President Biden performs best among several high-profile Democrats in hypothetical general election match-ups against former President Trump, according to a new poll. The Emerson College survey re…
Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking
The Democratic primary will technically march on, but Hillary Clinton is almost certainly going to be her party’s nominee. Same with Donald Trump. And voters don’t appear thrilled at the prospect: Clinton and Trump are both more strongly disliked than any nominee at this point in the past 10 presidential cycles.
The strength of Bernie in the general election remains an unproven hypothesis. But I agree that the DNC behaved inappropriately. The nature of primaries as “private” elections controlled by the party makes this type of behavior fairly inevitable.
Though the RNC also tried to stop Trump, they just failed at it, so parties don’t necessarily have complete control over the outcome.
He was polling ahead of Trump, Clinton was polling behind. We don’t know if that would’ve continued to the actual election but we do know that Clinton lost.
I largely agree with this. I think there are good reasons to think the race would tighten—Bernie was never subjected to republican attack ads, and I think he also benefited from Clinton’s unpopularity, an effect that might fade once she was out of the race. But you’re right that we’ll never know for sure what would have happened.
Idk, I feel like Republican attack ads on Bernie would have done what Democratic attack ads on Trump did: electrify his base. “HE WANTS EVERYONE TO HAVE EDUCATION FOR FREE!!!” damn, well, sign me up!
I know there would have been calls of “communist” ad nauseam, but idk that it has the horrible effect it once had - if anything it might have energized youth vote…
We had a strong candidate in 2016 and the DNC literally committed fraud to deny him a nomination.
No they didn’t. You can complain about how they ran it, or that they showed a preference for Clinton, but she absolutely destroyed him and this “they committed fraud against him!” is equally as empty as the Trump supporters who claim the same. And, FTR, I voted for sanders in 2016.
There was a reasonably strong slate in 2020, and Dem primary voters passed them over for the old white guy as a hedge against the voting preferences of casually-racist and sexist boomer voters in the general electorate. The shit of it is that their reasoning wasn’t without merit either. But that’s left us where we are now, with a milquetoast octogenarian as the last bulwark against putting the fascist septuagenarian dementia patient back in charge, and nobody likes those options even if one is obviously less bad than the other.
I still feel like we haven’t had really strong candidates for some elections now.
2016:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/
2020:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/politics/polls-trump-biden.html
2024:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/25/politics/biden-trump-unpopular-president-election-2024/index.html
We had a strong candidate in 2016 and the DNC literally committed fraud to deny him a nomination.
The strength of Bernie in the general election remains an unproven hypothesis. But I agree that the DNC behaved inappropriately. The nature of primaries as “private” elections controlled by the party makes this type of behavior fairly inevitable.
Though the RNC also tried to stop Trump, they just failed at it, so parties don’t necessarily have complete control over the outcome.
He was polling ahead of Trump, Clinton was polling behind. We don’t know if that would’ve continued to the actual election but we do know that Clinton lost.
I largely agree with this. I think there are good reasons to think the race would tighten—Bernie was never subjected to republican attack ads, and I think he also benefited from Clinton’s unpopularity, an effect that might fade once she was out of the race. But you’re right that we’ll never know for sure what would have happened.
Idk, I feel like Republican attack ads on Bernie would have done what Democratic attack ads on Trump did: electrify his base. “HE WANTS EVERYONE TO HAVE EDUCATION FOR FREE!!!” damn, well, sign me up!
I know there would have been calls of “communist” ad nauseam, but idk that it has the horrible effect it once had - if anything it might have energized youth vote…
Idk
No they didn’t. You can complain about how they ran it, or that they showed a preference for Clinton, but she absolutely destroyed him and this “they committed fraud against him!” is equally as empty as the Trump supporters who claim the same. And, FTR, I voted for sanders in 2016.
There was a reasonably strong slate in 2020, and Dem primary voters passed them over for the old white guy as a hedge against the voting preferences of casually-racist and sexist boomer voters in the general electorate. The shit of it is that their reasoning wasn’t without merit either. But that’s left us where we are now, with a milquetoast octogenarian as the last bulwark against putting the fascist septuagenarian dementia patient back in charge, and nobody likes those options even if one is obviously less bad than the other.
Tulsi Gabbard looked promising at the time; too bad she went off the rails.
She went off the rails long before that, but it took some time for her fan base to catch up with reality.