Who is more electable??

Dear Friends,

One of the arguments I hear all the time about why I should support Secretary Clinton instead of Senator Sanders is that she can win the general election and he cannot.  I disagree with that argument.  In fact I think a very strong case can be made that Senator Sanders can win and that Secretary Clinton cannot win.

While the polls are not the best way to analyze who is more electable, they do provide some insights. Real Clear Politics provides a very helpful service in compiling all the major polls.  I strongly recommend that you visit their website (here) because the information is very interesting and available in lots of formats.  In the average of the polls they follow for March through the 22nd, here are some interesting averages,

Clinton beats Trump on average by 11.2 percentage points
Sanders beats Trump on average by 17.5 percentage points
In both cases, the spread increased in March.

But it is also important to consider what happens if the stop Trump movement is successful.
Clinton beats Cruz on average by 2.9 percentage points (well within the margin of error)
Sanders beats Cruz on average by 8.4 percentage points
Whereas Clinton's lead over Cruz has dropped during 2016, Sanders' lead over Cruz has widened considerably.

With respect to the Democratic nomination, the average of the polls in March so far give Clinton a 9 percentage point lead over Sanders but that is down from 24 percentage points at the beginning of 2016.

The truth is that the more people find out about Senator Sanders, and the more they hear and understand his message, the more popular he is and the better he does against all other candidates, Democratic and Republican.  In addition, Senator Sanders is the only candidate with a positive favorability rating.  According to the averages on Real Clear Politics for March, here are the results:

Sanders      Favorable  48.7%  Unfavorable  41.3%   +7.4
Clinton       Favorable  40.7%  Unfavorable  53.9%  -13.2
Cruz           Favorable  33.4%  Unfavorable  51.0%  -17.6
Trump        Favorable  30.4%  Unfavorable  63.2%  -32.8

The latest polls indicate that perhaps Donald Trump is beginning to lose ground, but we have heard that before, so who knows.  Also the latest Democratic nomination poll shows Sanders ahead of Clinton by 1 percentage point.  The daily and weekly variations among polls should not receive too much weight but the overall direction is important.  Also so far in this election cycle, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders tend to out perform the polls.

So if you believe in polls, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is more electable than Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has won 14 states by more than 1 percentage point and 4 by 1 percentage point or less.  Nine of the 14 states are very red states.  Trump has won 12 of those states as well, and all but 3 of those states are very red states.  The only two states that Trump has not won that Clinton won were Texas (home of Cruz) and Ohio (home of Kasich).  So the states where Clinton performs well are states that have been won by Trump and are overwhelmingly red states.  So it is impossible to say that Clinton has demonstrated that she can win against Trump based on her current performance.

Sanders has won 11 states.  Of those states, the Republicans have not yet had a primary/caucus in 2 of them.  In the nine states that have voted, Cruz has won 5, Trump has won 3 and Rubio won 1.  Six of the 11 states that Sanders won went for Obama in 2012, 2 of which are on the list of the closest races in 2012.  The results so far suggest that Sanders would win the traditionally blue states and be apt to win the close states that went for Obama last time.  If anything, this analysis says that Sanders has a better chance of winning the general election than Clinton does, but the analysis is far from certain.

There is a lot of talk about Sanders supporters who say they will vote for Trump rather than Clinton if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.  Clinton supporters attribute this position to the privilege of those Sanders supporters.  This allegation is yet another example of Clinton supporters and others in the "Establishment" not understanding the anti-establishment sentiment that exists in this country.

For the last 30 years at least, the middle class has lost ground while the rich and powerful have gained incredible wealth and power.  Many Sanders supporters are active in the political process today because they are tired of the status quo and are appalled at the inequality, in all respects, in this country.  They did not become involved to fight for a Democrat or a Republican.  They became involved to get rid of the "Establishment" and make big changes to the status quo.

It is not showing white privilege or any other kind of privilege for these voters to say that the most important thing is to get rid of the status quo.  These voters will not vote for Clinton because she represents the Democratic Establishment.  They might vote for Trump just to get rid of the "Establishment" or they might just drop out of politics.   I disagree with that approach and will most certainly vote for Clinton if she is the nominee, but to tell those voters that they are rejecting Clinton because of their privilege is not only wrong, it is stupid and offensive, particularly if you want their vote.

