Sanders Reminds Voters He's Most Likely To Trounce Trump

Enthusiasm generated by Sanders' campaign is its greatest weapon against both Clinton and the GOP frontrunner

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/22/inevitability-or-electability-sanders-reminds-voters-hes-most-likely-trounce-trump

As the dust settled after the weekend's primary contests, Bernie Sanders reminded voters that—despite the corporate media seizing on the narrative of an "inevitable" Clinton vs. Trump match-up—he remains the country's best chance of stopping the billionaire leading the Republican primary race.

"If you want a candidate who is going to defeat Donald Trump, you’re looking at him," Sanders told a crowd of 5,200 in Greenville, S.C. on Sunday.

"There would be nothing that would give me greater pleasure than in fact beating Donald Trump," he added.

Recent polling has shown Sanders outperforming his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton against all Republican contenders. When matched against Trump, the senator from Vermont is up 48 to 42 percent, which is a much wider margin than Clinton's 44 to 43 percent lead on the GOP frontrunner.

Meanwhile, the two Democratic contenders remain neck-in-neck in national polls.

Despite these figures, after Clinton squeezed out a slim 52.6 to 47.3 percent victory in the Nevada caucus on Saturday, the corporate media has increasingly accepted as fact a Clinton-Trump general election.

But as Sanders told the Greenville rally, "a lot has changed in the last nine months," pointing to his campaign's growing momentum, evidenced by its record-breaking number of contributors. 

"One of the most amazing things that has happened in a very long time in American politics is that over the past nine months what we have seen is that our campaign has received 4 million individual campaign contributions," he said. "That is more campaign contributions than any campaign in the history of America at this point."

And as last week's Quinnipiac University poll showed, Sanders has the highest favorability rating of any candidate and the highest scores for honesty and integrity, for caring about voters’ needs and problems, and for sharing voters’ values.

Indeed, as both supporters and experts note, the enthusiasm generated by the Sanders campaign is its greatest weapon.

In South Carolina, where Sanders is hoping to chip away at Clinton's historic African American support, actor and activist Danny Glover and former NAACP leader Ben Jealous are hoping to bolster outreach ahead of next Saturday's Democratic primary.

"I think the easy part of getting black voters to turn to Bernie Sanders is what happens when they actually listen to him," Jealous told the Washington Post. "The hard part is getting beyond the Clinton brand. The Clinton brand is a bit like Coca-Cola. You know, it’s a Southern brand. Everybody knows it. It tastes good. The question you have to ask is: Is it the best option for you?"

Jealous said that Clinton "has hit her high-water mark in the black community," and the question remaining is "how far her support will fall [and] how fast. Right now, a lot of people in South Carolina still haven’t made up their minds."