I am afraid that he would be the best chance that the Republicans could have at winning the White House in 2016.
Before anyone starts telling me what an idiot I am, please let me again be perfectly clear. I love Bernie Sanders. His values are much closer to my values than those of Hillary Clinton. I am very progressive and if we could elect Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as our next president, I would be absolutely thrilled. So, please understand that I am coming at this not from the angle of what I would like to see happen, but rather what I think would happen if Bernie were to be our nominee.
If elections were all about policies, we (Democrats) would never lose and Bernie would be the perfect champion of our values. But alas, they are not. Elections are about optics. I can honestly say that I have been able to predict the outcome of every presidential election since 1980 with the exception of the 2000 election (and I probably got that one right too). I am not saying that I looked at the polls to make those predictions. It was far easier than that. All you have to do is watch the narrative that the media is putting forward and you can easily figure out what is going to happen.
So, the thing is this. The Republicans are great at demonizing Democrats. They live for it. They turned Dukakis into a bumbling idiot. They took a Vietnam War veteran in John Kerry and made their draft dodging candidate the “real” hero (I still don’t know how they pulled that off). I was afraid of “W” back in 2000 because he was an unknown and he came across as a regular guy (and the media was pretty easy on him). I thought that Gore would crush him in the 2000 debates, but when he didn’t (how did that happen?) it practically sealed his fate. The GOP painted Gore as ultra-liberal and pulled just enough of the independents to win the election.
In 2008, the Republicans looked desperate with their veiled racism and the “Obama has terrorist friends” meme. That approach was clearly a FAIL for them and the optics of it were awful. There really was never much of a chance for McCain after he brought on Sarah Palin and she opened her mouth. Romney fared no better with his optics as almost everything he did showed that he was not one of the “little people." No amount of spin could save him from himself.
As much as I love Bernie Sanders and his enthusiasm in fighting for true liberal values, this is what I think will happen if he gets the nomination. First, the GOP will paint Bernie Sanders as your crazy old uncle. With the mussed hair and the anger that he sometimes displays when passionately fighting for what he believes in, the GOP will have ample video to use in their ads to support the meme that Bernie is an extreme leftist and someone who is on the fringe. The fact that Bernie is an avowed Democratic Socialist will just add fuel to the fire. Americans have been taught from birth that communism is evil and socialism is terrible. The GOP will push this angle very hard and peel away a lot of low information voters using this meme.
Of course, the GOP will demonize Hillary as well, but she has already withstood an intense barrage of attacks from them and the GOP looks more and more desperate with each new fake outrage that they float. Unless they can find a scandal with legs, their attacks are not going to do much more damage to her than they already have.
The next eight years of the presidency is going to determine a lot, not the least of which being the ideology that is in the majority in the Supreme Court. We have seen the havoc that a conservative court can wreak on the country, so I think that we would be taking a significant risk making Bernie our nominee.
All that said, here’s to Bernie dragging Hillary kicking and screaming toward the left. Go get her Bernie! Let’s turn Hillary into more of a real liberal!