* Hillary will be forced to campaign against Bernie a little longer. The more people see and hear Hillary talking the less they like her. She has very high negatives for a reason, it is not due to her politics as much as her personality and history of lying, such as fabricating the story about being under sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia.
* Bernie’s candidacy success has been good for Trump not because of anything in and of itself, but because Bern’s success and Trump’s success rely on a lot of the same forces and mentalities, the populist insurgent mentality. It means that populist politics were a hot iron that was ready to be struck in both parties, because populism is the national mood, not just a one party thing.
I find it curious that the two major Democrats for President this year are a former Goldwater Girl, and someone who at this moment is not an elected Democrat.
* I read the editorial as saying that Bernie has pulled Hillary to the left and that’s a good thing. It is a good thing, but not in the way that they meant it. It’s a good thing for Trump. The traditional route to the Oval Office is to seize the middle ground — if Bernie forces Hillary to the left then Trump has more middle ground to seize. He is already not very far right by Republican standards.
* Bernie is “the other side of the coin” of today, and ALL past 9 months for God’s sake. Earlier, tonight, I told my youngest son, “whoah, we are in a historic moment.” Half my family are Bernie Bros…the other; Dark Side – Trump. I have always liked “the house divided,”…always been good for Holiday conversations around the table, whether in Europe or USA. We all love to debate and eat…snow shoe/ski/ride the next day.
I miss all you guys, here, (and, some, very few girls- Unz still needs to work on that, or maybe not, whatever) and will post more late May. I wanted to say something…’cause: historic.
* Bernie’s disgruntled white guys are not the same as Trump’s disgruntled white guys. I doubt that many will cross over. However, Bernie’s disgruntled white guys may stay home because they have no desire to vote for Hillary, which is almost as good (for Trump).
* In primary after primary, looking at maps showing where they win, Hillary Clinton wins in areas with relatively strong local Democratic Party organizations. This was true in Indiana too. Sanders does alot better with independents voting in the Democratic primaries, where they are allowed to do so. In other words, Hillary Clinton is winning the machine or regular Democratic vote.
The Democratic Party is and always has been the more machine politics party compared to the Republicans, so this gets her the nomination. But her difficulty in winning independents and her complete dependence on the regulars point to her being a weak general election candidate.
In some ways Sanders is a left-wing, much more likeable version of Ted Cruz. His career shows him to be good at political strategy (remember he started his political career running and winning as a minor party candidate, which is really hard to do in this country), but to be a really unlikely politician due to his background and political views. He really shouldn’t have given Clinton this much of a challenge.
* Just as Trump mentioned tonight that people saw thru the 60,000 attack ads against him, people can also sense Hillary’s fundamental phoniness and are repelled by it, to the point that they prefer a Jewish socialist who would normally be radioactive, even in a Democrat primary.
* If Bernie wins most of the remaining states such as California and ends up with a delegate count more than Hillary’s, but loses because of the superdelegates in the tank for her, there’s going to be an explosion of fury at the Democratic party convention. I don’t see ticked-off Bernie Bros going to the polls to show up for Hillary in the general election, because they’ll be too angry with her for doing in their guy by foul means. It’ll finally dawn on the Dems that their own party rules let the traditional Smoke-Filled Room choose the candidate, right at a time period when they’d thought they’d made their party more egalitarian.
And if Hillary loses to Trump in the general, that will only convince a lot of Dems that they need to purge their party of the status quo wing if they want to see true leftism. Adding the Trump insurgency, the 1% may no longer have a party of any sort after 2016. It’ll be interesting.
* It helps Trump enormously if Bernie stays in the race. Even if he can’t possibly win, as long as he continues to have strong support, it makes Hillary look like a weak candidate. Constantly being reminded of the super-delegates issue also makes the Democrats look corrupt.
The GOP should capitalize on this moment in time to come together behind Trump and stop talking about 3rd parties and convention shananigans. They have everything to gain.
* The more Hillary talks, the happier this Bernie supporter is in the sure knowledge that she will not win. Every time she opens her mouth I see millions of dead brown civilians and thousands of dead American military pouring out. With Hil we have a 100% certainty of losing one, two, three, or more pointless new wars in the Middle East. Trump may be a wildcard, but at least there’s a chance he might say “no” to the permanent war machine running both parties.
