In response to Cynthia Dill’s May 22 Bernie and Jane Sanders-bashing column, “Sanders is losing fair and square,” I offer the following comments.
It took until the next-to-last paragraph to actually find anything of substance to comment on. The balance of Dill’s piece sounded like it was written by a Donald Trump speechwriter, clothed in mock liberal jingoism.
Regarding her statement that Sanders’ “latest stunt – an anti-democratic pitch suggesting that polls point to him as the best nominee – is ridiculous,” I can only point to the polls themselves. As for favorable opinion of the candidates among likely voters, Hillary Clinton polls an astonishingly low 32 percent, as compared to Sanders’ 45 percent (April 17 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll). According to the May 25 Huffpost composite poll chart, Clinton leads Donald Trump by 1.6 percent, where Sanders leads Trump by 10.2 percent with likely voters.
What the Democrats’ primary process fails to take into consideration is the huge effect that unenrolled or independent voters will have on the outcome. When allowed to vote in open Democratic primaries, Sanders carried their vote by a 2-to-1 margin.
It seems that the Clinton camp’s biggest worry is in uniting the party once she has been crowned as the official Democratic candidate.
In reality, the likelihood that most Sanders supporters will “do what’s best for the party” is extremely low. As frequently stated online, in the opinion section of newspapers and at political gatherings, the pervasive sentiment is “Bernie will get my vote, whether I check his box or write his name on the line.”
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