It is almost impossible for a Democrat to win a general election with the 18% net unfavorability rating that Clinton has among Independents, unless Republicans choose an opponent so repugnant as to force Independents to hold their nose and vote for her anyway. Independents are now the plurality "party," averaging about 43% of the electorate (Sept. 2015), compared to Democrats at about 30%. Fluctuations in the appeal of Independents can now easily shift Democrats into third "party" status.
By stark contrast, Sanders exactly reverses Clinton's Independent deficit by scoring an 18% positive favorability margin among Independents (47%-29%). Since 24% of Independents still "haven't ... heard enough about him" to form an opinion, Sanders would, in a general election, almost certainly enlarge significantly upon his already-sufficient margin. That increase would likely go vertical about the time that he gains national attention by winning the New Hampshire primary, provided he first does well in Iowa. These residual Independents currently lacking knowledge about Sanders could be the key factor in achieving the mandate-conferring landslide that Sanders and the country need to start an electoral "revolution" against plutocracy.
Sanders is, of course, the Independents' favorite candidate irrespective of party affiliation. You could say that Sanders, a lifelong Independent and longest serving Independent in Congress ever, is the leader of the Independents' "party" whose day has come, much as the abolitionists day came in 1860 with Lincoln. Clinton is an icon of the Democratic Party establishment (serving plutocracy like Stephen Douglas served slave power oligarchy). Therefore she is the Independents' least favorite candidate, aside from Bush and Trump who narrowly pass her in that race to the bottom for reasons that are respectively very similar and different.
Trump represents an unusual Oz moment of transparency when the most media friendly available celebrity of plutocracy, such as it is, stepped through the curtain to undertake a nasty but necessary assignment. He is managing the public repair of the essential but frayed Republican alliance between Mammon and the current Tea Party manifestation of America's lingering heritage of Southern and doughface racist, misogynist and generally anti-democratic ("Bourbon") politics.
These politics are fated to be the republic's Sisyphean burden. Instead of focusing on this enduring domestic problem of democracy, the segregationist Jim Crow propagandist and warmonger Woodrow Wilson started a futile violent mission to bring democracy everywhere but to the U.S. which continues today. The same law discussed above in which Congress further tightened the grip of plutocracy by prohibiting SEC or procurement regulations from interfering with plutocrats' right to keep their corrupt "dark money" political investments secret from the public (though not from the politicians who are expected to reciprocate) also contains a provision that Wilson would like. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, " SEC. 7032. (a) FUNDING" states " $2,308,517,000 shall be made available for democracy programs" pretty much anywhere but the United States. Congress defines the purpose of such programs abroad as "development of democratic states, and institutions that are responsive and accountable to citizens." Wouldn't Americans like to have one of those, which could probably be provided at half the price. It is unlikely Congress could point to a single country which has become an authentic democracy as a result of these annual appropriations, though the US could possibly be the first if given a chance.
This anti-democratic coalition that Trump is rebuilding between money and the religious and "New" right was first forged and institutionalized (Moral Majority, ALEC, Heritage) in the 1970's by operatives like Paul Weyrich. They energized the alliance with plutocratic money after political corruption was legalized in Buckley v Valeo (1976). This coalition has been key to Republican success since the realignment of the parties during the civil rights era, when Northern urban voters forced Democrats to abandon their institutional support for the old Jim Crow. Republicans under Nixon and Reagan willingly took up the task with a set of national New Jim Crow policies (war on drugs, prison industrial complex, undermining the rule of law and of elections).
Unlike Trump, Clinton originates from the public side of the curtain behind which plutocrats normally exercise their control. This makes her vulnerable to the recognition that she is an influence peddler to those behind the curtain. Trump plausibly promises not to be such a peddler, presumably helping only himself to the benefits of a corrupted polity, not necessarily the whole class of billionaires.
Sanders spoke uniquely for Independents when he asked the kind of question about Clinton never heard from a partisan platform: "Let's not be naive about it. Why, over her political career has Wall Street been a major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? Maybe they're dumb, and they don't know what they're going to get. But I don't think so... Why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something. Everybody knows that." Sanders could say the same of every Republican except maybe Trump.
