Despite scandalous neglect by mass media and predictable opposition from big money, Bernie Sanders is the #1 favorite of the majority of voters. A defective run-off process disguises this fact behind a partisan primary curtain where Sanders loses to Clinton 2-1. Democrats, 30% of voters, don't know that Sanders runs decisively ahead of Clinton against Republicans and are even more ignorant of their respective qualities.

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This article looks at polling data from the point of view of an Independent plurality which favors Bernie Sanders by 36% over Clinton, making him in turn the likely winner against any Republican, while leaving Clinton only a toss-up chance in November. Polling also shows Democrats to be unaware of that fact. It is risky for a party that shares only 30% of the electorate to ignore the decisive role that Independents play in choosing Presidents. The Democratic Party's own shrinking base gives it features of a third party in need of coalition with the larger "party" of Independents that Bernie Sanders uniquely brings to the table. But that will require facing up to the party's own systemic corruption well represented by a Clinton candidacy.

Meanwhile, as discussed in Part 2, due to their partisan resistance to understanding President Obama's deepest flaws, Democrats fundamentally misunderstand what the rest of the country seeks in a 2016 candidate.

Polls show misinformed Democrats failing to form a coalition with Independents for these two reasons.

This article warns that Democratic voters flirt at their peril with using their control over primaries at the front end of a defective run-off process to deny victory in November to the nation's preferred choice, Sanders. Democrats thereby play a similar role today that they labeled "spoiler" in the past when they complained that a third party denied victory to the nation's preferred choice, thereby allowing the rejected and now reviled Bush II to take power and inflict permanent damage on the country.

To win in 2016, Democratic primary voters need to vote strategically, based upon reliable information, in favor of the alliance with Independents that Sanders offers them. This alliance would join voters across the line now separating those who accept systemic political corruption as a lesser evil than electing a Republican, on one side, and a growing majority that does not, on the other.

But Sanders can win even if Democrats should choose to remain ignorant. The polls' optimistic teaching about the mathematics of the Democratic primary is that with 30% of the electorate expected to vote 2:1 for Clinton, Democrats will provide Sanders roughly half the votes he needs to win the primary. But his 36% lead over Clinton among Independents, who are 43% of the electorate, gain him another 14% if they will participate in the primary of the Democrats they otherwise disdain. This would deliver Sanders a 24-20% victory over Clinton in the primary. Since winning the primary is tantamount for Sanders to winning the general election against any Republican his victory would change the Democratic Party from what we know it to be, a network for corruption.

Whether motivated by dislike of the corrupt Democratic Party or a liking for Sanders, or both, it is clear that voting in the Democratic primary is the necessary first step back to democracy. If that means registering as a Democrat, that is a small price to pay for your country. Its reversible after the primary, and not communicable if you wash your hands.

plu-toc-ra-cy1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A country or society governed in this way.

In early December the highly trusted Quinnipiac University National Poll (" Q-Poll") delivered both bad news and good news for Bernie Sanders.

The unpromising lead is: Sanders polls 30% behind Clinton, among Democrats.

This bad news might be best explained by the Democrats' even more lopsided answer to the big "electability" question, as well as questions that explore several perceived Clinton qualifications to be president. Unfortunately, the Q-Poll shows that 38% more Democrats think Clinton "would have a good chance of defeating the Republican nominee" than would Sanders (87% to 49%), while also suggesting that she would bring stronger leadership and better experience to the general election, if not the presidency.

Part I. Electability?

1. Whose Electability?

The good news for Sanders is to be found in the details of what the pollsters actually demonstrate to be true about his electability. The Q-Poll disproves the conventional opinion of most Democrats with evidence from direct match-ups of each of the two Democrats against each of the four Republican contenders who have more than single digit support. This polling substitutes for the lack of an effective run-off presidential election system in the United States. Now run by two corrupt parties the process is partially privatized.

The Q-Poll findings: "Sanders does just as well [as Clinton against Rubio], or even better, against [the other] top Republicans [Trump, Carson,and Cruz]." Against each of the latter three, Sanders' winning margin exceeds Clinton's by an additional 2%, 3% and 5% respectively, compared to a survey margin of error of +/- 2.6%.

