Its true that Sanders does better than Clinton in hypothetical matchups against the Republicans. Currently, Sanders outperforms Clinton by more than seven percentage points against Trump, and by nearly nine points against Ted Cruz. But thats not because Sanders is the stronger nominee. Its because Republicans havent yet trashed him the way theyve trashed Clinton. Once they do, his advantage over her would disappear...
...The problem with current polls that test Sanders against Trump or Cruz is that they dont capture the effects of the fall campaign. As Harry Enten points out in FiveThirtyEight, early general-election polls in previous cycles were predictively worthless. Early in the 2000 election, for instance, George W. Bush led Al Gore by 12 percentage points. Bush, then the Texas governor, burst onto the national scene with relatively little negative media scrutiny, Enten observes. Between December 1999 and November 2000, as the scrutiny intensified, Bushs net favorability fell 27 percentage points. He ended up losing the popular vote.
The best way to account for this kind of damage is to conduct a campaign within a poll. That sounds perverse, but campaign pollsters, unlike media pollsters, do it all the time. Its called message testing. Heres how it works: Youre running against another candidate. There are a lot of bad things you could say about him. You want to pick the message that will hurt him most and hurt you least. So you call up a bunch of people and ask them how theyre planning to vote. Then you try out the various messages youre considering. After each message, you ask the person on the phone to what degree this statement makes her less likely to support your opponent. When youre done, you ask her once more how shes planning to vote, given the information youve provided. Congratulations: Youve just conducted a campaign in a poll. Youve ascertained how the election might turn out, depending on how you go after your opponent.
Thats what a pro-Clinton phone bank did to Sanders two months ago. Thanks to a voter who recorded the call and passed it to ABC News, you can listen to the whole spiel. First the caller asks the voter which candidate hes planning to support. Then she reads talking points from each candidate and asks the question again. Then she tries out some pro-Clinton and anti-Sanders messages. Next, youre going to hear some statements that someone could make about Bernie Sanders, she says. After each one, please tell me how much it concerns you. One statement is: Bernie Sanders is making big campaign promises that will cost up to $20 trillion. The New York Times said his plans are not realistic. Other independent experts said his plans are unworkable and dead on arrival in Congress. Another statement is: Bernie Sanders plan is to replace Obamacare and put all Americans into a whole new health care system. His plan would force 70 percent of Americans to pay more for health care through higher taxes. Sanders himself said he will raise taxes.
Thats what a general-election campaign against Sanders would look likeexcept it would be much, much worse. Republicans would rip Sanders as a big-spending, big-taxing socialist. They have plenty of ammo. They could quote the 2015 letter in which Sanders urged President Obama to raise revenue through executive action. They could dig up quotes from decades ago, in which Sanders called himself clearly anti-capitalistic, complained that U.S. interventions in Latin America have been for the benefit of large corporations, and praised communist countries as culturally superior. Contrast what the young people in China and Cuba are doing for themselves and for their country as compared to the young people in America, Sanders argued in 1976.
Republicans could hammer the back-seat foreign policy Sanders conducted as a mayor in Vermont: going to Cuba to seek a meeting with Fidel Castro, visiting Lenins tomb in the Soviet Union, and traveling to Nicaragua, where he met with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and praised the countrys cultural minister as a hippie whose government was teaching poetry not only to peasants and to workers but in the military. They could go after Sanders countercultural mockery of respectful clerks, technicians and soldiers. They could rehash his attacks on compulsory schooling, dairy laws, and fluoridation, or his Freudian analysis of napalm use in Vietnam, or his advocacy of public toddler nudity and genital touching as cures for porn, or the sexual quackery through which he attributed breast cancer and cervical cancer to orgasm deficiency and capitalist conformity.
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