He's not going to win, and here's why. Being able to collect money on the internet means nothing in today's political climate. Why? Because having lots of supporters spread thin over a wide area means absolutely nothing, and that's what internet support is. Go to any small town in America. How many Bernie Sanders supporters are there? One? Two? A half dozen at the most? Even in a decent-sized city, you're looking at maybe a few hundred. Candidates don't win by sheer number of votes they get across the entire country. Candidates win with regions. They win with having large and numerous concentrations of voters. Ron Paul failed to even come close to winning the GOP nomination in 2012, yet he raised a lot of money in the beginning (I also recall it was more than any other candidate). He failed because his supporters were split and sectioned off into pieces so small, not a single one could overcome the rest of the voters in that region. Another example, I live in Michigan. In the US Senate, which is a state-wide election, both of our Senators are Democrats. In the House, we have 4 Democrats and 10 Republicans. If you go by the entire state, the Democratic voters in Detroit, Lansing, and Grand Rapids--densely populated areas--overpower the Republican voters in smaller cities and rural areas. Yet, when you split the state up region-by-region, the large population centers no longer skew the numbers in rural areas, and you have the majority of the House Reps as Republicans. This is how the system works. In order to win the presidency, a candidate doesn't need votes as much as they need states. Sanders' supporters are spread out too thin to be concentrated enough in enough regions to carry those regions. And that's why he doesn't stand a chance.
When you say something like "Sanders can't win" then you've already lost. You gain nothing. You contribute nothing. You allow the ideas he stands for to be branded "unwinnable" and we're stuck exactly where we started. But if all that comes out of Sanders' campaign is that ideas like "healthcare is a human right" or "higher education should be free for everyone" become adopted by Clinton just to shut Sanders up, then Sanders has won. Look at Ron Paul. He never won the presidency but he gave a voice to those in the Republican party, and others, who sympathize with his Libertarian ideas. He won. The Republican party is more Libertarian because of him. That's what Sanders can do for those who consider themselves Social Democrats. But imagine Sanders actually did win. Then his ideas would really become powerful. And that can't happen if everyone who supports him throws up a white flag just as his campaign is getting started.
Whether or not he can win really has less to do with his popularity or ability to fundraise than you might think. The Democratic Nomination process is actually a bit more complex than it seems on the surface. It's about collecting delegates, not winning states. Barack Obama (David Axelrod & co.) understood this in 2007/8, which is how they were able to beat Clinton. If you recall, that was also supposed to be a coronation for Hillary. They're chummy now, but that was a really ugly primary which did a lot to damage Obama in the general election. The strategy Obama used was to focus on states that Clinton didn't really care about and try to win them big, collecting a significantly larger proportion of delegates. For example, let's say a state has 100 delegates. If you win by a wide margin in the primary/caucus/etc. you may win 65 or 70 of those votes at the Convention. If you win a close race, you may only get 55. Obama collected delegates and played a much smarter game than Hillary, to the point where she remained in the race long after she had been mathematically elimanted - the media never acknowledged it and neither did she, but there was a point (late May/early June '08) where she had no possible chance of winning the race due to Obama's clinching the "magic number" of delegates. The other part of Obama's plan was an absolutely beautifully executed ground game. Seriously, it is the gold standard to which all other Get Out the Vote efforts should be compared to. I'm not sure it will ever be done better, but now there's a model. The Obama brand was incredibly strong, he used the internet and social media better than anyone before him - there were online communities which had dedicated phone bank for Obama threads, targets, etc. The removal of the "go to the local crappy office and make calls" way of phone banking was blown out of the water. His team did incredible jobs in poor, minority, and under served communities - it was an extension of what I wrote above about the delegates. Obama's team understood that collecting a lot of votes which nobody usually bothered with would pay off, and it did. He won North Carolina! Tremendous effort. The third heat for Obama was definitely fundraising - he was a machine, but it was only to power the other two. Romney had plenty of money as well, it's significantly more than that, and he can do it cheaply in the primary as well where money is less important. The buys in the states Obama won were significantly less than the ones Hillary won.