It is by just such narrow margins that modern elections are won or lost. For example Slate opines it to be "a sign of how accustomed we've become to razor-thin margins of victory that Obama's 2.3-percent popular-vote victory [in 2012] seems almost like a rout...[T]hree out of four of our last elections have been decided by a popular-vote margin of less than 3 percent" which, the author observes, "best resembles the Gilded Age" when choice was similarly limited to pluto-Dum and pluto-Dem candidates.

Sanders' additional margin of safety places him beyond the margin of polling error around which Clinton's fluctuating numbers for her Republican match-ups are more commonly found. Sanders' numbers seem "almost like a rout" compared to a toss-up for Clinton. That makes Sanders, before winning a single primary, already the #1 favorite presidential candidate, notwithstanding the plutocratic media and Democratic Party apparatus doing as much as possible to oppose him.

Democratic voters have it exactly backwards. It is Sanders that should be attracting their near certain (87%) confidence of victory next November now accorded Clinton, while their doubts about a Sanders toss-up (49%) should properly attach to Clinton. Democrats are not just misinformed, but grossly misinformed, about the key issue of whether Clinton or Sanders will more likely win against Republicans. The cause of this ignorance, one labor leader argues, is the well-funded' effort to "consciously mislead" Democrats into believing "that [Sanders] cannot win," what she calls the "gaslight" strategy of persuading people they must be crazy to think that the most popular candidate could actually win a U.S. election over the opposition of plutocrats who "frankly own the place."

The 38% margin by which polled Democrats erroneously rank Clinton as the more electable, a virtual shoo-in, candidate probably explains a good deal of the margin of support among Democratic voters for Clinton over Sanders (30%). Certainly, not all Clinton supporters are using electability as their main criterion for preferring her in opinion polls. A possible alternative would be if there is something about Clinton that is so importantly preferable to voters so as to transcend their normal desire to defeat any of the likely Republicans.

Since the thoroughly establishment Clinton is not one to inspire great enthusiasm by force of personality, what obviously comes to mind as a possible factor is her gender identity. But the polls do not consistently support that theory. Any gender bias seems to be canceled out by the gender gap which has persisted since the beginning of women's suffrage. Women are more progressive than men, and so Sanders claims more women have donated to his campaign than to Clinton's, a possible measure of relative enthusiasm. It is the more conservative Democrats, naturally, who give Clinton her widest margin of support. In addition, it is reported that younger women are less concerned with identity politics than issues like inequality which will have greater actually experienced impact on their lives. Historically Clinton has done better with women over 65. Since younger women are better acclimated to the fact that a female presidency reached 92% acceptability over 15 years ago, it does not register with them as such a pressing issue to be fought for as the focus of a political campaign. As Margaret Thatcher proved, it is far more important to gender equality who the woman is than that a leader be a woman.

In any event Sanders should have an excellent solution available to him for any lingering gender issue: her name is Elizabeth Warren, who declined to run for president but has said nothing yet about forming a Sanders-Warren ticket. At Sanders' age, the wise selection of a Vice President will be an important test of judgment. It would be a lapse of judgment not to be enthusiastically courting Warren to join the Sanders ticket and thereby move a woman with a remarkable life story and inherent likeability more surely toward the presidency than a Clinton nomination would necessarily do. An Iowa poll concluded that having Warren on the Sanders ticket would take 3% off Clinton's 9% advantage there, before she has even started to campaign.

Discussed in Part 2 of this article is a theory that Democrats' gross 38% error about electability is compounded by how a questionable assessment of President Obama likely affects voters' preferences to Clinton's advantage. These two factors, both based on misunderstandings, seem to account for the Democratic voters' lopsided but misplaced preference for Clinton.

