Bernie Is Favored To Win In New Hampshire-- Both On Tuesday And In November

Trump keeps whining that New Hampshire is a state he can win in November and tells his campaign manager he wants to contest the state. That's because he remembers winning the first-in-the-nation primary in 2016 and because he remembers how close it was in the general election. The final score was 348,521 (47.6%) for Clinton to 345,789 (47.2%) for Trump. Trump won 6 of the state's 10 counties, including the two biggest, Hillsborough and Rockingham. But Granite Staters have largely come to understand that Trump is a toxic sack of shit and his campaign knows it would be pointless to spend money there. Since inauguration day, Trump's favorability in the state has decreased by 14 points and is now underwater-- by a lot. 42% of New Hampshire voters approve and 55% disapprove. That's minus 13.

True, his 2016 primary victory smashed his opponents and put them back on their heels:

• Trump- 100,406 (35.3%)
• Kasich- 44,909 (15.8%)
• Cruz- 33,189 (11.7%)
• Bush- 31,310 (11.0%)
• Rubio- 30,032 (10.6%)
• Christie- 21,069 (7.4%)
• Fiorina- 11,706 (4.1%)
• Carson- 6,509 (2.3%)
• Paul- 1,900 (0.7%)

On the same day, Bernie was pulverizing Hillary. He beat her 151,584 (60.4%) to 96,252 (38.0%). Bernie had more votes than Trump and his top competitor (Kasich combined). And Bernie beat Hillary in all 10 counties. He also beat Trump in all 10 counties.

Hillary is still fighting that battle and has relentlessly and bitterly attacked Bernie ever since. As Ryan Teague Beckworth pointed out Friday just before the Democratic debate, "Clinton and two longtime allies have hammered Sanders over his ideology, his second-place finish in Iowa and his ability to get elected. Clinton, who said in January that Sanders was unlikable and insufficiently supportive of her nomination, hit him indirectly in an interview Thursday with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. Without naming Sanders, she said she was concerned about candidates who promise too much. 'We need to rebuild trust in our fellow Americans and in our institutions, and if you promise the moon and you can’t deliver the moon, then that’s going to be one more indicator of how, you know, we just can’t trust each other,' she said. She urged voters to ask themselves, 'Who do you think can win? Because if you don’t win, you can’t govern.'"

Beckworth noted that James Carville, a hopelessly reactionary old Clinton hack, went on Comcast's anti-Bernie TV station to say that "the Democratic Party risks becoming an 'ideological cult... This party needs to wake up and make sure that we talk about things that are relevant to people. We don’t need to become the British Labour Party. That’s a bad thing. It’s not going well over there.'"

New Hampshire voters rejected Clinton and her status quo establishment politics and embraced Bernie. And then she nearly lost to Trump. She's still furious about it. And she may hope Trump beats Bernie. At least he'd keep her taxes down. And, after all, she's always been a Republican anyway-- except for the issues that directly impact women and, more recently, gays.





At the debate, the establishment candidates who stand for the status quo ante went after Bernie-- and failed to stop his momentum. Bloomberg News reporter Gregory Korte: "The desperation to prevent Sanders from being the nominee was on full display. They saved some of their fire for the other leader in Iowa, Pete Buttigieg, but it seemed clear they’re most worried about the possibility-- not entirely out of the question-- that the Democrats’ nominee to take on President Donald Trump would be a self-described socialist they all plainly fear would lose. And if any of his rivals hoped for a breakout performance to halt Sanders’ momentum, it didn’t come. At the end of the two-and-a-half-hour debate, there was no clear alternative.

Sanders stuck to his populist message. “The way you bring people together is by presenting an agenda that works for the working people in this country, not for the billionaire class,” he said.

As vigorous as the attacks on Sanders were, they were conventional arguments that his passionate supporters have already rejected.

He’ll explode the deficit: “Bernie says that you have to bring people together and we have to have Medicare for All,” Biden said. “And he says he wrote the damn thing. But he’s unwilling to tell us what the damn thing is going to cost.”

He’s too extreme: Sanders’ approach to governing is “my way or the highway,“ Buttigieg said.

His “democratic socialist” label is a liability: “I think that’s the label that the president’s going to lay on everyone running with Bernie, if he’s a nominee,” Biden said.

He’s yesterday’s candidate: “The biggest risk we could take at a time like this would be to go up against that fundamentally new challenge by trying to fall back on the familiar,“ Buttigieg said.

But the Iowa caucuses showed that those attacks won’t deter Sanders’ base of young voters who see Sanders’ “revolution” as the antidote to millionaire and billionaire politicians.

Sanders characteristically didn’t back down or tack away from his more unpopular positions. One exception: His 2005 vote to protect gun manufacturers from product liability lawsuits. “The world has changed and my views have changed,“ he said.

On economic issues, Sanders has hewed to the same message for 40 years, and that makes him hard to stop, especially in a state that’s less than 80 miles from his Vermont home and where he beat Hillary Clinton by 22 percentage points in 2016.

