There were serious concerns during the primaries about how well Sanders was doing among minorities compared to Clinton, and now Clinton has failed to secure enough support from minorities to overcome a racist opponent. Plus, there's no telling how much mileage the Republican party could have gotten out of tarring Sanders as a "socialist".
Sanders definitely would have been a big risk. But in hindsight and especially given the weak set of potential candidates available to the Democratic Party, a big risk may have been necessary, and Trump was probably the best opportunity they could have hoped for to gamble on a non-traditional candidate of their own.
I don't really see the difference, but it should be noted that given Clinton's minority support there weren't many minorities supporting third party candidates, and there was a significant third party candidate vote this year. In the primaries Clinton actually lost the white vote to Sanders, despite winning the minority vote 3 to 1. It also isn't as if Trump is popular, he is one of the most disliked politicians ever to get elected. So I think it is more correct to say Clinton had weak support from white voters.
I thought he was easily the most interesting candidate and would've supported him were it my election, but it seems to me that in the US, "socialist" is a truly horrible label and it would've made for easy attack ads. He would've copped it for his age, with the idea that he'd destroy the economy and whatever else.
I spotted this on Twitter and thought it was insightful:
"Both parties nominated the only candidate that the other side's candidate could beat," Karl Rove, apparently.
Nothing is certain in politics, but I'm curious about why you hold that opinion. Why would you consider Sanders a big risk?
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