If It's Trump vs Bernie, Who Will Win?

[TheEconomist]

Keep in mind that this is merely and only in part the case against him. There is also the case _for_ Sanders which is substantial given popular support of his pillar polices; ideas to excite and galvanize people, along with being a unique politician who has thus far proven to be genuinely incorruptible.

You can certainly find something appealing about Bernie Sanders. He is widely popular among young people, college educated people and he outraised all other Democrats in the last quarter of 2020, if I am not mistaken. It's also true that he seems to actually believe in what he proposes and I can respect that. You can also dislike Donald Trump. I don't peculiarly like his attitude and I think that his political strategy does not help re-establish a more civil environment for political discussion in the United States. He's taking advantage of radicals online to generate outrage. I don't think he's anywhere near as bad as some people make him out to be, but I don't like him. To be honest, Sanders really is less abrasive for my taste.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, if I was American and Sanders won the nomination, I would probably lean toward voting for Trump. I cannot stress enough how much I loath the identity politics many Democrats decided to play over the last few years and Bernie Sanders is walking around with Ocasio-Cortez of all people. I'm perfectly okay with disagreements of substance over policy issues. I'm perfectly okay with trying to remedy discrimination where it actually exists. It's unsurprising: I actually lean to the left. But I'm not okay with authoritarians peddling identity politics, irrespective of whether they come from the right or from the left. Both of them put people into little boxes and fail to treat them as unique individuals capable of making their own choices. I have neither patience, nor respect for that.

So, maybe I do not appreciate enough what Sanders has to offer because he's walking around with someone I profoundly dislike.

 

[btthegreat]

I'm not very confident in my prediction, but the only candidate that will inspire young voters is Bernie. I think a strong majority of older Democrats will still vote for him, but there will be losses in the recently gained suburban Republicans. Aside from the word socialism Bernie is positioned pretty well in those rust belt states given his stance on trade. I think he beats Trump by close margins in the rust belt.

The most unreliable vote, is a young one. The most reliable vote is an older voter. I can't count the number of elections that were lost because young people polled well but found something else to do on election day. If I have to piss off a demographic on a week before election day, its going to be voters between 18-25. But I really don't want to tick off the seniors. That is why entitlements like Medicaid, Medicare and social security are so hard to tame but you can vote against education funding and still live to see another election.

 

[Divine_Wind]

Recent studies have shown that this is no longer true. There are actually only about .5% who actually switch parties based on issues and candidates. There was a time when this was true, there were Reagan Democrats, for instance.

Now what happens is there are independents who lean Democratic or who lean Republican. It boils down to who is voting. If the independents who lean Democratic stay home, like in 2016. Republicans win.

If Independents who lean Republican stay home, Democrats win. The question will be which candidate can convince the leaners to vote. Will those who voted Trump last time, come out and do it again? Or are they tired of the chaos. Can Bernie, excite the left leaners into coming out to vote?

Agreed about "lean" but they are still Independents. I "lean" Republican because I was won for 38 years and only left several years ago because they'd gone, IMO, insane. OTOH, I've never been a Democrat nor desire to be one since, IMO, they've always been insane. When it comes to the election, I can vote for the lesser of two evils or third party. I do not believe I am alone in these beliefs since the ranks of Independents have grown larger over the past several decades.

As posted, I think most will vote for the status quo.

 

[jamesbyoung]

NYC, and I get out everyday the wife doesn't want to keep me busy at home. Of course I already state that in this thread that you haven't had the respect to read.

Do mind your manners. I asked you nicely, so be nice. I would think your world view would be more developed if you live in NYC. Of course, I understand the getting out of the house every day. I have a wife, too, who would keep me busy all day at home, if I were around.

 

[Surrealistik]

You can certainly find something appealing about Bernie Sanders. He is widely popular among young people, college educated people and he outraised all other Democrats in the last quarter of 2020, if I am not mistaken. It's also true that he seems to actually believe in what he proposes and I can respect that. You can also dislike Donald Trump. I don't peculiarly like his attitude and I think that his political strategy does not help re-establish a more civil environment for political discussion in the United States. He's taking advantage of radicals online to generate outrage. I don't think he's anywhere near as bad as some people make him out to be, but I don't like him. To be honest, Sanders really is less abrasive for my taste.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, if I was American and Sanders won the nomination, I would probably lean toward voting for Trump. I cannot stress enough how much I loath the identity politics many Democrats decided to play over the last few years and Bernie Sanders is walking around with Ocasio-Cortez of all people. I'm perfectly okay with disagreements of substance over policy issues. I'm perfectly okay with trying to remedy discrimination where it actually exists. It's unsurprising: I actually lean to the left. But I'm not okay with authoritarians peddling identity politics, irrespective of whether they come from the right or from the left. Both of them put people into little boxes and fail to treat them as unique individuals capable of making their own choices. I have neither patience, nor respect for that.

