Bernie will beat Trump in November
People are freaking out because they're finally coming to terms with the fact that Bernie Sanders will probably be the next Democratic nominee. Not to toot my own horn, but I successfully predicted this (and Coronavirus impact) a month and a half ago.. But what if I were to tell you that things were about to get a lot, lot, lot worse.
On November 3rd, 2020, Bernie Sanders will be elected the next president of the United States of America.
No, I don't support Bernie, (despite what @real_Skankhunt42" seems to believe), but I do think that everyone is denying the current political reality of the United States, in a similar fashion to 2016 and Trump's political ascent. In fact, I would argue that the baseline case for Sanders is much stronger than the case for Trump was. The assumptions from Wall Street and the DC punditry class that are priced into the market are dangerously wrong.
1) Assumption #1: People assume that Trump will easily be re-elected, even though his initial victory was a giant fluke. Trump won the presidency by winning three Midwestern states, and he won Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 1 percentage point each. And he still lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. To the most unpopular Democratic nominee in the history of this country. His initial victory was fueled by dumb luck (in the Comey letter timing) and low voter turnout. His initial victory was by the skin of his teeth and was only possible because the Democrats chose a historically awful and unpopular candidate. Bernie Sanders is a historically popular candidate who will campaign hard to win the Midwest.
2) Assumption #2: People think that Bernie isn't electable, but he’s the most electable Democrat. Trump isn't electable - he has a 43% favorable rating, and a 54% rating (-11% spread) and this is near an ALL TIME HIGH. Bernie has the highest favorability rating and best numbers among Democratic candidates.
3) Assumption #3: People still believe that "swing voters” will decide the election. This is not that accurate of a model anymore, the 2018 midterms were decided differently.
Bernie Sanders is a dual-threat here. First, Sanders will flip “swing voters” in the Midwest (he is the top-ranked Democratic candidate among male white working-class voters without a college degree) and siphon off Trump’s core 2016 base. Second, he will drastically boost Democratic turnout from 2018, and him being on the ballot will lead to increased turnout from voters who have had historically low turnout. Among young voters, he enjoys overwhelming support, and he runs away with the vote with Hispanic voters, which Trump overperformed within 2016. Sanders takes from Trump’s white midwestern base, and increases turnout. Here's an article from the NYT if you don't believe me. Game over!
4) Assumption #4: People assume the economy doing well will get Trump elected. That assumption wasn’t true to begin with, and now that the Coronavirus has arrived and the stock market is plunging, the failure will be associated with Trump. In a worst-case scenario, the Coronavirus will be like Hurricane Katrina on steroids, and Trump will be on the hook for it (even though he’s trying to blame it on Pence).
Sanders’ campaign’s biggest strength is America’s support for Medicare for all (70% support in polling data), and the Coronavirus will expose the systemic problems in America’s healthcare system. Millions are uninsured or have shitty policies that incentivize them not to see the doctor, and 70% of people in the bottom 10% of income don’t have any paid sick days. In other words, the people who work in the grocery stores and make your food will get the Coronavirus and come to work because they have to, spreading it to everyone else. They won’t even know they have the Coronavirus, because it costs thousands of dollars out of pocket to get tested. Even if they do get infected, they can’t afford to see a doctor. If the Coronavirus becomes a pandemic and spreads across the US, Sanders is guaranteed to win the presidency. Trump knows this, he’s setting up Pence to take his fall, and he’s politicizing it and calling it a “hoax.”
Unless Trump somehow sees a massive uptick in popularity (won’t happen, his unfavorability ratings are remarkably consistent), or Bernie Sanders gets another heart attack and dies, Bernie Sanders WILL be the next President of the United States. He could win by 5% and flip Texas blue. Seriously. Wake the fuck up and plan accordingly.
Tldr: Trump’s victory was a political fluke, Bernie actually IS electable, Trump loses core Midwestern base and Bernie adds new supporters in November, the stock market dropping and the coronavirus is the cherry on top.
There is a big, giant hole in your analysis. The fact is, unless you are a close observer of politics, which only a minority of people are, Bernie Sanders is a complete unknown figure. He has endured virtually no negative publicity and has not encounterned any material attack ads. You fail to even take into account the fact that negative ads are effective.
