For all those Progressives who vow it is Bernie or bust, a recent Quinnipiac poll offers some good news. I am reprinting an article by H.A. Goodman, columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer,
If the polls are gospel, then it’s only logical to actually read the polling data, as opposed to simply a headline stating Clinton leads Sanders by an overwhelming margin. In reality, when these polls are analyzed from a critical perspective, it’s apparent that Bernie Sanders is well positioned to win the Democratic nomination. Democrats had a chance to elect Clinton in 2008, with the same polls extolling a wide lead over Obama, but chose to elect the more trustworthy candidate. Like Gallup reported in 2008, despite the dominance of Clinton in prior polls, there existed a Perceived Honesty Gap for Clinton Versus Obama, McCain.
So much emphasis is placed upon poll numbers as accurate assessments of public opinion that they’ve turned into public relations tools. Like all elements of public relations, it’s natural that supporters of the Clinton campaign would only want to emphasize the positive, while ignoring the negative or inconvenient truth behind the numbers.
Quinnipiac University, when asking respondents to think of a word that correlates to Hillary Clinton, found the following results:
Clinton tops the Democrats’ “no way” list with 11 percent.
“Liar” is the first word that comes to mind more than others in an open-ended question when voters think of Clinton.
“Arrogant” is the word for Trump and voters say “Bush” when they think of Bush…
Trump and Clinton have the worst scores among top candidates on honesty:
Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, voters say 61 – 34 percent, her lowest score ever;
Trump is not honest and trustworthy, voters say 54 – 38 percent.
For various reasons, encompassing endless evolution on key topics to an ongoing FBI investigation of emails, voters correlated the word “liar” to Hillary Clinton. Also, 61% of voters find Clinton “not honest and trustworthy”; even a racist xenophobe like Donald Trump had a better trustworthiness rating.
Therefore, why would Democrats vote overwhelming for a candidate whom voters correlate with the word “liar”?
They didn’t in 2008, why would they do so in 2016, with an ongoing FBI investigation and further questions about honesty?
In November, Quinnipiac found the same results, citing Clinton’s issues with favorability and honesty among voters:
Clinton has the lowest rating for honesty as American voters say 60 – 36 percent she is not honest and trustworthy. Trump is not honest and trustworthy, voters say 58 – 38 percent.
Subsequent polls also found a similar results, with voters saying they’ll vote overwhelmingly for Clinton, but also saying they don’t trust the former Secretary of State.
In contrast, Bernie Sanders is the only candidate to ever get two million individual donors.
When voters drive to the polls, honesty and integrity will be the biggest issues in 2016; media and pundits have almost completely ignored this fact. Quinnipiac found in a September poll that voters find Sanders more honest, as explained in a report titled Sanders 41 To Clinton 40 In Iowa Democratic Caucus, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Dems Say Sanders Is More Honest And Caring:
Sanders gets a 78 – 6 percent favorability rating and likely Democratic Caucus-goers say 86 – 4 percent that he is honest and trustworthy, and 85 – 5 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. Voters say 76 – 9 percent that he has strong leadership qualities and 65 – 15 percent that he has the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis
Bernie Sanders has much higher favorability ratings than Clinton, which has allowed him to go from relative unknown to serious challenger in a matter of months. Clinton spent an entire career garnering power and support and now still has to contend with the Sanders campaign. The primary reason is the discrepancy in favorability ratings, as was the case with Obama in 2008. I explain why Hillary Clinton is unelectable due to negative favorability ratings in this YouTube segment.
Finally, from opposing gay marriage to supporting Keystone XL and ground troops to fight ISIS, Clinton’s perpetual evolution on key topics is perhaps another reason Quinnipiac found voters correlated Clinton to the word “liar.” In addition to prison lobbyist donors, Clinton also has oil and gas donations, despite not being able to remember them. The latest news regarding donors is explained in a Huffington Post article titled Hillary Clinton Says She’s Unaware Of Receiving $150,000 In Oil & Gas Contributions:
“Have I? OK, well, I’ll check on that.”
At a campaign stop in Iowa on Wednesday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton claimed to be unaware that she’d ever received campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry — even though she has received over $150,000 from oil and gas representatives during the 2016 cycle alone…
But Clinton’s ties to top fossil fuel donors have raised questions about her commitment to other environmental policies in the past. One of her top “Hillblazer” bundlers — people who have assembled over $100,000 for Clinton — is Gordon Giffin, a former lobbyist for TransCanada, the company that spent years urging the U.S. to build the Keystone XL pipeline.As HuffPost has previously reported, Giffin serves on the board of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which invested in the pipeline and paid Clinton $990,000 for speeches in the months before she announced her presidential run.
