A poll paid for by Michael Bloomberg is making the rounds on Capitol Hill — much to the delight of Republicans and chagrin of Democrats.
Politico reports that the poll found Sanders running about even with Trump in 40 contested districts with a Democrat incumbent. But when people find out about some of Sanders’ socialist plans, it’s a different story.
The poll of voters in more than 40 battleground House districts currently held by Democrats — conducted by Global Strategy Group for the Bloomberg campaign and obtained by POLITICO from two sources — found that Sanders is less popular than Trump and loses significant support when hit for holding socialist positions. Sanders is a self-described Democratic socialist, a distinction that his opponents are starting to draw more frequently in the days following the Vermont senator’s dominance in Nevada. His agenda of “Medicare for All,” the “Green New Deal” and guaranteed tuition and debt-free public colleges has rankled more establishment members of the party.
The poll found Sanders essentially running even with Trump in a head-to-head match-up across the districts, trailing the incumbent by just one point. ButTrump opens up 6-point advantage after a list of negative messages about Sanders’ ideology and alleged ineffectiveness in the Senate is presented to poll respondents.
That does not bode well for Bernie in many of the battleground states like Wisconsin and Ohio. But for Democrats, the news is even worse.
But Sanders’ potential impact extends beyond the presidential race. A plurality of voters, 39 percent, say they will be less likely to vote for a Democrat for Congress if Sanders is the Democratic nominee and his ideas are folded into the party platform. That’s nearly double the 21 percent who say they would be more likely to vote for a Democrat for Congress, while 34 percent say it wouldn’t impact their vote.
The poll also found that “47 percent of voters in competitive, Democratic-held districts felt that ‘the increased role of socialist ideas in the Democratic Party’ was a ‘bad thing,’ and 19 percent ‘ believe it is a good thing,’ and 24 percent said ‘it makes no difference to them.’”
Like shootin’ fish in a barrel.
Even though the poll was paid for by Bloomberg, Global Strategy Group is not known for its push-polling and is, in fact, a left-leaning polling outfit. There’s no reason to doubt the negative impact a Sanders nomination would have up and down the Democratic ballot.
Trump and the Republicans can tie the Sanders millstone around the neck of every Democrat running.
Trump and the GOP will certainly have the money to do that. People must be forced to look up from their phones and pay attention to just who Bernie Sanders is and what he wants. He’s gotten this far because most voters have been ignorant of the fact that his Medicare for all plan would cost $38 trillion over 10 years, or his “free” college tuition plan would cost another $3 trillion, and his recently announced universal childcare initiative another $1.5 trillion.
And that’s not even including the “Green New Deal” that Sanders and other climate warriors want to foist on the American people.
Do people want a single-payer health insurance system? Do they want the government to care for their children? Do they want Sanders and the Democrats to spend us to catastrophe?
I think the answer is going to be “no” — as long as Republicans can rip off Sanders’ mask and expose him for the radical revolutionary that he is.
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