The Democratic nominee must win several battleground states to be elected president. Popular vote doesn’t matter. Electoral votes do. The electoral college is indeed an archaic convoluted mess. However it is the system under which a Democrat must win. It doesn’t matter if NY and CA go Democratic by huge margins. We know the Democrat will win them. However, it matters very much what happens in about eight other states, states that are not nearly as woke as NY and CA.
Mainstream Democrats, the DNC, and much of the pundit class do not think Sanders can win crucial swing states, primarily because he identifies as socialist, which severely hurts him in those states.
Me, I am baffled why Sanders identifies as socialist when he’s mostly a New Deal Democrat. He’d probably get way more votes with essentially the same platform if he just dropped the socialist ranting. But he won’t. And that’s a problem. The heartland, where most of those battleground states are, don’t much care for socialism. They just don’t.
And permit me a rant. Norway is not socialist. It has a great safety net, with free education and health care. Yay! However the government doesn’t own the means of production. However, it does own the biggest sovereign wealth fund on the planet, which pretty much makes it capitalist to the bone. It is not Democratic Socialist. And it would just be great if Bernie supporters would stop getting all misty-eyed about how socialist Norway is.
Also, for those who say they support socialism, that means the government owns most everything, so they’d be ok with just one cell phone company, one that is owned by the government? Didn’t think so.
Battleground states include Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Florida. They would probably be less likely to support a socialist than the general population. And a Gallup poll on Feb. 11, 2020 found that the only category that less that half would vote for is socialist.
This is why mainstream Democrats (and Bloomberg) will do whatever is needed to derail Sanders, because they assume Sanders will lose most of the swing states. And if that happens, Sanders and the Democrats will be crushed.
More than nine in 10 Americans say they would vote for a presidential candidate nominated by their party who happened to be black, Catholic, Hispanic, Jewish or a woman. Such willingness drops to eight in 10 for candidates who are evangelical Christians or are gays or lesbians. Between six and seven in 10 would vote for someone who is under 40 years of age, over 70, a Muslim or an atheist.
Just one group tested — socialists — receives majority opposition. Less than half of Americans, 45%, say they would vote for a socialist for president, while 53% say they would not.