Don't blame me, I voted Gecko.

if bernie loses, maybe he endorses her, but since she is the exact type of person he rails against in his speeches i doubt you'd ever see him campaigning for her. the guy's like 75, he'll go home to vermont and retire. it would also surprise me if he (an independent) cared about a spot from a convention who has, from the start, tried to undermine his campaign at every turn.

Watch the Santorum guy vid if you haven't. http://www.snappytv.com/tc/1329671/555454

"Failure to launch."

A prime time speech at the convention would give him a the last, best chance to share his worldview with the nation. Hillary would probably want him to pack it in March in order to get the time slot.

I wasn't including r/politics for the obvious reason that subscriptions to that tell us nothing about the political affiliations of posters.

I was wrong about libertarian (although in my defense it's been awhile since I've checked). My point was that the size of a subreddit is pretty meaningless for determining the popularity of political affiliations.

hillary will have a hard time getting a decent percentage of the under 30 vote. i don't think people who might have to work decades to pay off student loans in the 5/6 figure range are ever going to resonate with someone who makes $250k for one speech.

plus her campaign is just so uninspiring. with obama there was 'hope and change', and everyone knows what bernie is about. so i think if hillary wants to increase the younger voter demographic, she needs to show them why she is in this race.

They are lying, this happens every primary. The one exception might be a real wildcard like Trump, but unless the D primary gets incredibly ugly there's going to be a choice for those Sanders voters:

1) Stay home

2) Vote against Cruz

Contra some others, though, I doubt Sanders sticks around to stump for Hillary. He's old, he already is a Senator so he's not angling for a job in her administration, once he's out he's gone. But once he's out, Hillary gets to activate Agent O, and he'll get the youngins.

Its like an oot reg in real life. He could probably explain in great detail how Donald Trump isnt actually a good businessman and Hillary Clinton has endangered us all by releasing classified information.

C'mon he is campaigning for POTUS now. Showing up at a some campaign events is no big deal.

Willing to bet Bernie shows up at 0 HRC campaign events.

it's possible this happens, that he just takes his ball and goes home.

however, i believe he WANTS that prime time convention spot, because of the quoted post below. personally, i think he will do "enough" to get it. what "enough" is, i don't know, but an endorsement and then some follow up to remind his followers that half a loaf is better than none (e.g. don't cut off your nose to spite your face) will likely do it.

yup. it would be a "once in a lifetime" moment, and i doubt he wants to miss it.

yeah, i think that most of people who say "i'm staying home unless i get MY guy" become pragmatic when it actually comes to election day and go vote.

the reason why it may hold some credence with they "youngs" is that they aren't exactly a reliable voting bloc when it come to showing up at the polls, and those who were never involved in politics and latched onto the "bernie phenomenon" may indeed just stay home. as a matter of fact, i'd expect some of them to stay home, that's already baked into my GE thoughts. if bernie hadn't have come on the scene, they weren't going to be voters anyway. whatever voters hrc gets from that group are a bonus.

the more "youngs" that bernie gets involved in politics, the better it is for hrc (and longterm for the dems). the ones who listen past "i'm going to take care of your student loans" and hear the rest of the democratic party's "social message" may become solid "party" voters. younger voters would seem to be lean left socially, and if we can get the involved now, all the better.

some seem to forget about the bolded. the potus has yet to be unleashed. also, bubba has yet to be truly unleashed, and NOBODY feels people's pain like bubba does.

I see so many people with the idea that polls will just remain static in the South which is an interesting position to take. I think Sanders can gain there but how much is the interesting question and will determine whether he has a shot at the nomination or not. Time isn't on his side.

I don't like how the democratic establishment has pretty much shoved one candidate on us. Sanders has been quite successful given what the initial estimates were for his campaign. He was expected to be steamrolled from the beginning and yet wound up 50/50 in the first state. What other campaign in the past has done what he has so far against a candidate the establishment has already crowned in a big way? It's unprecedented and yet the establishment continues to shun him. Candidates have done much worse in primaries and gotten establishment support and yet he gets none. If Clinton actually has a shot in my state I will vote for her but if she doesn't then I may vote otherwise as I don't agree with what the party has done here.