In light of this latest revelation in Iowa, as well as her initial support of Keystone XL, I don’t trust Clinton to veto Keystone legislation if she becomes president.
I do, however, have complete faith that Bernie Sanders will veto Keystone XL legislation, like Obama, and also address the structural issues of Wall Street greed, perpetual war, and climate change. Only Sanders wants to break up the banks and reinstate Glass Steagall. Only Sanders demands Saudi Arabia and other send ground troops to fight ISIS. I trust Bernie Sanders, I don’t trust Clinton or Trump, and I state why in this YouTube segment.
The reality is that polls today contradict the belief that Clinton will run away with the nomination. Democrats won’t vote for a candidate they don’t trust, no matter how many poll say Sanders is behind Clinton. Ultimately, Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination because he’s more trustworthy than Clinton, and few people can dispute this fact. You’ll get to evaluate the character and integrity of both candidates during the next Democratic debate this Saturday, December 19, at 8 p.m. ET.
H. A. Goodman
As I write this comment I am listening to MSNBC as guests discuss and comment on the Sanders campaign’s lawsuit against the DNC. John your posts on 11/13, 12/10, and today, a little over 10 months before one of the most critically important elections in human history, prompted my comment today. The election of 2000 offers so many lessons for Democrats. I respected Ralph Nader and The Green Party before they betrayed their antecedents and descendants by electing Bush/Cheney instead of Gore/Lieberman. I despise both now. As an historian who never much participated in “what if this had/had not happened what do you think would have…?” speculation. But does any intelligent American really think Gore would have proposed a multi-trillion dollar tax cut over 10 years for American multibillionaires, billionaires, and multimillionaires, or that Gore would not have vetoed it if it came to his desk. Al Qaeda knew American policy was to never yield to terrorist demands, they knew the Fascist Republican Party wanted to destroy the social safety net “tax” the perversely rich “and spend” the tax money to improve the standard of living of all Americans we “liberals” in the Democratic Party established in the United States. This depraved tax cut may have been why Bin-laden ordered 9/11. After all American advisors to the Afghan resistance (which included Al Qaeda) fighting the Soviet Red Army there during the Reagan Presidency taught Afghans to bleed the Soviets with a thousand pricks and to never attack them in large numbers because they would just be wiped out by massive Soviet firepower, and to make the Soviet-Afghan War long and expensive in order to possibly bankrupt the Soviet economy, also how to construct many new and different types of IEDs from various military and non-military hardware, as well as alternative and additional guerilla war tactics for more effectively efficient kill and destroy results, and most importantly we taught them to not only to accept Jihadi volunteers from all over the Muslim world but to actively and aggressively recruit Jihadi fighters around the world and pay their way to Pakistan and then help flood them into landlocked Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney Administration and the Fascist Republican leaders in the Senate, House, and especially the puppeteers, who truly control the Fascist Republicans, in the American Oligarchy knew all these facts before they started their criminal war in Iraq, and they also knew all we taught the Jihadists to use against the Soviets in Afghanistan would be used against our troops in Iraq, in fact they counted on it. Just yesterday I heard the moral coward John McCain, who said in 2002 he had never heard of cutting taxes in the middle of a war and then flipped overnight and said tax cuts were fine in the midst of a war, on the Senate floor again bitching, whining, sniveling, and demanding like a brat child that President Obama send ground troops into Syria and Iraq. McCain and his fellow Fascist Republicans never truthfully or honestly say that they want and believe America must sacrifice dozens, hundreds, or thousands of additional American troops to be killed and maimed in order to eliminate ISIS. And even more degenerately he and his fellow Fascist Republican moral deviants never say taxes on individuals making 1, 2, up to 5 or more million dollars a day need to be increased in order to pay for this killing and maiming of more American military personnel. I believe they want to run the national debt up even higher by borrowing more money from the Chinese to finance their hideous proposals. The war against the monstrous human group entity ISIS, which the Fascist Republicans created with their illegal war of aggression against Iraq is costing the American people billions of dollars every month right now, money which we could be using here at home to improve the lives of Americans by ameliorating some of the expansive social problems Fascist Republicans have caused and created with their massive tax cuts for the wealthy which began in the Reagan era. Many intelligent people all over the world, including myself, knew the criminal war in Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 human beings from all sides, would cause the Jihadi movement in the Muslim world to go from a very small and fractional fringe movement and grow into a large, violent, and influential movement involving millions of people. Al Qaeda’s intelligentsia may have used 9/11 as bait for the Fascist Republicans and their American oligarchic