Sunday, November 20, 2016

A basket of deplorables

I'm a bit sore about the U.S. election.  For people like me who supported Bernie Sanders, it's a huge temptation to say, "I told you so!" Back in the spring Sanders' supporters pointed to polls that kept showing Sanders leading Republicans like Donald Trump by wider margins than Hillary Clinton did.  All the Clintonites could say to that was that such polls were unreliable.

Yes, I do believe that Sanders would have beaten Trump decisively.  He had greater support than Clinton among the crucial bloc of independent voters:  indeed, he probably would have won the nomination itself if key states hadn't excluded independent voters from their Democratic primary.  And he likely would have got a much higher turnout, especially among younger voters.

Sanders narrowly lost the nomination (among other bad reasons) because too many Democrats said, "he's not One of Us!" Yet at key moments like the vote on invading Iraq, Sanders proved to be a more reliable supporter of Democratic policy than Clinton!  The Democrats chose the wrong moment to be clannish.

When a Cassandra gets proved right, it's a cold comfort indeed.

No comments:

Post a Comment