sure could.

And I think/hope he will.

Now back to work.

He can do it!

Get ready for some not so subtle red baiting. There looks to be a truly contested primary underway.

I'm looking forward to Bernie heading down south and out west to continue the trend in other states.

Maybe he could spend some time in South Carolina, and make it a trifecta. Wouldn't that be something?

I'm still amazed at those numbers. I can't believe that Sanders is a bit ahead of where Obama was at the same point in the primary process.

The Clinton campaign must be reeling.

I'm ready for Hillary to start tearing apart our state, and Bernie--in a feeble attempt to counter these numbers.

If he spent a lot of time there, I mean?

Lot's of bigots and hateful people in South Carolina. That's my impression after the shooting at the church. What a horror!

I would like to know from people who live in South Carolina. Is your state safe for progressives?

...and I can honestly say "I don't know." I've got my Bernie 2016 bumper sticker on my car. We'll see how that goes.

I understand how hard it is to be a liberal in the South, but someone has got to stand up and change it. It's got to be safe for people of different opinions, and it may not be at this time.

He can very well win Iowa and NH, and be a formidable challenger to Clinton across the country.

Just, Wow!

WOW!!

Wonder if some people in the Hillary camp are getting nervous?

Once she starts actually putting herself out there, I fully expect missteps because when you have so much to hide, you have to be VERY careful. Bernie can let it all hang out. Hillary will appear either reticent or she will make a mistake.

from 2007.

I'd had a feeling that Clinton's inevitability was firmly in place more than a year out from the '08 election, and so it was.

I keep on wanting to revive an old handle I used to have here on DU, and post that I've just come out of a coma I went into at the beginning of 2008 and the very first thing I've done is sign on here and I want to find out how fabulous a President Hillary Clinton has been. Because if I had gone into a coma 8 years ago it would have been with the happy assurance she was going to win.

You can't stop the truth.

One trick in winning is always, always to assume that you will lose.

That was the underlying assumption of everyone (except maybe Sanders himself) about Sanders when he started testing the waters and thinking about running. Now he is pulling up in the polls very quickly. And quite frankly, he is so open about his past and his failures and successes, his proposals and ideas, that I think it will be difficult to smear him effectively.

Take for instance the Women's Lib article he wrote when he was very young. I think that the Hillary folks call it the Rape Article even though it isn't really at all about rape but rather about how the Women's Lib movement affected relationships between men and women who were having to adjust traditional ideas about gender within their relationships.

Hillary supporters played that article up big, hoping to embarrass Bernie. But Bernie just smiled and said, yes, he wrote the article and that it was not well written. (I happen to think, as one who lived at that time, that it was well written, but . . . . )

It's very hard to smear a person who acknowledges his actions, who admits to mistakes and who is honest about his plans. It's just really hard to smear a man who has voted with courage and conviction and without the usual compromises of his values for so many years.

Hillary faces a huge challenge because thus far her campaign appears to be constructed like most prior campaigns -- on the premise that she can equivocate in her answers, avoid answering direct questions, attack those running in the race with her and use surrogates to do the dirty work. It isn't going to work this time. And all those political pros that she has hired are going to make her look bad if they don't realize that this time those tricks and trusses just won't work.

It's face the music time for the Hillary campaign. Hillary will either campaign on Bernie's terms and expose her opinions and purposes and those of her donors to the American people or lose. Cause sooner or later she will trip on all the scaffolding that has been built around her to cover up what is really underneath and supporting her.

That's my prediction. I could be wrong. Hillary could win simply on name recognition and on Bill's history, but I'm beginning to think that Bernie's honesty about the moral and economic choices we face and his convincing history of honesty and talking straight to real people will win in the end.

Bernie seems to be rubber or maybe better yet Teflon, and Hillary has, even going back to the '90s, been like glue and can't rid herself of any of the negatives, real and imagined.

I don't think she or the people she's hired know any other plays.

...and I witnessed Hillary's abysmal campaign in 08.

She simply refused to do anything but give large-venue speeches that were an impersonal slew of slogans and rhetoric. She never answered questions after or spoke with the people.

She had a helicopter that she toured around Iowa in. Her campaign coined it, "The Hill-ocopter." I'm not kidding.

She did hold one Q&A after she was roundly criticized for her failure to dialog with Iowans. An Iowa reporter discovered that all of the questioners were actually her staffers. They were plants. They asked her the questions she wanted to answer. Such a farce.

In my opinion, I don't think Hillary wants to campaign the way you need to in Iowa and NH. I think she's fine behind a podium, giving prepared speeches. I don't think she has any desire to diaglog or take questions. It's just not her style. I think she has a hard time connecting. Time will tell what she does in this caucus cycle.

The problem is--You have to campaign that way in Iowa. Every candidate--Democrat or Republican who campaigns here, mingles with the people, takes questions, talks with everyone. They show up at restaurants, diners and they have conversations with people. That's how it's done here. I've met so many politicians. I've seen the the lint on Evan Bayh's sweater, had conversations with John Edwards and Barack Obama called me at home when I was playing a board game with my kids--to discuss the issues because I had been to a house party and told someone I was undecided!

This year, thus far--Hillary has held mainly closed-door events with fewer than 15 people. She's had at least a couple of public speeches. I really don't know what her plan is. Bernie has already begun retail politicking here--answering questions and engaging in meaningful conversation. Iowa seems to fit his authentic, honest style very well.

No big surprise to me that he's up in the latest Iowa Quinnipiac poll. Sanders is a bit ahead of where Obama was--when Obama was campaigning to win the Iowa caucuses against Hillary. And we all know that Obama won and Hillary came in third. Interesting that Sanders is following the same trajectory as Obama. For sure.

... Voters are just waiting for an alternative.
And here comes Bernie...
A candidate saying exactly what voters want to hear.

You linked to a national poll at this point in 2007:

"We all remember that Clinton was "inevitable" going into the primary.She was expected to win, with Obama and Edwards trailing far behind. Of course, we all remember how Obama eventually won Iowa."