Kevin Graham wrote:Anyone who thinks a guy who went to the Soviet Union and Cuba during the cold war and advocated for how great they were is going to have an easy time in a general campaign has drank the kool aid. That's not to dismiss him, as I think he'd still win as well. But he'd have a much harder time than his supporters here seem to think.
Not that much harder. I mean their #1 issue is his "Socialism" and that was already played out against Obama and didn't work. And this came from folks who genuinely hated Socialism whereas Trump will be in no position whatsoever to criticize Sanders for promoting socialistic ideas. After all,
he admires Canada's health care system, he also
supports the Buffeft rule in which wealthier folks should pay more taxes, and he
doesn't think wealthy people should get social security.
Then you have the fact that numerous prominent Republican figures have come out and praised Sanders for being genuine and honest. Only 4% of Republicans and 35% of Independents think Hillary is
honest and trustworthy, compared to 37% (R) and 56% (I) for Sanders. Bernie also has a 5 point lead among Democrats as well.
So if Trump wants to flip the table and suddenly go after Sanders' character, well, good luck with that. To this day the only thing I've seen against Sanders that could remotely be construed as a knock against his character is his presumed intentions to "steal" the election by persuading superdelegates to change their minds "no matter what."
There are some misunderstandings here.
1) Obama isn't a socialist. He isn't anywhere near the radical Marxist he's sometimes portrayed to be on the right. The fact that Sanders is legitmately friendly with far leftwing ideas might play differently. One criticism is true. The other is not.
2) Just because Obama won elections doesn't mean negative attacks didn't work. It just means they didn't work enough to cause him to lose an election all other things considered. To wit, Hillary Clinton is still soundly beating Trump in polls. Does this mean negative attacks aren't working? Probably not. She has high negatives and the perpetual negative campaign against her probably plays some role in that. It just means they aren't working enough. Remember, all anyone here is saying is that if Sanders was facing the full fury of the Republican attack machine instead of Clinton, maybe his head-to-head numbers would be similar to or even worse that Clinton's. This is realistic and you can't test the counterfactual.
3) You continue to seem to believe that the right-wing media's attack machine needs to be based in honest criticism. The biggest harm to John Kerry's campaign as far as negative attacks were concerned was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That this was dishonest propaganda didn't stop it from having some impact. In fact, it probably cost him the election because of how close it otherwise was. Don't think Sanders can't be Swiftboated (or Benghazi'ed if you prefer) if Republican campaigners are so inclined.
4) Republicans have been relatively handsoffish, and in some cases downright friendly, to Sanders precisely because they rightly or wrongly perceive this to be strategically advantageous to them either to draw-out the campaign against Clinton from the left and/or because they'd prefer to run against Sanders.
5) You just bloody watched people who used the absolute harshest language possible in condemning certain Republican candidates turn around and back them when the time became convenient. So yes, absolutely, Republicans can completely flip their criticism of Sanders and have it be transparently hypocritical and also oddly effective. But even if not, honesty isn't the only area a politician gets criticized on. You're not thinking clearly if a radical socialist Jew from Vermont has nothing the Republicans can work with if they want to. They've been remarkably stand-offish.
6) I feel like if we just started naming some character assaults Republicans could try to bring Sanders down a peg or two with, for example portraying him as a pervy old man, you'll just angrily attempt to debunk it. Until you get #3, I don't think any of these other points actually matter. It's as though you can't help but conflate why you prefer Sanders over Clinton with what's actually going on the right, which also is a heavy dose of stuff like this:
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/10/11650098/d ... d-red-pill