masters. Bait Al Qaeda knew the true and real facts of could be twisted and then “fixed” to justify an unjust war in Iraq as a means to achieve the Fascist Republican Party’s domestic goals here at home. The Fascist Republicans refused to roll back or repeal the perverse tax cuts they instituted before 9/11 as they engaged in their criminal conspiracy to start the illegal war in Iraq after 9/11, because to repeal the tax cuts would have blocked their true purpose for starting the war. They wanted to double, even triple the national debt and then demand the destruction of the social safety net we in the Democratic Party through our tax and spend liberal and progressive principals and ideals established here in America. These ideals and principals of the Democratic Party are largely influenced by one of true Christianity’s basic tenets, “to share the wealth”. The Democratic Party’s great and good ideals and tenets created and passed into law Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, FEMA, and a host of other positive programs including LIHEAP , the program which I believe was at the heart of the Clinton Impeachment. All these wonderful programs created by Democrats to help all Americans have at least some hope and happiness and hopefully influence many to work devotedly for “the pursuit of happiness” were opposed by the Fascist Republicans. I will stop here and write no more about the very recent past for now. Fellow Democrats, independent progressives and liberals, and even far left Socialist Workers, Green Party environmentalists, and anyone who hopes for a better future for our descendants, we must unify, and we must all vote because we can not lose this election. Those who pout and quibble about such foolish and worthless things like plans and information and sitting it out because their candidate did not get the nomination, starting third-party candidacies, Clinton can’t be trusted, the Clinton Foundation is a scandal waiting to happen, Sanders is too far left, O’Malley is too far right, and all the other meaningless and insignificant controversies which will inevitably arise in our ranks in the next 10 months 12 days must not prevent any of us from voting. If any person in our ranks defects or sits it out they “will be damned in both time and eternity” . I will vote a straight Democratic Party ticket as I always have done, even if I have to crawl to my polling place. I will not shirk my duty nor betray my antecedents or desert my descendants because some of those in my party or in the progressive movement are sniveling about trivial matters. I know if I do not vote I will be an accessory to and an accomplice of the Fascist Republicans. The Fascist Republicans are pushing our country towards oblivion and humanity towards extinction and it is cowardly to whine about imperfections within our ranks. They can not be allowed to gain more power, they must be stopped. Nothing must stand in the way of this essential goal. The stakes in this election are way too high. P.S.
I purposely loaded this somewhat lengthy comment with the term “Fascist Republican(s)” because I know if we continue to largely refuse ” to get down in the gutter with these people and fight them on their own terms they will win and we will lose” , and if we continue to lose these Fascist Republicans will force our country into a state of perpetual war which will lead to nowhere but tragedy. We in the progressive movement appear, in my opinion, to believe if we use primitive and uncivilized tactics like the Fascist Republicans have used against us to gain the ever increasing and already enormous power they currently wield in our country we become no better than them or that we lose the “moral high ground”. The Fascist Republicans have made “tax and spend liberal” a label to vilify, but my description earlier in my comment of what a true tax and spend liberal believes is the real and honest truth. If an American citizen works for 50 years from age 18 to 68 and averages earning $100,000 a year he or she will earn 5 million dollars total over those 50 years. The Kook brothers, major players in the Fascist Republican Party who never worked a day in their lives, inherited 1500 million dollars each from their daddy. One of them is now worth nearly 50 billion dollars and another nearly 30 billion dollars and they did not get daddy’s money until they were in their 30s. Please fact check me on my “1, 2, up to 5 or more million dollars a day” statement. Sam Walton left his 5 children 1500 million dollars each also and how much they are worth now I don’t know or care to know, but some of them used their daddy’s inheritance money to defeat both of Arkansas excellent Democratic Senators. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor are their names and the people who the Walton kids installed to replace them are puppets, hirelings, and warmongers in the Fascist Republican majority in the U.S. Senate. We tax and spend liberal Democrats believe the Kook brothers, Sam Walton’s kids, and all the other perversely wealthy people and corporations in America should be taxed properly and the money gained should be used to build, repair, and modernize America’s infrastructure, for much needed improvements in the educational system for our children and young adults, to treat and reduce America’s enormous and ever-increasing social problems, and for other essential programs required to make America truly great again. If this comment is posted whole or in part I request that my many “Fascist Republican(s)” description remain unedited and undeleted. Thank-you again John for this site and your devotion to our cause.
Excellent comment, Edward. Thank you.