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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Wed Apr 6, 2016, 10:16 AM Apr 2016

The best evidence that Bernie Sanders's political revolution might be possible

by Dylan Matthews

Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign is based on a simple theory: There is a reserve army of liberal voters who've sat out past elections but who stand ready to support a more stridently leftist Democratic nominee.

By getting these historic nonvoters to turn out, Sanders claims, he could win the general election, maybe take back the House and Senate, and have an organized public ready to pressure Congress to pass a democratic socialist agenda.

So far, this idea of a leftist political revolution has been widely dismissed as implausible by many liberal commentators — and I share a large part of their skepticism. But new research by Stanford political scientists Simon Jackman and Bradley Spahn has convinced me that at least one big part of it is correct: There really is a reasonably large segment of the American population that most political campaigns aren't reaching.

It's a segment that's disproportionately black and Latino and decidedly more liberal than the American public as a whole. If they were turning out, it could conceivably push the American electorate to the left.

It's getting them to the polls that's the hard part.

more

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/6/11373862/bernie-sanders-voter-lists

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