I don’t want this to turn into a big nasty war of words. These are my honest questions about the viability of Bernie as a general election candidate.
Three overarching points before getting to the questions:
-
I don’t give ANY credence to current general election polls featuring Bernie against GOP candidates, which I know have shown him running ahead of Hillary in head-to-heads. I just think they are meaningless because most Americans outside of the hard-core Democratic primary voters just don’t know much about Bernie and we won’t know how middle America will respond once they are introduced to him.
- Corollary point: We must keep in mind what will happen to Bernie if he does in fact win the nomination. I wouldn’t be surprised to see our opponents spend way more than $1 billion to tear Bernie down. I don’t think we have any earthly idea how much damage and pain will be inflicted on Bernie — literally everything will be thrown at him with bottomless sums of money.
-
This is not a post to compare Bernie’s general election chances to Hillary’s. I think I have a pretty good idea how Hillary will perform in a general election. I’m asking these questions because I honestly don’t know how Bernie will do. So if your comments simply compare Bernie to Hillary, I’m not interested. That’s not the point.
With those caveats in mind, here are my questions:
- Looking at the map of states Obama won in 2012, what states if any can Bernie add? And what states are most at risk? My initial impression is Bernie won’t be able to really expand the playing field anywhere, but I’d love to hear a rationale for new states he could add to the Democratic map. At the same time, I’m very concerned that Bernie will be able to hold Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and I can’t decide if his anti-Wall Street and anti-bank message scares off voters in places like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware. These last four states are all very Democratic, but there are key voting blocs that may be scared off.
-
Bernie has pledged he will never run a negative ad. That’s a problem in the general election, isn’t it? Don’t you think he HAS to break that promise?
- The number of Democratic elected officials who have endorsed Hillary, and not endorsed Bernie scares me. When we get to the general, do you think Bernie can unify the party for a all-in push that we’ll need to win up and down the ballot? Do you think Bernie’s message of not-so-subtle attacks on the Democratic Party and establishment will alienate establishment figures and leave Bernie more isolated in the general?
- Finally, are we sure that Bernie’s record doesn’t contain some really embarrassing quotes that may not sound bad to we hard-core Democrats/liberals/progressives, but would scare the crap out of middle America? I haven’t dug into his record, but I would not be in the least surprised to find something in there — like a Reverend Wright moment only from the candidate himself. Add this concern to the fact that the other side will literally have no limits to the amount they will spend to destroy Bernie Sanders, it concerns the hell out of me.
Honest to God, I’m not trying to poke at Bernie or his supporters in this post. But I am really concerned about these questions (and probably others, as well). Bernie is a maverick, a one-man band, has marched to his own beat. And that is very appealing on a lot of levels. But I worry that he hasn’t been vetted nearly enough and that we will be severely challenged to hold our 2012 states, much less expand the map. And that he’ll be on his own come November. He’s running against the establishment, which means he’ll have very little enthusiastic support from the establishment. This can be offset to some degree by the base of activists and hard core progressives, but will it be enough?
I welcome all reasonable comments disproving my concerns.
Thank you in advance for a civil conversation.