Just wait until the knives come out. Just wait until ads in Pennsylvania remind the hundreds of thousands of fracking workers that BS plans to eliminate their jobs. Just wait until targeted ads in Pittsburgh remind the giant healthcare community there that their jobs will be nationalized under BS. Wait until the electorate is reminded that Bernie Sanders plans to elimiante 99% of deportations and has endorsed a plan to allow criminals who were deported to come back into the U.S.--paid for by the U.S. tax payer.
The campaign has not even begun yet!
This is correct. Bernie has not been attacked yet by Trump and the GOP. Even his Democratic opponents have been very easy on him.
I provided my analysis of why Trump will defeat Bernie in the other thread so will not repeat that here. In terms of ads, I think there are several ads that Trump should use against Bernie in the general.
Ad 1: Health care The scene is a decrepit hospital. In a squalid hospital room, a young girl lies in bed, and her mother sits next to her, holding her hand. A doctor walks in and says: "I'm sorry, but your daughter, patient #99845Z will not be able to receive surgery. Since this is a government run system, the wait time is too long with a shortage of surgeons, and the government rations healthcare. They decided that she is not a priority. Sorry for your loss." The doctor, without any emotion walks away, and the mother cries in anguish. Narrator's voice says: "This is what our healthcare will be under a President Bernie Sanders."
Ad 2: Energy industry The scene is a small home in western Pennsylvania. A man walks into his home, dirty from the hard work he did in mining. His two young children are playing in the living room. There is a Christmas tree. The man goes to his wife and says, "Honey, I don't know what to tell them. There won't be a Christmas this year. No presents." The wife replies, "What happened?" The man responds, "President Bernie Sanders banned fracking, so our jobs are gone. Like all of them. It's over." The husband and wife hug and look worryingly at their kids, wondering how they will make ends meet in a Sanders presidency.
Ad 3: Immigration The scene is a funeral. A mother is grieving the death of her teenage son. The narrator says that the son was killed by an illegal alien who was not deported because President Sanders ended deportations. The scene then cuts to the illegal alien in question, who is driving a sports car and enjoying life. He looks at the camera with a big smile and says, "thank you President Sanders for not deporting me. And thank you for the free taxpayer funded health insurance. We illegal aliens love President Sanders!"
Ad 4: Pain of socialism With ominous music in the background and scenes of the horrors of communist regimes in black and white, people who survived these regimes are talking about their experience. It would be even more effective if these are Obama-Hillary voters who decided to switch to Trump. They simply talk about the horrors of those regimes and say that they cannot support a man who supported them. At the end, pictures of Stalin, Mao, and Castro, merge together and morph into a picture of Bernie Sanders.
It’s kind of inane to say that Bernie, a leading presidential contender for two election cycles, has not been vetted. People already have all the oppo research they’re going to get. Yes, the headon Fox attacks haven’t begun yet, but I don’t think thats going to make a major dent
Hillary Clinton's lead in 2016 was tenuous at times, but there really wasn't a "uh-oh" moment where it looked like she may not be the nominee. She didn't have to attack Bernie, and she didn't. An over the course of his political career he has been so incredibly irrelevant that no one else had to either (as opposed to someone like AOC who should be irrelevant but we live in the time of social media and thus her public profile is material).
Whether voters respond to this opposition research on Bernie is debatable (sadly), but you are mistaken . . . it is real and it is coming.
Running in the primary and running in the general election against an incumbent President who is a political beast, has no qualms launching savage attacks, and is loaded with campaign cash, are two totally different experiences.
In 2016 Bernie was the populist outsider, a freakshow to the Democratic establishment. Yes, he did far better than what anyone had anticipated, in large part due to people voting for Bernie as a protest vote against Hillary and the DNC. But it was pretty clear that Hillary was going to win the nomination, so the attacks on him weren't that vigorous. In 2020 the Democrats were afraid to alienate Bernie's base since they want their votes in the general election. The attacks on him have been fairly mild.
Ya know, just to clarify my position for posterity, I absolutely think Bernie can win. Any major party nominee has at least a 40% chance of winning the general election. My point is that we hear this evvvvery 4 years early in the election cycle--"the polls say this; I guess we know what's going to happen!" The reality is, we don't know anything. Until there is an actually selected nominee that the general public is focused on (largely in the last 8 weeks of the campaign), we just don't know anything. So I reject the absolutes that say "[insert candidate name] will win in 8+ months."
If there was a 50% chance of the markets tanking badly 8 months from now, you'd probably want to keep that in mind, no? With 2016 being an exception in most cases, people have successfully predicted most of the electoral outcomes.
