Could Bernie Sanders have won the Democratic primary if he started a year earlier?

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During the 2016 Democratic primary Bernie Sanders jumped in relatively late in the process and was pretty clearly initially a message candidate to push Hillary Clinton to the left, but was surprised, along with everyone else, with him becoming a stiff challenger to Clinton. Yesterday I heard a theory by a Clinton supporting pundit that had Sanders thought he could potentially win and started his primary run a year early, which meant preparing to run and assembling a time, not necessarily officially announcing a year earlier than IOTL. Apparently he was talking about a run as early as 2012, so it's not like he decided out of the blue to run in April 2015. So what if he started preparing for 2016 in 2014 and really made an early effort to win and get his name out there in preparation for a run, while assembling a better primary campaign staff? Do you think he might have had a shot to win with better preparation and expectation that he would actually try and win, rather than run a message campaign?
 
The Clintons' excellent relationship building in the black community is what saved her candidacy. Bernie would've had to go back about thirty years in order to overcome that. Hell, the first black president ever had to work his butt off in order to overcome it back in 2008.

(And no, no one was impressed by that one thing he did for the Civil Rights movement 50 some odd years ago. Having Bernie supporters bring that up was akin to Republicans bringing up Lincoln.)
 

karikon

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Hillary Clinton already has national support network in place and couple that with the DNC and it's clear Bernie is at huge disadvantages.
 
Getting more institutional support approaches ASB; the Party had decided on Hillary in 2009, basically. Might have gotten more votes if he'd started early, I guess.
 
Getting more institutional support approaches ASB;

It would not be impossible. Al Gore only endorsed Hillary at the fucking convention (which he refused to attend) with a low-key written statement. Elizabeth Warren had had some serious falling out with Hillary in the past. Both of them could could have made a big show of endorsing him right at the start under different circumstances.

Of course, you would also need something like a clear victory in Iowa, a nail-biting victory in Nevada and a much better showing in South Carolina to get those 27$ donations rolling much faster than OTL.
 
It would not be impossible. Al Gore only endorsed Hillary at the fucking convention (which he refused to attend) with a low-key written statement. Elizabeth Warren had had some serious falling out with Hillary in the past. Both of them could could have made a big show of endorsing him right at the start under different circumstances.

Of course, you would also need something like a clear victory in Iowa, a nail-biting victory in Nevada and a much better showing in South Carolina to get those 27$ donations rolling much faster than OTL.

Getting endorsements if he won would be one thing, but getting those early is laughable. People sat out from endorsing Hillary because they didn't want to be involved in the primary process, not because they were open to someone like Sanders. Biden maybe could have cut into her endorsement lead, but not Sanders.
 
Sanders could only win the nom if he attracted minorities. I'm not sure if running a year earlier would be enough for him to improve his lacklustre attempts to attract minorities.
 
Maybe Bernie could have become a Democrat sooner? Instead of spending most of his career as the Independent Senator from Vermont?
 
Getting endorsements if he won would be one thing, but getting those early is laughable. People sat out from endorsing Hillary because they didn't want to be involved in the primary process, not because they were open to someone like Sanders. Biden maybe could have cut into her endorsement lead, but not Sanders.

I think we'll never know what Elizabeth Warren was really thinking at the start of the primary, probably not even after she's super old and publishes her memoirs. If you think it would have been impossible/laughable for her to decide on endorsing Sanders early, regardless of the circumstances, then that's your opinion, and we can just agree to disagree or something.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Of course, you would also need something like a clear victory in Iowa, a nail-biting victory in Nevada and a much better showing in South Carolina to get those 27$ donations rolling much faster than OTL.
A clear victory in Iowa would be a game changer, especially if followed up by the landslide in NH. Then NV probably would have been even closer, though maybe not an outright victory. I have a tough time seeing SC getting any better for Sanders given the demographics (a huge part of the Democratic primary electorate is older, church going black women with strong political ties to Clinton). The South is unlikely to be that much better. However MA could very well change, especially if Warren came out at the right time for him. Then the rest of the race could have been very changed from there on out.

Getting endorsements if he won would be one thing, but getting those early is laughable. People sat out from endorsing Hillary because they didn't want to be involved in the primary process, not because they were open to someone like Sanders. Biden maybe could have cut into her endorsement lead, but not Sanders.
Agreed, early endorsements aren't coming until Sanders proves to everyone he is not only viable, but likely to win. Iowa is non-negotiable for that, NH helps, NV is potentially a game changer then if he wins that despite Harry Reid acting behind the scenes for the party/Clinton. That would be a MAJOR wake up call and I think then you might see a Warren endorsement. Winning MA would be a huge boost for Sanders too.
 
Do you think he might have had a shot to win with better preparation and expectation that he would actually try and win, rather than run a message campaign?

Well, yes, but the problem is that nobody had much reason to suspect that Bernie Sanders would do anywhere near as well as he did. Even Sanders himself didn't seem to realize he could run something more than a messaging campaign until after it was too late to matter.

One outside factor that could help is if Trump doesn't run. He basically monopolized media coverage in the Presidential primaries. If Trump doesn't run, Bernie will be the main story, bar occasional flavors of the month like Ben Carson, and that could give him an earlier boost — thus leading him, maybe, to an earlier realization he could run more than a message campaign.

It'll still be a rough road, but it's doable.
 
I think we'll never know what Elizabeth Warren was really thinking at the start of the primary, probably not even after she's super old and publishes her memoirs. If you think it would have been impossible/laughable for her to decide on endorsing Sanders early, regardless of the circumstances, then that's you opinion, and we can just agree to disagree or something.

She doesn't even want to be in the Senate, really, it basically got forced on her to run. Otherwise, she's much more of a policy wonk than a politician. The more she gets dragged into contentious intraparty disputes, the less she can be focused on the work that really matters to her.
 

Deleted member 1487

She doesn't even want to be in the Senate, really, it basically got forced on her to run. Otherwise, she's much more of a policy wonk than a politician. The more she gets dragged into contentious intraparty disputes, the less she can be focused on the work that really matters to her.
She really does love ripping on Trump though.
 
Bernie's campaign had a big problem reaching out to minorities, espcially African Americans. I belive that a big problem was the focusing on the campaign on a single or a couple of issues (UHC and collage debt) and not a big tent of progressive ideals. As we aid before he didn't know he had a chance until January or so.
 
Endorsements largely don't matter. Consider the Republican race; Trump got essentially no major endorsements until well after he had essentially clenched things. Even if e.g. Warren wanted to endorse Sanders over Clinton (assuming facts very much not in evidence), it wouldn't have changed much. The average swing voter, even in the primaries has never heard of Elizabeth Warren.

More broadly, electoral coverage of the Democratic primary always tends to focus on young, white, college-educated (or college-students) liberals. Every one of the past several contested Democratic elections has featured an anti-establishment candidate who appeals to this group (arguably Tsongas, Bradley, Dean, Obama, Sanders). But despite their prominence in the media, there aren't enough of them to win the nomination; the only one of these to capture the nomination did so by building a much broader coalition. Again, the media focused on white, wealthy, liberal college students as Obama's base, but in truth, he relied heavily on support from traditionally Democratic groups like African-Americans during his primaries. There's a reason that both Obama and Sanders did so much better in caucuses (which require turning out small numbers of highly motivated supporters with enough free time to attend) than primaries (which require mobilizing a much broader base); the difference is that Obama had enough other support to contest and win primaries as well. It's instructive to compare the 2008 and 2016 primary maps.

Bernie's problem is that his message, his platform and his campaign are very much not oriented towards those other factions of the Democratic base, and it's not clear how he would go about changing that, even given more time.
 
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