08-08-2016, 02:39 PM
rjmacs wrote:
So, as usual - we're faced with the question: how many Sanders supporters are ideological twits who will throw away their vote in the voting booth?
That question could be interpreted to imply that if a Sanders supporter doesn't support Clinton in the general election, then they are ideological twits who will throw away their vote. If that is what you meant to imply then I think that is an oversimplification. Is feeling that the soft corruption of money in politics is the keystone issue that needs to be addressed being realistic or ideological?
And, as I alluded to in a response to Lemon Drop, I think that it's important to acknowledge that some Sanders supporters who won't support Clinton may value different things more highly than those who do choose to support Clinton. How do we assess differences in value priorities when deciding what is ideological and what is not?
rjmacs wrote:
Also, how many of these voters would ever have voted for a major party candidate, and were only supporting Bernie as an anti-party move?
I expect the votes Clinton is supposedly 'losing' are ones she (or a GOP nominee) never had any chance of winning anyway, so it's a wash. These people were never going to vote Clinton or Trump. I would guess that most of them don't regularly vote.
I think that is generally true - although I'm not sure about the "don't regularly vote" part; it may be true but I'd like to see some empirical evidence on the matter.
I think that a very small number of Sanders supporters really are Bernie or busters. No Bernie means then bust the system. They may vote for Trump in hopes that he will win and be such a screw-up as president that "the system" will break down and give them the opening they think they need (the naive ones probably actually believe that their message will prevail when the chaos hits and the realistic ones who want such a break down are probably at least quasi-anarchists).
I also think a very small number of Sanders supporters have gotten caught up in a "cult of personality" thing where not supporting Clinton is really mostly about hurt feelings more than policy considerations.