Ever wondered why all of a sudden the Sanders campaign has started their attack on Clinton on being progressive? Sanders while saying he’s not going negative, and I agree that if you make the distinction of personal attacks, but he isn’t exactly talking about himself either. The same could be said of Clinton in the primary, she has attacked positions but I haven’t recalled any personal attacks.
So here’s the reason, this week in NH based on the UMass Lowell/7News NH Tracking Poll Clinton has gain 16 points. Sanders with still a significant lead with 15%.
2/1 – Sanders 61% Clinton 30%
2/5 – Sanders 55% Clinton 40%
Losing 16% in 5 days is a free fall, I still think Sanders is going to win NH, but I have no doubt that Clinton will use the Sanders free fall this week against him in Nevada and South Carolina where Clinton is already in a strong position. So for those who are arguing over labels, save yourself time and energy, it doesn’t matter. Sanders attack is just good old fashioned politics.
I doubt Sanders’ campaign really is in free fall in NH, as evidenced by other polls indicating otherwise (e.g. the latest CNN poll showing Sanders maintaining a wide lead). I think if the campaigns’ internal polls showed the same thing, Clinton would not be leaving NH for Flint this weekend.
Sanders’ strategy all along is something of a delicate balance. He wants to draw distinctions with Clinton without attacking her directly (like on the bogus emails issue). The “progressive” debate is a new wrinkle on it, but I think both campaigns have done a good job keeping to the issues rather than personal attacks — as witnessed by the very substantive debate last night.
I like the tracking poll because it is a 3 day daily average, for today’s poll is Feb 2-4, it’s the same poll, so I’m not cherry picking polls to suit whatever point real or not that I’m making. It is what it is. A poll conducted in the same manner daily with a 3 day average.
Now they could be off, Sanders could be leading by 80% and now leading by 65%. But you need to get real.
Sanders and his team disagree with you.
As I think I said yesterday, I was surprised when Sanders took the gloves off AFTER his Iowa showing, which he had to see as a win. But a poll drop would explain it.
Dante Scala was on WBUR this morning, and he came pretty close to predicting a Clinton upset. He didn’t say that, but he did talk about NH still being able to surprise people.
Personally I would never count out Kathy Sullivan, if she’s helping Clinton there. I don’t know that she is, but it seems likely.
I have to honestly go with Sanders for my NH prediction, but I don’t think it will be a 30 point blowout. I do data entry for the Clinton campaign in Nashua and we are getting net positive results.
I think Sanders will go to win by 10 points in New Hampshire – would be surprised if the difference was larger.
My concern with Clinton continues to be that, as President, you lead by example, and the personal example she and her husband have set on any number of past occasions has been very bad. Whereas Sanders will set a great personal example of how to be an honest public servant.
Another is that, unless you talk about big issues and bold ideas during a presidential run, you’ll struggle to create movement and momentum to reform a badly gridlocked system in Washington.
To counter all this, she has a good argument in that she’s knowledgeable with policy, and she’ll know how to run government and deal with Congress. Sanders looked really lost in the foreign policy part of the debate last night. That is not good for him.
At the same time, a closer inspection of her record as Senator and as Secretary of State is that of few remarkable accomplishments. I think she did not surpass the expectations set for her at the outset. With the office of President, it might be different, because it’s a much more visible public function.
So looks like you are on the money. Suffolk has the best track record around here anyway.
CNN has Sanders by 30, Quinnipiac had Clinton by 2, and those were from today.
The Quinnipiac poll figures released earlier today were, iirc, for the entire country, not just NH. It was also explicitly stated – headlined actually on the station where I first heard them – as well within (no surprise for a 2 point spread!) the margin of error for that survey. (Btw, this was apparently also the first Quinnipiac national figures since December, when they had Clinton 61 vs Sanders 30.)
…and the alleged lack of accomplishments have their origins mostly in the Republican Noise Machine. The VRWC thanks you for falling for it:)
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, complains that Sanders’ attacks on the “billionaire class” and bankers has the potential to become personal, to become “a dangerous moment“…
“Not just for Wall Street not just for the people who are particularly targeted but for anybody who is a little bit out of line”, he says.
Methinks Blankfein is starting to feel the Bern.
but he is helping Sanders.
Wait until the money interests start chewing Bernie. Today, CNN discovered that Congressmen organize retreats with the wealthiest donors – and guess who is reported among the 535 members of Congress as going to these retreats?
Bernie Sanders.
CNN could not hear, see, or touch these obscene fund raisers for years, but now that the topic is influence of money in politics, all of a sudden CNN is duly reporting that Sanders is “a prolific fundraiser himself”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/sanders-democratic-fundraisers/index.html
Wow.
Clinton and Sanders are politicians, I have always thought that, neither is an outsider. Sanders has won a string of elections over the course of decades, that doesn’t happen unless you are skilled at your craft and the craft is politics.
How closely tied Sanders has been to monied interests surprises me a little bit. But it shouldn’t.
I wrote yesterday on a different thread (emphasis here):
One of the memes I’ve been hearing for too long is that Hillary Clinton is “dirty” and Bernie Sanders is “clean”. Whether we call it “honesty” or “integrity” or even “establishment”, it’s all the same meme. It amounts to a recitation of the many smears that the GOP has made against Ms. Clinton in the last three decades, and a wide-eyed “See? Bernie Sanders doesn’t have any of that baggage”.
I suggest that this is badly mistaken. I don’t think that Ms. Clinton is significantly “dirtier” than any other public figure, and I don’t think that Mr. Sanders is significantly “cleaner”. I think EACH of them is a dedicated, loyal, and committed public servant doing the best they can to fight huge and increasingly powerful vested interests.
I think the “is-she-honest” narrative about Ms. Clinton is inappropriately hostile, and I think the “pure-as-the-driven-snow” narrative about Mr. Sanders is naively positive.
In my view, this all works to Ms. Clinton’s favor. I think that a large portion of these hit-pieces that she attracts are written precisely because she IS powerful and effective. I think Mr. Sanders has escaped such attacks in the past because he has not, in fact, actually DONE very much.
Now that Mr. Sanders joins Ms. Clinton on the 1% radar screen, his “negatives”, in reaction to pieces like this, will quickly catch up with hers.
Admiral Nimitz was famously quoted as saying “If you’re not making waves, you’re not underway”. Now that Mr. Sanders is underway, he too is making waves — Ms. Clinton has been leaving behind a wide wake for more than two decades.