Sorry if this has already been so widely discussed here that this entry is pointless, but I just wanted to quickly summarize my theory on why the rhetoric of this year’s Republican presidential candidates assumes that Hillary Clinton will be this year’s Democratic nominee. The Clinton campaign would have you believe that it is because they are preparing to run against her in a general election (as part of the “presumptive nominee” narrative whether or not they use those words), but consideration of the facts suggests that it is actually a sign of just how scared they are of having to run against Bernie Sanders in a general election.
Although when I was in the habit of writing blogs a couple years ago I liked filling them up with sources, you probably already know (and if you don’t, 30 seconds of research on your search engine of choice will reveal) that Bernie Sanders is crushing every Republican presidential candidate — doing better against them than Clinton sometimes by a little and sometimes by a lot, while she actually loses to some — in virtually every national poll of hypothetical general election one-on-one match-ups. This has been the case for awhile now. At this point, a poll showing otherwise would be an outlier.
The Republican presidential candidates’ campaign rhetoric relying on running against Clinton works to their advantage on at least two objective levels. First, their argument against Clinton is easier because they’re doing better against her in the polls than against Sanders. Second, it contributes to the establishment media narrative that Clinton is the presumptive nominee which helps to discourage prospective Bernie voters (not those already definitely turning out to vote) who happen to get most or all of their information from establishment media sources (which is obviously not all but probably a significant chunk) from getting out to vote. That helps prevent Bernie from becoming the nominee, which gives the Republicans the Democratic nominee that virtually every objective measure indicates would be the easier candidate for them to beat in the general election. This is essentially the Republican assist to the mainstream media including super-delegates in their delegate numbers graphics (and on the rare occasion they even note that, they fail to note that the super-delegates haven’t voted and don’t count yet which one would think would be the whole point of making the distinction, but I digress...).
Bernie Sanders is an anti-establishment candidate in a presidential campaign cycle that is so unquestionably favorable to anti-establishment candidates that even Hillary Clinton is now objecting to being characterized as establishment on the grounds that the description is an ad hominem attack. I wholeheartedly agree with and support the assertion that if the rest of the industrialized world can have health care and education for all as a human right, it is not wide-eyed, unrealistic, or naive to fight to achieve those things in the United States of America. And the way to get there is not through establishment politics. Republicans running for president now and planning to do so in the fall are apparently as conscious of this as the general election voters are, but about half of Democratic primary voters are about the only people in the country who apparently still don’t get that despite virtually all objective evidence showing that to be the case.
This is why, when asked about running against Bernie Sanders in the fall (which barely ever happens compared to how often it should), Republican presidential candidates have no response other than to laugh it off and say that because the word “socialist” appears in how he describes himself they could obviously beat him easily. They have no case to make based on the facts and they don’t get asked follow-up questions. (Meanwhile, some are pushing the narrative that Bernie has only gotten positively shining press coverage so far…) And I’m still waiting for the establishment media to start asking the follow-up question: If you’d crush him so easily because he describes himself that way, why is it that he is crushing you in the polls and do you have a plan to start turning that around?