Article on Sanders-Trump voters

[Willie Pep]

I don't know if this article has been posted here yet but John Sides wrote an interesting article in The Washington Post on whether Bernie Sanders supporters cost Hillary Clinton the election. When discussing the profile of Sanders-Trump voters Sides writes:

Perhaps the most important feature of Sanders-Trump voters is this: They weren’t really Democrats to begin with.

Of course, we know that many Sanders voters did not readily identify with the Democratic Party as of 2016, and Schaffner found that Sanders-Trump voters were even less likely to identify as Democrats. Sanders-Trump voters didn’t much approve of Obama either.

In fact, this was true well before 2016. In the VOTER Survey, we know how Sanders-Trump voters voted in 2012, based on an earlier interview in November 2012. Only 35 percent of them reported voting for Obama, compared with 95 percent of Sanders-Clinton voters. In other words, Sanders-Trump voters were predisposed to support Republicans in presidential general elections well before Trump’s candidacy.

Schaffner found that what distinguished Sanders-Trump voters from Sanders-Clinton voters wasn’t their attitudes about trade, but their attitudes about race. When asked whether whites are advantaged, Sanders-Trump voters were much more likely to disagree than were Sanders-Clinton voters.

Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/24/did-enough-bernie-sanders-supporters-vote-for-trump-to-cost-clinton-the-election/?utm_term=.ffa58d907760

I think this is an important point because I don't think that Sanders really did much at all to damage Clinton among likely Democratic voters. The Sanders supporters who voted for Trump were likely going to vote for the Republicans in the presidential election and contrary to popular belief these folks weren't economic populists but more likely vote based on racial issues.

The article doesn't touch on Sanders voters who voted third party or stayed home but I wouldn't be surprised if these people also turned out to be less likely to regularly vote for Democrats. From what I read online (I know, not an accurate way of measuring things) many Bernie or Bust types were likely the kind of people who sat out elections or voted for the Greens. They didn't strike me as disgruntled Democrats.

In any event I thought this would be an interesting article to discuss since it sheds some light on which Sanders supporters didn't vote for Clinton. It looks like many of them weren't Democrats at all and likely favored the Republican Party in presidential elections.

[Warpy]

1. No, he absolutely did not damage Clinton in any way

Remember, he was talking about issues that ordinary people care about, mostly that the country has been stolen out from under us by a series of conservatives who favored fattening the rich over anything else. The ones who swung over to Dump were never Democratic voters. There is no way any of them would have voted for a mainstream Democrat, especially another Clinton, and especially a woman.

However, they still didn't defeat her. She was defeated by a corporate press that stonewalled her message in favor of phony scandals ginned up by Russian trolls, by an FBI agent who gave credence to those scandals just before the election (followed by a whisper that nothing was there, after all) and very likely Russian tampering with easily hacked voting systems.

The party is going to have to figure out how to deal with all of these things unless it wants to keep losing.

That's assuming we still have a country left after this narcissistic psycho gets done with it.

[chwaliszewski]

2. +1

Completely agree. I started voting in 1990, am an Independent, and have never voted republican. Why am I not a registered Democrat? Because I am a voter, period. I don't have to belong to a certain group in order to vote my own personal interests. It just so happens that currently, the Democrats, for the most part, meet most of my needs from what I expect from government.

Anyways, my point is that I may have voted Bernie in the primary but I voted Hillary in the GE because like her or not, she could never be as bad as the orange assface we have now and I did not want him anywhere near the White House. I'm sure there were plenty of other disappointed Berners that felt as I do and did as I did.

[LiberalLovinLug]

5. Well stated

That is why it is so pointless to rant and rave in here, on DU about it. Because it comes off as sour grape venting aimed at fellow Democrats that would never in a million years vote for Trump. Those votes were never ours to begin with. (But we could have stolen them if Bernie had won the primary)

[BainsBane]

6. Putting aside the question of what determined the GE result

It is clear that his campaign rhetoric had a lasting influence on views not only of Clinton but the Democratic Party and Democratic voters. That is clear by the fact we hear much of it repeated today.