He Can Do It by Nancy Ohanian

AP's coverage also addressed the "socialist" issue, if only superficially and without historical context. The GOP attacked every Democrat as a socialist since FDR and today is referring to every Democrat for every office as a socialist. It's a shame when the Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party give their screeds credibility. During the debate the muddle-headed Biden warned that Bernie would put the entire party at risk because of his self-proclaimed agenda of democratic socialism. "I think that’s the label that the president’s going to lay on everyone running with Bernie, if he’s a nominee." The GOP, as I said, is already doing that. Savvy congressional candidates are more worried that Biden and his status quo conservatism will be at the top of the ticket and many long for a progressive like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren leading the party.

Sanders was asked to respond to Trump’s comments earlier this week to Fox News, when the president said, “I think of communism when I think of Bernie.”

Sanders brushed off concerns about Trump’s attacks: “Donald Trump lies all the time,” he charged.

Asked if they had concerns about a top-of-the-ticket candidate with a “democratic socialist” moniker, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and businessman Tom Steyer raised their hands.

Former Vice President Joe Biden warned that Donald Trump and his allies would use the socialism label against Sanders and the party in a prospective general election matchup.

“Bernie’s labeled himself, not me, a democratic socialist,” Biden said before acknowledging his own political challenges.

Neither Elizabeth Warren nor Pete Buttigieg proved willing to criticize Sanders for embracing democratic socialism.

Warren, a Massachusetts senator, was asked about saying previously that she is “a capitalist to my bones.” But she refused to make a major contrast at Friday’s debate in New Hampshire, saying only, “Bernie and I have been friends for a long time.”

Warren said the “fundamental question” is “how we bring our party together” and talked about fighting government corruption, saying it is “an issue we can all agree on.”

Miles Kampf-Lassin, writing for In These Times about Bernie's win in Iowa, noted that by taking wining the popular vote there, Bernie has upended the notion that running as a socialist is a liability.

By claiming the most votes in Iowa-- a rural, Midwestern state-- Sanders has shown that fears over a Scarlet S have been largely overblown. In reality, the democratic socialist agenda that undergirds Sanders’ political philosophy-- free and universal healthcare, taxing the rich, canceling debt, ending wars, expanding workplace democracy and investing in a livable future for the planet-- is incredibly popular.

The pundits are already waving their arms, warning that Sanders is uniquely vulnerable to a Red Scare-style takedown because of his political beliefs. On Monday morning, MSNBC host Chris Matthews compared Sanders’ campaign to George McGovern’s failed 1972 presidential bid, saying the Democratic frontrunner reminds him of “some old guy with some old literature from this socialist party or that,” as if Sanders was more akin to a leafleter for the Revolutionary Communist Party than a U.S. senator first elected to Congress 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, at The Atlantic, neocon David Frum proclaims that “Bernie can’t win,” referring to him as “a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot.” And Matt Bennett and Lanae Erickson, hucksters for the Wall Street-funded, Democratic centrist think tank Third Way, write in USA Today that Sanders’ socialist ideas are “toxic,” cautioning that “Democrats must not be fooled by him now.”

Even Biden himself, reeling from a disastrous finish in Iowa, is joining in on the swipes. On Wednesday, Biden said: “If Sen. Sanders is the nominee for the party… every Democrat will have to carry the label Sen. Sanders has chosen for himself. He calls him-- and I don’t criticize him-- he calls himself a democratic socialist. Well, we're already seeing what Donald Trump is going to do with that.”

Such admonition is understandable coming from a political and media establishment that views Sanders’ redistributive platform with scorn: Their concern over “electability” really just masks their ideological opposition to Bernie Sanders’ political project. But that doesn’t make their claims correct.

Majorities of young people, women and Democrats all now say they prefer socialism over capitalism. And survey results from Data for Progress show that in a general election matchup, Sanders’ identification as a socialist would not be a liability against Trump. Interestingly, the results indicate that Sanders performs better against Trump when he’s identified as a “socialist” and the president as a “billionaire,” versus Democrat and Republican, respectively. As Vox concludes from the study, “tagging Sanders as a socialist did not seem to undermine his campaign.”

University of California political scientist Gabriel Lenz’s research has shown that, in general, voters “adopt their preferred party’s or candidate’s position as their own.” As a result, voters are less likely to be turned off by a candidate identifying as “socialist” if they generally agree with or approve of that candidate.

Sanders is the most popular hopeful in the race and is the most trusted on the issues most important to Democratic voters. And Sanders is reliably beating Trump in polls both nationally and in battleground states across the country. Rather than serving as a hindrance, Sanders’ political philosophy could actually benefit him in the country’s heartland. Chicago City Council member Carlos-Ramirez-Rosa, himself an outspoken democratic socialist, writes in NBC News that “Far from being allergic to socialism and class struggle… the Midwest has always been a region steeped in it-- even leading the way.”

