[philwelch]

He doesn't. Not even most of the Democratic base will vote for a white male socialist in his 70's over Hillary, and he has no chance of winning the general election even if he were nominated. Even he probably knows this and is only running to make a statement.

[amyjess]

Sanders is going to end up like Ron Paul: he'll make a big splash on social media (well, he already did), but he'll crash and burn in the primaries.

There are actually a lot of similarities between Sanders and Paul: they made the splash they made for the same reason (they're honest politicians who put their values before the party line), and they'll crash and burn for the same reason (no support from party elites, most "supporters" are just people who share Facebook posts and don't vote).

[ConceptJunkie]

Sanders won't get far because the only thing he has to offer is giving away other people's money and the USA is already $20 trillion down that path (more like $150 trillion if you consider the unfunded mandates).

How can we possibly do more when what we are doing now is unsustainable?!

[dragonwriter]

> Not even most of the Democratic base will vote for a white male socialist in his 70's over Hillary,

Perhaps.

> and he has no chance of winning the general election even if he were nominated.

The national head-to-head polls I've seen that have included have him beating all the Republicans he is polled against (Trump, Bush, Walker, and Rubio), in some cases by wider margins than Clinton does in the same polls. That's not to say he would win the general if nominated, but I'd certainly expect more than mere assertion from someone who wanted me to accept their argument that he certainly would not do so.

[philwelch]

Those polls are meaningless 14 months ahead of the general election. Trump is a highly polarizing figure who (a) will also almost certainly not win the nomination and (b) is widely hated enough that he would likely lose head-to-head against a ham sandwich. The other Republican candidates don't have hardly any name recognition because Trump is monopolizing all the media attention.

I'm not sure how much elaboration you need for the idea that an avowed socialist wouldn't be elected President of the United States.

[mdemare]

> He has no chance of winning the general election even if he were nominated.

Well, that depends who he is up against. Imagine Sanders vs. Cruz with Trump as a 3rd party candidate...

[MrJagil]

Could you unfold that statement?

[mdemare]

If Sanders is up against Cruz, and Trump is a 3rd party candidate, it's unclear who'd win.

[MrJagil]

Being a foreigner not quite knee-deep in the American election yet, I was actually fishing for more information on Cruz and Sanders and whether you're basing this on polls, their relationship, intuition, major (dis?)similarities in political programming or some such.

Sorry if "unfold" wasn't used correctly.

[nindalf]

Sanders and Clinton are competing for the chance to run as the Democratic candidate. Similarly Cruz, Trump and 10 others are running for the chance to run as the Republican candidate. Its customary that the losing candidates will get behind the winner and endorse them, uniting their party behind a single person after a divisive primary campaign.

However, Trump doesn't see it that way. He feels that if he doesn't get the nomination, he will run as an Independent candidate. He doesn't stand any actual chance of winning but he would claim some of the Republican votes (say 5-10%) on election day, making it a cake-walk for the Democratic candidate.

Why would he do this? Its blackmail. There's a good chance the heads of the Republican party would sabotage his campaign because of how unsuitable he is. This threat keeps them from doing that, because they would bury their party's chances in 2016.

[delecti]

I think the idea is that Trump would take enough of the conservative side of the vote that even if moderates tended to vote for Cruz (as Sanders is thought to scare moderates) it could be close between Sanders and Cruz.

[yellowapple]

Honestly, as a moderate, Sanders is far less scary to me than Clinton at the moment.

[javert]

> Not even most of the Democratic base will vote for a white male socialist in his 70's over Hillary

Why do you say that? I could perhaps be convinced, but at this point I don't see any reason to think that.

[pweissbrod]

Thinking back to the 2012 election, the sentiment of reducing government/cutting taxes in this country is palpably strong. The word "socialist" itself gradually became established as an anti-american insult. Republicans worked hard to place this label on obama as an affront to american freedom reminiscent of communism.

Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist. His ideals dont align with the prevailing american values. It actually reminds me of how Kerry lost to Bush in the early 2000s largely because of his support for gay rights.

[gerty]

> His ideals dont align with the prevailing american values.

That's not exactly true. I recall an article in the Washington Post explaining that his propositions are actually supported by majority of Americans. Sanders is not a real socialist, he's just a New Deal Democrat.

[res0nat0r]

Most of America is for the ACA, but against Obamacare, it all depends on how you phrase the question.

The issue is that most of America isn't represented when it comes time to vote, only a small subset of people do, and those who do are not going to be voting for Sanders when it comes time to choose which Democrat to get behind.

[javert]

> Most of America is for the ACA, but against Obamacare, it all depends on how you phrase the question.

Citation needed. I can't believe that without some kind of evidence. I can believe that the wording of the question matters, but not that it's "ACA" vs. "Obamacare."

[p_eter_p]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/27/poll-obamaca...

[eli_gottlieb]

>Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist. His ideals dont align with the prevailing american values.

Just because you told all the socialists in the USA that we're unpatriotic traitors and should shut the hell up, doesn't mean we stopped actually existing. And now we've got a candidate who stands for our views.

