PRESIDENT BERNIE SANDERS: a very real possibility
Bernie Sanders has a decent shot at winning the Democratic nomination and the presidency. Outside of your personal bubbles (no, Bloomberg is not going to win), Bernie is the overwhelming candidate of choice for Democratic voters making under $50k per year. Improbably, Bernie’s support has increased since 2016, and he is in a strong position to become the Democratic nominee, and the possibly the next president.
Here’s why I think Bernie will (or come very close to) secure the Democratic nomination:
1) Weak competitors - Outside of Warren (whose campaign is flaming out) and Pete Buttigieg (who has negative 5% support among black voters), Sanders’ only competitor is Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s campaign enjoys very little support among young people, and less enthusiasm than even Hillary. Yes, he’s polling at 25-30% making him the front runner, but that’s his ceiling. Bernie has been consistent #2 in all polling from last year, and his base is very consistently behind him. 80% of his supporters would not vote for anyone else. Bernie is right behind Biden, and if someone like Warren drops out, Bernie would enjoy the lions share of that support.
2) Impressive fundraising and field organization - Bernie raised $35M last quarter, with over 5 million individual donors. This is more than any other campaign in US history at this point in time. Sanders has a very sophisticated and technologically adept grassroots campaign, with a much bigger field organization than rival campaigns. Millions of donations, thousands of volunteers, a grassroots campaign in the true sense of the word.
3) Strong Latino and minority support - Sanders enjoys huge Hispanic support, especially in key early states like Nevada. He is 2nd among black voters to Biden, but the majority of young black voters support Sanders. No other candidate besides Bernie and Biden enjoy meaningful levels of minority support. This Hispanic support will lead him to win California, and a fuckton of Superdelegates.
4) California and Super Tuesday - California’s primary elections are earlier this year, and Sanders leads there. If Bernie wins Iowa and/or NH and/or Nevada, he is going to take a huge swath of delegates on Super Tuesday, especially in California. Spoiler alert: the most liberal state in country doesn’t get hard for Joe Biden.
Don’t believe me? Read this WSJ article and find your way to the nearest restroom so you don’t shit your pants. In all seriousness, I think Bernie will be probably be the next Democratic nominee and POTUS.
No Thanks. The last thing we need is another liberal.
I think people need to open their eyes that this is a very, very, very real possibility. I think there’s like a 45% chance he wins.
And a similar 45% chance of that old bag dying in office
Update: Nate Silver is giving Bernie a 50% chance of winning the nomination. And whoever wins the Democratic nomination will almost certainly become the next president.
President BS?
No way.
Not my president! Resist!
Wait a minute. I vaguely remember hearing that somewhere before . . .
I think Bernie is the favorite to win the Dem nomination. Biden was always a paper tiger, the weakest "frontrunner" since Howard Dean. Bernie ha a massive loyal base consisting of young voters, Latinos, and working class. He has developed an impressive campaign infrastructure and ground game from his 2016 campaign and has further expanded it.
The path for Bernie is as follows: 1) win Iowa or come a close second, 2) win New Hampshire by 10+ points, 3) the momentum will result in Bernie winning Nevada, 4) he will lose South Carolina to Biden but probably by single digits, 5) Super Tuesday: win California, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts; Biden probably wins Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, on the strength of black voters.
By that point, Bernie will have a clear delegate lead. The others except Biden would either have dropped out or are totally irrelevant. I anticipate Warren and Yang will endorse Bernie while Buttigieg and Klobuchar endorse Biden. But the momentum will be too strong, and Bernie secures the majority of delegates sometime in May.
Whether or not Bernie wins the general election is a totally different topic, and I discussed this in my 2020 election thread. In a nutshell, I think Bernie has more downside and upside than Biden. Trump vs. Biden will be fairly close while Trump vs. Bernie is a wild card. This is because Bernie's socialism, anti-war stance, and lack of establishment connection, has the potential to reduce Trump's white working class margins and bring out disenchanted new voters. Biden will do better with minorities and college educated suburban whites than Bernie, but in terms of the electoral college impact, I think Bernie actually has more upside than Biden. On the other hand, it is totally possible that Bernie gets destroyed due to the radical nature of his policies, lifelong praise of Soviet Union and other dictatorships, and getting outgunned by Trump (whatever you may think of him, he is a political savage).