On both counts it would be useful for these misled Democrats, when casting their primary votes over the next several months, to consider not just the fact that, but also the reason why, Bernie Sanders consistently outperforms Hillary Clinton against all Republicans. They should remember that it is independent voters, not narrowly divided partisan loyalists, who generally determine the outcome of typically close general elections. Much current polling of Republican match-ups shows Clinton finishing, win or lose, in or about the poll's margin of error. If Democrats really want to risk losing the 2016 election, with Supreme Court appointments, climate change policy and the myriad of urgently important unresolved issues at stake, they should by all means choose a partisan candidate who Independents strongly reject. The Q-Poll shows Clinton fits that job description like a glove.

Other good polling news for Sanders of late is one showing him still solidly ahead of Clinton in his neighboring state of New Hampshire, along with historically high favorability margins over Clinton there (30%). Another poll shows Sanders losing New Hampshire Democrats but winning Independents by an equal margin, while holding on to a 20% favorability advantage over Clinton, even among moderates. Sanders' remarkable favorability advantage could communicate to other Americans that his neighbors, those who know him best, do like Bernie exceptionally well, as much as any major elected official in the country.

Also in the good news category is another poll with a 6% error value that had Sanders finishing only 20% behind Clinton nationally, roughly the same as Obama's 2008 numbers at the same point in the campaign. But this news was balanced by a recent poll showing Sanders as far behind in Iowa as he is in the rest of the country. Winning Iowa, plus New Hampshire, is key to shifting Sanders' momentum before super Tuesday. The redeeming flip side of the bad news from Iowa is explained by the NYT pollmeister Nate Cohn, who argues that these Iowa poll numbers do not fairly account for Bernie's unusually large lead with Iowa Independents. An earlier Q-poll confirmed that view by showing a slightly narrowing 9% spread between Clinton and Sanders in Iowa.

Notwithstanding this background data, the purpose of this article is not to attempt a meta-analysis of all available recent polls. Some with smaller samples may be inconsistent or not directly comparable with the independent, academic-based Q-poll. The purpose here is rather to extract useful longer term meaning about electability and the key role of Independents primarily from the detailed data of a single broad-ranging and historically reliable poll which is based on a statistically large sample, and is clearly no outlier.

2. Whose Centrist?

Theoretically, in a democratic two party system the more centrist Democrat should normally appeal most to independents. But that is not the end of the story. Many Clinton supporters may have missed the memo from the Democrats' only living former president who they can trust, Jimmy Carter . He tells us: "America has no functioning democracy at this moment." Though many who still vote are persuaded otherwise by the plutocracy's own media, the US has become a full-fledged plutocracy due to the line of typically 5-4 Supreme Court "money is speech" decisions, culminating in those notorious Roberts Court travesties of constitutional interpretation, Citizens United (2010) and McCutcheon (2014). These cases removed the last minimal restraints on systemic corruption. As a result both parties have now become so corrupt that a bipartisan Congress has joined the Supreme Court in enacting its own Influence Peddlers Protection Act of 2014 and another now again in 2015 when special interests extorted more than half ($650 billion) the amount of the federal budget in tax expenditures as the price for keeping the government open, while their rented politicians in return made the kickback process to themselves for this favor more private by establishing new legal rights to make secret ("dark money") kickbacks. See 107, 707 and 735, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016. The conventional wisdom about how democracies normally operate does not hold true for this free market for influence peddlers, open US election of 2016.

In this new environment of systemic in-your-face political corruption, for those Democrats concerned about electability to hew to the more centrist candidate is misguided for two reasons.

First, a policy position in a plutocracy is "centrist" not because it is supported by a majority of voters distributed around the bulge of the bell curve between two narrower extremes on a policy axis sometimes described as running left to right. In a plutocracy centrist policy falls within the overlapping domain of concerns for which politicians are paid on a bipartisan basis to satisfy plutocrats. Congress and Obama's now annual Influence Peddlers Protection Acts, mentioned above, are a good example of the two parties using the annual end of year budget process as an excuse to deliver bipartisan Christmas goodies to plutocrats out of a down-the-chimney black-box Santa's gift bag for special interests that bypasses the normal legislative process where laws are supposed to use the front door. The plutocratic "center" which is jointly occupied in common by two plutocratic parties that deliver such goodies actually lies at a point on a different political axis at the far opposite extreme from democracy.

