“It’s almost a cruel joke on the electorate that the longest presidential election potentially ever might also be the one that they’re least excited about,” said one Democratic pollster, speaking anonymously to candidly discuss the race.
“It’s almost a cruel joke on the electorate that the longest presidential election potentially ever might also be the one that they’re least excited about,” said one Democratic pollster, speaking anonymously to candidly discuss the race.
Sanders, while I love the guy, is a more polarizing figure than Biden.
Biden was pretty much always going to be the nominee in 2020 for that reason: he was never anybody’s favorite, but he was the one face in that field with the important distinction that while nobody really super liked him, nobody really hated him either. Cast a wide net, big tent, and all that.
While the people who like Sanders really like him, there are also a lot of people who would vote Biden to block Trump for whom being asked to vote for Sanders would be a bridge too far. Not that they’d vote for Trump instead…but they just wouldn’t cast a vote for either main party candidate.
…which of course also segues neatly to the fact that Sanders isn’t a Democrat, and asking the DNC to nominate someone who’s not even a party member is a big ask anyway.
If Sanders is a polarizing figure, it’s because democrats (and republicans, obviously) paint him that way because his policies diaagree with their donors. In reality, Sanders’ policies align with the vast majority of Americans, but there’s no way that’ll be allowed through our bought-out election system.
I feel like this is indicative of a general shift in the electorate in America. It’s hard to be someone that most people like. It’s really easy to make most people hate the other guy and then just not be him. In 2016 Clinton tried this with the pied piper strategy, but Trump did a better job of it. People know Hillary, and they don’t like her. They didn’t know Trump at the time, and I personally know some Bernie voters who went for Trump just because “He’s not just another politician, we need a change.” In 2018, 2020, and 2022, name recognition hurt Trump and the GOP. Democrats successfully positioned themselves as the people you vote for if you don’t like Donald Trump, and they succeeded by a comfortable margin in 2018 and 2020. 2022, historically speaking, should have been an absolute bloodbath for Dems but Trump’s polarizing dickishness drove democratic voter turnout and the GOP failed to take control of the Senate and took such a narrow majority in the house that they’ve been basically non-functional since then. In 2023 Glenn Youngkin was thinking about what a GOP-controlled legislature in Virginia would do for his presidential chances and then Dems overperformed again and now he’s not even in the presidential picture and his agenda is being thwarted at every turn.
Now it’s 2024 and each candidate is running on a platform that boils down to “vote for me, I’m not that guy that you hate and fear”. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out, and by interesting I mean that as a queer person I’m terrified because of all the violence.