I don’t think Bernie will win Utah, if it even matters much
Bernie won Utah in 2016 by 59 points against Hillary, who was a much stronger candidate than Biden.
I agree with the entirety of this post. Bernie has more upside than people realize.
The Dems just spent the last 5 years shaming America for having an old, white man as President. They'll look pretty stupid if they choose another old, white man as the Dem nominee. I think they'll push Warren.
5 years ago Obama was President...
Warren's campaign is dead
The thing is that he has chances of being nominated (like you said, if EB retires, he will get a huge boost), but he would have no chance against Trump. A moderate candidate such as Biden would have chances, but a radical candidate like BS or EB would have 0 options as their radicalism would be used by Trump to mobilise a lot of voters. The best weapon of a politician is to have a big enemy to target, and Trump would take huge advandtage of that. He would revive the ghost of communism.
I wouldn’t say no chance. The polling data shows him up by 10+ points. In general election, he’s a wild card. I think that while a democratic socialist is not palatable for the slight majority of voters, if his base shows up like Obama 2008, it’s game over for Trump.
What polling data has Bernie up 10 points in the general? The polls I've seen have Sanders as the worst or one of the worst Dem performers in the general.
Also, in the general election electorate, Sanders has low name ID. The favorable/unfavorable has huge dynamic ability for him if the weight of his past comes out in the general. Do you think the general election poll population today knows Sanders was a tacit supporter of the USSR during the Cold War? They don't but they will know.
I can't tell if the thread is serious or not, that is good.
100% serious unfortunately
Still not certain but I'll go with it.
Fundamentally, your argument is correct. Given that everyone is a disaster (lmao at Biden telling coal miners to learn to code), it makes everyone credible.
The only thing you missed out is that the Dem establishment utterly despises him, so if it's down to two and the other one is Biden, the latter should be safe, with a re-edition of 2016. So long that's at least a disgusting MMF, it's credible. With 30% of millennials thinking that COMMUNISM is a good idea, you'll get that eventually. It's either 2020 or 2024.
UCHICAGO
Agree with you, he could find a spark in those Midwest auto workers and take some swing states. It’s a real threat.
I do think you underestimate Bloomberg’s chances a bit. If Biden were to slip then all the non Bernie folks will want an alternative.
I think Bloomberg’s ceiling is maybe 20%, and his presence in the race really is HELPING Bernie Sanders. One, he siphons support away from Biden, and two, the presence of a literal $54B billionaire bogeyman is everything Sanders stands against. If Bloomberg actually wanted to beat trump, he’d write a $200M check to Biden/Buttigieg instead of doing this quixotic money burning nonsense
Agree. Bloomberg is hurting Biden and particularly Buttigieg, as they both draw from affluent white liberals.
Bloomberg is running an anti-Trump ad in the Super Bowl, and he has committed to spending millions to defeat Trump regardless of who wins the nomination. His candidacy is a vanity exercise, just in case the Dems have a brokered convention, giving him an outside shot at the nomination. It also allows him to attack Trump.
One interesting face of the 2020 Dem primaries is just how little the candidates have attacked each other. They have focused almost entirely on attacking Trump. Thus, I do wonder whether the eventual nominee will be properly equipped to deal with the attacks from Trump and the GOP.
For now, the dynamic is what you describe. Bernie has his lane, and Biden/Bloomberg/Pete have to fight for another lane. Which clearly helps Bernie.
But over time, if non-Bernie Democrats get frustrated with that reality and if Biden is seen as weak, I could see a rally around Bloomberg.
That’s a lot of ifs, yes. But did you see the report that Obama privately told some big donors that he would speak up against Bernie if he started to pull ahead? If that’s a representative data point on how powerful Dems think, it’s something to pay attention to.
Sure, but then you go and overly discount everyone else's chances. Bernie's base is ironclad, but his ceiling is very low. Biden is still the overwhelming front runner, if for nothing else than because of his national poll lead and his support among African Americans.
Biden would also play infinitely better in the national election, although I have seen polls showing Bernie beating Trump.
Agree with this. I also think a lot of Warren supporters would go to Biden - more might go to Bernie, but I don't think Bernie gets >80% of them, for example.