I've never voted before. I recently finally registered. I registered as a Democrat so I could vote for Bernie over Hilary in the NY primary. I probably won't bother voting at all in the GE unless it's Bernie and it's somehow gonna be close. Even if it was close between Hilary and Cruz/Rubio I really don't think I'd bother showing up and voting for her. I'm 28.

I'd consider voting for Trump over Hilary if it somehow came to that.

I don't understand this why not vote Green party then as that should line up more with your views? While Clinton is more of a centrist there are still many differences between her and Republican candidates. I do think she will be more status quo than anything but status quo will be better than a Republican Congress and Republican President rolling back a lot of the advancements we have had.

I disagree with both parties' devotion to big money interests and I don't care if I agree more with George Soros over the Koch brothers as I disagree with big money in politics regardless of who the message comes from.

Not the first time I've heard Sanders and Trump being #1 and #2 choices.

I'd still like an explanation though.

Would you feel differently if you lived in a swing state where your vote mattered?

And like eurodp said above, show up and cast a protest vote for the Greens or Libertarians or something. Plus, you know, maybe see wtf is going on with the local races because they happen to matter quite a bit.

I'm sure you know this, but in NYC local races are also typically decided on primary day. Those of us without party registration are effectively disenfranchised.

YES PLEASE DO THIS. The left really needs to learn from the right on turning out for elections even when a President isn't being chosen. Republicans dominate state legislatures.

Also going back to my previous point about static polls, I believe 538 said most people start paying attention/deciding on who to vote for like a week before the vote happens in the respective state so I will be more curious about the polls in some weeks from now with regards to the South.

In my opinion Sanders will gain but not enough to overtake Clinton. Regardless, I think his campaign bodes well for American democracy and for bringing more attention to campaign finance. He is also unabashedly not religious which is something that is so great to see in an elected official.

welcome to the way politics works. establishment sees the "big picture" and backs the candidate they feel is most likely to win.

how do you think bernie would have done is the first primary was held in a big state that more accurately represents the demographics of america, vs. a very small state where all the demographics were in his favor? or in a state with a high number of AA voters?

i wouldn't go getting too excited about "lack of precedence". iowa's ****ed up way of doing things and the demographics leant itself to bernie doing well.

fwiw, i don't think the polls stay the same in the south. but i think they go the opposite way that you do once "the first black president" is unleashed down there. don't ignore the fact that the AA vote is huge in the south, and clinton owns that group (and bubba will only make that support more solid), with no real way for bernie to make inroads.

iow, don't get too fired up with a tie in iowa and a win in nh. neither state is representative in terms of demographics for the democratic party.

me too. only thing i can see is that they are "protest voters", and will vote for anyone who promises to "change the machine". i'd characterize this group as "non-issue" voters, they don't care about the issues, they'd like to tear down the existing structure.

I have no problem with establishment backing the candidate they feel most likely to win but they backed Clinton to an unprecedented level before anything even began. This left us with 1 option for our nominee and it is likely other candidates didn't even bother to run because of this. What is the point of having a primary then?
I don't know and we will find out when those states come up. You are basing this on what the polls currently are in those other states but I am curious to see more accurate polls once campaigning really starts in those states. You could very well be right and he has no shot of gaining with older voters and minorities.
This is an interesting point you bring up.
Agreed.

I'd argue that the people who would vote Trump if they can't vote for Sanders are more inclined to be voting that way due to the issues of campaign finance and the influence of money on establishment politics.

If this is true for some people then I don't get it as billionaires are the ones running the campaign finance system so how does electing a billionaire change that? It just removes the middle man(politician)? So then this billionaire who has admitted to playing the system in the past will all of a sudden do the bidding of the 99%?

EDIT - Trump is spending a ton of money to get elected so I would be surprised if when elected he didn't do what was best for people like himself. The same thing with the Bloomberg potential threat of running if Sanders wins. Bloomberg wants to keep his absurd level of power that he now has and Sanders threatens that so spending $1 Billion is nothing to keep that power.