Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump. Period. [View all]

[Bucky]

Another poster here in DU is arguing Sanders would have lost.

Evidence: arguments that begin with "it woulda been like" and outright assertions that "socialism is still unpopular in America"
In other words... no evidence. Just speculation without fact.

I'm arguing Sanders would have won.

Empirical date: actual polls showing Sanders winning decisively against Trump.

Sanders beat Trump by 10 points among independencts and would have taken the overall electorate 56-44 in a two way race.

Some people will argue that polls were inaccurate this year. But that's only true of state-by-state polls. Overall polling showed Clinton just slightly ahead of Trump in popular support--when you aggregate all the major national polls--and that is in fact what happened. She'll win the popular vote by about one million votes (better than Gore's margin of victory) or 8/10s of 1%. Trump did a little better, but not much better, than the aggregate of all major polls.

He "overcame" a 2-3% margin, but could not have beat a 12% point margin like Sanders had.

Am I making some assumptions too? Yes, to be honest, I am. But I make far far fewer than those made by people saying Bernie would have lost. The truth is we'll never know with absolute certainty. But any reasonable model will tell you Sanders at the minimum would have flipped those 2-3 razor-close rust belt states that gave Trump his fluke of a minority victory and deprived Clinton of her electoral plurality.

It's tough to write this, because the one thing we do NOT need at DU is a typical liberal circular firing squad. We need to spend our time and effort organizing and putting the word out on how to resist Trump's disastrous policy impulses and the corrupt mob of sycophants and opportunists that he's going to bring in to loot the country.

I won't sit back and let others spread bad info. I will speak up. But I will always be a voice saying we need to look forward and find the soft spots to kick their fascist asses.