OP is heavily discounting the non-youth vote.
I know AOC gets all of the press and you can find lunatics on twitter and reddit, but the majority of the Democratic party is not looking for some socialist revolution. The "big tent" includes far more Clinton/Obama voters than it does so-called revolutionaries.
Lloyd Blankfein is a HACK and a LOSER
You better watch out before he POUNDS you in the ASS
i dont follow politics but allowing that man to be the face of supposedly the most powerful nation on earth would be a travesty or a mistake
It’s a real possibility at this point :/
We’ve had a reality TV star with the attention span of a fly as the face of our nation for the past 4 years. I think our reputation might improve from there.
Trump is strong. Bernie is weak. You can just imagine bernie cowered in the corner shivering while Melania pegs his wife and Trump sits back eating chicken wings, licking his fingers.
here's a list of other people who had a decent shot at winning the presidency before the primaries were over
rick perry al gore mitt romney hillary clinton john kerry ted kennedy ted cruz rick santorum john mccain gerald ford (1976, he got the nod over Reagan)
too early to call man, quit having panic attacks about this shit
Predicting the future is impossible of course, but I would say the media and Wall Street are systemically underestimating the odds of Bernie winning the nomination, which if it actually happens would have massive repercussions for the financial industry
people said the same thing with obama. now I'm not saying bernie is the same as obama and will tone down his rhetoric a tremendous amount to be more mainstream, but to think that bernie can just come in and torpedo the entire finance world is just short sighted.
we have divided government for a reason. yes, if you're in PE and used to carried interest taxation, your days are numbered (as they always should've been), maybe mega mergers get more scrutiny, but the industry did just fine between glass steagall and graham leech bliley, and it will continue to do fine, even if it has to adjust. maybe the TCJA gets rolled back and my tax rate goes up, big whoop. maybe fears of bernie turning into chairman mao tanks the market 30%, great! I'll put every last cent I can scrape up into the market.
I fuckin hate that dandruff commie prick's policies, but I'm not worried one iota, and none of you should be either.
For Bernie to make that much of a difference, he would not only have to win but the makeup of Congress would have to change to be more sympathetic to his views. I highly doubt that the entire DNC establishment will change in the near future
I am really not worried about President Bernie as he would get nothing done, absolutely nothing. His whole career as been about being and outsider / outcast and he has no history of building consensus to pass legislation, he can't even agree with his own "party" so good luck getting the GOP on board. There's no chance in hell he would be able to enforce any of his crazy ideas. If anything, I think he would be so ineffective and useless that it would drive people away from socialism for a couple decades.
If you are correct, the silver lining of a Bernie presidency is that Dems lose big in the 2022 midterms, and Ron DeSantis or Josh Hawley win the presidency in 2024.
I may not agree with all of his views but I respect him. Out of all the democratic candidates, he seems the most sincere. He has been saying the same things for decades. However, until about four years ago, not many people took him seriously.
He is indeed consistent and authentic, albeit he is a Soviet style communist stuck in the 1970s.
He is neither a socialist or a communist lmao
It truly amazes me that people who support Donald Trump think Bernie Sanders will be the person to disgrace the office of President.
damn this post makes me excited. Hope he sweeps the dem primary and then the general election in November. :)
You must love paying taxes then - oh right, "prospective"
eat the rich
I don't think that would be so bad. Since governance is broadly a compromise, and given that the government overall leans far more conservative, a bit of liberal / socialist bent might lead to more social services, reduction in military spending, support for a single-payer healthcare system, and increased spend on education. Could be quite good for America's economy. Anyway America always seems to be a pendulum swinging from one party and philosophy to the other, in turns. 8 years Dem, 8 years Rep, repeat.
Andrew Yang and UBI all the way
me too. I like some of his ideas, especially in the areas of addressing automation, job loss in retain and manufacturing, etc. I am not so sure about UBI, but open to learning more about it I suppose.
Yang Gang
You shouldn’t be allowed to run for office if you’re going to hit/pass retirement age in your first term
I am not the praying type per se but if he wins the nomination I will be getting my church on soon that he does not win the Presidency.
Trump has somehow managed to be right of center in about 60-70% of his policy decisions, which is good. That makes you think Bernie will be similar on the left side of the middle.