Thete is also a disconnect between the constant assertion that he is "the most popular politician in America" and the claim that his rhetoric about Clinton had no impact.

[Warpy]

8. "Putting aside the question of the GE result"

is like saying "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

You are conflating a lot of things here, none of them appropriate. Yes, he used rhetoric we hadn't heard from a Democrat (albeit a temporary one) for over 40 years. It was about time.. Democrats still voted for Clinton, so he did no damage by it. What he did do is finally open up the debate the party conservatives have been terrified of for 40 years. It's about fucking time.

And no, the left is not going to go away. Sorry about that.

[BainsBane]

10. "the left"

I haven't seen anything that resembles leftism. I've seen a lot of cries to return to the mid-20th century, which is the opposite of leftist or progressive. Your yearning for the rhetoric of 40 years ago is indicative of that. For most Americans, conditions were infinitely worse 40-50 or more years ago.

I'd love to see a leftist movement in the Democratic party, but what I have seen actively seeks to divert resources from the poor and marginalized to the privileged, which is of course the very point of hearkening back to mid-20th century. They yearn for the height of American empire, when the US overturned one country after another, plundering resources that allowed prosperity for the white middle class and poverty for the majority. You say 40 years ago. Most others say the 1930s to the early 60s, when the Democratic Party was good, in their estimation. No matter how many times people point out that they see such hearkening back to the days of Jim Crow and lynchings as hostile, it continues. it can no longer be passed off as mere ignorance of history. And pretending none of that existed is no better. It is tantamount to saying those problems weren't important because the people they effected weren't important. That is the discourse of what you call "leftism.

And that the entire conception of "leftism" revolves around one politician's career and who promotes it only underscores the self-serving ways in which the term is so often used.

You call my speech inappropriate because you aren't willing to address even the most glaring logical fallacies. That you don't want to think about the most simple questions is on you, not me.

I said "putting aside" the outcome of the election because it is simply not possible to establish the relative weight of the factors that brought Trump to power. Some of that is because there is still much we don't know, and the rest is because figuring out exactly why voters decided against Clinton is not measurable. Beliefs about the outcome are not evidence or fact. One thing is clear. Every vote counted, so much so that Clinton lost by two votes per precinct in Michigan. With such a tiny margin, everything mattered.

That most Democrats voted for Clinton isn't the issue. Enough didn't to throw the election to Trump, which is of course exactly what those voters wanted. Those are the values those Stein/Trump voters champion, and they have nothing to do with leftism. I find it odd that left has come to be defined entirely in terms of what benefits more privileged Americans, while the poor and marginalized are disparaged as "corporatist" and "establishment." I saw one person insist African Americans as a race--all of them--were "establishment." That anyone would describe the poorest Americans, most subject to lethal discrimination, as establishment tells me they use such terms are weapons to justify their own demands for power and wealth. I've seen many other examples that point to quite mercenarain uses of those terms, while in other cases people simply refuse to say what they mean by them or hold to any common standards. I see a political ethos that begins and ends with labels, in which a few mean of wealth and power are held as infallible, accompanied by disregard if not outright resentment toward the most marginalized.

There is nothing wrong with individuals or groups advancing their own interests in our political system. When it becomes toxic is when that self interest as presented as the ONLY legitimate interests, with everyone who fails to priorities those demands for resources and power treated with contempt, as inferior. This demands of one group are not universal; they are their interests. And when people have to work so hard to shut out the concerns of the vast majority of the population, they must on some level know that they are engaged in something that seeks to benefit them to the exclusion of others.

[Expecting Rain]

12. What you are seeing is populism mixed in with nativist isolationism and protectionism.

And guns. Can't forget guns.

That, and demonization of anyone who has acquired wealth or created jobs as the evil scapegoats who are responsible for all of America's problems.

This is a regressive ideology that doesn't fit the 21st Century.

[R B Garr]

15. Great points, and an individual who advanced his own interest was Donald Trump by

copying the attacks on her, so obviously they influenced people and damaged her. When a con man like Trump sees it, well, it's there.

