The fantasy for 2016 being pushed by various GOP satraps is that turnout will be low, thus tilting the presidential electoral field toward the Republicans. It is true that suppressing the vote has been a major GOP tactic, intention & goal — some would say since the election of 1896, but I will settle for 1968.
These sleek, soft suits proclaim from Times to Post that women won’t vote because they are disgusted with Secretary Clinton, men won’t vote because they are disgusted with the Democrats, Hispanics won’t vote because they never do, blacks won’t vote because Obama isn’t on the ballot, and young people won’t vote because they are loyal to Senator Sanders and feel betrayed.
And yet.
Any part of the 1948 Dem platform (civil rights; defense wind-down; universal health care; full employment) that Bernie manages to smuggle into the '16 Dem platform will be a net gain. All the reliable data confirms that he & his people will support Clinton if that is how it works out at the convention.
No, the platform is not binding. But it is indicative. And Dems have a slightly less disgusting level of platform betrayal over the last 30 years than Repubs do. So it’s significant if not conclusive.
This one won’t be like the Dem campaigns of ’68 (when the insurgents hated on the establishment) or ’72 (when the establishment hated on the insurgents.) In ’16 people are ready to hear that the Obama record is defensible. Clinton will make a good fist of doing so & Sandersites will be going right along with her. If only because of two words: 'Supreme Court'.
So the Dems are sufficiently cohesive, in the face of what looks remarkably like utter Republican disarray, to get along. And now Donald Trump comfortably assumes he can go on as before. He imagines that his primary maneuvers can be repeated until November.
I figure the Republican National Committee can give newly minted party supremo El Trumpo all the data they want; but he is just arrogant enough not to pay it no mind. He has always been a little king: his majesty, the baby. Not a collaborative bone in that boy’s body. I fully expect him to continue to believe, and act on, the theory that rallies & advertising (without sophisticated voter targeting & turnout cultivation) will elect him.
As for Sanders slowing himself up by talking process — the only problem is, a la ’68, an enormous part of his message about the Democratic party primaries & general election financing is this: the very process itself is defective by design. So you kinda hafta talk about it some.
In fact, you might define insurgent candidacies as those which talk about the process as much as about policy differences with the establishment. Not saying he couldn’t have done it better. But he had to do it some.
Overall, as long as anti-Hillary feeling is more than 15% smaller than anti-Trump feeling, as it is today and has been for quite a while, the result is Dem victory.
When I remember the (totally justified) hatred of the progressives for the establishment & its poor puppet Humphrey in '68, I would say there is dismay at HRC, and some disdain, and a relatively small amount of complete loathing. Not enough for the “party in disarray” narrative to be anything more than a GOP pipe-dream unfortunately echoed by some pro-Clinton mouthpieces.
This year’s situation is a far, far cry from the party disintegration of '68 when labor took a walk & so did a lot of the Kennedy/McCarthy wing. Sure, some Sandersites won’t vote at all. But the number of GOPers who are going to sit this one out is yuuuuuuge.
Stay-at-home formerly red voters will be the source of any lowered turnout as occurs in 2016.