So, maybe I do not appreciate enough what Sanders has to offer because he's walking around with someone I profoundly dislike.

So far as ID politics goes, Bernie is perhaps the least affiliated with that among the Dem field; he has always been focused on economic matters and policy to the point of being lambasted for his relative lack of attention to matters of identity politics or social justice.

So far as the disproportionate emphasis on ID politics with respect to many if not most Dem representatives, I suspect that has much to do with wanting to smokescreen for a lack of genuine left wing bona fides on economic matters (because their megadonors aren't interested in higher taxes and ambitious/transformative change that might imply said higher taxes). However, I will note that as OC goes, she does place more emphasis on economic justice than ID politics, though perhaps not quite to the extent Sanders does.

 

[chuckiechan]

I don't think we've tried this one.

Trump will take 100% of the electoral vote, and 90% of the popular vote.

 

[TheEconomist]

I'm just going by the numbers as they are. His approval and popularity numbers just aren't good.

That surely is true.

In general the economy under Trump has more or less featured a continuation of existing trends; certainly nothing unduly or disproportionately impressive. I think on the whole, one can argue that the economy is doing well, but there hasn't been some fantastical boom that has exceeded expectations or ongoing trends as Donnie often asserts.

The overall impact of the party in the White House on measures such as growth rate of some measure of real GDP is statistically undistinguishable from nothing. In fact, the correlation dies as soon as you get rid of long term downward trends. You're far from a reasonable model and there is nothing left to explain, in other words. I don't think we can make a good case that any president has had a large impact on business cycle fluctuations. This applies to Trump. Now, if you were to look at specific policies and specific indicators, you might get something. Clearly, that's not what politicians do: they will all take credit when things go well and they will all decline to do it when things go wrong. Most of it, as you point out, probably is not reasonable.

Overall, I wouldn't consider this a point of weakness, but I don't think it's a source of particular strength either, particularly as there's no clear before and after differential he can point at vis a vis his policies; at best, if he's being honest (lol), Trump can say he didn't **** things up, which for him is admittedly impressive.

Your intuition about the break you should observe is correct (measuring the causal effect requires us to posit an expected value for the counterfactual scenario that is missing), in my experience, most people do not put the problem this way. Those who support Donald Trump will point to results without reference to the missing case (here, it's something like continuing Obama-era policies across the board). Those who oppose Donald Trump will play with measurement errors and/or cherry picking the worse indicators of economic activity.

Both of them miss the point. There's probably not that big a difference in the grand picture between Trump in office and another typical president. There probably are specific differences, though.

 

[Patriotic Voter]

Uninformed people often toe the party line. That explains a lot.

One reason they are uninformed is their news source choices. See the media poll thread.

 

[MrPeanut]

The most unreliable vote, is a young one. The most reliable vote is an older voter. I can't count the number of elections that were lost because young people polled well but found something else to do on election day. If I have to piss off a demographic on a week before election day, its going to be voters between 18-25. But I really don't want to tick off the seniors. That is why entitlements like Medicaid, Medicare and social security are so hard to tame but you can vote against education funding and still live to see another election.

I agree, but the hope would be that older voters will vote anyways. You have to inspire the young to vote to get them to the polling location. Look at someone like Obama. Bernie is the only one with that kind of spark among the young. Bernie will only piss off seniors because of the term socialism. He wants to strengthen all of the programs they depend on.

 

[TheEconomist]

So far as ID politics goes, Bernie is perhaps the least affiliated with that among the Dem field; he has always been focused on economic matters and policy to the point of being lambasted for his relative lack of attention to matters of identity politics or social justice.

I didn't follow Sanders enough to get a good sense of his position on ID politics. All I know is that he walks around with someone who made extremely stupid comments about white supremacy just a few months ago. She made a series of post likening wwhite supremacy to some sort of virus, but it was a variant of the dog whistle argument and it just sounds like a convenient excuse to paint everyone who disagrees with her as evil.

