And we all know how that turned out.
In November 2007, many in the media counted Obama out, said he had no chance and quoted polls such as the Gallup poll that I cite here. They were all wrong.As I have written before in The Hill, polls show that Sanders would defeat Trump in a general election, in most cases by landslide margins. Why don't members of the media write Trump off? Because Trump wins one-fourth or one-fifth of the votes of one party in recent polling? What a double standard!
Sanders is the most authentic and compelling voice of progressive populism in the presidential campaign. His position in the polls in November 2015 is similar to, or stronger than, the position of Obama in the polls taken in November 2007. It is not the job of the media to coronate a candidate or to count out a candidate. Nor is it the job of the media to give exaggerated coverage to the freak-show aspects of the GOP campaign while giving short shrift to a compelling progressive candidate in the Democratic campaign.
It is very possible that Bernie Sanders wins the Iowa caucus and then wins the New Hampshire primary. Sanders may win neither, or he could win both. The voters of Iowa and New Hampshire should decide that, not pundits in the media. With his compelling message and his devoted followers, it would be a big mistake to count Sanders out in 2015 the way so many pundits counted Obama out in 2007.
Sanders wrongly counted out by mediaPeople want to declare HRC the winner. That is wrong. They want to say Bernie can't win. That too is wrong. How do we know? History.
In the event, the “supers” have never tilted the nomination; they always line up with the candidate who won the most delegates in the caucuses and primaries. That’s essentially what happened in 2008: Clinton had an early lead in superdelegates, but as Barack Obama started winning caucuses and primaries, he wound up picking up almost all the undecided supers and even some defectors from Clinton.And the supers will go with the winner in 2016, too. It’s technically possible for Clinton to win the nomination by dominating the superdelegate count even if she (narrowly) loses every state: Thanks to strict proportional allocation on the Democratic side, a candidate only gains a small delegate advantage for a small edge in primary votes. Realistically, however, politicians and formal party leaders would never go against a clear decision by voters. If Clinton lost every state, she would lose her superdelegates, too.
Clinton's Superdelegate Tipping PointI don't put a lot of stock in polls, personally. But some people love them, swear by them, as long as they are saying want them to say. When polls say something different, then they find the flaws. I think even the best of polls are myopic in one way or another. It all depends on what's being measured, how it's being measured, what's been left out, inadvertently or otherwise, what errors are being made and what conclusions can be drawn from it all. I think much of what's really going on out there is off the radar, not being measured by anyone. This is not a conventional year for presidential politics. The Internet is playing a much bigger role than ever, mostly due to social media, and so will the youth vote and the never before voted. There is deep potential there. Only Bernie seems to have noticed. He's already won the Internet. He's a very smart person.
Poll Shocker: Bernie Sanders Leads Trump and Bush by Double DigitsSanders outpolls GOP frontrunner Trump and establishment candidate Bush.
In the latest McClatchy-Marist poll, Sanders outpolls GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and establishment candidate Jeb Bush. Against Trump, Sanders leads 53 to 41. Against Bush, Sanders leads by 10 points, 51 to 41.
The Vermont senator's lead is particularly large among voters 18 to 29; there, he leads Bush 57 to 38. Even among some of the most conservative voters in the country, in the South, he leads Bush 46 to 45.
Back in July I wrote that all the excitement is for Bernie.
It still is.People are excited about Bernie because he's the 'something completely different' we've all be waiting for, praying for, dying for. This revolution is for real. And it has been coming for a very long time. So while the middle-of-the-roaders and the conservadems are backing the establishment, the 1% and the status quo, we’ll be making a political revolution to change the world and right the terrible wrongs imposed on us from the top — you know, those guys Hillary represents.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – just plain "Bernie" to his backers – is the unlikeliest of political sensations. The self-styled "democratic socialist" has packed arenas and meeting halls from Seattle to L.A. to Atlanta, drawing nearly 400,000 supporters to his rallies. Decrying a "rigged" economy and a political system corrupted by billionaires, Sanders has refused Super PAC politics, instead drawing on 750,000 grassroots donors. On the strength of $30-average checks, he has built a campaign war chest to rival the Hillary Clinton juggernaut.Sanders has already altered the course of the 2016 campaign. His resonance with the Democratic Party's activist base has forced Clinton to tack left, repeatedly. But don't mistake this as Sanders' endgame. "Bernie's campaign is more than symbolic – it's real, and it can succeed," says senior adviser Tad Devine, a veteran of Al Gore's 2000 bid. The Sanders machine is built to slingshot to an early lead, propelled by grassroots excitement in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then to fight, delegate by delegate, all the way to the convention. And recent polls counter the notion that Sanders is "unelectable." An October NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows Sanders besting Donald Trump by nine points, Marco Rubio by five.
Bernie Sanders' Political RevolutionDon't vote for the problem, vote for the solution.
There are a lot of hypocrites in this country and a lot of people who don't have a clue, but there are also a lot of good and wise people with hearts full of love for their neighbors and countrymen – and we are going to make Bernie our president.