We are about to enter the period of actual primary and caucus voting… February 2, 2016 seems like a very short time away. And while a month is still a long time, and while we have another Democratic debate in mid-January, I have made my choice. Hillary Clinton is our best candidate and our best bet to win the general election.
Based on the latest opinion polls, she is trusted more than Sanders on all the issues, including the economy. According to the latest CNN poll,
Yet Sanders continues to trail Clinton as the candidate better able to handle economic issues, 47% say they think Clinton is best able to handle it, 39% Sanders.
The former secretary of state has even larger leads on foreign policy matters and ISIS, however, topping Sanders 72% to 15% on foreign policy, 63% to 18% on ISIS. Clinton also holds a 21-point advantage over Sanders on handling gun policy, 51% prefer Clinton vs. 30% Sanders.Although much of the debate over guns on the Democratic side has centered on Sanders' more gun-friendly views after representing a state where many own guns, among registered Democrats who say they or someone in their household owns a gun, Clinton is more widely trusted to handle gun policy: 58% favor her take on the issue vs. 28% who prefer Sanders.
Another factor is that despite all the talk of Sanders’ progressivism and support of workers rights, Hillary Clinton leads him in union endorsements. The list seems endless…. AFGE (representing 302k members), AFSCME (1.3 million), AFT (1.6 million), AWIU (30k), BAC (76+k), IAM (570+k), ILA (65k), IUOE (374+k), IUPAT (103+k), IW (123+k), LIUNA (558k), NABTU (3 million), NEA (3 million), OPCMIA (39k), SEIU (1.8+million), UA (330k), UBC (520k), and UURWAW (22k).
Do you know? That is a total of 19 major unions who represent a total of 13,908,661 workers exactly.
Sanders’ totals? 5 unions, representing a total of 1,181,900 workers.
Just for mathematical perspective this is a ratio of slightly better than 1:12.5 in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Not quite the landslide you would expect for one of the most populist candidates in recent history. In fact, if I were Sanders I would be really troubled by this ratio. Where is the groundswell of support? I mean he has been talking about economic issues like 95% of the time.
Conspiracy theorists, abounding on this site, will undoubtedly point out that the decisions made by a lot of these unions were undemocratic. That, if only given the chance, their members would have gone for Sanders by dramatic margins. In fact, Sanders himself complained about it quite recently,
"Other unions do what they do and that is up to them," Sanders said at the D.C. headquarters of the Communications Workers of America, which backed the senator Thursday. "I don't know what the prospects would have been had there been a democratic poll at those other unions. I think I would have had a good shot."So… One of the emerging memes of the Sanders campaign seems to be the “if only” meme. If only people who don't vote came out and voted… if only “real” union members had their voices counted, … if only no one had noticed their theft of Clinton campaign data… if only online polls were the real thing.
But that is as it may be.
One other fact on endorsements which I will note in passing. Among elected officials, in the so-called endorsement primary, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by a whopping 455 to 2. No need for comment here.
Or is there? I mean… “establishment candidate” vs “man of the people” just writes itself doesn't it? Believe what you will. Elected officials have been there… fought elections, and actually won them. They know what it takes to win. And if you examine the lists, you can hardly classify them all as establishment. So by an overwhelming margin that is not even in the neighborhood of being a contest, they believe Hillary Clinton should be our next nominee… because by that same overwhelming margin they believe, among other things, she is more electable.
I wrote a whole diary on this before. But by the logic of the Sanders’ campaign, new voters who support him, will come to the polls in droves and upend the entire polling industry and everybody’s understanding of how things work. This is the essence of the Sanders revolution. However, voter registration numbers, at least from Iowa, do not appear to support this narrative. To wit. In January 2015, there were a total of 665,269 registered Democrats in Iowa. As of end of November that number was 633,549. Yes, you read that correctly. There was a DECLINE in the number of Iowa democratic voters of 31,720. So WHERE are Sanders’ new voters? Where?
Addressing another mass delusion on this website… The delusion that Sanders is more electable because he beats Trump by 13% where Clinton only beats him by 7% (latest Quinnipiac poll). Yeah. Mass delusion. Hillary Clinton beats Trump by 7% while being, for the right wing, the most reviled and hated Democratic Party figure of recent history. Who in this country has not heard of Hillary Clinton and does not have an opinion about her? Who, I ask you? Sanders is an unknown to the vast majority of voters in this country. Hillary Clinton beats Trump by 7% after almost 25 years of exposure to the right-wing smear machine. THAT is a feat of enormous magnitude.
Bernie fans and supporters, please realize, your candidate is UNVETTED in the public eye. The public knows nothing about him … And it would take a few days of Republican attacks to turn a lot of voters away from him. I've seen it before. In 2000, the media developed a whole meme about Gore’s exaggerations. No matter that he was in fact the better candidate with the better platform. The media made a mockery of his record and his real achievements. And in 2004, two things happened. First, that same media DESTROYED Howard Dean’s campaign by portraying him as unhinged after his performance in Iowa. Here is the video that apparently doomed him
x YouTube VideoAnd do you know what else happened? Republicans savaged John Kerry… A Vietnam War vet, a triple-Purple Heart winner… He was made to look like someone who was a coward and who lied to promote his own career… just Google “Swiftboat Veterans for Truth”.
I am not going to do the GOP’s dirty work here. But, already a number of damaging stuff about Sanders has been aired on this site. I will not repeat it. I will just tell you this. Hillary Clinton has not touched it. And the GOP are salivating at the opportunity to unleash this load of crap on his head. He has not run a national campaign before. He is unprepared to address these issues. That 13% lead against Trump? It is a pipe dream. It is based on people’s lack of knowledge about him. It will evaporate as soon as the GOP does what it always does and unleashes nasty attacks on him.
And this brings me to the final point. All of you, who believe that Sanders can win and should be the new Democratic nominee… Do you not think that he should be winning the Democratic party vote by now? I mean, if he is the transformational candidate he is seen to be, if he is going to win independents, if he is going to win in a landslide, at least some sign would be visible… that he can reach, convince, and transform Democratic Party voters. Based on the latest round of polling, that is not happening. What does this say about his larger claims? I will let you draw your own conclusions.
And, a day or two ago, there was a diary on the wreck list that lamented, “How Does CNN get away with it?” At issue was the fact that while the latest CNN poll showed Clinton leading Sanders 50 to 34, the previous CNN poll had said that the lead was 58 to 30…. and yet, and yet, the CNN TITLE was “CNN Poll: Post-Debate Voters Move to Clinton.” Outrage! Or not…. here is part of the write-up
But those overall results mask a shift back toward Clinton following the Democratic debate on Saturday night. In interviews conducted before the debate, Sanders ran closer to Clinton, with 37% support to Clinton's 45%. Among those interviewed after the debate, Clinton's lead grew to 60% vs. Sanders' 27%.I leave you with the latest Hillary Clinton campaign ad.
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