I believe the reason that Sanders does better against Trump and Cruz than Clinton does is that these voters will stay involved and vote for Sanders rather than either Trump or Cruz.  If, however, their choice is Clinton or either terrible Trump or Cruz, they will either vote for the terrible person or they will just drop out.  This result will be even more certain if Clinton wins the nomination and then moves to the right during the general election campaign.  Certainly her history of positions suggests that she has only moved left because of pressure from the success of the Sanders campaign.  If she wins the nomination, moves to the right and continues to denigrate Sanders supporters by calling them uninformed, sexist, naive and now privileged, she will surely lose their support and votes.

Neither Trump nor Cruz is actually crazy.  They are fighting for the Republican nomination now.  They will run a different race once they get the nomination.  Cruz is an ideologue who will have trouble changing his positions but can probably change his demeanor.  Trump has no scruples so he will change to whatever he thinks will win.  He will certainly try to become less awful as a general election candidate and who knows what positions he will take.  He might even try to make himself look normal, as difficult as that is to believe right now.  If he does that, Clinton will have an even more difficult time defeating him because she will sound like the pot calling the kettle black if she criticizes Trump for changing positions. Sanders, on the other hand, has not changed his positions and  will be able to call Trump on his change in positions without fear of hearing the same back.

The nomination of the Democratic candidate for President is a long way off and much can change.  While it is true that Senator Sanders has an uphill battle, that has always been the case.  The Democratic Establishment, the media, the elites and the general establishment are all against him, but together we can overcome all of that and have a Presidential nominee and a President that will change this country and who will make us proud.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Bernie Sanders Gets Things Done

Dear Friends,

One of the many narratives that the Democratic establishment is using to attack Bernie Sanders is that since he is passionate and consistent about his positions, he cannot get anything done.  There are two prongs to this attack, one is that he will face a Congress controlled by Republicans who will not pass anything he is proposing.  With respect to this point, the real question is which candidate, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, will change the face of Congress more.  My contention is that since Bernie Sanders generates incredible enthusiasm that has motivated tons of first time voters, the face of Congress will change more with a Bernie Sanders victory than with a Hillary Clinton victory.

The second prong to the Democratic establishment's attack on Bernie Sanders is that he will never compromise and will not get anything done but by comparison Hillary Clinton's incremental approach will somehow permit her to get more done.  There are two big problems with this attack. The first is that Hillary Clinton will be just like Barack Obama for the Republicans.  They are certain to do anything to make her fail.  That may also be true for Bernie Sanders but given his favorability ratings it will certainly be less than for Hillary Clinton.  The second is that Bernie Sanders has a really great record of getting important progressive changes to legislation through the use of amendments, much of the time with bipartisan support.

Paul Krugman made the Democratic establishment's argument in a column a few days ago in The NewYork Times (here) entitled "How Change Happens".  He ends with the these rather arrogant and patronizing paragraphs.

The point is that while idealism is fine and essential — you have to dream of a better world — it’s not a virtue unless it goes along with hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve your ends. That’s true even when, like F.D.R., you ride a political tidal wave into office. It’s even more true for a modern Democrat, who will be lucky if his or her party controls even one house of Congress at any point this decade.
Sorry, but there’s nothing noble about seeing your values defeated because you preferred happy dreams to hard thinking about means and ends. Don’t let idealism veer into destructive self-indulgence.

Bernie Sanders has had a long career as an effective legislator.  To say that he does not have "hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve" his goals, is just ridiculous.  This same argument, even citing Krugman is made in an even more obnoxious manner by John Avignone in an article entitled, "I have had it with naive Bernie Sanders idealists" with the subtitle, "Take a lesson from Paul Krugman: We don't have political revolutions.  This is a democracy of incremental change." on Salon (here).  Mr. Avignone claims that the Civil War was the last time there was fundamental change in the United States.

Bernie Sanders says he will bring about a political revolution to make his dreams of a democratic socialist society come true, which seems an unlikely proposition given that the GOP is sure to control one house of Congress and may well control both. Hillary Clinton advocates a pragmatic approach: protecting the progressive gains won under the Obama administration, taking what new gains may be possible in a divided government and setting the political table to back for more later.
Historically, it is this latter approach that has produced change. In any democratic system of government, progress is incremental. Only one time in our history as a nation have we seen such sweeping ideological change at a fundamental level happen in a brief span of time, and that change came at the price of five years of bloody civil war and some 500,000 deaths.

