The far left are the ones that will be supporting him most if he's the eventual nominee (which I think everyone in this thread knows the DNC ultimately won't allow to happen, for that reason). Right now there may be some more moderate people that are fine hopping on board with him because his stances seem good, compared to whatever the rest of the candidates are putting out there. When they get lined up against Trump's, and people start to realize just how drastically different Bernie's vision is from what they've experienced for their whole lives, I think he'd be left with mostly the far left "progressive" (lol, love that moniker) faction in his corner.
Using the progressive "moniker" is helpful in ways that calling people "far left" is not. The true far left is communism and socialism. There is no meaningful faction of communists or socialists in this country. The word socialism has been diluted to the point of being completely meaningless. Bernie is not advocating for the public ownership of the means and modes of production. He's advocating for Scandinavian style social democracy. Obviously conservatives will still disagree with those policies but it's a meaningful distinction. And I think it's important to make that distinction because the right is being constantly fed this red scare nonsense about how democrats want to turn the US into the Soviet Union. I'm happy to concede the point that Bernie would help himself out a lot by just referring to himself as a social democrat, which means the same thing as democratic socialist, but without the negative connotations with the word socialist.
I don't really see how Bernie's vision would make people's lives drastically different. Is your life really going to be that different if you aren't paying for private health insurance? Obviously I would argue that you would save some money. And we wouldn't see the ridiculous healthcare billing practices that we see today. But I don't think our lives are going to drastically change aside from how much we pay for healthcare. Same goes for the minimum wage or changing our energy industry. Is your life going to dramatically change if your house drew energy from a grid that was no longer powered by carbon based fuel? As long as the lights still turn on and your A/C works, you aren't going to notice a difference. But we will go a long way towards mitigating carbon emissions which is clearly a good thing.
Agree on the name recognition, but strongly disagree on the second sentence. The center-left is more likely to just not vote, than they are to vote against whoever is running against Trump, if they're apprehensive of the Dem nominee.
The Dems have been railing against old, white, straight men for awhile now. I can't see anyway they could justify trotting one of those out there (Sanders or Biden). Pete isn't old and isn't straight, and Warren isn't male, so they don't need to completely tear up the playbook with those two, which is why I think it'll be one of them that gets the nod (likely Warren).
I think this point is where most of the difference in our outlook is coming from. The way I see it, the country is pretty evenly divided between Trump's supporters and everyone else. And everyone else is appalled at his behavior, especially after the most recent scandals. I'm not big on anecdotal evidence, but I will say that most of my family is center-left and they are disgusted by trump and will happily vote for anyone that runs against him. They all supported Hillary during the primaries in 2015. I think pretty much everyone (>95%) who voted for Hillary will be willing to vote for Bernie against Trump. But there were a lot of people that refused to vote for Hillary who would turnout if Bernie was the nominee. There is evidence that some people who supported Bernie actually hated Hillary so much that they voted for trump. Would there have been many Hillary supporters who voted for Trump if Bernie got the nomination? I doubt it.
Its true that the woke crowd has been railing against old straight white men for awhile. And its gross. Identity politics is not the antidote to prejudice. I'm sure we agree there. However, Bernie has one of the most impressive civil rights records of anyone in American politics. This is an old straight white man who marched with MLK, and supported gay marriage before it was popular to do so.
Will the DNC try to sabotage Bernie like they did in 2016? Probably. But I think that will be harder to do in a primary where it's not a two person race. I'm sure they will do everything they can to prevent him from getting the nomination. He just has to hope that his voters turn in out in enough numbers to leave no doubt.
They do like stability. And while Trump the person (and the twitter handle) isn't stable, the country under the Trump Administration actually is pretty damn stable. Bernie's policies would drastically change life for pretty much all Americans. You think that change would be for the better, but moderates likely aren't as sure about that as you are, which will lead them to err on the side of stability and not usher in an upheaval of the way things are now. Especially if things are going as well for them in a year as they are now in terms of economy, jobs, etc.
But people also want stability from the administration itself. They don't want a president who blackmails foreign leaders into helping their campaign. They don't want a president that talks about grabbing women by the pussy, or uses a sharpie to change the impact zone of a hurricane. The Trump administration is anything but stable. His appointments have been a revolving door of resignations.
I've already disagreed about the "upheaval" that would be caused by Bernie. I think you're overestimating the impact of his policies.
Giving the behavior of the fed, I don't know if I'd bet that the economy will continue to consistently expand until November 2020. There are some bad indicators suggesting that we could be facing a recession, or at the very least a major market correction. Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on the largest cash reserves they've ever had because WB clearly is lacking confidence in the market right now. Obviously he could be wrong, but I'd argue he's as likely to be right as anyone in the game. That man is a wizard.
I would also argue that there is a significant index fund bubble that is due to pop at some point in the not to distant future. Trillions of dollars have been pumped into index funds, which I would argue causes the overvaluation of many companies within those index funds. If that's accurate, then it means the most valuable corporations in the country are being significantly overvalued. If that bubble is there, it will be worse than the housing market crash.
Republicans keep pushing to deregulate Wall St. which is exactly what caused the 2008 crash. Financial institutions are still selling CDO's, but now they're called bespoke tranches. Will the downturn come before or after the election? Who knows. But it's coming at some point.
