(CNN)Bernie Sanders often says the principal reason he can beat President Donald Trump in a general election is that he will win the way he says, by burying Trump under a tidal wave of new liberal voters. The idea that the senator from Vermont can win by expanding the electorate "is the equivalent of climate denial," longtime Democratic strategist James Carville told me. "If you believe that, you are dumb as a climate denier. Not only is there no evidence to support your hypothesis; there is all the evidence in the world to refute it."
Carville has emerged as a leader among Democrats concerned that nominating Sanders will doom the party to defeat against Trump and put the House majority at grave risk as well. Democratic experts both sympathetic to Sanders and skeptical of him agree the real question is whether he can do that -- not whether he can count on a massive cavalry of new voters to tilt the election. The idea that a turnout surge will obviate the need to convince swing voters "is magical pixie dust that he and others like him wave over their candidacies to explain away any problems," Another fundamental challenge looms over a strategy built on winning through mobilization: Any candidate, like Sanders, with a persona strong enough to excite positive turnout on his side risks igniting "negative" turnout on the other. Many Democrats believe that the unrelenting partisan conflict of the Trump presidency ensures that their supporters will turn out in large numbers against him in November.
If the party picks a polarizing nominee of its own, they fear, it will make it easier for Trump to generate massive turnout from the Republican base against the Democrat. Even if Democrats want to pursue a strategy revolving around mobilization, Teixeira argues, "You can argue it's possible that Sanders is the worst possible candidate to do it. He's so polarizing. He's likely to jack up turnout on the other side at least as much."
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