But Bernie doesn't really bring much to the table in terms of dignity to the office. He's old and stale and isn't relatable at all, much like Trump. Trump's language, the part that completely tarnished the image of the Office, is the only thing some part of the populous could relate to, while also offending and colliding with the other part of Americans.
Trump Tweets like an old person, saying things he doesn't realize should be left to his own, as if he doesn't realize there are millions/billions of people who can access it, and it will remain as permanent record forever. Bernie at least seems like he may understand that part.
Bernie thinks socialism will fix the problem, and so will the fight for workers, when we now live in a world where working a job has become somewhat overrated.
Bernie thinks that taxing people more for having took advantage of the system through education and social connections, is not exploitation, because you can't exploit an exploiter. Well, information is becoming more and more cheap, and school is becoming more and more overrated, too, except for the value in the paper and the social connection.
The world is changing and Bernie and Trump are both dinosaurs who are not prepared because they will both be dead when all this nascent stuff really starts to take over and matter. Neither one of them are good for the image of the office, US policy, or policy on the world stage.
I'm sorry, but anyone who says that the presidency is inherently a position of "dignity" and has been tarnished by Trump obviously has zero knowledge of American history, even recent American history. Actual corruption was standard for the 19th century presidency. Just 20 years ago we had a president who was cheating on his wife with an employee in the Oval Office.
Spare us all the clutching of pearls. The phony indignation is unbecoming.
While I agree, technically speaking, the Clinton thing was something Bill Clinton did. He didn't fuck Monica Lewinsky as President Bill Clinton (even though I'm sure that's what she moaned that day).
I guess Obama set a bad standard that all those white dudes couldn't live up to is what you mean?
But seriously, most presidents tried to act presidential when in a presidential capacity. Hell, Trump tries, he just fails miserably. But tweeting out nastygrams on presidential matters even from your personal account is degrading the office.
This is what Trump does. Everything he touches is debased, devalued, and cheapened by him and his apologists.
“You think Putin is a bad guy? We’re not so great ourselves.”
“Let’s bomb Iranian cultural sites; ISIS does it!”
“McCain is no war hero, he’s a RINO! I like people who don’t get captured”
“[Insert Democratic-led city here] is a complete shithole”
And now “the office of the President was never dignified, don’t be ridiculous”
I think this has been the correct asymmetric bet for a while now. Still seems like a long-shot but I think any worsening of the situation in Iran pushes him to the nomination. Most of media will reconcile with Trump at that point but it would probably be a 50/50 in the general, which would not be the case of any other Dem candidate save for Tulsi.
I wonder how many opinions have changed due to the debate here on this topic. My guess would be zero.
Which is in no way a reason to not have debate.
The repetitiveness of political debate, here and elsewhere, can get annoying, as both the commentators and hot takes are entirely predictable (myself included). When topics come up, I can typically predict who will start the thread by saying something nonsensical, who will back me up when I disagree, and who will find a problem with what I say.
I used to just ignore it, but then WSO's Off Topic forum became an alt-right breeding ground and read far more like 4chan and /r/TheDonald than a place that was always conservative when politics were discussed, albeit in a far more respectful way. However, if you don't call out bullshit, you let it breed.
I don't expect to change the minds of those who I argue with, but I hope the 16 year old superstars reading this forum who are still making up their minds can see that WSO, and finance in general, isn't just MAGA land.
I think that the political views here have varied over time. About two years ago, the off topic section was dominated by conservative views. More recently, however, I have noticed more of an even split of views between conservative and liberal views. This off topic section will likely never have a liberal bias because most people here work in finance
I get that debates are good and might have an influence on some of the younger participants but they sure are frustrating. For me, the tone is the most frustrating aspect of some of those conversations.
Oh come on, you libs even harassed TNA to the point he left.
I miss him and liberal_slayer too.
This is my view as well. I didn’t make a single political comment in 8 years on this site until the rise of Trump and the racist xenophobic garbage that started popping up on this site. I was once an impressionable college kid on WSO looking for advice, and I wont let a few hard right posters give the impression to those students that all of Wall Street thinks alike. I don’t post to convince the minds of those who are arguing with me, it’s for the onlookers who haven’t developed a view on the topic
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