Apparently, Mr. Avignone does not think that Women's suffrage, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Roe v. Wade and marriage equality were fundamental changes in America.  All of those significant changes in America were the result of the people pushing Congress and/or the courts in what was at the time of each a radical change.  FDR, Truman and Johnson were not elected as radicals but as representatives of the values they held.  Until Bill Clinton, Democrats were Democrats.  Bill Clinton ushered in an era of Democrats trying to be Republican light.  The Democratic Party is just as responsible for the overwhelming increase in economic and social inequality in our country as the Republicans because we, Democrats, went along with the changes because the Democratic establishment decided after losing to Bush I and Reagan that the way to win was to become Republican light.  Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment is clinging to that strategy as they circle the wagons to protect Hillary Clinton.  It was the enthusiasm and energy created by Barack Obama's candidacy that broke the Republican reign.  Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment has not learned the lesson that Democrats win elections when we stick to our true beliefs and make sure that the voters understand the critical role that government can and should play.

The Democratic establishment's narrative that Bernie Sanders is an idealist who will not compromise and cannot get anything done has no basis in fact.  As I wrote in my post about the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by Planned Parenthood Action (here), Bernie Sanders has introduced, worked for and voted for many legislative actions for women's rights.  The list of his progressive legislative accomplishments is very long.  I commend to you an article at People's War (here) entitled, "What Bernie Sanders Got Done in Washington: A Legislative Inventory".  It is of necessity a really long piece because it lists all of his legislative accomplishments both in the House and the Senate.  If you don't read the article here are my favorite paragraphs.

Bernie Sanders is a progressive who likes to get things done and his record of legislative accomplishments in the House of Representatives and the Senate shows it. Despite being independent from both the Democratic and Republican parties, he got more done in his first eight years in the Senate than Democratic Party superstar Hillary Clinton did in her eight years there. Before the people of Vermont elected him to the Senate in 2006, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi dubbed Sanders the “amendment king” of the House of Representatives noting:

“Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, no other lawmaker – not Tom DeLay, not Nancy Pelosi – has passed more roll-call amendments (amendments that actually went to a vote on the floor) than Bernie Sanders. He accomplishes this on the one hand by being relentlessly active, and on the other by using his status as an Independent to form left-right coalitions.”

There is a shorter version of his legislative accomplishments in an article on Alternet by Zaid Jilani entitled, "Bernie Gets It Done: Sanders' Record of Pushing Through Major Reforms Will Surprise You" (here).  The article starts with the following paragraphs:

“I'm a progressive, but I'm a progressive who likes to get things done,” Hillary Clinton said at the first Democratic debate, in response to a question from moderator Anderson Cooper about whether she defines herself as a moderate or a progressive.
The implication was that progressive Bernie Sanders is too far to the left to accomplish anything—all of his ideas are pie-in-the-sky. You have to be able to find the bipartisan, “warm, purple space” as Clinton said earlier this year, to get anything done. Slate's Jamelle Bouie was super-impressed by this rationale, saying Clinton has “skilled use of bureaucratic power.”
The problem with this narrative is that it is completely false. Not only has Sanders gotten a lot more things done than Clinton did in her own short legislative career, he's actually one of the most effective members of Congress, passing bills, both big and small, that have reshaped American policy on key issues like poverty, the environment and health care.

Mr. Jilani then goes on to enumerate quite a few of Bernie Sanders' legislative accomplishments that he deems important.  He concludes his piece as follows:

It's easy for the establishment media and politicians to make the assumption that Bernie Sanders is not an effective lawmaker or executive. He has strong convictions and he stands by them, and we're often told that makes one a gadfly—someone who is out to make a point rather than make an actual change. But with Sanders we have the fusion of strong principles and the ability to forge odd bedfellow coalitions that accomplish historic things, like the audit of the Federal Reserve or the rejuvenation of Burlington that has served as a model for cities around the country. “Don't underestimate me,” Sanders said at the beginning of the race, words that anyone who knows his political and policy history take to heart.

Do not underestimate what a passionate person with great legislative skills can accomplish.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal