Let's Take a Step Back and Get Some Perspective
The buzz of the hour is the fox news poll showing Trump +3 over Clinton. Scary stuff, no? Clinton has fallen by about 10 points in that poll in the last month. But lets also look at Sanders.
Fox News
April 11th:Sanders +14
Sanders=53%
Trump=39%
May 18th: Sanders +4
Sanders=46%
Trump=42%
We might say "well Sanders is still leading" or "we are all screwed", depending on how your night is going.
But lets look at another scary set of polls
May 16th=McCain +3
McCain 47%
Obama 44%
A few polls showing Obama ahead at that time, a few showing McCain ahead but overall similar to what we see today with the dems vs GOP.
But what did we see in 2008? Roughly the same thing we see today. A republican primary all wrapped up and two democrats fighting on to the bitter end of the primaries. And what did we see when the republican wrapped up the primary? A surge in support for the republican and a drop to the mid-40's for the dems. The problem we have right now is basically a 3 person race. We have a divided democratic field and at least a not all that divided republican field. The passion is high this year, as it was in 2008. Clinton people want Clinton, come hell or high water, Sanders people are "Bernie or Bust", Obama's people will never vote for Clinton, period. We see this downward trend for the dems as soon as the republican field gets settled. What happened in the last few weeks? Did a massive new revelation about Clinton come to light? No. Did Sanders have a rough couple of weeks? Not really. Did Trump suddenly become graceful and moderate? Fuck no. In May 2008, was Obama embroiled in a major scandal? Nope. Was McCain cranking up that old warmonger charm? Not possible.
Sure, maybe Lawrence O'Donnell is right. Maybe Clinton only winning 67% of the vote in the 2006 New York senate election is a harbinger of doom. Maybe there are zero parallels between this election and those of the past. Or maybe we go with occam's razor. Perhaps we say that the most likely explanation of the Clinton and let's not forget Sanders, poll numbers taking a nosedive is due to the democrats still battling it out. And maybe, just maybe, one poll 6 months before the election when one of the major parties does not have a nominee yet, isn't all that telling. Unless President McCain says something different.
And for those of you saying that we will never unify the party and that we are going down in flames because of irreconcilable differences. I present to you this CNN story from May 6th, 2008:
Half of Clinton's supporters won't back Obama
"According to the exit polls, half of Clinton's supporters in Indiana would not vote for Obama in a general election match up with John McCain. A third of Clinton voters said they would pick McCain over Obama, while 17 percent said they would not vote at all. Just 48 percent of Clinton supporters said they would back Obama in November"
[link:http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/06/exit-polls-half-of-clintons-supporters-wont-back-obama/|
= new reply since forum marked as read
