One of the more curious (i.e. annoying) aspects of this election cycle has been for people to do something called “selective fact enforcement.” Meaning they only pay attention to information they like and outright ignore information they don’t. Which is why I’m still hearing that “Bernie’s gonna win this thing!” and “We’re gonna be laughing all the way to the White House!” from his most “passionate” (i.e. annoying) fans.
They also keep spreading the persistent falsehood that Bernie is a better general election candidate than Hillary is and he’ll beat Trump by a much wider percentage as has been proven in straight match-up polls. Yes, it’s true that he does beat Trump in straight match-up polls, but those polls mean virtually nothing. Here’s why…
They’re ignoring everything else. Consistent polling has shown that people are less likely to vote for a Socialist than any other group in America. They said they were more likely to vote for any racial minority, a homosexual, a Muslim, or an atheist over a Socialist. People are also apparently not seeing that Hillary also handily beats Trump in those same polls, and that’s even after the media has declared her everything but a horse thief for years…
Bernie has not been under the same scrutiny. Colorful rape fantasies in fiction he wrote, speeches praising Castro, being divorced, having a kid with a woman besides the one he was divorced from, draft dodging, wanting to disband the CIA early in his senate career, a host of conspiracy theories, and sponsoring 400 bills while only passing 3 (two were renaming post offices, one was medial benefits for veterans that Republicans wanted too) are just some of the things most of the American public doesn’t know about Bernie Sanders. Clinton has been trying to draw attention to some of his foibles almost single-handedly–like recommending Vermont’s toxic waste be dumped in a Latino Texas community, not voting for the Brady Bill, not voting for naturalization despite claims he’s pro-immigration, voting for the Crime Bill despite somehow being against it, etc.–but if Bernie were really the nominee then the media would actually start reporting on some of this stuff too. The few times I’ve seen Bernie really confronted by a tough reporter, it’s all he can do not to yell “Wall Street!” and point his finger at them. In a general election campaign where less than 90% of voters don’t already agree with you, that’s not going to cut it. In every sense, he’s a candidate who’s not really ready for primetime.
Head to Head Polls Aren’t Relevant in Electoral Politics. A head-to-head poll is virtually worthless in an electorale college system where it doesn’t really matter if Hillary wins Minnesota by 10 points or 20 points as long as she wins it (and she will). The business of becoming President is the business of winning purple states, and moderate red states, and Hillary is the only candidates the Dems have that can do that. How do I know?…
She’s already won every purple state and soft red state. Bernie fans seem to scoff at Hillary’s strong showing in the South, but North Carolina and Virginia are two very important states to win, as is Florida. It would be difficult to become president without winning them. And it would be downright impossible to do so without winning any of them plus Ohio. So far, Hillary has won big victories in Ohio, NC, Virginia, Florida, and even closer victories in smaller purple states like Missouri, Nevada, and Iowa. People can point to direct match-up polls–as if they can’t change between now and half a year later–but I would much rather go by the way people have actually voted than the way they might vote seven months from now.
The demographic match-ups are a landslide. Trump’s weakest categories (minorities, older women, policy wonks) are Hillary’s strongest. She might even beat him in establishment Republicans and is almost certain to get some of the Super-PAC donors who don’t know who to back now that Jeb is out of the race. [Yet they’re unlikely to find Bernie less terrifying than Trump.] Head-to-head polls in specific demographic categories like African Americans, Muslims, gay people, women, and Hispanics (you know, damn near everyone) show Hillary beating Trump by significantly higher margins than Bernie would. And a lot of these groups just don’t like Bernie much more than they like Trump, which would be devastating if they didn’t show up in November.
Bernie is a primary-only candidate…who’s lost the primary. Despite all the complaining about super-delegates, Iowa “cheating,” Bernie getting “screwed” somehow or another, Harry Reid’s “Nevada machine,” the evils of Debbie Wasserman Shultz, and any other of a dozen conspiracy theories to explain why Bernie has lost this race the bottom-line is still this: he’s lost the popular vote. For all his Revolution talk he might have actually forgotten that races are won by whoever gets the most votes, and so far Hillary has gotten over 2.5 million more votes than he has. That’s enormous—for comparison, Trump and Cruz are actually much closer in popular votes despite the image of Trump being a win machine—and also very revealing. Bernie is a very liberal candidate who is barely even inside the Democratic Party, and yet he can’t win a primary that is majority Democratic voters. This is a guy tailor-made for a primary, and he’s not even winning that by any objective measurement of winning. In fact, he almost routinely loses non-caucus states (i.e. states where non diehards that don’t have an afternoon to kill vote). I would not want to see what a checked-out, “let’s get this done in 10 minutes or I’m leaving” general election audience thinks of this guy, and it’s worth noting that those people are not really on the radar of pollsters yet since we still have seven long months before the general. Less than one-fifth of the people who vote in a general election will vote in a primary, to call them “different ballgames” is an understatement.
In short: For all the reasons I just laid-out Bernie is not the man we want in the Fall. And you might have noticed that Republicans have barely said a word about the guy, and clearly want to face him in November. Now why do you think that is?
Even after reading this I still thing Trump is the best candidate at the moment!
I still think Bernie is the best canidate.
That selective fact formate will be the downfall of America.
No way can we get what Bernie wants without being in dept billions of dollars.
Common sense has left the building when voting in America comes to vote. Hopefully, in November
someone will wake up and vote their pocketbook or wallet.
VOTE for who will benefit your group! The poor outnumber the very rich. WAKE UP!
I don’t think Donald Trump should be the president because he is being races about Hispanics and saying thing that aren’t true and Hillary will be the first woman has a president.
Donald trump is nasty.
I kind of like Hilary but i feel like she lies about a lot of stuff.