Disclosure: I’m a staunch Republican (but more of a Mitt Romney type).
If it is Trump vs. Bernie in the general election, I think the likelihood that Trump is re-elected is >85%. However, some Republicans (and Trump himself lol) are playing with fire by pumping Bernie’s tires . . . while he is clearly the desired opponent, I don’t want a socialist/communist anywhere near the presidency and would much rather see a more competitive candidate (Bloomberg/Biden with Klobuchar as VP) from the Democrats for the good of the country. I strongly disagree with your prediction that Bernie will win (although I will admit it is certainly a non-zero probability he does), with the two main reasons being:
The Republicans have a massive stack of opposition research that has yet to be released.While there was plenty of bad stuff that voters overlooked in voting for Trump (grab’em by the pussy, etc), it was generally distasteful / non-PC in nature. Bad, but not absolutely disqualifying for the presidency bad. For Bernie Sanders however, the bad stuff (see: Sandinista rally) can be characterized as ACTIVELY HATING AMERICA which will destroy him with independents and moderate Democrats, who will vote Trump or sit out.
The Socialism smear will work. Not that I think it is a smear (I think Bernie is a goddamn communist) but a good chunk of even super liberal voters that are 40+ (my mother being one) will not vote for a Socialist/Communist. While I am very scared for this country’s future given the material % of voters who support Bernie, this is a 2024 problem and beyond.
People already know Bernies a socialist - his favorable numbers are a lot higher than the favorable numbers for socialism
True, but I think once more scrutiny is paid to his background his favorable numbers will plummet.
And I would add that despite his supporter's efforts to paint him as a garden-variety European social democrat, his background indicates that this is definitely not the case - on the contrary he comes off as a loopy anti-american communist kook who had one too many acid trips. I would argue that this will become transparent to even the most uninformed voters, and thus will sink his candidacy.
I have a close friend who is working on data analytics for Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager. To say that they are salivating over a Bernie nomination is putting it mildly. They have 600+ pages of oppo research on Bernie, and a lot of the stuff they have are things that even I was not aware of (and I'm a huge political junkie). By election day, Bernie will be seen by voters as not just a socialist but as fundamentally un-American, dangerous, a threat to your family's security, and morally depraved.
A Bloomberg/Klobuchar ticket in my opinion would beat Donald Trump easily. But the Democrats have lost their fucking minds, and running Sanders makes Trump the more "moderate" and "safe" candidate by a long shot.
Frankly I just don't get it . . . even for some of the NeverTrump Republicans (which I was but will vote for Trump in 2020 given how batshit crazy Democratic policy proposals have become) . . . at this point Trump is a known quantity, we know what he can and cannot do, but the solution is to elect a fucking communist?!
You may be right, but I'm of the opinion that people who will believe that Sanders is a socialist from communist Russia because of Fox News wouldn't vote for him anyways. I don't think that any oppo research will pick off the beast of a fundraising and grassroots campaign that Sanders has built over the past four years. Even if 40% of America sees him as un American, he still wins the election.
Dude, you’re missing the fact that Boomers, already the greediest, most obtuse generation in the history of the world, will come out in full atomic force against Bernie. They’re already the cohort most likely to vote, and this will only exacerbate this inclination.
Ain’t no fucking way Boomers are sharing their gibs with anyone else. They’d start WWIII before losing a single cent from their SS, Medicare, or 401(k). After all, they have lake homes and RVs to buy, and their reverse mortgages will only go so far.
>Dude, you're missing the fact that Boomers, already the greediest, most obtuse generation in the history of the world, will come out in full atomic force against Bernie. They're already the cohort most likely to vote, and this will only exacerbate this inclination.
>Ain't no fucking way Boomers are sharing their gibs with anyone else. They'd start WWIII before losing a single cent from their SS, Medicare, or 401(k). After all, they have lake homes and RVs to buy, and their reverse mortgages will only go so far.
Dude...take a Xanax and chill
It really depends on how Trump will attack him and how the response will be, all of which is kind of unpredictable atm.
Will Coronavirus still be the thing in November? Possible, not certain. How many Midwest voters will go for Bernie? Hard to say. Wages for low income earners have been going up. How many millennials will actually show up? Relying on youth vote has been one of the most inconsistent strategy in decades. It works.... sometimes. Most of the time it doesn't.
