2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary Clinton has been too easy on Bernie Sanders.
This could hurt Bernie a lot if he happens to be the nominee. I say this as a Bernie supporter.
Does anyone really think the Republicans will not try to portray Bernie as a "socialist", a "communist", an "anti-capitalist", an "anti-American", "Russia-loving" Trotskyite?
It would be to Bernie's benefit and to the Democratic Party's benefit if Bernie had to respond to such charges now, rather than later, in my opinion.
This name-calling is sure to come if Bernie is the nominee and, not one time, has Hillary forced Bernie to respond. This needs to be dealt with now, not after the nomination.
Perhaps Hillary is so sure of the nomination that she sees no need to address the matter at all? Bernie's stump speech is insufficient in addressing these charges that are sure to come if he is the nominee.
I would disagree with those that say Bernie has addressed these "issues" and that the voters look at "socialism" differently now than in the past.
jfern
(5,204 posts)roguevalley
(40,656 posts)It merely highlights her own corruption.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Jitter65
(3,089 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)we tear ourselves down. People looking at Hillary and Sanders are looking at what the DEMOCRATIC PARTY offers, and whatever happens affects perceptions of not just both of them, but all our candidates.
Hillary's already started the GE against the GOP, and they have to be extremely aware of her need to hold the line as much as possible. At the same time, she also has to be careful not to appear to be dismissing Sanders by not paying enough attention to him since that could backfire too.
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)And look forward to hearty discussion while they do mandrel impressions.
BeyondGeography
(39,382 posts)She does. Plus the GE is a different forum entirely. His proposals as well as his background would come in for a full-on evisceration in the GE.
I fully agree with your main point, which is why his head-to-head #'s against the GOP are irrelevant, imo.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)...until Bernie is the nominee.
BeyondGeography
(39,382 posts)They also enjoy a horse race on our side. Kid gloves all around.
IdaBriggs
(10,559 posts)So have at it. It reminds me that she is old and out of touch and maybe a bit dotty.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)If this was a losing strategy she would already be using it. The MSM already went down that path on Hillary's behalf when Bernie was asked 4 different times about Castro in the Univision debate in Florida.
I kind of doubt the person who made the OP is really a Bernie supporter.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)you may find that I was one of the earliest supporters of Bernie on DU...
But I am a realist and I know how the GOP operates.
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)Their dumber voters, which is most of them, believe it. They're never going to vote for anybody the Democrats nominate. The amount of support Bernie gets from independents shows many of them aren't as put off by Bernie's Democrat Socialist identity and his proposals as they are by Hillary and her war mongering, corporatism, and lying.
Public opinion polls show broad support for many of Bernie's socialist ideas, like a single payer healthcare plan, higher taxes on the rich, higher minimum wage, doing away with free trade agreements, etc.
What are you proposing that Hillary should do, scream "You're a socialist!" at him to toughen him up? She's tried to attack him from the right on healthcare and some other issues and it hasn't gone too well.
firebrand80
(2,760 posts)Attacking Sanders in that way doesn't rob him of any of his support, and it drives her negatives way up.
I don't doubt that she'd do it if she had to, but a highly pragmatic politician like Hillary isn't taking a risk like that at this point.
Perogie
(687 posts)inchhigh
(384 posts)He's not a communist but if she could make the socialist label stick that might get him MORE votes. Americans aren't involved too often because the entire conversation is always between the right and the far-righter. The Democratic Party is strongest when it advocates for working people and average Americans. It moved to the right, not for our benefit, but for the benefit of Hillary Clinton because she could never hope to represent a party of the people. They had to turn it into a party she could represent, a party of upper income professionals, a party of lawyers, lobbyists and hedge fund managers. The truth is Americans mostly hate those people. There are no jokes about what you call 100 farmers at the bottom of the ocean. Anybody ever ask you how many auto workers it takes to screw in a light bulb?
She is inextricably a member of three of the most reviled groups in American society. She will never represent most Americans. She will never represent me.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)and knows better.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Sounds like a plan.
