Kidding!

I doubt they will learn, but they will witness what an uprising of underground democrats can do when properly motivated by a candidate.

Feel the Bern!!

The Real Deal: Bernie!!

Bernie people gonna rock their world!!

National polling still has Hillary at a steady 60%.

Ask a question: when we move out of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are retail politics States, how does Bernie campaign effectively elsewhere? How many town hall meeting can he attend in a State as big as California? How can he afford television advertising in multiple markets like Florida? How does he deal with the multiple Super Tuesday States all at the same time?

If Hillary loses the first two primaries after her 2008 results, the media will stop talking about Sanders being a "fringe" candidate and start talking about Hillary being "yesterday's news, an unelectable has-been".

People are going to start looking elsewhere. They may not go to Sanders. But there is no way they go to Hillary if she loses the first two states out of the starting block.

And Nevada and South Carolina are still small enough to allow for retail politics. We already know that Hillary does not do well in rural communities while Sanders does quite well there. So Sanders has a very good chance of repeating Obama's performance in Nevada where he took every county except for Las Vegas where Hillary won despite trying to disenfranchise Black voters.

If she's "yesterday's news, an unelectable has-been" after two losses, how will she be seen after four? I think your theory on the "big campaign" has a serious problem. The inevitability meme serves three purposes. (1) fund-raising, (2) scare off competition and (3) people don't like to vote for losers.

That last one might make Super Tuesday too little, too late for Hillary.

The latest poll had it 54-12 Clinton



...and a guy who's got 1.5% of the vote won't be breaking out anytime soon...

She came in THIRD last time.

And my prediction was not based on current polling. I have been saying the exact same thing for months. The only difference is I now have a name to fill in the blank for which Democrat was going to beat her. And had I been a personal confidante of Hillary, I would have told her the same thing all these months. "It's over. Republicans usually vote for the 2nd place finisher next time around. Democrats never do."

Which makes sense when you consider the ideology. Conservatives preserve traditions. Liberals embrace change.

Non-extremist Conservatives are actually a good thing to have in politics. A lighter ship may run faster, but it'll tip over without that weighty ballast slowing it down. Hillary expressed much that same sentiment in letters arguing with some radical professor type back in her younger days. She spoke of a Liberal/Conservative hybrid which is what the Third Way has tried to create.

I knew exactly what I was voting for when I voted for Bill Clinton. I agreed with that theory. Before I saw the results.

The problem is status quo is the default position. Not changing is easy. Progress is difficult. Since big money and non-minorities have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, there will be no shortage of people to build a Reactionary counter balance to the Liberal/Conservative hybrid. So the hybrid will never, ever push the Right out of the mainstream. They will gleefully pull us back to feudalism. Republicans did not make themselves more extreme. We did it thinking that would push them out of the mainstream.

Instead, they took the House for the first time since the Great Depression. They took over a majority of state legislatures and governor's mansions for the first time since the Great Depression. It hasn't worked out to well for us electorally, did it?

Worse yet, look at modern Republicans. Every single Republican presidential candidate today has said things that would have made them pariahs in the public eye 20 years ago. But today they are mainstream. THAT has been the result of Third Way politics. And it is getting downright scary.

We were wrong. We need to open our eyes. We weren't just wrong. We were horribly, awfully wrong.

When I argue politics with a Republican, the economics argument never goes very far. We had an economic depression every 12 to 15 years before the New Deal. We have had none in the 80 years since. Why? I could give theories. But lets here a Republican try to explain away the 800 lb gorilla I just brought into the conversation.

It should be the same way arguing against the Third Way. We have tried it for 25 years. The results have been horrible. We lost the States. We lost Congress. We have gutted our economy. And we have created a reactionary army out there. If you think 20% of Americans wouldn't happily fire up the gas chambers, then you've been living in a bubble. These people hate.

And we fucking handed them their own political party on a silver plate!

a guy who's got 1.5% of the vote won't be breaking out anytime soon

Then it is a good thing for Bernie that the caucuses are not anytime soon.

they'll be voting for a popular US Senator and the Secretary of State for a popular President. She'll be running and winning on her own accomplishments, not because it's her turn.