This bipartisan "plutocratic center" to which Clinton (like Obama) sticks like a magnet defines those safe positions that will not be undermined by unanswerable quantities of paid bipartisan campaign propaganda, and either attacks from or deliberate neglect by a plutocratic mass media. Plutocratic "centrist" positions therefore appear non-controversial by those who still get their news from the plutocratic mass media.

Unlike Clinton, Sanders consistently rejects policy positions that are centrist in this plutocratic sense, except those supported by the most overwhelmingly powerful lobbyists, the MIC, NRA and AIPAC who prohibitively own the public mind as well as Congress on their issues. On those latter issues Sanders tends to be more nuanced. But it would be wrong to conclude, as many Democrats do, that his other positions are therefore extreme. Sanders advocates virtually all majoritarian positions, scaling the top of that bell curve of voters views on issues far above Clinton's proposals, which remain ultimately mired in her debt to special interest investors.

Sanders challenges the defining feature of the systemically corrupt politics of plutocracy where majority opinion does not matter because there is usually no alternative to the plutocratic parties on offer. Both parties are paid well to foreclose any alternatives that would serve the majority. The money minority had already decided that, in 2016, Americans were supposed to get a "choice" between its reliable Bush and Clinton dynasties. Their back-up plan is to go to those artifacts of cold-war history, the Republican's right-wing Cuban faction, as represented by Senators Ted Cruz or Marco "Tony" Rubio.

Sanders is breaking this mold by giving voice to the majority. Many of Sanders' proposals, like on inequality, financial regulation, tax and campaign reform, are supported by large bipartisan majorities. Clinton by contrast has created a dubious montage of Sanders' positions modified, one might say distorted, so as to be unthreatening to plutocrats.

Independent voters who decide general elections are bell curve centrists, not plutocratic centrists, and are therefore inclined to prefer a Sanders, when allowed the choice, provided that Sanders can continue to by-pass the mass media and the Democratic Party to get his issue-driven message out to them.

Second, Sanders' central campaign message about political inequality, and the economic inequality that it generates, defines a second fault line that lies between Independents and the two parties. As Independents grow in number, this fault line is emerging to be as important politically as the differences separating the two plutocratic parties that have cooperated to cause the inequality. There are thus two significant political axes operating today, which is highly unusual for the two-party system inherent to the United States' first-past-the-post single-member-district non-Parliamentary electoral system. The closest previous example of this duality reaching the point of instability is the election of 1860, though comparable instability arose again at the height of the Progressive Era, in the election of 1912. The first destroyed one and nearly both of the two parties; the other led eventually to the suppression of the Progressive movement, and the end of their Era.

One axis is the conventional one that separates the parties roughly between issues of community and issues of security so innate to a normal distribution of human psychology that parties tend to divide evenly around them. The other axis defined by Independents, and represented by Sanders could be identified with the fight for survival of the democratic polity itself against two systemically corrupted political parties who have colluded in overthrowing it.

The principal thrust and hallmark of Sanders' campaign is his promise to fight the same special interests, some of whom happen to be Clinton's campaign contributors, the only way possible, with an electoral revolution in the Progressive tradition. Large majorities regularly report their desire to change the corrupt system in which the Clinton family has prospered, and is ruled by what Sanders calls "the billionaire class." The 84% of all Americans who complained recently to pollsters that "money has too much influence" in campaigns included the same portion of Independents holding that view. The difference is that partisans think the other party is corrupt, mutually disagreeing about whether Democrats are extortionists or whether Republicans take legalized bribes; Independents understand both parties to be corrupt and therefore refuse to associate with either.

Independents are at least as critical of political corruption as are partisans, with 59% possessing the basic functional understanding of US plutocracy that, most of the time, politicians "promote policies that directly help the people and groups who donated money to their campaigns." It's not rocket science. Even though Independents include roughly an equal number who lean Republican, traditionally the more openly plutocratic party, slightly fewer partisan Democrats, only 53%, share this view of a government for sale in which both of the two parties serve as brokers on most issues.