Gothmog
(145,616 posts)According to this article, Sanders has been treated with kid gloves by the Clinton campaign to date. However the GOP will not be as kind to Sanders. This article from VOX has some good predictions as to how nasty the GOP and the Kochs will be http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10903404/gop-campaign-against-sanders
Sanders would be the oldest president ever to take office older than John McCain, who faced serious questions about this in 2008.
Sanders is a socialist. "No, no," you explain, "it's democratic socialist, like in Denmark." I'm sure GOP attack ads will take that distinction into careful consideration.
Sanders explicitly wants to raise taxes, and not only on the rich.
That's just the obvious stuff. And he has barely been hit on any of it so far.
I have no real way of knowing whether Sanders and his advisers appreciate what's coming if he wins the nomination, or whether they have a serious plan to deal with it, something beyond hoping a political revolution will drown it out.
But at least based on my experience, the Bernie legions are not prepared. They seem convinced that the white working class would rally to the flag of democratic socialism. And they are in a state of perpetual umbrage that Sanders isn't receiving the respect he's due, that he's facing even mild attacks from Clinton's camp.
If they are aware that it's been patty-cakes so far, that much, much worse and more vicious attacks are inevitable, and that no one knows how Sanders might perform with a giant political machine working to define him as an unhinged leftist, they hide it well.
In the name of diverting some small percentage of the social media bile surely headed my way, let's be clear about a few things: This is not an argument against supporting Sanders. There's nothing dumber than making political decisions based on how the other side might react. (For one thing, that would have foreclosed supporting Obama, a black urbanite with a funny name, in 2008.)
But it is an argument that Sanders has gaping vulnerabilities that have not yet been exploited at all, so his followers should not yet feel sanguine about his ability to endure conservative attacks. Also they should get a thicker skin, quick.
The GOP will have a great deal of material to work with and the Kochs will be spending $887 million, the RNC candidate may spend another billion dollars and Bloomberg (who will only run if Sanders is the nominee) will spend another billion dollars. These groups will have a great deal to work with
The concept that the Sanders supporters think that the attacks by the Clinton campaign are scorched earth tactics is really amusing
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)The point I made is that the Democratic party needs more divisiveness based around race, class, sexual orientation or whatever else can be found to divide it into tiny little sub constituencies that can be played off against each other.
Divide and conquer, it's a remarkably ancient and well developed strategy. How the hell do you think one small island ruled half the world at one point?
ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)It's that it's been overused so much by the repukes on ANY Democrat that it's become a word that people automatically tune out.
Skwmom
(12,685 posts)Vinca
(50,310 posts)Since it appears she will most likely be the nominee, Hillary supporters here are in for a very rude awakening. If Bernie had really gone after her, everything would be a yawn by now and no one would pay much attention to it in the general. Since he hasn't, and the GOP has been mum throughout the primary, it's going to come down on her like a nuclear blast.
Sancho
(9,070 posts)The DWS strategy to find someone who would stir up the electorate and not be able to beat Hillary is working perfectly.
Hillary doesn't want to squash Bernie. She wants to keep the fight going, get on TV, and contrast her policies with the GOP.
Bernie fits the bill.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)morningfog
(18,115 posts)GeorgiaPeanuts
(2,353 posts)Remember Clinton never uses the dirty slimy smears herself. She has her surrogates say them so she can have plausible deniability, I think she even threw her own daughter under the bus in the lead up to Iowa suggesting she had gone rogue when her daughter had attacked Sanders suggesting he wanted to create less healthcare.
My point is that many of her surrogates tried and failed to use the red scare, all of this surrogates have been put to pasture because the attacks failed. They were used in the lead up to NH and he didn't falter one bit, cleaving the polling average!
That you forget this shows you how effective they were
Gothmog
(145,616 posts)The concept that the Clinton campaign has been very negative on Sanders is simply false when you look at what Sanders would be subject to if he was the Democratic nominee. VOX had a good article on the potential lines of attack that Sanders would be exposed to if Sanders was the nominee. http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10903404/gop-campaign-against-sanders One of the more interesting observations in the VOX analysis is the fact that Sanders have been treated with kids gloves compared to what Sanders would face if he was the Democratic nominee. I strongly agree with the VOX's position that the so-called negative attacks against Sander have been mild. Form the article:
When Sanders supporters discuss these attacks, though, they do so in tones of barely contained outrage, as though it is simply disgusting what they have to put up with. Questioning the practical achievability of single-payer health care. Impugning the broad electoral appeal of socialism. Is nothing sacred?
