2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumGOP Chief Says Hillary Clinton Easier to Defeat in General Election Than Sanders
https://twitter.com/iBrianHamilton/status/722696130505666560
How stupid are you, America?
TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)that woman has more baggage than the Samsonite warehouse.
madamesilverspurs
(15,805 posts)isn't hers to begin with.
TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)hehe.
Gomez163
(2,039 posts)2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)Gomez163
(2,039 posts)Remember "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
The use of the phrase "that woman" was singled out as sexist back then.
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)Gothmog
(145,321 posts)The GOP really wants to run against a weaker candidate http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-karl-rove-attack
In a Tuesday evening statement, the Clinton campaign's communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, mentioned an ad from the Rove-aligned super PAC American Crossroads, which accused Clinton of being in Wall Street's pocket. Palmieri said the ad suggests that Republicans want to face Sanders in the general election.
"While Senator Sanders tries to make a case on electability based on meaningless polls, Republicans and their super PACs have made clear the candidate theyre actually afraid to face. The Sanders argument falls apart when the GOP spokesman is trying to help him and the Republicans run ads trying to stop Hillary Clinton in the primary," she said in the statement.
Karl Rove is running an attack ad against Clinton and these ads have helped Sanders. Rove is doing this for one purpose which is to weaken the strongest candidate and Sanders has been benefiting from these ads
nc4bo
(17,651 posts)Skinner
(63,645 posts)Not like he has any ulterior motive or anything.
rbrnmw
(7,160 posts)emulatorloo
(44,131 posts)TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)Skwmom
(12,685 posts)Democrats they know.
The GOP have waited a long time to take it to the Democrats. You are handing them a HUGE gift.
emulatorloo
(44,131 posts)TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)emulatorloo
(44,131 posts)TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)the RNC for damn sure won't let Trump have it.
I just hope it's nobody that's actually electable.
emulatorloo
(44,131 posts)TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)I hope it's televised - every second of it.
Of course he back room goings-on would be pure unadulterated entertainment.
thesquanderer
(11,990 posts)...yet one of them will probably be elected!
riversedge
(70,242 posts)msongs
(67,420 posts)Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)LOL
Blue_Adept
(6,399 posts)Anything to distract from his own shit show.
mcar
(42,334 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)TheBlackAdder
(28,209 posts)Gman
(24,780 posts)Sanders is not vetted and would crumple up with their first attack ad.
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)where Clinton has a ton and a fucking half of skeletons sticking out of her oversized closets.
thesquanderer
(11,990 posts)Hillary's unfavorables (outside the Dem base) are already sky high, and as I've said elsewhere, her favorability will likely sink even more in the general, because Bernie has been handling her with kid gloves. Once (presumably) Trump hammers her on the emails, on the Clinton foundation, and runs a constant loop of Bosnian sniper fire commercials and the like, she'll be that much further in the hole. It's not like her unfavorables are going to be getting any better for the general. And they just aren't going to be able to do to Bernie in 3 months what it took them 25 years to do to Hillary, plus he doesn't provide them with as much ammunition. For electability, HRC was the weaker choice, but hopefully she's good enough.
Gman
(24,780 posts)Maybe he doesn't. But we don't know that.
thesquanderer
(11,990 posts)Better to put up a candidate who might or might not have baggage over one that definitely has tons of it.
And again, it would be tough to do to Bernie in 3 months what it took them 25 years to do to Hillary. And she still has stuff nobody has really used against her yet.
I'd also suggest that if he had any real deal-killer in his background, Hillary would have found it and used it. Instead, she and her campaign had to resort to ginning up a bunch of phony or at least severely misleading stuff (accusations of sexism, questions about whether he was in a photo, the "foreward" to a book, the auto bailout, derivative deregulation, siding with the Koch brothers, vigilanteism, taking away people's medicare...)
uponit7771
(90,347 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Zira
(1,054 posts)highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)When Trump boasted that he has the biggest hands ever, did you fall for that line, too?
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)"We'll beat whoever you nominate."
When they specify a candidate - watch out. The double-speak is on!
Guess who's not Ready for Hillary?
JTFrog
(14,274 posts)By Steve Benen
01/19/16 09:22 AM
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was asked last week which Democratic presidential candidate hed prefer to face in a general election. The RNC chief said Bernie Sanders is probably the tougher candidate.
Its obviously difficult to take Priebus assessment at face value even if he has a firm opinion, the Republican has no incentive to tell the truth and his comments are all the more curious given what his party has been up to lately.
During Sundays Democratic debate, for example, reporters received emails from the candidates campaigns and their allies, but in a remarkable twist, the Republican National Committee also issued statements two during the event, two after defending Sanders against criticisms from Hillary Clinton and endorsing Sanders arguments.
Bloomberg Politics Sahil Kapur reported that Republican operatives have a strange crush on Bernie Sanders, and it goes beyond the RNCs pro-Sanders rapid-response during Sunday nights debates. After the debate, the Republican political action committee America Rising promoted the narrative that Sanders won the debate .
Hillary rewarded Wall Street with a $700 billion bailout, then Wall Street made her a multi-millionaire, a narrator in the ad says. Does Iowa really want Wall Street in the White House?
Yep, Karl Roves operation is not only complaining about the bailout his former boss signed into law, Team Rove is also suddenly worried about Wall Streets influence in DC just like Bernie Sanders.
