The Myth of Sanders' electability

[BmorePat87]

A pretty good read. Here are some selected sections:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/bernie_sanders_electability_argument_is_still_a_myth.html

Quote:"Over the past year, Bernie Sanders’ supporters have repeatedly criticized the undemocratic role of super delegates in choosing the Democratic presidential nominee.

It is more than a little ironic, then, that Sanders is now urging those same insiders to ignore the intention of the primary electorate—which has given Clinton an edge in both pledged delegates and raw votes—and bequeath the nomination to him instead.

The presumption is that there is anything progressive about a plan that asks powerful figures to cast aside an electoral majority built on the choices of women and people of color. The falsehood is that Sanders’ superior electability is, as he asserted on Sunday, 'extremely clear.'

But it is also true that Clinton has not hit Sanders with a single negative ad. Not one. Initially, her campaign didn’t take him seriously. Later, it couldn’t figure out a way to go after him where he’s weakest—on the flakier parts of his far-left past—without alienating his supporters.

The right, meanwhile, had no incentive to rough up Sanders, a candidate who, by all accounts, Republicans would love to run against in the fall. And the mainstream media often failed to treat Sanders as a plausible contender, which would have entailed a much greater degree of scrutiny than he received. As a result, issues that, fairly or not, would be obsessively scrutinized in a general election have gone almost entirely unexamined.

The Sanderistas appear to believe they were treated unfairly, even viciously, in this primary. In fact, they’ve been handled incredibly gingerly. That might end up being to Sanders’ detriment: If we’d spent the past few months chewing over his glaring electoral weaknesses and he was still leading Clinton in head-to-head matchups against the GOP, he might have a case for a contested convention. It would be a cynical, anti-democratic case that contradicts the people-powered rationale of his candidacy, but it wouldn’t be as nonsensical as the argument he’s making now.

It goes on to list some easy ammunition for a conservative attack:
-relationship with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party that called with solidarity with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis

-Sanders’ 1985 trip to Nicaragua, where he reportedly joined a Sandinista rally with a crowd chanting, “Here, there, everywhere/ The Yankee will die.”

-Sanders’ youthful sex writings

-Sanders opposition to the Amber Alert legislation

-Sanders opposition to criminalizing computer generated kiddie porn

-Support for a public takeover of TV

-Opposition to private charity because it's the government's job

-Belief that sexual repression causes cancer

-Jane Sanders possibly trying to defraud the Catholic Church and getting a golden parachute when fired from that university job

-Opposition to public schools and support of taking kids out of "establishment" schools



It's an argument you see a lot by his supporters. He does better in polls. It's true, but that's because he has not been attacked the same way that all the other candidates have been.