But c'mon. This stuff is patty-cakes compared with the brutalization he would face at the hands of the right in a general election.
His supporters would need to recalibrate their umbrage-o-meters in a serious way.
The attacks that would be levied against Sanders by the Kochs, the RNC candidate and others in a general election contest would make the so-called attacks against Sanders look like patty-cakes. The GOP and Kochs are not known for being nice or honest and as the article notes there are a ton of good topics available for attack. Raising taxes is never a good campaign platform (Just ask President Mondale). The GOP would also raise the socialism and age issues if Sanders was the nominee.
Again, I agree with the VOX position that so far, Sanders has not been subject to negative attacks close to what the GOP would use against Sanders and the attacks against Sanders if he was the nominee would be brutal. I urge Sanders supporters to read the VOX article to start to get a feel for what real negative attacks would look like.
Gothmog
(145,616 posts)One reason why match up polls are worthless at this stage of the contest is that Sanders has not been vetted or subject to the expected attacks from the GOP. Dana Milbank has some good comments on general election match up polls https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-would-be-insane-to-nominate-bernie-sanders/2016/01/26/0590e624-c472-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-for-wide-side_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Watching Sanders at Monday nights Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump or another Republican nominee would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.
The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the socialist label and requested that Sanders define it so that it doesnt concern the rest of us citizens.
Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who dont want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top thats my definition of democratic socialism.
But thats not how Republicans will define socialism and theyll have the dictionary on their side. Theyll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. Theyll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldnt be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists dont win national elections in the United States .
Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases one of the biggest tax hikes in history, as moderator Chris Cuomo put it to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that hypothetically, youre going to pay $5,000 more in taxes, and declared, W e will raise taxes, yes we will. He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that its demagogic to say, oh, youre paying more in taxes.
Well, yes and Trump is a demagogue.
Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government bigger than ever, Sanders didnt quarrel, saying, P eople want to criticize me, okay, and F ine, if thats the criticism, I accept it.
Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.
Match up polls are worthless because these polls do not measure what would happen to Sanders in a general election where Sanders is very vulnerable to negative ads.
The so-called attacks on Sanders so far pale in comparison to that the GOP will do to Sanders if he is the nominee
CalvinballPro
(1,019 posts)jcgoldie
(11,647 posts)She's doing it right. Unless you read too much DU, you realize mathematically his chances of winning the nomination are minuscule. That being the case why would she attack Sanders aggressively and further split the party?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)He has been given a free ride.
HumanityExperiment
(1,442 posts)Enjoy!
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Might as well choose our best candidate despite the names R's might call him.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)And the Clinton campaign did try a little red baiting early on. It just didn't stick.
awake
(3,226 posts)I know you are disappointed that Hillary has not wrapped this up yet but if she went any more negative on Bernie now her own rating would go down which she can not afford to do. Hillary's unfavorable rating are above 50% the only candidate with a higher unfavorable rating is Trump. For the life of me I can not understand why Hillary is not promoting her own ideas and solutions to today's problems. Mud slinging only gets mud all over yourself. What Hilary has not understood is that part of why people like Bernie is that he is offering solutions to problems that need to be addressed, I am sure that Hillary must have some new ideas of her own that she could be promoting instead of trying right wing tactics.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)If Clinton were to do that, voters would abandon her.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Avalux
(35,015 posts)That's what they do. Democrats should not employ the same tactics, although I have to give Hillary a hand, she's done a really good job emulating them.
The more they attack Bernie, the better he does. Think about it.
Califonz
(465 posts)And he won four elections in a row!
frylock
(34,825 posts)BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)You have to be terrified of Bernie going too easy on Hillary, particularly given how hard the MSM has worked to prop her up. Imagine the GOP carpet bombing the airways with one ad after another showing back to back videos of Hillary on one side of an issue and then the other, like the ones that are on YouTube ("13 minutes of Hillary Clinton lying", "When you realize Hillary is fake", etc.). And then there is the goldmine of corrupt foreign governments pouring money into the cesspool that is the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hillary's speaking fees, etc.