Or put another way, Reince Priebus can say he sees Sanders as a stronger general-election candidate, but his actions suggest he means the opposite.
Gothmog
(145,321 posts)The GOP wants Sanders to be the nominee because he is a very very weak general election candidate http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-republicans-are-eager-intervene-the-democratic-race
Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist. But if he were to win the nomination the knives would come out for Bernie pretty quick, said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romneys campaign. Theres no mystery what the attack on him would be. Bernie Sanders is literally a card carrying socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Thered be hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican ads showing hammers and sickles and Soviet Union flags in front of Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton is a much more centrist candidate in comparison, Williams said, and she would have a better chance of winning over moderate and undecided voters, despite numerous polls showing that many Americans, even in the Democratic Party, dont view her as honest and trustworthy. Bernies numbers are better than hers right now because shes been in the political arena for 30 years getting beat up, he said.
Former RNC spokesperson Doug Heye added that Republicans look at some of Sanders success with bemusement, because they think it would be easy to define Sanders as out of the mainstream.
The Bloomberg Politics piece quoted a Sanders campaign official saying that Republicans are simply wrong and that may very well be the case. The underlying question is inherently speculative and theres no way to prove definitely whos correct. It is, in fact, possible that Republicans underestimate Sanders appeal, just as its possible that Sanders could withstand the ferocity of the Republican Attack Machine, which the Vermont senator has never faced.
The fact remains that some of the more controversial aspects of Sanders record and platform are not widely known to the public at large love her or hate her, Clinton is already a well established figure and we dont know for sure how the race to define the senator would unfold.
But while we cant see the future, we can see the present, and right now, Republicans would look forward to a general election against Sanders even if they shouldnt.
I strongly believe that Sanders would be a horrible and very weak general election candidate
Gothmog
(145,321 posts)The premise of Sanders' lame claim that he should stay in is that he is a better candidate in the general election. That claim is simply false. Sanders has not been vetted which means that Sanders is very vulnerable to attack ads. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/04/19/some-republicans-see-socialist-bernie-sanders-as-the-weaker-opponent/
This current situation is in many ways unprecedented, and makes it harder than ever to gauge which candidate is more electable this fall. We have one Democratic candidate who has been a major national figure for 25 years, and has been subjected to unrelenting national attacks for just as long, and one Democratic candidate who legitimately is significantly more liberal than many in the party.
And so, its at least possible that two decades of attacks on Clinton are baked into her polling against the GOP candidates. Nor can the possibility be dismissed that some of Sanderss positions (middle class tax hikes as part of a transition to single payer, which he defends on the grounds that Americans would benefit overall) could be made into liabilities, if Republicans prosecuted attacks on them effectively. There is a danger in being too risk averse, of course, but that doesnt mean there is no chance that Republicans could successfully use these positions to paint Sanders as an ideological outlier, as those GOP strategists suggest above.
Of course, the fact that Sanders is a relative unknown nationally, at least compared to Clinton, could conceivably play in his favor if he could successfully rebut GOP attacks on his proposals and background, he might arguably end up having less baggage in a general election than does Clinton, given her dismal personal ratings. And the rise of negative partisanship in which voters are motivated more than ever by dislike of the other side could also help mitigate any negatives about Sanders.
The point is that gaming out the electability argument either way is made harder than ever by the fact that the juxtaposition of these two particular figures has created such a strange and unique situation.
Match up polling is meaningless unless both candidates are fully vetted. Sanders is not vetted and is very vulnerable
Gothmog
(145,321 posts)No one who understand the polling really believes that Sanders is more electable than Clinton. The GOP is clear that they would rather face Sanders compared to Clinton http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-18/despite-polls-republicans-see-sanders-as-an-easier-opponent
Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist. But if he were to win the nomination the knives would come out for Bernie pretty quick, said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's campaign. There's no mystery what the attack on him would be. Bernie Sanders is literally a card carrying socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. There'd be hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican ads showing hammers and sickles and Soviet Union flags in front of Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton is a much more centrist candidate in comparison, Williams said, and she would have a better chance of winning over moderate and undecided voters, despite numerous polls showing that many Americans, even in the Democratic Party, don't view her as honest and trustworthy. Bernie's numbers are better than hers right now because she's been in the political arena for 30 years getting beat up, he said.
Out of the Mainstream
Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Clinton would be a tougher opponent due to her foreign policy fluency, her toughness as a candidate, and the Clinton attack machine around hergroups like Correct the Record and Americans United for Change that are active on her behalf. He added that there's less room for the GOP to define Clinton than Sanders as out of the mainstream.
Her negatives are set in. There's no American out there who doesn't have a definite opinion on Hillary Clinton, Heye said. That's just not the case with Bernie. The fact that some of his success has been looked on with bemusement, I think, speaks to that.
Believing that Sanders may be too far outside the mainstream to win the Democratic primary, the Republican National Committee is doling out reams of opposition research on Clinton, and virtually none on Sanders. (By contrast, the Democratic National Committee has continued to launch attacks on Kasich, even though he has no mathematical chance of winning the GOP nomination before the convention.) Still, the RNC's actions don't reflect its chairman's rhetoric about who it would rather face.
Sanders has not been vetted and would be an easy target for the GOP
boston bean
(36,221 posts)Of course he would say that. To keep the bernsters going. It isn't because he thinks it's the truth.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Really?
People are so gullible I swear.