Attacks that would have been used effectively on Sanders if he were the Democratic nominee [View all]

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Seeing this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2664743
brings up the point yet again that Sanders could have beaten Trump.

I think we should remind ourselves what a Sanders nomination would look like in detail, specifically the typical Republican attacks that would have been leveled against him.

Never mind the nuance to these points, Republicans don't do nuance, and they have a lot of potent anti-liberal talking points refined over decades.

1) over and over, he wants to raise your taxes, even on the middle class

2) over and over, he will enact job killing regulations (Sanders environmental plans)

3) he wants to hobble Wall Street by breaking up banks

4) he wants to redistribute your wealth (wink wink)

5) he's a socialist

6) he's a communist, a marxist

7) he's an old hippie

8) he praised communist dictators

9) he's not Christian and maybe he's even a godless atheist

10) he's pro-abortion

11) he's weird, creepy (his old writings)

12) he's too old

13) he had a child out of wedlock

Now I need to say, I don't mind any of these things myself. I voted for him in the primary. I loved so much of what he said.

However under his plans, my taxes would go up a lot under his plans. I don't mind it, I'm willing to pay more, but I think a lot of people wouldn't. The people in the news media sure wouldn't. Corporate America would not like it.

These attacks would be devastating, in my opinion, for his run. It's just super important to realize how blunt and effective Republican attacks can be, if you don't remember them yourself.

Would Sanders have done better in the rust-belt states with independent voters? Maybe, maybe not. There's no guarantee that independent voters wouldn't be strongly turned off by these GOP talking points. He may well have done much worse than HRC.

Yes, his favorability ratings were high, and that would have helped him. But those ratings were mostly because people didn't know him and he hadn't been subjected to GOP attacks.

Could Sanders have beaten back these attacks with his well-known powerful rhetoric? I think yes, somewhat. But I don't think he could have been strong enough to beat back all the attacks, and there's little doubt that the Dem party would not defended a lot of these attacks very well, because of their typical caution and trepidation. Plus, since Sanders was not a Democrat for most of his life, he would not get the same backing by the party, and there would be a lot of distancing.

So I understand that a lot of people on the left think this election was the best chance they had in ages to get New Deal/socialist candidate elected, and they are still mad that Sanders didn't get the nomination. They think the nomination was stolen from him, despite the actual evidence against that.

But the fact is, he lost the primary, and it wasn't that close, and he would NOT have had an easy time in the general election, at all.