[javert]

What exactly is different between the ideology underpinning Democrats, and socialism? I'm genuinely asking what you think the difference is.

The Democrats obviously support socialized medicine, socialized education, wealth redistribution via high taxes, and significant regulation of private enterprise.

To me, that is the same as socialism, except perhaps in minor technicalities of implementation, which are relatively unimportant.

For instance, maybe a "true socialist" would favor the state owning enterprises, rather than massive tax-and-regulate, but to me, that is not an important difference.

Hence, as a rule of thumb, I consider all Democrats to be socialists.

So, I don't think Hillary or Obama is much different from Sanders, except that he is more bold and open and labels himself differently.

I am genuinely interested in your views on this. I'm not going to change your mind on politics, you're not going to change mine, that is not my goal here.

[eli_gottlieb]

For purposes of this comment, I will be attempting to clarify differences between social democracy, democratic socialism, and socialism-in-general.

>What exactly is different between the ideology underpinning Democrats, and socialism?

It comes as news to me that the Democrats have an ideology. Ever since Reagan, and then Clinton, their standard strategy has been every bit neoliberal, even if not sadistically neoliberal like the Republicans have been.

That is, the difference between Democrat and Republican is, in my opinion, the difference between saying, "We're so sorry you're homeless, but if we tried to give you housing, businesses would flee the country, but at least we're using government funding to help keep your soup kitchen open", and kicking the homeless while yelling "Get a job, you filthy bum!".

Notice that in both cases, the homeless person remains homeless.

Well, I suppose if we can call pragmatic-to-the-point-of-fundamentally-unprincipled meliorativist humanitarianism an ideology, then they do have an ideology, but only the very leftmost portions of the Democratic Party actually begin to be social democrats at this point. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, is an actual social democrat: she favors a broad ideology of decommodification, in which the necessities of human life become social rights and a middle-class society is explicitly encouraged via policy. Actually, she only even begins to favor decommodification.

>The Democrats obviously support socialized medicine, socialized education, wealth redistribution via high taxes, and significant regulation of private enterprise.

As noted above, in terms of their voting record, they mostly don't favor these things at all.

Also, "significant regulation of private enterprise", in terms of things like OSHA, the EPA, occupational licensing, Sarbanes-Oxley or Glass-Steagal, etc, should be placed completely to the side. Everyone who's not wildly insane is in favor of significant regulation of private enterprise, and the only negotiation is over where the boundaries of pragmatic, useful regulation actually fall.

(That is, most people who are not right-proprietarians (ie: not in the Libertarian Party) favor regulation of business for pragmatic, instrumental reasons, rather than considering it always terminally valuable as a point of ideology. "Reversed right-proprietarianism is not leftism" is a slogan you should repeatedly write on a chalkboard until you manage to actually believe it.)

>For instance, maybe a "true socialist" would favor the state owning enterprises, rather than massive tax-and-regulate, but to me, that is not an important difference.

A true socialist favors workers owning enterprises. Whether this should be achieved via labor actions (strikes, etc), seizure of state power by revolutionary force, state power won in elections, or cooperative entrepreneurship is a matter of strategy among socialists. Sometimes we disagree with each-other as points of ideology, and sometimes as matters of pragmatic implementation. Sometimes we agree, despite hailing from very different schools of socialism.

As a classification heuristic, "revolutionary" socialists favor seizing state power via revolution, "democratic" socialists (eg: Bernie Sanders) favor obtaining state power via electoral participation, and revolutionary anarchists favor using a revolution to destroy state power (never to be wielded again). All of these groups often adopt each-other's tactics if deemed pragmatically useful, so, for instance, almost all socialists support workers' cooperatives, even though many don't consider them the final goal of socialism.

Once again: reversed right-proprietarianism is not leftism, so I thank you for actually taking the trouble to ask a leftist what we actually believe. To repeat and sum-up the core point: socialism does not really care about taxation or regulation except as tools, it cares about workers owning their own tools, work-sites, materials, and enterprises, and thus controlling their own lives rather than being controlled by an owner.

>Hence, as a rule of thumb, I consider all Democrats to be socialists.

Basically nobody who calls themselves a socialist considers the Democratic Party to be socialists. Even the Democratic Socialists of America - who are often accused by other socialists of shilling for the Democrats, and who, truth be told, straddle the line between actual democratic socialism and social democracy - do not consider the Democratic Party to be a socialist party.

>So, I don't think Hillary or Obama is much different from Sanders, except that he is more bold and open and labels himself differently.

Clinton (both Clintons) and Obama have never put forward serious programs of decommodification (Sanders' social-democratic platform) or worker ownership of enterprises and means-of-production (Sanders' encouragement of ESOPs and cooperatives). In fact, Clinton and Obama have, by and large, not done anything for the working classes, instead preferring to appeal on a combination of identity issues and middle-class meritocracy-through-education. By their voting records, and in contrast to Sanders, both Hillary and Obama have voted in favor of treaties, regulations, and other forms of laws that not only took economic power away from workers and communities, but even away from industrialists, putting the nation's destiny in the hands of the financial sector.