To be fair, you're probably right. Some of the people who were die hard fans in 2016 voted for Trump, perhaps because the guy doesn't pander to educated elites too. There is an "outsider" appeal to Sanders and, nowadays, it seems to be working for politicians.

So far as the disproportionate emphasis on ID politics with respect to many if not most Dem representatives, I suspect that has much to do with wanting to smokescreen for a lack of genuine left wing bona fides on economic matters (because their megadonors aren't interested in higher taxes and ambitious/transformative change that might imply said higher taxes). However, I will note that as OC goes, she does place more emphasis on economic justice than ID politics, though perhaps not quite to the extent Sanders does.

I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is playing her hand the wrong way. She's an hispanic woman who was tending bars just a few years ago. She's a congresswoman, has an enviable followership on social media and is a central figure of the Democratic party. She embodies all the possibilities and opportunities offered to vast swaths of people in America. Her own life is a theatrical annecdote that heavily conflicts with her personal views on discrimination. You'd think she would try to milk that cow a little, but she doe not.

She parrots the criticism of academics she probably never bothered reading and tries to tap into a deep cynicism about America to build support, but she doesn't have to do that. She could just adjust the rhetoric a little and it would protect her from being attacked as unpatriotic. People on the far left tend to have a personnality that disposed to respond to strongly to perceptions of harm and care, but they are also relatively unphased with concerns of loyalty**. They don't get the appeal of "Make American great again" or "America First." I am not sure AOC understands that treating America as a fundamentally racist country makes her more off putting than she needs to be. She could sell similar policies without risking to open up her flank to accusations of being unamerican or insulting moderate voters.

That's another thing that is so bizarre about Democrats. Where on Earth do you hear people argue over how little success they have had in their lives as if not being able to run a successful career or business was desirable? If you did something difficult in your life, that should be a good thing. It means you might not screw up too bad if we ask you to do something complicated.


** That comes straight out of research conducted by Jonathan Haidt. You can read about it in "The Righteous Mind." People who self-identify with the left tend to load most of their speech and reactions disproportionally on a subset of all possible dimensions of moral cognition. Haidt points out that this might explain why he found that conservatives have an easier time accurately explaining liberal points of view than the reverse (on average). Accuracy here would be measured as the other side agreeing the argument is good summary.

 

[Winston]

Those rust belt states went to Trump in 2016. Why do you think Bernie woudl get them?

He steals his thunder on key issues that are important to those voters and polling shows him up


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[TheEconomist]

One reason they are uninformed is their news source choices. See the media poll thread.

Most of mainstream media is biased to the left, although some outlets are more biased than others and there are a few more conservatives outlets. Conservative outlets aren't exactly equivalent to liberal outlets because they tend to do more commentary than classical on-field repporting, as far as I can tell. I might be wrong on that last point, but it's my impression. Now, motivated reasoning is impossible to avoid and you, as a liberal, will see more easily problems when conservative speaks than when liberal speaks. The best way to counter that is to let people who are motivated to make an argument make it for you. In terms of news sourcing, here is a simple way to do it: read the New York Times and the Daily Wire, or watch MSNBC and Fox News. Your best proxy of what is true is the overlap: it's what they share. And if you want to know if an argument is strong, you pick it on one side and you let the other side attack it -- and see if it survives.


And, frankly, if you want me to bet on which group is likelier to be less properly informed, I would point out that it's very hard for a conservative to avoid liberal points of view. It's not a secret that liberals dominate the arts, so movies and comedy largely are slanted in one direction. They also dominate most fields in the academia, so you cannot attend college without being exposed to it. Even in fields like economics, the ratio is something around 3 or 4 liberals for every conservative. And the media is slightly slanted to the left (on average). On the other hand, it's very easy to live in a bubble if you are a liberal in the United States. If you study social sciences, you might never run into a credible defense of rightwing policies. If you watch big budget hollywood movies, you will probably never run into movies that supports socially conservative values. Most of the time, capitalism is bad, traditions are bad, etc. And if you watch MSNBC, it's not Rachel Maddow that's going to give you a detailed summary of what appeals to Republican voters.

They're not really less informed than you. It's just that it's easier to see problems in others than it is to see them in yourself.

 

[jamesbyoung]

it's very easy to live in a bubble if you are a conservative in the United States.

 

[OldFatGuy]

Do mind your manners. I asked you nicely, so be nice. I would think your world view would be more developed if you live in NYC. Of course, I understand the getting out of the house every day. I have a wife, too, who would keep me busy all day at home, if I were around.

