred solution is 1) index the minimum wage to inflation then 2) turn on the printing press.:). Let’s see how long the Koch’s 40B hold up when bread costs one trillion dollars per loaf.
Peale
@Brachiator:
We only have 1 position available. I don’t think anyone who has ever run for office has had national governing experience.
John D.
@Lurking Canadian: The principal reason your property is taxed and your IBM holdings aren’t is that they KNOW where your land is. All the fungible assets can be moved, and moved rapidly, and will be.
I like your preferred solution.
Brachiator
@Peale: re: has never had to govern at a national level, so both she and Sanders are untested
.
I was in a hurry and wrote gibberish.
Matt McIrvin
@shomi: Weren’t you telling us that Trump will never be the Republican nominee a couple of weeks ago?
Yutsano
@Applejinx: Never forget: 218-51-1-5. If you don’t have that socialist utopia is but a pipe dream.
Indy
@Cacti:
This is more a reflection of Clintons really solid support among older black voters than a lack of effort on Sanders part. The generational gap among black voters feels even sharper than among white voters. One of the BOS reps in my county is a baptist minister, and when I called him about Sanders, it was all Hillary, all the way.
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
Are you sure you’re not confusing that with the 3,471st repeat of some variation of “mistermix is an idiot and we hates him forever! Curse the mistermix!”?
cmorenc
@Cacti:
Along with Alabama and Mississippi, and Utah, Oklahoma is among the handful of states which are least potentially winnable by any democratic nominee in the general election, most especially Bernie Sanders. If he was making a strong challenge in some purplish states, as he did back in Iowa, it might be more meaningful.
chopper
@Matt McIrvin:
yeah, there have been a lot of bold bullshit predictions here out of some usual suspects.
mclaren kept harping about how jeb was totes gonna take the GOP side even when trump was ahead of him by 20-something points, as well as going on and on (even as recently as a few weeks ago) about how hilz was definitely not going to be the dem nominee. 10 bucks says he’ll be back later to say that trump vs hillary is ‘exactly what i’ve been saying would happen’.
Gian
you know the Donald is readying a joke about Marco, and his high heeled boots trying to peek over a urinal divider at one of the debates
shomi
@Matt McIrvin: I think what I said is that I don’t think he even wants the job. It’s just a vanity project to stroke his paper thin ego. I still don’t think he will be the nominee. I think they are going to roll him at the convention. Using every legal and maybe not so legal trick in the book.
If not I will GLADLY admit I was wrong on that. Oh what a glorious thing to be wrong about. I don’t have to listen to the Bernie wankers anymore either. This is like Christmas all over again. Might even be able to tolerate going back to DKos for a few minutes a day after they finishing their whining and sobbing.
As long as Clinton doesn’t keel over and die it’s in the bag and probably quite a few Senate and house seats as well. MarkyMux is dead wrong on that saying don’t underestimate the human combover. People are actually overestimating that clown. It’s going to be far bigger of a blow out than anyone thinks if that moron is the GOPer chosen one.
Why do you think people like Axelrod and Plouffe are being so quiet right now. Don’t you think they would be out there rolling up their sleeves if they thought Trump was a bad thing. It’s probably all they can do right now from trying not to be seen dancing in the streets.
moderateindy
@C.V. Danes:
100 percent this.
If you support Hillary because you think she has the best chance of winning, I have no problem with that idea. But if, as most people on BJ seem to express, they are tired of the way this country is becoming an Oligarchy/ plutocracy, than why are you voting for Clinton? What has she done that makes you believe, for a second, that she will do anything to stem that lurch towards Perdition?
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: We should definitely increase the quota of Mexicans who are allowed to legally immigrate. I guess you could evaluate those here illegally who are caught & see if some of them should get amnesty. I’m sure there are many who would fall in that grouping.
Paul in KY
@John D.: Well then, John D., how do we get at that sweet, sweet wealth?