Hillary vs. Bernie: Answering Objection #1

Supporters of Bernie Sanders have a lot going for them – passion, fellowship, anger, and deep admiration and affection for a candidate who has spent a lifetime laboring for the causes he believes in.

All of that is essential.

But from here on, the battle will turn on our ability to persuade people who do not yet “Feel the Bern”.  We’ll be dealing with the skeptical, the timid, and the unconvinced.  We’ll be talking with earnest people who have heard some journalist or political scientist pontificating on “the real world”.

And addressing those skeptical, timid, unconvinced or earnest citizens will require more than youthful – or I-used-to-be-youthful – enthusiasm.

In the next few posts, I will offer suggestions for handling some common objections by those who aren’t yet convinced.

Objection #1:  Bernie Can’t Win.

Answer A:  How Do You Know?

Assuming you, or your interlocutor, doesn’t want to get into complex, strategic considerations of caucuses and primaries, delegates and super-delegates, swing states and electoral math, the simplest answer is, “How do you know?”

Once the nomination process is over, a presidential election always comes down to a choice between two living, breathing, flawed human beings.

Loyalists on both sides will vote for their parties’ nominees, and the people in the middle – the people who decide nearly every election – will make the final choice.

And they will make it based on the two people who are still running.

So it’s always a match-up issue.  Who wins always depends almost as much on the opponent as on your own candidate.

We don’t know who the match-up will be, so how can we predict?  Some opponents will match up better against Bernie; others will match up better against Hillary.

Our job is to pick the best Democratic candidate we can, and let the Republicans pick theirs.

Answer B:  Bernie Is Pretty Good at Campaigning.

Bernie Sanders has been persuading people to vote for him for a long time.  He started running for office in the early 1970s – losing for both governor and senator before being elected Mayor of Burlington in 1981.

He served four terms as Mayor, then eight terms in the House of Representatives, before being elected to the Senate in 2006.  He was re-elected in 2012.

That’s a lot of campaign experience – and a lot of wins:  four for mayor, eight for Congress, two for the Senate.  And this from a Jewish guy with a Brooklyn accent, an avowed socialist, running in Vermont.

Hillary Clinton has run for office three times.  She was elected Senator from New York in 2000, and re-elected in 2006.  She ran for President in 2008, and lost.

If experience counts, Bernie has run in more than five times as many elections as Hillary, and won seven times as many.

And after the New Hampshire primary, Hillary's campaign seems - as it was in 2008 - to be having problems.

If experience is a factor in this campaign, running for office – and getting elected – are an enormous skill set to have mastered. 

Who's the master here?