When Bernie announced his candidacy, most of the pundits and political experts didn't give him a snowball's chance in hell of winning the Democratic nomination. Yet as the summer wore on, his campaign gained momentum, attracting huge numbers of people to his rallies, and he has begun rising in the polls. These same political pundits are now beginning to acknowledge that - so far - Bernie is doing well - better than most people expected.
We've already seen the FiveThirtyEight Blog's piece about Bernie's surge being over which turned out to be wrong and was followed by another piece titled We got Berned.
And yet most of these so-called political experts are still saying Bernie can't possibly win the Democratic nomination - let alone the general election. Could they be wrong in their prediction, and if so - why? What are they missing?
This was the subject of an article I read over at the
Secular Nirvana Blog.
What the Pundits and Experts Fail to Understand about the Bernie Sanders Phenomenon
Join me below the orange Berning Flames for more.
The gist of the article is that pundits and analysts have a tried and true "formula" to make their predictions on winners and this formula is based on the idea that most politicians are alike and that they all pretty much play by the same rules.
Different candidates have different strengths and weaknesses, but they more or less play the same game. Under these conditions every political statement becomes a strategic play, and experts have to analyze the “attributes” of each candidate in order to identify statistical advantages. Hillary’s gender gives her an edge with women, Bush’s wife gives him an edge with Latinos, Rubio’s age gives him an edge with young people, etc. Once you account for those margins in relation to current demographics and add how much each candidate was able to raise in order [to] market themselves, you have a model which can reasonably predict the outcome.
But Bernie is not like any other politician on either side of the aisle. His political statements aren't "strategic plays."
The reason political experts and models have failed to predict the rise of Bernie Sanders is that he is not playing by the established rules of the game.
Bernie's not accepting money from Super PACS is just one example of this.
Both republicans and democrats understand that the current system in the United States essentially amounts to legalized bribery, and they aren’t happy about it. Yet politicians and pundits proudly tout the massive sums raised by each Super PAC as a statistical strength. And its true, if your Super PAC raises $60 million and mine raises $40 million, by all accounts you have a $20 million dollar advantage. But what happens when a candidate who’s Super PAC raised say $50 million goes up against a Sanders campaign which raised $15 million dollars in its first quarter without a Super PAC and an average donation of $33.51?
The article makes the point that most candidates are like acrobats and most political campaigns are a balancing act where the candidates have to walk a tightrope trying to appeal to voters, while at the same time not pissing off their donors. The TPP, Keystone XL and Glass-Steagall are are examples of where candidates may have large donors who favor - and who have lobbyists pushing for the passage of TPP, Keystone, etc. - have to "walk the tightrope" The "formula" is that the best "acrobat" with the most money will win the race.
Bernie's not trying to win the race by walking on that same tightrope, though. He's competing on foot. The question then becomes who can get to the finish line (and win the race) faster? Someone walking on a tightrope or someone running on the ground?
The article also talks about the amount pf money needed to run a campaign. For most candidates, you need a huge amount to run ads that make you "more personable" to the voters - kind of like the ads HRC is running in IA and NH right now. (And it's not just HRC - all the candidates eventually run ads like that, be they Republican or Democrats.)
Then many of those same candidates spend even more money to run negative ads against their opponents - something Bernie won't be spending any money on. Candidates also spend money on internal polling, consultants, focus group studies, etc. Bernie spends no money on any of those things.
And if you’ve ever watched shark tank you may be familiar with another question often posed to entrepreneurs; what is your customer acquisition cost? How much money, on average, does a candidate have to spend in order to earn an extra vote? And again, this is why the model crumbles, for all the reasons mentioned above, political pundits are oblivious to the reality that on average, Clinton will have to spend much more money to win over a Sanders supporter than vise-versa. When all of these factors are considered it becomes less clear whether she even has a financial advantage at all.
The author ends by recounting the story of how Napoleon regained his empire without firing a single shot - despite military expert who would have thought that the King’s forces would easily defeat Napoleon’s - because Napoleon was playing a different game and then compares Napoleon's game to Bernie's campaign.
Pundits who insist on evaluating the Sanders campaign through the lens of conventional politics will continue to see their predictions fall flat. Bernie Sanders is not running a political campaign, he has instead become the leader of a movement whose message transcends the personality of the candidate. It is the American electorate’s response to decades of corrupt campaign financing, divisive politics, and continuous foreign interventions and war. While the other candidates are playing at politics, Bernie Sanders is making history… its a completely different game.
Awesome article - y'all should read the whole thing.