This article looks at polling data from the point of view of an Independent plurality which favors Bernie Sanders by 36% over Clinton, making him in turn the likely winner against any Republican, while leaving Clinton only a toss-up chance in November. Polling also shows Democrats to be unaware of that fact. It is risky for a party that shares only 30% of the electorate to ignore the decisive role that Independents play in choosing Presidents. The Democratic Party's own shrinking base gives it features of a third party in need of coalition with the larger "party" of Independents that Bernie Sanders uniquely brings to the table. But that will require facing up to the party's own systemic corruption well represented by a Clinton candidacy.
Meanwhile, as discussed in Part 2, due to their partisan resistance to understanding President Obama's deepest flaws, Democrats fundamentally misunderstand what the rest of the country seeks in a 2016 candidate.
Polls show misinformed Democrats failing to form a coalition with Independents for these two reasons.
This article warns that Democratic voters flirt at their peril with using their control over primaries at the front end of a defective run-off process to deny victory in November to the nation's preferred choice, Sanders. Democrats thereby play a similar role today that they labeled "spoiler" in the past when they complained that a third party denied victory to the nation's preferred choice, thereby allowing the rejected and now reviled Bush II to take power and inflict permanent damage on the country.
To win in 2016, Democratic primary voters need to vote strategically, based upon reliable information, in favor of the alliance with Independents that Sanders offers them. This alliance would join voters across the line now separating those who accept systemic political corruption as a lesser evil than electing a Republican, on one side, and a growing majority that does not, on the other.
But Sanders can win even if Democrats should choose to remain ignorant. The polls' optimistic teaching about the mathematics of the Democratic primary is that with 30% of the electorate expected to vote 2:1 for Clinton, Democrats will provide Sanders roughly half the votes he needs to win the primary. But his 36% lead over Clinton among Independents, who are 43% of the electorate, gain him another 14% if they will participate in the primary of the Democrats they otherwise disdain. This would deliver Sanders a 24-20% victory over Clinton in the primary. Since winning the primary is tantamount for Sanders to winning the general election against any Republican his victory would change the Democratic Party from what we know it to be, a network for corruption.
Whether motivated by dislike of the corrupt Democratic Party or a liking for Sanders, or both, it is clear that voting in the Democratic primary is the necessary first step back to democracy. If that means registering as a Democrat, that is a small price to pay for your country. Its reversible after the primary, and not communicable if you wash your hands.
plu-toc-ra-cy1.
Government by the wealthy.
2. A country or society governed in
this way.
In early December the highly trusted Quinnipiac University National Poll (" Q-Poll") delivered both bad news and good news for Bernie Sanders.
The unpromising lead is: Sanders polls 30% behind Clinton, among Democrats.
This bad news might be best explained by the Democrats' even more lopsided answer to the big "electability" question, as well as questions that explore several perceived Clinton qualifications to be president. Unfortunately, the Q-Poll shows that 38% more Democrats think Clinton "would have a good chance of defeating the Republican nominee" than would Sanders (87% to 49%), while also suggesting that she would bring stronger leadership and better experience to the general election, if not the presidency.
Part I. Electability?
1. Whose Electability?
The good news for Sanders is to be found in the details of what the pollsters actually demonstrate to be true about his electability. The Q-Poll disproves the conventional opinion of most Democrats with evidence from direct match-ups of each of the two Democrats against each of the four Republican contenders who have more than single digit support. This polling substitutes for the lack of an effective run-off presidential election system in the United States. Now run by two corrupt parties the process is partially privatized.
The Q-Poll findings: "Sanders does just as well [as Clinton against Rubio], or even better, against [the other] top Republicans [Trump, Carson,and Cruz]." Against each of the latter three, Sanders' winning margin exceeds Clinton's by an additional 2%, 3% and 5% respectively, compared to a survey margin of error of +/- 2.6%.
It is by just such narrow margins that modern elections are won or lost. For example Slate opines it to be "a sign of how accustomed we've become to razor-thin margins of victory that Obama's 2.3-percent popular-vote victory [in 2012] seems almost like a rout...[T]hree out of four of our last elections have been decided by a popular-vote margin of less than 3 percent" which, the author observes, "best resembles the Gilded Age" when choice was similarly limited to pluto-Dum and pluto-Dem candidates.
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