One reason increasing numbers of voters identify as Independent is their disgust with the systemic political corruption managed by the two-party condominium. That does not necessarily mean they are all or even mostly either moderate on issues or confused where they stand on issues on what we can call the "policy axis" along which the parties divide themselves. It does reflect that a majority of Americans "are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties," finding that both parties occupy an equally unsavory position in the pockets of plutocrats at the same end of what we can call the "polity axis." Systemic corruption and democracy cannot both exist in the same government across the fault line dividing them.

Other polls show why voters do not necessarily prioritize solving the issue of corruption, so much as coping with it. Few people are persuaded there exists any effective solution to the problem of restoring the country's democratic heritage, even at the modest level achieved prior to 1976. It is this doubt, or cynicism, that primarily prevents the political world from total reorientation around the polity axis that Sanders represents to achieve a majoritarian solution by restoring rule of law and applying ordinary robust criminal law enforcement to the field of systemic political corruption.

Sanders is the only candidate offering the plurality of voters on his side of this new political fault line across what is called here the "polity axis" a credible alternative to a party candidate, irrespective of where those voters may stand on the policy issues that divide the two parties. Until Independents clean up the systemic corruption of the two parties, the parties' supporters will not be allowed by the ruling plutocrats much of importance in the way of what they want from government anyway.

3. Independents' Day

For these two reasons that involve a complex ongoing reconfiguration of American politics along the two described political axes, it is no surprise, then, that the Quinnipiac poll shows that more Independents think Sanders shares their values compared to Clinton by 47-33%; more Independents think Sanders authentically "cares about the needs and problems of people like" them, compared to Clinton, by 59-40%; and vastly (38%) more Independents, 64% to 26% - and even a further corroborating margin of Republicans, 39% to 7% - think Sanders "is honest and trustworthy," compared to Clinton. It should be no surprise because on the end of the polity axis where Sanders operates, democracy, honesty and authenticity are as closely connected as are plutocracy, propaganda and cynical manipulation on the other end of the polity axis where Clinton finds her support.

The only important issue in the 2016 campaign for the majority is which candidate can honestly be trusted to act effectively to start rescuing our former democracy from the deadening grip of corruption on all levels of government that, in myriad ways, is driving economic inequality to record levels. No important policy opposed by plutocrats, like any measure that might slow the current upward redistribution of wealth to them, can be accomplished until their political investments are outlawed again. Nor can any of the increasingly dysfunctional policies that plutocrats support be stopped, such as the job- and democracy-killing so-called trade agreements.

Government will not serve the majority until private money is eliminated from politics by systemic reforms, such as broad ethics recusal requirements and Supreme Court jurisdiction stripping, that go well beyond the pretextual piecemeal proposals now on offer by operators along the incremental policy axis allied with Democrats.

This leaves for effective partisan contest along the policy axis just a few issues of identity politics and religion for which plutocrats have not yet discovered a profit angle worth the price of influence. Since they both serve a system that disserves majorities, the two parties are incapable of fulfilling their only legitimate function of channeling the consent of the governed while at the same time they join together in protecting the corrupt plutocratic system from reform. The two corrupt parties are now the principal obstacle to consent of the governed, as Madison and the framers expected they would be. Sanders seems to believe that with struggle at least one these parties can be repurposed to serve the majority.

The comparative ratings of Sanders and Clinton discussed above reflect the diminishing legitimacy of the two corrupt parties. They help explain why only 38% of Independents have an overall favorable opinion of Clinton while 56% have an unfavorable opinion of her. (Only 5% have no opinion, leaving virtually no room for improvement in her negative numbers without an unlikely change of by now fairly hardened perceptions of her.) Independents by a large margin apparently believe Sanders, but not Clinton, has the integrity to keep his campaign promise to fight the bipartisan plutocracy, and also to level with voters about how the fight is proceeding. As one critic writes, "virtually every voter group other than self-identified Democrats ... appears to be screaming: Please do not do this. Nominate someone other than Hillary Clinton."

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

The Quinnipiac poll also identifies other questionable beliefs of Democrats who support Clinton, which beliefs also tend to skew Democrats' electability calculations against Sanders.

