This morning I woke up to find the tweet storm above about Bernie's Medicare for All proposal and how it may help define electoral politics over the next few years. Over the last months, I've been asserting that Bernie would have won by pointing to the counties and districts that Trump won went for Bernie over Trump in the primaries. This wasn't about Bernie beating Hillary in counties in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, etc... this was about counties where voters went to the polls and cast more votes for Bernie than for Trump, but then-- in the general-- looked at what Trump was offering and what Hillary was offering and decided it was Trump who was the lesser evil.
She was unquestionably the candidate of the status quo. What voters had to decide was whether the change Trump was promising was change for the better or change for the worse. People capable of a modicum of discernment and critical thought decided Trump was worse. Nearly three million more Americans saw Trump for what he was and voted for Hillary, whether holding their nose or with some kind of hope and enthusiasm.
The kind of counties I'm talking about are like rural and coal counties in West Virginia. Sure Bernie beat Hillary in every single one of them. And Trump beat Hillary in every single one of them, but that isn't what I'm looking at. On primary day counties like Boone gave Bernie 2,410 votes and Trump 1,388 votes (second place Dem was Hillary with 1,244 votes and second place Republican was Cruz with 97 votes). Calhoun Co. gave Bernie 803 votes and Trump 480 votes. Trump crushed Cruz in Clay County 568 (80.8%) to 68 (9.7%) but Bernie beat them both combined with 754 votes. These are rural West Virginia counties. Logan Co. saw Bernie with 3,201 votes and Trump with 1,665 votes. McDowell gave Bernie 1,453 to Trump's 760. Mingo went 2,425 for Bernie to 1,161 for Trump. These aren't college towns; they're coal towns. But even in urban Monongalia Co., the state's third-most populous, which includes Morgantown, Bernie beat Trump 8,096 to 5,971. Voters knew they wanted change and they sensed Bernie change would be better for them and their families than what Trump represented. Now let's look at key counties in the states that swung the electoral college to Trump-- where Trump beat Hillary but where Bernie had beaten Trump. We'll start in Wisconsin where the state's 10 electoral votes went to Trump because he beat Hillary 1,405,284 to 1,382,536 a margin of 22,748 votes. What we're not looking at here are counties where Bernie beat Hillary but where Hillary them went on to beat Trump. A good example would be Dane County, where Hillary kicked Trump's ass, 217,506 (71.4%) to 71,270 (23.4%). A case could be made that Bernie would have done even better. Why? This is how primary day looked in Dane County:
• Bernie- 102,585Throw in another 1,500 votes for the other Republicans still in the race (Rubio, Carson, Paul, Bush, etc) and all the Republicans together wound up with around 70,000 votes, far less than just Bernie alone. But we're not looking at counties like Dane, just the ones where Trump beat Hillary but which would have likely gone to Bernie in the general. Here are a dozen that would have put Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes in Bernie's column:
• Hillary- 61,072
• Cruz- 26,320
• Trump- 20,884
• Kasich- 20,055
• Columbia Co.- Bernie- 6,455; Trump- 4,413Now let's skip around the country and look at 20 key counties in various states that meet the same criteria we saw in Wisconsin-- where Bernie beat Hillary and Trump in the primaries but where Trump then went on to win in the general (primary states only, not caucus states)
• Dunn Co.- Bernie- 4,272; Trump- 3,074
• Grant Co.- Bernie- 4,484; Trump- 3,462
• Kenosha Co.- Bernie-14,612; Trump- 11,139
• Outagamie Co.- Bernie- 16,985; Trump- 13,848
• Pierce Co.- Bernie- 3,199; Trump- 2,822
• Racine Co.- Bernie- 14,651; Trump- 11,756
• Rock Co.- Bernie- 17,337; Trump- 10,264
• Sheboygan Co.- Bernie- 8,537; Trump- 6,532
• Vernon Co.- Bernie- 3,476; Trump- 2,437
• Walworth Co.- Bernie- 8,405; Trump- 7,534
• Winnebago Co.- Bernie- 17,818; Trump- 13,293
• Hillsborough Co, NH- Bernie- 38,646; Trump- 28,981Those counties are all blue color counties that rejected Hillary for Trump after voting for Bernie. The DC Dems refuse to try to understand how that could happen and refuse to try to make sure that kind of nightmare doesn't happen again. Just look at the crap from the bottom of the sewer-- Sinema and Rosen-- Schumer has recruited to run for the Arizona and Nevada Senate seats! Could not be worse! And the DCCC is doing their best to recruit the worst barnful of candidates in their illustrious history. What I'm writing about here are working families for whom the status quo is completely dysfunctional and who were looking for a candidate to change that. Hillary, for many was so out of the question that they preferred to take a chance an utterly unqualified sociopath like Trump. Many may be sorry now and that should reverberate in the midterms next year. If Pelosi and Schumer play their own status quo games-- to please the donors who, to be completely honest, are their top constituencies, voters will take it out on the Democrats in 2020. Read Costa's tweets up top again, carefully.
• Rockingham Co, NH- Bernie- 31,080; Trump- 28,716
• Grand Traverse., MI- Bernie- 8,091; Trump- 5,891
• Kent Co., MI- Bernie- 43,375; Trump- 22,742
• Wood Co, OH- Bernie- 7,165; Trump- 6,911
• Madison Co., IL- Bernie- 18,723; Trump- 15,588
• Winnebago Co., IL- Bernie- 16,715; Trump- 13,421
• Tulsa Co., OK- Bernie- 26,525; Trump- 23,900
• Broome Co., NY- Bernie- 9,175; Trump- 8,409
• Columbia Co, OR- Bernie- 4,221; Trump- 3,418
• Greene Co, MO- Bernie- 17,403; Trump- 16,649
• Jackson Co., NC- Bernie- 3,021; Trump- 1,624
As usual, comparisons of primary vote counts between Bernie and the drumpfsterfire is misleading.
ReplyDeleteIn D contests, there were only 2 or 3 names to choose from. In the R contests, with extra weight on the early ones, there were 3 or 4 TIMES as many names who got votes.
Without including total D vs. R votes cast, the raw numbers for B vs. D are nearly meaningless.
Bernie might have gotten 10k votes out of 18k, while the drumpfsterfire may have gotten 4k votes out of 20k. In this example, the county would have gone for the drumpfsterfire whether or not Bernie was the D.
I wonder if DWT is this short-sighted or is DWT just trying to obfuscate?
I'm not as convinced as you are that Bernie would have defeated Trump. I think had Bernie been the nominee, the media would have gone after him with a vengeance, and that kinda sorta "rape porn" thing he wrote in college over a half-century ago would have come to be perceived as a major campaign issue after Scarborough and Chuck Todd and their ilk got done with him. And the "socialism" thing would have raided its head. (For the record, I worked for Bernie in the primaries and voted without enthusiasm for Hillary in the general.) I do think, however, that "Bernieism", expressed in plain language the way Bernie does, IS a winning ideology, should the Democrats ever decide they want to actually win elections.
ReplyDeleteWorking class voters should recognize that the Democratic Party is a lost cause and cares nothing about people who have no wealth accumulated. With about half of all working class Americans making $30,000 or less, this means that the Republicans will continue to win with lots of Democratic Party assistance as expressed through utter incompetence and corruption.
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