Sen. Bernie Sanders has a huge uphill battle to actually win the Democratic nomination, one of them being ballot access in all fifty states, but for now, he may very well be right about some early primary wins.
ABC's George Stephanopolous spoke to Sanders about his recent rise in the polls and got some bold predictions in response from Bernie: Sen. Bernie Sanders Predicts He'll Win White House:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who has risen quickly in the polls for the 2016 Democratic nomination, predicted with confidence Sunday that he’ll secure the nomination and be elected president next year.
“We are going to win New Hampshire. We’re going to win Iowa, and I think we’re going to win the Democratic nomination, and I think we’re going to win the presidency,” Sanders told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”
Sanders said his economic message targeting the middle class would help him secure the nomination.
“The American people are sick and tired of seeing the disappearance of the great middle class of this country,” he said. "They're sick and tired of working longer hours for low wages while at the same time 99 percent of all new income generated is going to the top one percent."
When asked about a recent poll showing his low support among non-white voters, Sanders told ABC News he has spent many years fighting for civil rights and added he believed his economic message would resonate with minority communities.
“I have a long history in fighting for civil rights. I understand that many people in the African-American community may not understand that,” he said.
“Given the disparity that we're seeing in income and wealth in this country, it applies even more to the African-American community and to the Hispanic community. And what we are going to do is make a major outreach effort to those communities, let people know my background, let people know my record, and I think we're going to do just fine in those communities,” Sanders added.
Whatever happens, as I've said before, his entrance into the primary race is good for the Democrats, no matter how much chattering we hear from the Villagers in our corporate media. David Atkins agrees and did a very nice job of explaining just why here: Bernie Sanders Helps the Left, Donald Trump Hurts the Right:
As Bernie Sanders gains momentum among the Democratic primary electorate, there have been a number of commentators claiming his candidacy constitutes a tea party of left, weakening Hillary Clinton’s appeal to progressives and damaging her general election prospects.
It’s an easy conventional wisdom argument to make, especially for the Third Way centrist types who make a living concern trolling against progressives to promote a socially liberal yet corporate-friendly agenda. There’s also nothing more pleasing to most Beltway journalists than a “both sides do it” narrative in which both the leadership of both political parties is painted as nobly resisting their “extreme” base voters in order to “get things done”—as if passing legislation were the primary goal rather than passing good legislation, and as if laws that can somehow pass muster with the most centrist Democrats and Republicans were automatically the most commonsense, well-reasoned and level-headed solutions. (Hint: they’re not.)
Since the Republican Party is most assuredly being pulled to the right by antiquated stances promoting bigoted social doctrines and discredited supply-side economics that are wildly unpopular, especially with younger voters, it’s comforting to claim that the same is happening with the left. If Donald Trump is dangerous for Republicans, then assuredly Bernie Sanders must be dangerous for Democrats.
But he’s not. For starters, most prognosticators don’t consider either Trump or Sanders to be serious threats for the nomination. While Sanders is indeed rising in the polls, he still trails Clinton in most polls by very wide margins. So absent unforeseen circumstances, their effect is likely to be in shifting the tone and topics of the conversation.
As far as that goes, Sanders can only help Democrats. To start with, nearly every single policy position in Bernie Sanders’ quiver is publicly popular. There’s no sense in which the Democratic Party being branded with the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders is going to hurt its prospects with general election voters. It might hurt with corporate and Wall Street donors, but then that’s what the whole battle for the soul of the Party is all about. And frankly, if Democrats lose the general election in 2016 it won’t have been for lack of funding, but rather weakness of message.
Go read the rest where he finishes his point and ends with this: "There’s no comparison between the two, no matter how much the centrist pundits might wish it so."