[Nevernose]

11. People have thought she was crooked for 25 years

Bernie didn't start that shit, and the closest he got to innuendo was referencing her Wall Street speeches, which even SHE says were a big mistake.

Sanders ran probably the cleanest campaign I've ever seen in my life, on any level.

Clinton's problem wasn't Sanders or Bernie-Bros, it was her serious underestimation of his (and his message's) appeal. She should have come down on Sanders way harder, way sooner. Released the bad porn from the 70s, talked about the Nicaragua vacation (which I actually fully support. Viva Los Sandinistas!). The Clintons have well-deserved reputations for being tough, downright nasty competitors and have since the 70s, and should probably have used those skills.

[BainsBane]

14. You are wrong about his campaign

And right that the attacks against Clinton began when she tried to pass universal healthcare now the early 90a. That those who claim to support that goal vilify her shows how little policy and issues matter. That disregard for issues is similarly displayed even today through a determined refusal to even look at the policies she proposed. Such disregard for issues didn't stop with the election of course. In fact, we see a politics focused on political tribalism, brand, and messaging to the exclusion of issues and policy. Single payer is only discussed in terms of boosterism for politicians.

Hillary Clinton is not "the Clinton's." She is her own person, not an appendage of her husband. That we saw the Intercept post charts purporting to show corporate financing for Hillary that dated from the 80s, when Hillary never sought elected office until the 2000s, among other things, the refusal to see her as her own person.

Lest you say none of that had to do with sexism but was particular to Clinton, I point you to the Hill poll commonly sited in support of Sanders. On that same poll, Liz Warren polls in the 30s, some 20 points less than Bernie. It certainly can't be because she isn't progressive enough, when her voting record shows far more consistent positions on issues identified as progressive. She currently polls less than Hillary and less than half of Hillary's favorability ratings before the 2016 election. So while you're right that Clinton has been vilified for a long time, her numbers were in the 60s and 70s while she was SoS and after. Clearly the election did have an influence, as this chart shows. http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating


The Nicaraguan vacation wasn't a productive approach for the primary, in my view, though it certainly would have been a point of attack in the GE. I think she would have been better off pointing out the vast differences between his rhetoric and voting record as well as super pacs and campaign finance violations. To this day, there has been no significant coverage of Old Towne Media. I suspect Sanders will not be so fortunate should he decide to run for president in the future. Clinton never raised those issues because she didn't need to in order to win. Where I think Hillary is wrong in her current assessment is that exposing any of that would have mattered with his supporters. None of it matters now. I don't see how it would have mattered then.

She made an insightful comment in her Sunday and interview. She said she misjudged the mood of the electorate. She thought voters wanted to hear solutions to problems, and she ran a campaign focused on how she would do that. Only, as she observed Sunday, this was an election in which people wanted to have someone express their anger. That is something both Bernie and Trump tapped into, Trump obviously far more successfully.

[oasis]

3. Interesting. nt

[BainsBane]

4. It certainly shows that his voters were not all to the left of the Democratc party

That a certain portion was considerably more conservative.

[zentrum]

7. Sanders Primary voters

....were largely Democrats. Most, not all, switched to Hillary in the General.

I'm one of them, as a lifelong Democrat, whose father was a precinct walker in the days when the Democratic Party had a strong local presence, which it no longer has.

Both Roosevelt and Truman would recognize him as a classic Democrat in their own mold.

If FDR was a Democrat, so is Bernie. Except for the foolishness of the "D" after his name. But if it walks like a duck...etc.

[Expecting Rain]

13. FDR: internationalist/free-trader/pro-capitalist reformer/anti-populist/...

anti-nativist/anti-isolationist.

I'm not seeing ducks.

[clu]

9. they are uninformed and knee jerk with

maybe some aspects of race issues. maybe they think merit-based open access to education is sufficient and that entitlement programs can be abused. my most competent co-worker in a somewhat technical field was a Kenyan woman - maybe they don't see race as an issue for any one of a number of reasons.

[berni_mccoy]

16. I've been making this same point to no avail...

Some will want to believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts.