I’m genuinely undecided between Hillary and Bernie.
Yes, I know. I can see the eye rolls already — another disingenuous diarist claiming impartiality to lend credibility before the diary ultimately takes a narrative turn to hammer one candidate and gush over the other. I promise you won’t see that here. The purpose of this diary is to get some informed feedback from people to help me (and perhaps others like me) decide whom to support.
This election I’m a single issue voter. All I care about is electability. I know there are very passionate and loud opinions about how Hillary is not a true progressive, or how Bernie’s proposals are nothing more than unicorns wrapped in a pipe dream. If you’re inclined towards that particular brand of discussion, please save those comments for another diary. I’m not interested, and frankly the invective that usually accompanies these arguments is so over the top that it’s difficult for me to take them seriously.
I’ve considered many of the electability arguments for Hillary and Bernie, and frankly the only one I’m stuck on now is the “Socialism” argument. You’re probably all familiar with it. In brief, the argument is that a self-described socialist is not electable in this country. And there is some evidence to support this. A Gallup poll conducted in June of last year found that less than half of all Americans — only 47% — would even consider voting for a socialist.
But, I know that people often consider things differently in the abstract than they do when confronted with a particular individual. Consider the approval level of Congress or members of Congress in general, which usually polls in the single digits or teens compared to the approval level “your Congressional representative” whose approval is always much higher. Or if you’ve ever known people who are racist or prejudiced, often they will make an exception to their ignorant ideology for specific individuals. So in this case, perhaps even people who respond negatively to socialism conceptually may not have a problem with Bernie Sanders specifically, despite his socialism. Or perhaps when they learn what socialism actually is (i.e., not trying to steal your freedom), it won’t sound so bad.
But then there’s this survey by YouGov that specifically asks people about Bernie’s identity as a socialist, and whether that makes the voter more or less likely to support him. 12% said more likely; 18% said less likely (the rest said it makes no difference in their support or opposition). So this one data point, at least, suggests that socialism does carry some liability — although perhaps not nearly as much as the Gallup poll suggests.
This matters a great deal because a lot of recent polling shows that in general election match ups, Bernie seems to be performing significantly better than Hillary. Besides this, Hillary’s approval is underwater right now, and she is losing to the GOP in many head to head polls. So, on the surface Bernie seems to have the electability advantage.
But, I’m sympathetic to the argument that Bernie has not been throughly vetted. The Republicans have not gone after him the way they have Hillary, and the way they will should he become our nominee. So it could be that the data we’re seeing is Bernie’s high water mark, which will come down to earth once the Republicans get to work on him. And I have to believe that “Socialism!!” will be a big part of that attack.
So i guess that brings me back to the original question. Will “Socialism!!” sink Bernie’s general election chances, or will it not prove to be a major liability — enough to cost us the election? I’d be interested to hear from both Hillary and Bernie supporters on this one, preferably with some data or at the very least something resembling an informed opinion. Again, please reserve the sux/rox nonsense for… well, for anywhere I am not.