You want respect, you first give respect. Mind your own manners. Read the threads from the beginning before opening your mouth. Show respect to those who post by doing so.

My world view is far more experienced than your own. I understand that indifference does not mean dislike. And I am not the one stuck in a partisan world view. My agenda is an open mind.

 

[TheEconomist]

it's very easy to live in a bubble if you are a conservative in the United States.

The data is clearly on my side.

The media leans to the left, the arts lean heavily to the left and most of the academia leans to the left. It's almost impossible to not run into a liberal point of view. Even if you hand picked websites, news sources, books and did not attend college, chances are that you'd be exposed to it in a waiting room, a coffee shop or a bar because someone else watches a different channel. Or you would go to see a movie and almost every single movie will take a liberal point of view on every issue you can think about: marriage, sexuality, drugs, history, wealth, entrepreneurship, traditions, religion... Or you would go talk to a teacher at an elementary, middle or high school about your kids and you would almost invariably come across a liberal point of view on matters of education.

None of what I am writting here is controversial. As a matter of fact, a lot of the information and entertainment we consumme comes from people with a liberal point of view. I'm sure I'm not shocking anyone by saying that the actors, actresses and directors from the hollywood crowd aren't big fans of Republicans.

 

[jamesbyoung]

Since you attend these meetings, by your standard you must be out of touch too.

Not at all. I attend my mainstream traditional church several times a week. I attend evangelical church services as an observer.

 

[jamesbyoung]

You want respect, you first give respect. Mind your own manners. Read the threads from the beginning before opening your mouth. Show respect to those who post by doing so.

My world view is far more experienced than your own. I understand that indifference does not mean dislike. And I am not the one stuck in a partisan world view. My agenda is an open mind.

Be polite, and you will get what you want. Your experience may or may not be more than mine, but your writing does not reflect that you are not stuck in a political world or that your agenda is an open mind.

 

[jamesbyoung]

The data is clearly on my side.

The media leans to the left, the arts lean heavily to the left and most of the academia leans to the left. It's almost impossible to not run into a liberal point of view. Even if you hand picked websites, news sources, books and did not attend college, chances are that you'd be exposed to it in a waiting room, a coffee shop or a bar because someone else watches a different channel. Or you would go to see a movie and almost every single movie will take a liberal point of view on every issue you can think about: marriage, sexuality, drugs, history, wealth, entrepreneurship, traditions, religion... Or you would go talk to a teacher at an elementary, middle or high school about your kids and you would almost invariably come across a liberal point of view on matters of education.

None of what I am writting here is controversial. As a matter of fact, a lot of the information and entertainment we consumme comes from people with a liberal point of view. I'm sure I'm not shocking anyone by saying that the actors, actresses and directors from the hollywood crowd aren't big fans of Republicans.

What you are writing is conceived in a partisan bubble.

 

[OldFatGuy]

Be polite, and you will get what you want. Your experience may or may not be more than mine, but your writing does not reflect that you are not stuck in a political world or that your agenda is an open mind.

Do not tell me what to do or say. You've repeatedly shown no respect for all the posters who post before you by not reading them.

Unlike you, I am not stuck with partisan limitations. Disgust with the left does not mean approval of the right.

 

[jamesbyoung]

Do not tell me what to do or say. You've repeatedly shown no respect for all the posters who post before you by not reading them.

Unlike you, I am not stuck with partisan limitations. Disgust with the left does not mean approval of the right.

I told you what the result would be, not what to do. You are stuck with partisan limitations, and now are quarreling simply because I pointed it out. So you are now placed where you belong.

 

[Moderate Right]

Trump will take 100% of the electoral vote, and 90% of the popular vote.

Now you sound like a Trumpster.

 

[chuckiechan]

Now you sound like a Trumpster.

Definitely not a Burnster!

 

[MAGAnificent]

He steals his thunder on key issues that are important to those voters and polling shows him up


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The same polling that assured you the hildabeast would be elected president in 2016???

 

[charliebrown]

We are way too early in predicting the general election results. If Bernie wins the nomination it is going to be critical that he picks a good rational VP that will excite someone other than overly progressive citizens. Having AOC campaign for him is one thing, having her a short step away from the presidency is down right scary.

 

[OldFatGuy]

I told you what the result would be, not what to do. You are stuck with partisan limitations, and now are quarreling simply because I pointed it out. So you are now placed where you belong.

Learn how to read and comprehend.