By positioning himself as a candidate of and for the working class, Sanders has won the backing of low-wage workers and young people of color-- constituencies that will be key to winning the White House in November. In many ways, Trump’s perfect foil is Bernie Sanders: the son of an immigrant family who grew up poor, has been consistent in his political beliefs his entire life and has made workers the center of his campaign-- and billionaires like Trump the enemy.

The threat Sanders poses to Trump has been raised by none other than Trump himself. Leaked audio from a 2018 phone call showed Trump expressing relief that Hillary Clinton chose Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) rather than Sanders for her vice presidential nominee in 2016. “Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would've been tougher. He's the only one I didn't want her to pick,” Trump said. “Because [Sanders'] a big trade guy. You know he basically says we're getting screwed on trade. And he's right.

So, if Sanders does indeed have a real shot at beating Trump, why are so many in the Democratic brass sounding alarms over his rise? It could have something to do with the fact that Sanders has made the corporate wing of the Democratic Party his foe ever since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. In June 2019, Third Way president Jon Cowan called Sanders an “existential threat to the future of the Democratic Party.” More recently, centrist guru Rahm Emanuel said on ABC’s This Week, “The fact is one of the threats to the party right now is a rupture in the core.”

A rupture in the core of the corporate-centric Democratic Party establishment that Emanuel represents is exactly what a Sanders presidency promises. Which is the reason moderates like John Kerry are opening the door to jumping in the race to stop Sanders if his momentum continues to grow. Such gambits give the lie to the idea that party insiders are interested in representing the democratic will of the people. Instead, they want to protect the neoliberal consensus that’s dominated the party for the past 40 years-- and which Sanders’ campaign threatens.

Donald Trump has already laid out his strategy for the coming general election. “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream,” Trump said at a rally in June 2019. And in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump proclaimed: “socialism destroys nations, but always remember, freedom unifies the soul.”

Trump is running against socialism, that much is clear. That game plan won’t change whether or not Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee.

But Sanders boasts an asset that no other Democrat running can claim: He knows how to explain-- and defend-- democratic socialism in a way voters can understand.

At January’s Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Sanders if his description of himself as a democratic socialist would serve as a handicap. Sanders responded: “My democratic socialism says healthcare is a human right. We’re going to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We’re going to have a Green New Deal. That is what democratic socialism is about, and that will win this election.”

In a widely-touted speech last summer, Sanders explained that in contrast to demagogues like Trump who “meld corporatist economics with xenophobia and authoritarianism,” his democratic socialist vision seeks “a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love.”

Achieving that higher path means rejecting the kind of market fundamentalism that has dominated U.S. politics for decades, pitting working people against each other to fight over scraps while oligarchs grow their fortunes and fortify their political influence. Sanders’ socialism seeks to redistribute not just the wealth of the billionaire class but also its power, injecting more democracy-- and, as a result, freedom-- into American society.

As political science professor, Corey Robin explains at the New York Times, “The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.”

Establishing such a system and curtailing the role of unfettered capitalism in governing our lives may seem a Herculean task, even impossible. But after Sanders’ performance in Iowa, it’s possible that this more egalitarian future is firmly within our grasp.

Matthew Yglesias isn't anyone's idea of an avatar for progressivism but he's an accomplished journalist who noted at Vox after the debate that Bernie "is a highly skilled politician, and at Friday night’s debate he showed it. The Democratic Party is polarized right now between Bernie fans who insist that democratic socialism is the way forward and an establishment that’s terrified Sanders will bring electoral doom. The truth, however, is a bit more boring. Far-left politics isn’t really a winning hand, but Sanders himself is an effective player who consistently outperforms the partisan fundamentals in his races. Those talents were on display Friday evening at the New Hampshire debate, where he stayed relentlessly on message, emphasized the popular aspects of his agenda, and avoided major pitfalls. As long as he can avoid the trap of believing too much of his own hype, he has the ability to craft a winning message for November." He quoted Bernie responding to Mayo's reactionary sloaneering:

The way you bring people together-- Republicans, independents, Democrats, progressives, conservatives-- you raise the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour. The way you bring people together is to make it clear that we’re not going to give tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations. They’re going to start paying their fair share of taxes. That’s what the American people want.

And I’ll tell you something else. The way you bring people together is by ending the international disgrace of this country being the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right.

And you bring people together by telling the pharmaceutical industry they’re not going to charge us 10 times more for the same prescription drugs as the people in Canada that borders on New Hampshire. That’s how you bring people together and you defeat Donald Trump.

The Real Clear Politics polling average for New Hampshire as of today:

• Bernie- 26.0%
• Mayo Pete- 22.5%
• Elizabeth- 13.0%
• Status Quo Joe- 13.0%
• Klobuchar- 8.0%
• Yang- 3.5%
• Steyer- 2.8%

And last week's Emerson poll, the most recent and the most accurate, showed Bernie with a much greater lead: