Are Sanders and Trump competing for (some of) the same voters?

[KingOrfeo]

Both are pitching their messages to those angry and frustrated with the Republicrat Establishments, and with the 1% (even class-traitor Donald sometimes takes swipes at the 1%). Both are aiming at the shrinking, threatened middle class and the white working class, albeit in different ways with different messaging. (Remember the "Reagan Democrats" -- the frustrated white working-class voters, non-ideological, traditionally Democratic, whose support Reagan was able to capture in 1980, and who have been supporting the GOP ever since? Many of them are now becoming Sanders Republicans. For real.)

William Greider writes:

The essence of what Trump is peddling is rancid nostalgia—a random medley of regrets and resentments about how things used to be in “the good old days,” when America was great. When the nation didn’t hesitate to run over bad guys if they got in the way. When smart-tough people knew how to make things work. Trump says he still does. He talks like a can-do chief executive who sprinkles his rants with gutter-talk prejudices. The shock of his blatant incorrectness draws nervous laughter.

Sanders is selling universal hope and inclusiveness. Earnestly explaining what government must do to restore economic equity and security, Sanders talks concretely about who’s to blame: the One Percent at the top, who got all the money. Some of his proposals are broad intentions, others are precisely focused on how oligarchs looted Washington. In every event, Bernie is pumping up his crowds with optimism and energy. No time for cynics or despair.

Hope versus nostalgia. Bitter “frankness” from the Donald, or Bernie’s “happy warrior” vision of what Americans want the country to become? The contrast poses a challenging test for voters of all hues and persuasions. Trump and Sanders are not running against each other, of course. But they are effectively competing for overlapping pools of discontented voters from both parties.

Right now the two are running neck and neck—Sanders at 44 percent, Trump at 41 percent—according to a Quinnipiac poll that matched them in late August. Given the grossly unbalanced media coverage, that result is a tribute to Bernie’s high-road campaign style.

For good reason, Bernie and Donald are giving serious heartburn to Republican and Democratic leaders. The GOP cannot swallow Trump’s pitch without flying apart and losing its billionaire donors. Likewise with the Democratic Party; Sanders is forcing a showdown between working-class Old Dems and Wall Street–friendly New Dems. In both parties, establishment forces will pile on with money and negative attacks to squelch the insurgents. Their counterattacks have already begun and may succeed. But the bipartisan anger and rebellious spirit will not be so easily suppressed.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Its said Trump started a new American Revolution, and Sanders started a new Russian Revolution.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Its said Trump started a new American Revolution, and Sanders started a new Russian Revolution.

Any revolution Sanders is starting has plenty of good American precedents. E.g., it wasn't just FDR's will that gave us the New Deal, it was also the labor movement, much more strong and zealous at that time than seems imaginable now, which made the New Deal politically possible. Socialists, campaigning under that name and party-label, were elected to run major city governments in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and did so impressively (though ideologues sometimes dismissed their accomplishments as "sewer socialism"). There was a time when the Republican Party included avowed Marxists, Lincoln appointed several such to military and government posts, and Karl Marx himself wrote a regular column for Horace Greely's New York Tribune. Even Thomas Paine was kind of a proto-socialist, and as for Thomas Jefferson, see below. The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition . . . Socialism, by John Nichols, is an eye-opening read.

Any revolution Trump is starting, OTOH, has plenty of foreign precedents, and very ugly ones.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Greider also argues that both Sanders and Trump are mischaracterized as "populists." Interesting look at the 19th-Century Populist movement.

 

[werwolf]

Yes and no.

Both fundamentally have played-up until this week when Sanders became Hillary's shield-the same role in their respective parties, of altering the trajectory of what can and cannot be talked about.. And surprisingly, there is some overlap between their positions. Bernie Sanders unquestionably has closer views to Trump than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden on the Donald's main subjects-illegal immigration and free trade, as well as gun rights. And while his comments and general Trump-ness get the medias attention, the Donald actually has some policies that are definitely to the left of many in the GOP-he is harder on taxing the rich than most Republicans, is actively disparaging the neoconservatives left in the GOP in foreign policy, he accepts the Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage, and has pledged to end the War on Drugs. These policies are a lot more popular with much of the GOP base than with the Establishment. Both of their views fundamentally are geared toward, if not equally successful in, courting the working class.

However, no matter how hard they try, they cannot disrupt the realities of the last 70 years. Minorities do not trust Republicans, ordinary whites do not trust the Democrats. They've just been treated with too much contempt by the stated party for one election to make a difference, and in the end, they will divide on that line. Moreover, recently, this has changed. Bernie Sanders clearly is adopting more of a "party line", as seen in the debate. Trump most certainly is not.

 

[werwolf]

Any revolution Sanders is starting has plenty of good American precedents. E.g., it wasn't just FDR's will that gave us the New Deal, it was also the labor movement, much more strong and zealous at that time than seems imaginable now, which made the New Deal politically possible. Socialists, campaigning under that name and party-label, were elected to run major city governments in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and did so impressively (though ideologues sometimes dismissed their accomplishments as "sewer socialism"). There was a time when the Republican Party included avowed Marxists, Lincoln appointed several such to military and government posts, and Karl Marx himself wrote a regular column for Horace Greely's New York Tribune. Even Thomas Paine was kind of a proto-socialist, and as for Thomas Jefferson, see below. The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition . . . Socialism, by John Nichols, is an eye-opening read.

Any revolution Trump is starting, OTOH, has plenty of foreign precedents, and very ugly ones.

FDR was actually worried that Huey Long could mount a serious challenge from the left, albeit back in the 30s, this was absent many of the divisive cultural issues today. That should say a lot. Even the Red Scare of the 50s didn't seriously reverse the New Deal economically, if not socially.

So the change has been surprisingly recent. I'll never tire of saying that notorious Commiesocialist Richard Milhous Nixon once seriously proposed a guaranteed minimum income, was the first President to bring up alternate energy as a policy issue, and proposed a healthcare plan to the left of Obama.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

My first reaction is to say, "no". I think the average Sanders voter is quite engaged in politics, where the average Trump voter, is something of a hater of politics person.

Yes... both men claim to be outsiders, but they are appealing to completely different folks.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Ordinary whites don't trust Dems? Then who is voting for them?

 

[werwolf]

Ordinary whites don't trust Dems? Then who is voting for them?

Obvious generalization but for the most part, blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, professionals. The Obama coalition. Hillary's electoral success depends on the ability to get this coalition together.

 

[Sean Renaud]

That requires a pretty broad defintion of professional. All the groups you mentioned (minus professionals since I've no clue how to define that) don't get you close to 50% When you factor in that Republicans win when there is low voter turn out (because they make up a lower percentage of the overall population but a higher percentage of reliable voters. This also makes them dangerous in primaries) your definition has a lot of wiggle room.

What you meant is bigotted whites don't trust Dems and with good reason. They want to treat blacks, jews, mexicans, gays and women like people!

 

[werwolf]

That requires a pretty broad defintion of professional. All the groups you mentioned (minus professionals since I've no clue how to define that) don't get you close to 50% When you factor in that Republicans win when there is low voter turn out (because they make up a lower percentage of the overall population but a higher percentage of reliable voters. This also makes them dangerous in primaries) your definition has a lot of wiggle room.

What you meant is bigotted whites don't trust Dems and with good reason. They want to treat blacks, jews, mexicans, gays and women like people!

Upper middle class whites tend to be more liberal. Professors, journalists, lawyers, etc. Again, generalization. Some liberal working class whites, some conservative upper middle class ones.

Uh... no. Go out and actually talk to some real Republican-or ex-Republican-voters some time and figure out that, for the most part, they are ordinary people.

 

[Sean Renaud]

IF they were ordinary people they wouldn't vote Republican. Fox News would be out of business, Talk Radio wouldn't even exist. I'm blessed though, I can't go talk to Republicans. I'm a Californian. We have guys like Reagan but as Webb pointed out and for fucks sake Boehner and Paul Ryan are demonstrating being less than cartoon villain level evil disqualifies you from being a Republican.

 

[werwolf]

IF they were ordinary people they wouldn't vote Republican. Fox News would be out of business, Talk Radio wouldn't even exist. I'm blessed though, I can't go talk to Republicans. I'm a Californian. We have guys like Reagan but as Webb pointed out and for fucks sake Boehner and Paul Ryan are demonstrating being less than cartoon villain level evil disqualifies you from being a Republican.

Which proves that you are every bit as close minded and hateful as those idiots on talk radio. The moment you start defining a vast swathe of your fellow citizenry as the enemy(as our frontrunners in both of our parties sadly have done), you are Part of the Problem. The US has some massive problems, but if you think the answer to what causes these problems is simply "Democrats" or "Republicans", you don't get the full scope of what is facing the nation. They exist on both sides of aisle, and they are poisoning our politics.

And no, I'm not Republican. It's not an identity I agree with. I think the GOP Establishment is rotten the core, and there are some truly nutty sections of the electorate that vote GOP. But I do have people close to me that are Republicans, and I can attest to the fact that they are ordinary people who I disagree with politically yet nevertheless have functional relationships with.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Negatory. That is the primary weakness of the liberal is the inability to call evil out for being evil and instead approach it with the idea that they are equally valid as you are. They often are not. There are not two sides to every story. Sometimes sure everybody is wrong but often times there is a bad guy.

I'm not sure what massive problems you think the US has. There are some I'm sure but what problems precisely are you identifying.

I'd ask where you live because you might never have even met a Republican. No such animal lives in California. There are people who vote Republican for reasons they can't explain but Reagan and for that matter Bush are not REpublicans. Even Republican disown them with the title RINO.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Of course, any mutual Sanders-Trump crossover appeal breaks down when it comes to immigration -- the policies and, more importantly, the general tones and attitudes of the two on that issue are as far apart as you can get in American political discourse, and it is an issue that strikes down to deeply visceral, pre-rational feelings. Any white working-class voter who thinks Trump is talking sense about immigration probably will never vote for Sanders no matter how appealing Sanders' economic message may be to him. It's a matter of tribal identity, of Us vs. Them. There are perhaps some rational, defensible, non-racist, non-ethnocentric, non-xenophobic economic arguments to be made for a restrictive or selective immigration policy -- but those arguments are, by and large, irrelevant to electoral politics.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The moment you start defining a vast swathe of your fellow citizenry as the enemy(as our frontrunners in both of our parties sadly have done), you are Part of the Problem.

Is the recursive irony in that sentence intentional, or not?

 

[BotanyBoy]

Which proves that you are every bit as close minded and hateful as those idiots on talk radio. The moment you start defining a vast swathe of your fellow citizenry as the enemy(as our frontrunners in both of our parties sadly have done), you are Part of the Problem.

Dude...there are people both L an R on this board who think anyone who has ANY views that even LEAN towards the other side?

Pure fucking evil because their political party is fucking PERFECTION....ALTRUISTIC PERFECTION!! And the answer to all the problems and woes of the world.

And then you have a bunch of racist.....who blame all their woes on ________ race.

It doesn't matter what you say, what evidence you show, or argument you make....it's all the other team/race's fault.

Welcome to the GB.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Dude...there are people both L an R on this board who think anyone who has ANY views that even LEAN towards the other side?

Pure fucking evil because their political party is fucking PERFECTION....ALTRUISTIC PERFECTION!! And the answer to all the problems and woes of the world.

Well, I certainly don't think that about the Democrats. It's not that the Dems are perfection or anything near to it, of course they're not (if they were, Sanders would be taking this in a walk; as it is, it's astonishingly impressive that he has even made it this far); it is that the Pubs, ever since Nixon adopted the Southern Strategy in 1968, have gradually morphed into or absorbed almost everything that is wrong with political America -- naked plutocracy in the party establishment, allied to every form of ugly bigotry and ignorance in the base. The lesser of two evils is pretty damned attractive when set beside evil so pure and so energetic.

It was not always so -- there was a time when each major American party had its liberal, moderate and conservative wings, and party membership was more a matter of tribal and/or class and/or regional identity than political ideology -- I recall reading once that one of the Kennedy family remarked on the difficulty of explaining to a foreigner the difference between Democrats and Republicans. But, that was in the early 1960s. Ever since then, the parties have been gradually re-sorting themselves out along ideological lines -- and the Pubs have gotten the worst of that in all terms moral or intellectual. But not, unfortunately, electoral.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Well, I certainly don't think that about the Democrats. It's not the Dems are perfection or anything near to it, of course they're not (if they were, Sanders would be taking this in a walk); it is that the Pubs, ever since Nixon adopted the Southern Strategy in 1968, have gradually morphed into or absorbed almost everything that is wrong with political America

Yes (D)'s ONLY flaw is that it's not far enough left.....and (R) is everything that is wrong with political America.

See what I'm talking about werwolf?

-- naked plutocracy in the party establishment, allied to every form of ugly bigotry and ignorance in the base. The lesser of two evils is pretty damned attractive when set beside evil so pure and so energetic.

Those are not unique to the Republican party guy....you're just a partisan hack.

The only real lesser of two evils is who's backing your pocket book the most.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Yes (D)'s ONLY flaw is that it's not far enough left.....and (R) is everything that is wrong with political America.

Well, yes, it is -- not (R) meaning Republican, but (R) meaning right-wing. Unfortunately, those two are pretty much the same, now. As noted above, it was not always so.

There is also a libertarian wing in the GOP, but, let's face it, (1) it's marginal, (2) it's really just Republicans who smoke pot, and (3) such "libertarianism" as finds any even marginal traction within the GOP is based not on love of liberty but on hatred of poor people. There are other and better forms of libertarianism, best expressed nowadays by the likes of Noam Chomsky, but would Rand Paul or the Ronulans ever align with him on anything important?!

 

[werwolf]

Well, I certainly don't think that about the Democrats. It's not that the Dems are perfection or anything near to it, of course they're not (if they were, Sanders would be taking this in a walk; as it is, it's astonishingly impressive that he has even made it this far); it is that the Pubs, ever since Nixon adopted the Southern Strategy in 1968, have gradually morphed into or absorbed almost everything that is wrong with political America -- naked plutocracy in the party establishment, allied to every form of ugly bigotry and ignorance in the base. The lesser of two evils is pretty damned attractive when set beside evil so pure and so energetic.

It was not always so -- there was a time when each major American party had its liberal, moderate and conservative wings, and party membership was more a matter of tribal and/or class and/or regional identity than political ideology -- I recall reading once that one of the Kennedy family remarked on the difficulty of explaining to a foreigner the difference between Democrats and Republicans. But, that was in the early 1960s. Ever since then, the parties have been gradually re-sorting themselves out along ideological lines -- and the Pubs have gotten the worst of that in all terms moral or intellectual. But not, unfortunately, electoral.

Nowhere near that simple. I agree that the Republican Party has become far more Southern/heartland as time has gone on, but that the true process started in the 90s, not in the 60s, and was mainly a reaction to Clinton taking back the center, along with the Cold War ending and destroying the Snowcroft/Baker section of the Republican coalition. As late as the 1988 election, Bush Senior-hardly a campaigning genius or compelling personality-won Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and California, and nearly won in New York. They hardly needed a Southern strategy when the "white working and middle class" (Orthogonian for Nixonland readers) strategy worked just fine ever 1968.

Another thing to note is the increasing emphasis on free-market economics, and the fact that the New South was very friendly to the new form of economics. Race was not a defining issue in 1976 or in Reagan's campaigns in the same sense that it was in 1964. Carter was a key transition figure here-proto-New Democrat, degulalization, and won the South in 1976 against Ford. And then there is the Religious Right, largely concentrated in the South. Many of the Bible bashers who voted for Carter voted Reagan four years later.

I'm not saying race never played a role-it certainly has. But the racial appeals extended beyond the South-just look at all the Northern Catholics that gave Nixon his victories along with the border South. Moreover, this tends to understate the other non-racial cultural appeals as well. (The Deep South was so socially conservative, they voted for George Wallace. They did vote for Nixon in 1972, but every state except Massachusetts did that.)

 

[BotanyBoy]

Well, yes, is -- not (R) meaning Republican, but (R) meaning right-wing.

Yea so my statement earlier about what a politihack you are earlier was SPOT THE FUCK ON!!!

Left perfect right evil and you would see the fabric of time space undone before ever admitting that was not an absolute.......

That pretty much sums up your politics does it not?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Those are not unique to the Republican party guy....you're just a partisan hack

Plutocracy is certainly not unique to the Pubs -- but the difference is, that while both parties are owned by the 1% and Wall Street, the Dems are not quite wholly owned. That is why it is possible for Sanders to be a serious candidate. Trump, for his part, class traitor though he is in some respects, could not be a serious candidate if he were not himself a plutocrat.

As for bigotry and ignorance and ugliness in the base, yeah, things have by now been sorted out to the point that the GOP has, not a monopoly by any means, but certainly an overwhelmingly preponderant market-share.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Yea so my statement earlier about what a politihack you are earlier was SPOT THE FUCK ON!!!

Left perfect right evil and you would see the fabric of time space undone before ever admitting that was not an absolute.......

That pretty much sums up your politics does it not?

What on Earth are you talking about? Anyone who has any political views thinks they're the right ones. A "politihack" is one who puts party-loyalty above such views, and I think I've made it clear enough that I am not that. My loyalty to the Dems is based entirely on what I think they can do for for a leftist agenda -- which is very limited, but must be considered in light of practical electoral alternatives. E.g., we have a first-past-the-post single-member-district system, not a proportional-representation system, and until that changes there is no point in voting for third-party candidates; so I never vote Socialist, don't want to throw my vote away. If I were a "politihack," I would vote Socialist regardless of all of that.

And what about you? How do you vote, assuming you care enough to vote and assuming the law allows you to vote? Do you vote in either party's primaries? If not, you have no right to bitch.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Plutocracy is certainly not unique to the Pubs -- but the difference is, that while both parties are owned by the 1% and Wall Street, the Dems are not quite wholly owned.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1586878/hyde-s-laugh-o.gif

That is why it is possible for Sanders to be a serious candidate.

Sanders isn't serious and you're full of it, that's why MSN/CNN are doing everything they can to bury Sanders for Hillary, the great 1% dick sucker.

Trump, for his part, class traitor though he is in some respects, could not be a serious candidate if he were not himself a plutocrat.

Trump could not be a serious candidate if people weren't so sick and fucking tired of establishment politicians.

As for bigotry and ignorance and ugliness in the base, yeah, things have by now been sorted out to the point that the GOP has, not a monopoly by any means, but certainly an overwhelmingly preponderant market-share.

Just because you like the smell of your own shit doesn't mean it's not shit.

What on Earth are you talking about? Anyone who has any political views thinks they're the right ones. A "politihack" is one who puts party-loyalty above such views, and I think I've made it clear enough that I am not that.

Maybe for you but I see a politihack is someone who thinks the deep reaches of their political ideology hold all the answers and everyone else is wrong/bad.

What you're talking about is a partisan hack....not the same thing.

You're a religious zealot of the left.....I believe you are one of those people who would gladly support going what I feel would be entirely destructively left and be happy about it as millions starved around you.