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Sci Tech    H2'ed 4/18/16

Sanders Can Win. Here's Why.

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He can win by being what he so obviously is when we strip away the ten-mile head start Hillary Clinton had in this election season: by being the better candidate.

In almost every state, Sanders performs better with voters the more they're exposed to him, and Hillary worse the more voters are exposed to her.

Sanders' performance with every demographic besides the very old is improving over time. Heck, Hillary is losing delegates even between the time people vote for her at a primary or caucus and the time they're supposed to show up at county and state conventions -- which Hillary supporters aren't, in shockingly large numbers.

It's a good thing Harry Reid didn't stay neutral in Nevada as he'd promised, as the strings he pulled on Election Day in the Silver State ensured a narrow victory for Clinton -- which predictably disappeared in the second stage of the voting, the county-convention stage.

It's a good thing Arizona had reduced polling stations in its most populous county by 80 percent, given that on Election Day Sanders beat Clinton in live voting 50 percent to 46.5 percent. Thousands walked away from those six-hour lines without voting.

It's a good thing ties in Massachusetts, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa were put on CNN's "Magic Wall" as every bit the overwhelming victories for Clinton as were the primary votes in Alabama and Mississippi. An honest media would've put those four -- and, yes, Sanders' win in Michigan -- on the board as votes that more or less split down the middle, not just in the popular vote but in the delegate count. Our system disfavors insurgents by making a loss by one vote look like every bit the resounding defeat that a loss by a million votes is. The truth? With the advantages she had, those votes in Massachusetts, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa were all losses for Clinton. No candidate with her advantages and worth her salt would've won those states by anything less than 10 percent. Get a political pundit in private and they'll admit it to you.

The point: Clinton misused super-delegates from the jump by bringing them on-board before a single vote had been cast, by permitting the media to tally them as though they were pledged delegates, by allowing them to flaunt their states' votes, and by frankly not caring one whit if they supported the popular-vote or delegate-count leader -- as she was neither back in 2015 when they all agreed to vote for her in Philadelphia.

Now, despite her endless slate of electoral and media and circumstantial advantages, she's going to fail to reach 2,383 delegates via pledged delegates alone.

And the only argument she can make to being the better candidate in fact is that her head start on Sanders was so extraordinary in its size and scope that all he could do was battle her to a virtual draw in the delegate battle in March (51 percent to 49 percent) and beat her so far in the delegate battle in April (55 percent to 45 percent). Indeed, her pre-election lead was so great that half the country's Democrats still believe she's more electable in the fall than Sanders, despite there being no statistical evidence to support the claim -- and a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

So let's be clear: In a world in which both candidates start on an even footing and receive equal treatment from the media, the current Clinton-Sanders race would be Sanders +15. And everybody in American politics knows it, including all of the unpledged super-delegates.

So when both Clinton and Sanders fail to clinch the nomination via pledged delegates alone, and both head to Philadelphia with an eye toward wooing the (still completely unpledged) super-delegates, Clinton will win if her advantages are treated as assets rather than signs that she should have been beating this old socialist Jew from Vermont with the rumpled suits and unruly hair by twenty or more points all along.

And Sanders will win if the Democrats pick the better candidate -- which, given the harrowing dangers of a Trump presidency, I damn well hope they do.

Your ball, New York.

Seth Abramson is the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University) and the author, most recently, of DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016).

Follow Seth Abramson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sethabramson

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Seth Abramson is the author of several books: DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016); Metamericana (BlazeVOX, 2015); Thievery (University of Akron, 2013); Northerners (Western Michigan University, 2011); and The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009). (more...)
 

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