President Sanders? Bernie would have beaten Trump

[karynnj]

121. With Trump in former KGB Putin's pocket, it is hard to demonize a democratic socialist

I would imagine that Sanders would have been pushed to speak more of FDR and the new deal than Denmark and Sweden -- in fact, long time allies of his in Burlington were saying he needed to do that after the second debate.

You might say "socialist", but the fact is that that word has been demonized - as has liberal in the US by conservatives. A British high school teacher used the Obama hope poster and a distorted one from 2010 that was made to look ominous and replaced the word "hope" with "socialism" to show the poster of ads and propaganda. Her kids did not get why the second was negative -- because they did not have the same negative reaction to the word.

As to Jewish, how many times a day did Trump point out Ivanka and Jared were ORTHODOX Jews?

However, you never know the path not taken. I agree that he might have been better in getting the disaffected vote in the rust belt IN ADDITION to the normal Democratic vote that any nominee. It might also be that people really DID see two very different choices in the election. Going to a local ACA rally - I see that - now that we have lost - we are far more galvanized over that issue than during the election. One question is whether a different candidate could have made the election a referendum over keeping ACA, keeping the EPA regulations, keeping the banking regulations etc.

I KNOW that HRC had tons of position papers and gave speeches on them constantly. It was Trump who ran an almost content free election. What Trump did was to run on simple - (yes, stupid and impossible) slogans. One question is whether we could have done better creating simple slogans IN ADDITION to the speeches and complicated proposals. Had we done this, could we have gotten through with a media giving Trump hours of coverage as they found his outrageous comments interesting -- blame a culture that made stars of shock jocks!

The other question is who might have done that. I actually don't think it would be Bernie. Bernie is Bernie and he can be inspiring and he has to have political skills to have done what he did - without the support of any powers that be. But, he will speak of Denmark, which to a different audience gets his points across, to the entire country which demands leaders speak of why America is exceptional - not question if it is.

So, who could have filled that role? I would question whether Biden or Warren might have done so.

Imagine HRC opted out and Biden entered as the favorite, he might have connected better - almost for sure in PA where he was loved by Scanton, which is not located in the Philadelphia or Pittsburgh area. Biden DID find the slogans - 'Osama is dead, GM is alive" and "Guilaini is just 911 and a verb and a noun" BUT he also could go off on extreme tangents like when he spoke in the Senate at the Alito hearing for 26 minutes mostly on things like Irish kids could not go to Princeton when he was young.

But Biden would not have been a flawless candidate wither. With Biden there are so many different Bidens - there is the serious man who spent 3 decades on the foreign relations committee and who gained the respect of the beltway media on that; the very human, likable man who would say what was on his mind - with far less of a filter than most; there is also a man. Like anyone who has been in public life for at least 45 years, he has negatives too. The various bankruptcy bills might make it hard for him to be seen as the one to help the rust belt. The Anita Hill hearings might have still been a negative in a contested primary. Not to mention, Biden ran in 1988 and 2008 without gaining much traction - so, while he would get far more support as a sitting VP, it is hard to make the case that he was a spectacular candidate.

Warren, though incredible, has run just one race - in Massachusetts.

Where I come out is that this was a very close race. It is always easy after the fact to Monday Morning quarterback the race. I suspect that ANY candidate might have been blind sided by Trump. I suspect that he always was doing better than his polling. That happened in many many primaries and the general election. To me, this means that many who voted for him were not comfortable stating they would do so. One clue was he did better in the computerized polls than in those where you spoke to a person.

In retrospect, it is obvious that she should have spent more time in WI, MI, and even PA. In addition, had her campaign been more worried about those states, she might have been able to have a big speech in one of these areas and spoke emotionally about the facts of their lives and honestly acknowledged that we need to do better there. Imagine a call for a "Marshall Plan" at home - referencing the after WWII investment that restored the war damaged Europe. However, when they anticipated a landslide victory, this could have been seen as needlessly risky and suggesting not enough was done in the 8 Obama years.