...but then, you knew that, because the only people using the term "entitlement" or "coronation" are the anti-Hillary folks, right?

They know that if she wins the primary, she is likely to win the GE.

of your own introspection.

The newest poll out yesterday has Hillary 65% Bernie 9%.

even with flowery speeches that seem like a politician is on our side, great marketing, etc., but never includes any specifics on how. Those days are over.

numbers improve anywhere outside of the Northeast and a surge in a small state like NH is hardly bowling me over.

As thus, the firestorm is to be expected. The political atmosphere is more than ripe for a leader to take advantage of the economic pressures that have been building up for a long time on the American population.

Bernie's message of unity, equailty, fairness, honesty, and integrity will appeal to a huge portion of the populous.

He is genuine and people want somebody who speaks the truth and represents them not corporations and the elites.

to Bernie's then she is opening herself up to
the criticism of being phony. I hope that she will not do that,
because a lot of people distrust her already.

Bernie's message is clear and blunt without any twisting
on the issues, and that is what the people like.

His entry and groundswell of support has already moved her left.

Peace

The packaging may change, but her buddies on Wall Street are unsurpassed at putting bad things in pretty packages and selling them to a gullible public. That "talent" is what gave us the Meltdown of 2008.

“I think there is a silent majority that maybe don’t even know they agree with Bernie Sanders,”

Originally part of this OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026851840

taker issues that the candidates hold opinions on. It would then have you select an answer from a long list of possible responses, or allow you to enter your own, and then have you rate the issue's importance. Upon submission it would compare your answers with the candidate's positions or beliefs and show you their answers. It would then show the rate at which you agree or disagree with each candidate. This was going around my Facebook pretty rapidly. I have Facebook friends of all political persuasions. I saw a few Hillary fans in the 70% agree with her. I even saw a couple Scott walker respondents, but the vast majority of people in my circle have been Bernie matches often at well over 90%. I think he holds, what many would consider, common sense positions for working folks and poor folks. I think if we can just get people past the label, he is going to get mandate numbers and we are going to start seeing the pendulum swing back hard toward populist progressive ideas and candidates. We jus1st need to get his message out. He is the perfect delivery system for that message. I think we are all set for a Bernie groundswell.

Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone (and I know about the legendary Democratic-Farmer-Labor governor Floyd B. Olson, who might have been a second FDR had he not died so young).

Voters responded to them all because they placed the good of the masses above the well-being of the few, were plain-spoken and meant what they said. Just like Bernie.

I added your image to my adblock.

Yes, Sanders is one of those "fringe" candidates who sometimes do well in the early going, then get crushed when the big campaign machines swing into action and the party regulars take over. We've seen it before, and we expect to see it this time. The only possibility of a different outcome is an unexpected groundswell of support for progressive politics and democratic socialism. The media, of course, have declared both of those dead and buried, and they might be right. But there is quite a bit of discontent with bank bailouts, income inequality, rabid militarism, police out of control, and so on. Neither of the major parties has been effective at dealing with these issues. Indeed, one might argue most members of both major parties have been complicit in making things worse on several fronts. This is Sanders' opening. But does this opening exist? Can Sanders exploit it?

Conventional wisdom says it does not exist, and Sanders lacks the necessary money and machinery to take advantage if it materializes. And that's probably correct, but it wasn't correct 120 years ago, when the Progressive movement fought against the most powerful interests of the time: big banks, the railroads, and newspapers. Some of the social and economic issues that enabled the Progressives to win elections are similar to today' issues. The Progressives were able to succeed because people felt they were victimized by powerful financial interests who were in bed with both political parties. Sound familiar? Of course, things were much worse back then, with horrible social and economic conditions, and the government only making things worse, so the time is probably not ripe for a resurgence of progressive ideas. If people knew their history, they would know it's about time to support progressive politicians and break the grip of special interests on government. The media are busy telling them they can't do this because it's (gasp!) class warfare, and that's something very bad. So far, they're buying it, but I hear people talking about Bernie Sanders, and they're saying his ideas make sense, and they're saying maybe it's time we elect a different kind of president. Unless the media can stifle this kind of dangerous talk, and they probably can, Sanders stands a very good chance.

Disappointing.