From a left-wing perspective, Hillary and Obama are reasonably similar, while Warren and Sanders form a platform unto themselves, and Sanders borders actual democratic socialism (his platform is mostly social-democratic).

[javert]

By the way, to clarify the other comment I just made, the Democrats really are collectivist, because they favor socialized medicine, education, high redistribution of wealth, and arbitrary amounts of regulation. Yes, it's true that they haven't helped the homeless and that some benefits accrue to elites (e.g. you mention the finance sector).

That is what normally happens when one tries to implement collectivism. People think that places like Sweden and Germany are not corrupt like this, and that may be true, but the U.S. is really a third-world country (like Latin America), not like Germany or Sweden---just with a minority Anglo-Saxon-style pro-liberty subculture layered on top. So of course collectivism gets implemented in a much more corrupt way than what might "theoretically" be possible.

Also, I recognize that the mainstream Democrats want to go towards even more collectivism more slowly than Warren or Sanders or a "true socialist." And may not want as pure of a form. So there is a difference, but it's just a difference of degree. Also, it's true that the Democrats don't have a coherent ideology, but nonetheless, they still clearly represent collectivism and move in a collectivist direction. And I agree that they are not that different from most Republicans. Most Republicans concede having a welfare state and just want to do it more slowly and to a lesser degree, which, again, is just a difference in degree, not quality. The Republicans are not defenders of individualism; they do not really oppose collectivism; they just create temporary setbacks for Democrats.

edit: This is just to clarify where I am so you can answer the other comment (if you want), not to argue.

Also, I just want to say, since I started writing these two comments, I lost 12 karma all at once, so apparently somebody just went through and downvoted all my recent comments (all of which were in positive territory before, and none of them are inflammatory). If an admin sees this, it would be nice if you could ban whoever is doing that.

[javert]

> A true socialist favors workers owning enterprises.

> To repeat and sum-up the core point: socialism does not really care about taxation or regulation except as tools, it cares about workers owning their own tools, work-sites, materials, and enterprises, and thus controlling their own lives rather than being controlled by an owner.

Clearly you are talking about collectivism (as opposed to individualism), and the Democrats are collectivist. You just have this technical implementation difference.

Which is to have workers control enterprises by some sort of voting scheme. As opposed to the natural course of evolution from freedom to collectivism, where you would have "private" ownership of enterprises, but with the state controlling the owner through regulation and taxation.

That really is an implementation detail. There is a whole lot more that goes into a political system than just deciding how enterprises are managed. (And, by the way, it's not any different to have your 99 fellow workers decide by voting how things are run, vs. a bureaucrat from a central government. So it's also an unimportant implementation detail.)

I think that makes it pretty disingenious for Democrats to scream "we are not socialists" and socialists to say "Democrats are not socialists." Because the people complaining about socialism don't care about that technical implementation difference; that's not actually the issue being raised. Rather, they are arguing against collectivism.

People in general use "socialism" to mean "collectivism," and I think that's perfectly fine, because people in general don't (and shouldn't) care about some obscure implementation detail that is being argued over by true believers.

If you have an argument against what I've said here, I'd be interested to see it, but I'd rather get something really specific and targeted vs. more of a soapbox.

[gjm11]

No, it doesn't mean that there are no socialists in the US. But if the people of the US, as a whole, have by whatever means come to hate and fear socialists and socialism, then someone who's willing to describe himself as a socialist is not likely to do well in a US general election.

[pweissbrod]

The question was "why isnt bernie sanders a viable candidate?". You just said it yourself: most americans perceive socialist values as the antithesis of american values. Hence your candidate is not viable in this political climate. Sorry, I agree with your spirit but your arguing against a straw man.

[marktd]

At the end of the day, the most electable candidate tends to get nominated. Not always, but typically. And Hillary, even despite her challenges, is much more electable than Bernie, because she's much closer to the center. Of course, continuing email controversies could change that. But unless they do, Bernie's chances of winning are near 0.

[philwelch]

Sanders' support is almost exclusively from white progressives. He has almost no traction with minorities and less pull with women than Hillary. He's also well to the left of the Democratic base.

[enraged_camel]

Sanders is a social democrat, not a socialist. The differences are nuanced but quite important.

https://spfaust.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/socialism-vs-social...

[voyou]

Bernie Sanders is a socialist,[1] and social democracy is a type of socialism.[2] That blog you linked to is, at best, advocating a very idiosyncratic use of terminology.

1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11... 2: http://www.britannica.com/topic/social-democracy

[res0nat0r]

That doesn't matter to most of America. They hear "socialist", "social something", and they are going to be against it.

[davis_m]

They certainly seem to love their Social Security.

[res0nat0r]

They do, and they also hold up signs that state "Keep Government out of my Medicare." I didn't state US citizens as a whole are very bright.