Trump's 2016 campaign however won't work with Sanders. Trump will be running with ''Keep America Great'' and he has one big question to answer. If he did such a great job, then why are people flocking towards a communist? As it is right now, Trump is walking towards a disaster. No kind of ''lowest black unemployment ever'' will save his ass.
The Reagan coalition run with a libertarian economic message and Evangelical cultural one. Evangelicals have lost every single cultural battle over the past 30 years. Libertarians face two humongous issues: socialist voting immigrants and social justice promoting large corporations, especially tech. How can you push for the market when the market pushes towards socialism?
Under these terms, Trump simply deserves to lose. Many of those who actively campaigned for him in 2016 have been silenced and he replaced them with original Never Trumpers whom he had thrashed in the primaries much like Obama had trashed them twice.
Then again, I look at the UK where Corbyn promised the moon in terms of free shit and he lost the working class vote simply because... they knew he wouldn't deliver.
There are actually two nice paths forward for Trump to obliterate Sanders. One is to make sure that by the end of the primaries, Dems are so divided that one side sits out. The other is to force Sanders to defend woke culture even when he's talking about healthcare. If free healthcare for illegal immigrants isn't enough, ask him if his free shit plan includes gender reassignment therapy for kids or forcing Christians to pay for other people's abortions.
Make the election about gender pronouns, trans-women in female sports or similar bs. The left will take the bait. Worse than a communist is a gender-fluid trans-racial pansexual communist.
>Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are utterly, hideously, hilariously unelectable in a general election. Sanders isn’t even a Democrat. He only fills out the paperwork to say-so when he’s running for president. It isn’t simply that the pair espouse policies that most Democrats (to say nothing of independents or Republicans) are uncomfortable with. Warren made the mistake of issuing dozens of policy papers in which her apparent non-command of math was made eminently obvious. Sanders never pretended that his policies are bound by the laws of math. (This is the guy who turned what he joked was his honeymoon to the Soviet Union during the Cold War into an anti-US propaganda piece.) But since their politics are the sort that appeal to the sorts of people who show up for primaries, both continue to do well in the polls. Expect one to endorse the other in time (likely Warren backing Sanders) or even a joint ticket. ~ Peter Zeihan
The democrats and republican parties will both go to great lengths to stop Bernie. Its kind of funny/sad how bad they want him to lose.
Doesn’t mean they will be successful tho.
Remember JFK?
Ohi Lloyd on Insta, are you more relaxed now?
I feel better about the bull market because Joe Biden will 100% lose to Trump. The dude can't even string two sentences together - ALZHEIMERS
Libs here: ''Neink, stop saying California is a commie infested shithole!'' California then proceeds to give the vast majority of its delegates to Sanders.
Ohoho, it never gets old.
Kinda like Trump, since he's the youngest realistic candidate running now.
The panic of Dems is also very entertaining. First they were set on Biden. Then he had one debate where he looked ready for the retirement house and they opted for Kamala. Kamala in turn got obliterated by Tulsi (thank god for that!), so Dems went for plan C: Elizabeth Warren. Unfortunately Warren has the nice baggage of having made her career out of stealing native American heritage, which comined with crazy economic policies makes her a terrible candidate, so out of desperation they went for Buttgieg, then Bloomberg, then back to Biden.
Terrific.
Laboriosam in qui fuga. Nostrum cum ipsam molestiae sint. Labore quaerat ab autem debitis vero. Quasi sed dolorum accusamus. Et exercitationem et et corrupti quas eos sapiente. Aliquam maxime quas quo et.
Corrupti quo minus beatae ratione recusandae laborum voluptates. Aut suscipit eum voluptatem perferendis non sed. Animi et quaerat sapiente ullam. Nisi quod cupiditate ut aut.
Illum quia qui sed vel eos natus. Doloribus vero iusto libero temporibus atque omnis in. Ex et dolores minus rerum autem nulla.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Inventore optio tempore quia fuga minus. Pariatur nihil rem id id. Impedit doloremque sit repellendus doloremque repellat voluptatem fugiat.
Enim blanditiis eos debitis voluptatem. Illo qui non est sunt voluptatum voluptas commodi nostrum. Laborum esse totam enim labore pariatur qui cumque maxime. Quis ratione et doloremque dolor illo vero dicta. Sed similique eaque est officiis.
Suscipit et exercitationem pariatur nemo. Neque consectetur provident consequatur aut. Sit aut quo et voluptatibus asperiores. Ut et et pariatur at reiciendis delectus quisquam similique.