I didn't write this article, but I might as well have:
It's Official -- Bernie Sanders Has Overtaken Hillary Clinton In the Hearts and Minds of Democrats
According to PBS, Bernie Sanders is "gaining against Clinton in early polls." Salon's Bill Curry believes "Hillary Clinton is going lose," primarily because millions of voters longing for a truly progressive candidate will nominate Sanders. POLITICO explained recently that Early-state polls hint at a Bernie Sanders surge, a headline that was unthinkable only several months earlier. Yahoo's Meredith Shiner calls Sanders a "progressive social media star and pragmatic legislator" and states that "Sanders also has a much more substantial legislative history" than any GOP challenger. In Iowa, 1,100 people packed a gym to hear Bernie Sanders speak in May.
In contrast, Team Hillary had an intimate business roundtable discussion with five "ordinary" Iowans. The only problem was that according to The Washington Post, "All five were selected to attend her events." In fact, Clinton's "staged roundtables" were attended by a total of 13 Iowans, picked by either the campaign or the host.
Therefore, a paradigm shift has taken place. Many Iowans drove 50 miles to hear Sanders speak in Des Moines, primarily because Bernie Sanders has surpassed Clinton as the ideal choice for Democratic nominee. Regarding electability, Sanders has also surpassed Clinton as the realistic choice for Democratic nominee in the minds of many voters, because as one Salon piece illustrates, Hillary "just doesn't get it."
When it comes to everything from immigration to climate change and economic issues (most Americans side with Democrats, according to Pew research and other data) some writers believe that Democrats "can nominate a ham sandwich and win the presidency." Although once thought of as an impossibility, a closer look at the electoral map shows why Bernie Sanders could realistically defeat any GOP challenger. If voters around the country still care about middle class economics, the federal budget, trade and other hot button issues in 2016, Sanders has a legitimate chance to win. Also, since Sanders isn't tied to Obama fatigue like Hillary Clinton, it's quite possible the Vermont Senator re-energizes an America that just recently decided the Confederate flag doesn't represent its value system.
According to a POLITICO piece titled The 2016 Results We Can Already Predict, "Assuming the lean, likely, and safe Democratic states remain loyal to the party, the nominee need only win 23 of the 85 toss-up electoral votes." Therefore, there's no need to jettison cherished values for the sake of pragmatism; those days are over. Senator Bernie Sanders, known in Washington and throughout the nation as an advocate for middle class Americans, veterans, the environment, and other cherished causes can win crucial electoral votes just as easily as Hillary Clinton.
Why is this all so inevitable?:
For the Democrats, a victory in 2016 entails zero expansion of the blue map, merely the limiting of blue-to-red transformations. Assuming the lean, likely, and safe Democratic states remain loyal to the party, the nominee need only win 23 of the 85 toss-up electoral votes. And if a lean Democratic state such as Wisconsin turns red, it is relatively easy to replace those votes with one or two toss-ups.
On the other hand, Republicans must hold all their usual states plus find a way to stitch together an additional 64 electoral votes, or 79 if they can’t hold North Carolina. To do this, the GOP candidate will have to come close to sweeping the toss-ups under most scenarios—a difficult task unless the election year’s fundamentals (President Obama’s job approval, economic conditions, war and peace, and so on) are moving powerfully against the Democrats.
The 2016 Results We Can Already Predict
And of course this is being fought - though it's a losing battle - by the two groups that have the most to lose:
The plot to marginalize Bernie Sanders: The shared agenda that links Fox News and Hillary Clinton surrogates Both parties are owned by plutocrats. Sanders' challenge threatens them both, and their responses are oddly similar
Everyone is scrambling to make sense of the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. According to recent polls, the senator from Vermont is second only to Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic voters. Part of the confusion, it seems, has to do with Sanders’ so-called “socialism.” How, the pundits ask, can a self-described “socialist” gain any traction in American politics today?
I expect conservatives to pound this question down the throats of their audiences, but Democrats have latched onto this trope as well. Sen. Claire McCaskill, for instance, blithely suggested that Americans will reject Sanders once they discover his socialist roots: “This is somebody who can carry the torch of middle class opportunity without alienating a wide swath of voters by being, frankly, a socialist,” McCaskill said in defense of Hillary Clinton.
But American's aren't hearing Socialist... they're hearing someone with the same principles they have, and someone willing to say things others aren't:
There are very few unspoken rules among major-party candidates for president, and Bernie Sanders is breaking one of them. He’s saying that America’s leaders shouldn’t worry so much about economic growth if that growth serves to enrich only the wealthiest Americans.
“Our economic goals have to be redistributing a significant amount of [wealth] back from the top 1 percent,” Sanders said in a recent interview, even if that redistribution slows the economy overall.
“Unchecked growth – especially when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent – is absurd,” he said. “Where we’ve got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but we’ve got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people. In other words, if people have health care as a right, as do the people of every other major country, then there’s less worry about growth. If people have educational opportunity and their kids can go to college and they have child care, then there’s less worry about growth for the sake of growth.”
Wonkblog The thing Bernie Sanders says about inequality that no other candidate will touch