The most startling difference between Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters is that, by 81% to 6%, more Clinton supporters think the "right experience" and, by 70%-24%, that being a "strong leader," is an important attribute for a presidential candidate in this election. Lower ratios of Clinton supporters compared to Sanders' think attributes like values, honesty, and authentic "caring" about the majority are important.

It seems to be irrelevant to her supporters that Clinton's large attributed advantage on the scale of experience (96% to 68%) and leadership (91% to 68%) neglects the reality that Sanders, without exaggerating his resume, has far more actual on-the-ground experience in a greater variety of government offices than Clinton; that he has experience winning countless elections compared to Clinton's two practically uncontested dynastic coronations as Senator from the safe Democratic seat of New York; and that he was a successful mayor compared to Clinton's total lack of elected executive experience. By all accounts, which could become a factor in the general election, Clinton was an unsuccessful Secretary of State. This was her only "leadership" job to date (where she led primarily in the field of frequent flying, often to visit new friends and funders of Bill ), aside from leading the healthcare reform effort to defeat during the "feculent decade" of the Clinton presidency.

Fact-checking these preconceived differences is important for fairly making an assessment of the comparative risk to their electability from unanticipated weaknesses of the candidates that might arise after the nomination. These are intangible factors that polls do not capture well. As a highly seasoned campaigner, Sanders is unlikely to make major mistakes. Given the number and frequency of his numerous election contests it is unlikely that Sanders has any skeletons left in a closet somewhere likely to surprise the Party after it is too late for them to change horses. He is not a Carson, Cruz or Rubio fresh on the scene, inveigling us to take another chance on appearances and shallow slogans, as Obama succeeded in doing. Nor is Clinton. But unlike the old war horse Sanders she does have major corruption scandals percolating just beneath the current agenda of the mass media. And unlike Clinton, Sanders certainly has no unpredictable spousal issues likely to erupt all over his campaign without warning. As a Sanders supporter put it, "Bernie lacks the baggage that Clinton has been dragging around with her."

Compared to Clinton's potential problems, the only real outstanding campaign issues facing Sanders are substantive: whether he will be able to persuade his natural ally, the still uncommitted Elizabeth Warren, to join his campaign, if not his ticket, and whether the media will begin to tell the truth about his being significantly more electable than Clinton due to his appeal to Independents. Sanders himself describes the anti-democratic conduct to be expected from a plutocratic media after repeal of fairness regulation. "ABC's news program has spent 81 minutes on Trump and only 20 seconds talking about us. NBC Nightly News only spent 2.9 minutes covering our campaign. CBS? They spent six minutes. The point is: our political revolution certainly will not be televised."

That the leading candidate in the polls cannot get heard on the public's own airwaves is a scandal that should cause FCC licenses (pdf) to be revoked or at least modified. President Sanders could appoint FCC commissioners who would make such reforms, and could also veto attempts by a corrupt Congress to prevent them.

Well, actually, that is not the entire list. There is that other emerging question about Sanders' lack of a precise credible strategy to accomplish his paramount goal, getting private money out of politics, or as one prominent writer charged, he has "no idea what really needs to be done" about plutocracy. But that is a question for another day. (See this author's forthcoming The Amendment Diversion: How Clinton, the Democrats, and Even Sanders Distract Attention from Effective Strategies for Too Much Money in Politics by Promoting Futile Remedies).

Finally, the complaint from the strategically-challenged left that Sanders has not diverted his energies to directly fight the most invincible conduits of money in politics, the MIC, AIPAC and the NRA, rather than focusing energies on draining the swamp of systemic corruption in which they all swim, carries little weight. The strategic objective that Sanders' campaign targets is recovering democracy along the polity axis, not throwing oneself into the futile task in a corrupt system of trying to achieve any particular incremental reform along the policy axis that is most firmly opposed by plutocrats. Such critics misunderstand the two-axis political world they inhabit which Sanders does give every indication of understanding.

(PART 2: The Obama Factor)

Authors Bio:
Rob Hager is a public-interest litigator who filed a Supreme Court amicus brief n the 2012 Montana sequel to the Citizens United case, American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, and has worked as an international consultant on legal development and anti-corruption issues.