When the 700,000
strong Communication Workers union endorsed
Sanders over Clinton, after an internal democratic process, its
president made the same point on behalf of workers: "[Sanders] stands against the flood of money in politics that's corrupting our
democracy and attacking the right to vote. He knows that we have to
take on the rich and powerful special interests to turn around this
economy and end the 40 years of stagnant wages that working families
have endured." It sounds like this major union is choosing
independence from the plutocratic wing of the party.
In head-to-head polling of Independents Sanders, far more
comfortably than Clinton, beats every Republican candidate, with
statistically significant margins from 16% over Trump to 7% over
Carson, who was at the time the second favorite candidate of
Independents. Using the terminology leveled by revanchist Democrats
against the Green Party after the 2000 election, one could say that
in 2016 it is the Democrats themselves who threaten to be the
"spoilers." Democrats seem ready to deny Sanders the
chance to win a landslide of these proportions by using their control
of the defective election machinery Americans use for their
presidential run-off process. A spoiler is the smallest of two
similar factions who split the vote by rejecting formation of a
majority electoral coalition within which differences could be negotiated. A spoiler refuses such coalition with the result of enabling a minority
government. It is an anti-democratic result of an electoral system that lacks
an adequate run-off process.
Sanders made a very conscious strategic choice, for which he was criticized by practicing non-strategists, to invite Independents to take over the Democratic primary process rather than to invent a third party of their own for his candidacy. Ralph Nader did the country the favor of demonstrating how even the dream Third Party ticket with Winona LaDuke could not overcome the built-in strategic handicap that third parties confront in the U.S, two-party first-past-the-post voting system.
Barring attention spans beyond current American capacities, third parties are not sustainable in the US electoral system. The remedy for this defect was the primary system created by Progressives for conducting run-offs. Sanders has properly selected the primary process as the battleground for his electoral revolution. He has to first defeat Democratic plutocrats, who pretend to endorse much of his policy agenda, on their home court before he can sail to his victory over Republican plutocrats, who oppose his majoritarian policy agenda, in the general election.
Sanders' strategic choice to avoid proving over again the same point Nader already proved about the futility of Third Party politics provides Democratic voters an opportunity to recharge while decontaminating their corrupted party label with an epochal progressive victory. To do so will require Democratic voters to make a strategic alliance with the larger plurality "party" of Independents, just as Democrats advised Greens should do with them. Or Democrats can risk defeat as spoilers by insisting upon their own "donor-driven" candidate who freely appropriates Sanders' policy agenda, but who, in reality, effectively represents, on the decisive issues of concern to them, a plutocratic demographic little different in size from the Green vote. No doubt, like Obama, Clinton is capable of deceiving many more voters, but maybe not enough to win. Obama is the best at what he does. (See Part 2)
This 36% favorability advantage with Independents that Sanders has over Clinton defines the actual margin by which Sanders is more likely to win a general election than Clinton. According to Q-poll, both candidates would attract roughly the same number of Democrats in the general election. The Independents' 36% spread provides a clearly more reliable number than the Democrats' current totally mistaken guesstimate about who is the more electable candidate to get the remaining votes needed for a general election victory. The Democrats' erroneous guess as to which candidate can best defeat the Republicans could result in nominating the wrong candidate, unless those 36% of Independents decide to take action and displace ignorant Democrats as the decisive factor in 2016. Independents can make the primary election into a referendum on political corruption, or as Sanders says continued rule by "the billionaire class." Sanders' Independent supporters who choose him over Clinton are 14% of the electorate (36% of 43%). Combined with his Democrat supporters who are 10% of the electorate (one third of 30%) Sanders can win a 24-20% victory over Clinton in the primary, for a comfortable 55% of the primary vote.
Otherwise, if Independents do not engage in the primary, this 36% number is one that many Democrats need to study and learn at risk of helping to elect a Republican in 2016, should they reject coalition with Independents and insist on nominating Clinton. Most Democrat spoilers have only the single issue of corrupt plutocracy standing in the way of forging a winning coalition with Independents.
4. Experienced Leader vs Honest Authenticity
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