Since the Occupy Wall Street movement, more and more Americans have heard about the Citizens United ruling and are aware of the adverse effects it has had on US elections with regards to money in politics.
Senators are talking about it, Congressmen are talking about it, and the internet is awash with memes, videos, and articles about it. Heck, even the mainstream media talks about it.
Conventional wisdom says the candidate with the most money wins, and although grassroots movements and organizing is somewhat important in both statewide and national elections, they pale in comparison to making large amounts of ad purchases to blast the large states with campaign ads and negative ads alike. And while conventional wisdom is right in that it is still necessary to have some money to purchase ads, it has failed to adopt to a significant change in US politics.
People are sick and tired of "business as usual," they are sick and tired of constant elections and empty, disposable campaign ads, and while a lot voters in the US have always known their representatives were to some extent beholden to big money interest, the Citizens United ruling smashed what little remained of the illusion that the people's political representatives actually represented... the people.
If Bernie Sanders wins the nomination to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, he will have the moral high ground on any Republican nominee. Every time, say, Jeb Bush, with his $100m in his SuperPAC, purchases an ad to blast Bernie Sanders, the media will ask Bernie what he thinks of it and Bernie will get free airtime to respond to the ad and set the record straight. Not enough you say?
Well Bernie will not be without money himself. If he simply responds with his own ad to every 3-5 ads from a Jeb Bush, setting the record straight, explaining his positions and not going negative while pointing out that Jeb is using SuperPAC money, the US public will respond. This is Bernie's tried and true method in Vermont and is how he beat an incumbent in a nationwide election where he was outspent 3:1.
So while Bernie does need some money, he doesn't need nearrly as much as other candidates.
Thus, Bernie will not only have the moral high ground with regards to money, but he will also have it with his clean campaign pledge. And this is what the voters in the US (and a lot of other countries I might add) are thirsting for. This kind of campaigning has the potential to drive up voter turnout which is at dismally low figures in the US- around 35% in the last presidential election, roughly with a total of 100 million votes cast.
If the ~47% of people who said they would be willing to vote for a Socialist in a recent poll vote for Bernie in a general election, and Bernie and his grassroots organizers are able to increase voter turnout in the highly populated states by just 5-10 percentage points, also assuming he doesn't win over any of those who have said they wont vote for a "socialist", Bernie will win by ~30m votes.
Unprecedented since FDR... and that was while the US was fighting a world war!
Flip it over: Hillary gets the nomination, whether through rigging the election process through superdelegates (which are predominantly a part of the Democratic Party's establishment) or closely through a fair election.
Voter turnout will stay the same and might even continue its slide downward. She and her Republican opponent duke it out with their billions of dollars in a frenzy of fresh ads from New York, a plague on both your houses, and she loses to due to the fact that neither Democrats nor swing voters show up because they don't see a point and because they are bitter the one real chance they had to clean up the election and legislative process is gone.
In my opinion, Bernie Sanders is not only the best choice for the country, for US relations with the world, for the Democratic Party – he is the only choice to avoid that the oldest democratic country in the world, which Churchill once praised for its sense of Fairness, Justice and Democracy, cements it self as an Oligarchy serving the elite, not the people.
Nis Vincent Pedersen – Bernie2016.tv
Former Sergeant in the Danish armed forces, combat medic and MASH unit trained.
Today: Historian and religious scholar with specialty in economics, politics, and international relations. Holds public lectures and debates.