I share a similar belief. Maybe it's our state that brings out the cynicism. But I don't understand why this kind of outlook isn't discussed more, the only places I ever see anybody talking about how elections are gamed are statistics sites. The current system is biased towards politicians who build up concentrated bases in specific regions, which naturally means that policies are going to be biased towards the wants and needs of those regions. And in extreme (though unlikely) situations this could be exaggerated, as theoretically a candidate only needs ~25% of the popular vote to win the presidency. And of course even besides the presidential system the regular first-past-the-post voting system leads to gaming the system in other ways, by filtering out more extreme candidates, as people vote strategically out of fear of a worse candidate being elected. The thing is, there's so many alternative voting systems that could be explored and selected based on the type of election and public preference, but this hasn't really been looked into in-depth in most places. But candidates with the main parties, even more "fringe" types like Bernie Sanders, seem to shy away from the idea of reforming our voting systems. Maybe because it would be overly ambitious due to the fact that it would require constitutional changes, so they don't see it as politically viable, or maybe because they've already built a strong base within the two party system and they don't want to lose that security. I imagine it's often a mix of these two things, even with Sanders despite the fact that he's technically independent (I'm sure he worked really hard to get that political base that's kept him in Congress), his position could be shaken up if a system was introduced that allowed more diversity in candidates and didn't split up our elections into a dichotomy that quite likely doesn't translate well to an individual's personal political positions. I don't think we're going to see somebody like Sanders being a real contender for the presidency until we either culturally shift to a much more liberal society, or fix the problems with the manipulable voting system.
I agree. I don't think Sanders has a chance at nabbing the candidacy. But I also do agree with low_ho_fosho (typing that made my chuckle a bit) - as long as Sanders makes an effort to make waves within the Democratic Party, whether or not he wins or loses is irrelevant. If Sanders manages to make a big enough splash to influence the discouse within his own party, whoever the candidate ends up being will most likely (or more likely) be willing to adopt some of his ideas, given there is a substantial amount of support. I don't particularly agree with some of his proposed policies (free higher education is one I hear the most), but unless the Republican line aligns a little bit more towards where I'm comfortable at (center with a splash of left), then the Democrats is still the party with my interests in mind.
A very good point. But it's more than just thin money. Bernie Sanders visited the town of Kensett, Iowa, population: 240. And 300 people showed up. In a recent Wisconsin straw poll, Bernie got 41% at 208 delegates, to Clinton's 49% and 252 delegates. Comparatively, Biden received 16 delegates, or 3%. Does this mean he's a shoo-in? No. But he's gaining mainstream support fast.Because having lots of supporters spread thin over a wide area means absolutely nothing, and that's what internet support is.
Google tells me that he part of the FIFA scandal....
Bernie's our only hope. If you're not gonna vote for him than you're either not voting or voting for one of the robotic candidates that have already been bought and paid for. Only Sanders can say (honestly) that he doesn't owe the wealthy corporate owners anything. That alone is reason to vote for him. He's the only candidate not slinging mud right now. He's running on his ideas, actions and principles and not engaging in bashing other candidate. Why would you vote for any of the other candidates? or... Why would you not vote?
Socialism is great on paper, but rarely works in practice because it requires central control. In the same way that preschools tend to attract pedophiles, centralized governments tend to attract control freaks. In both cases, you don't know what you're getting until it's too late, and you only need a couple of bad apples to mess things up beyond repair (especially if they manage to weasel their way into key positions of power). Examples of bad socialist leaders: Kim Jong Un, Hugo Chavez, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Fidel Castro, Barack Obama. It's harder to get rid of guys like that than it is to get the head of a tick out of your skin.
Socialist countries today: Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Canada, China, New Zealand, and Belgium all doing well for themselves. But on the other hand most of the social-democratic Nordic nations have the highest wealth inequality in Europe as the top 10% owns 65-69% of the nations' wealth. Found this: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-socialist-scandinavia-has-some-of-the-highest-inequality-in-europe-2014-10 "Strong social security programs, good public pensions, free higher education or generous student loans, unemployment and health insurance can greatly reduce the need for personal financial assets. Public housing programs can do the same for real assets. This is one explanation for the high level of wealth inequality we identify in Denmark, Norway and Sweden: the top groups continue to accumulate for business and investment purposes, while the middle and lower classes have no pressing need for personal saving." Its nice to see with a well run government you don't have to focus all your energy on creating wealth, you can actual enjoy your life and its meaning.
"preschools tend to attract pedophiles" Can we get a source on that?
This is meaningless in terms of his chances to win. Ron Paul once raised $4 million in 24 hours, then later beat that and raised $6 million in 24 hours, and we never saw a Ron Paul inauguration. Both of those events were heavily reported in the news, but he didn't even make it out of the primaries. Bernie Sanders seems like a consistent, principled politician, which is rare and refreshing to see, but he's not going to be our next president.