In the 1964 film classic, Dr.
Strangelove, Slim Pickens is seen riding a nuclear bomb down to his certain
death – and perhaps to the end of us all – while he calmly inventories his
survival equipment.
The Democratic Party
Establishment’s commitment to Hillary Clinton is a lot like that.
As Hillary falls behind Trump,
the Establishment is doing all it can to to
continue to discredit Sanders -- who beats Trump handily -- and chase
him out of the race. Meanwhile, they comfort themselves with
self-deluding lies to justify backing the only candidate Trump could beat.
Here’s some of the myths
they’re spinning:
Myth #1: Sanders can’t win and
his supporters can’t “do the math.” In an attempt to make it a self-fulfilling
prophecy, the entire Establishment is declaring the race to be over. A typical
slant used by pundits, the Party elite, the corporate media and the rest of the
confederacy
of dunces that has opposed Sanders from the start is that Sanders
supporters “can’t do the math.” To hear them tell it, he’s been mathematically
eliminated, or he has “no pathway to victory” and holding on is just hurting
Hillary’s attempts to beat Trump.
Here’s the reality: Sanders
needs 885 delegates to get the nomination; Hillary needs 613; there are 930
delegates remaining to be won and it is unlikely that either candidate can
clinch the nomination without the aid of superdelegates. Meanwhile, Sanders is
surging, while Hillary is self-destructing, so many of those superdelegates may
be rethinking their commitment to Hillary. And if they aren’t, they ought to
be.
Sanders has pulled even in
California, and by the end of June 7, there’s a good chance he may go into the
Democratic Convention having won 19 of the last 25 primaries, and certainly he
will have won the majority of states in the second half. Try doing that math.
Myth # 2: Sanders’
numbers would drop in the general election: This is one of the Establishments’
favorite lines. According to them, he hasn’t been exposed to the kind of
assault he could expect in the general election, and given his history as a
“socialist” he’d be easy pickings for the Republican hit machine and
Trump.
There’s two things wrong with
this story, however.
First, Sanders has been under
a concerted and systematic assault in the mainstream media and from the
Democratic Establishment since he began to threaten Hillary’s “inevitable”
candidacy, yet his numbers have continued to skyrocket up in the polls. There’s
little more the Republicans could do in this regard. Which brings us to
the Establishment’s second error.
Any political consultant will
tell you that the two most important numbers in predicting a candidate’s
performance are their unfavorability/favorability ratings and how trustworthy
voters perceive the candidate to be.
Here’s why.
If a candidate is widely
trusted, and if he or she has a net positive favorability rating, it’s harder
to gain traction with negative adds. Sanders has the highest favorability
and trust ratings of any candidate, and his freedom from PACs and corporate
money, together with more than 30 years of consistently pursuing policies that
favor the middle class and the working poor makes him all but
bulletproof. There are no flip-flops, no equivocations, no spins, no
claims that can be made upon him by moneyed interests. That’s why Sanders’
numbers keep getting better even though the media is doing it's
best to bury him.
Myth #3: Sanders needs to drop
out; Hillary will do better when she can focus on Trump. If Sanders’
numbers make him bulletproof, Hillary’s make her a sitting duck. A wounded
sitting duck. She has a high net unfavorable rating, and she’s even more
distrusted than Trump in some polls, so political attack ads will land on
fertile ground.
Her unfavorability and
distrust issues are not just the result of the decades long assault on her by
what she calls the “vast, right-wing conspiracy,” although that’s certainly
real enough. No, Hillary’s problem is that she’s a lousy candidate. In
fact, in both 2008 and this year, she got less popular as
soon as she began to campaign for the Presidency.
That’s why Trump has overtaken
her in recent polls, and why she’s unlikely to reverse her slide. And
while Trump is equally disliked and nearly as distrusted, he at least generates
passion among his supporters.
But Hillary is seen as an
over-scripted, cynically calculating, automaton at a time when people are
craving authenticity and passion. This both plays into and increases the
distrust and likability issue. And even while she continues to masquerade as a
progressive, her campaign is contemplating whether and when to move to the
center. Talk about tone deaf. As Krystal
Ball put it:
The very fact that her team is
so publicly mulling these choices reveals that they have no clue that their
biggest problem isn’t making the proper electoral calculations, but rather that
their entire campaign is based on electoral calculations.
She’s the consummate insider
at a time when people are demanding someone from outside the
establishment. She’s the Party favorite at a time when Parties mean less
than they have, perhaps ever.
Trump can only win if voter
turnout is low, and Hillary Clinton all but guarantees a low turnout.
It doesn’t help that she has a
history of lying, then doubling down on her lies when caught – something
she’s doing again with the IG’s report on the emails.
The closer we get to the
Convention, the clearer it is that Sanders is a far better candidate in the
general election.
So why is the elite
Establishment clinging to Hillary like Slim Pickens clung to that plummeting
nuke? Could it be they are so eager to retain power that they’d rather risk
losing than backing someone who is not one of their own?
This work is licensed under a
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John Atcheson is author of
the novel, A Being
Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global
warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post,
the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers.
Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.
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