{"id":231408,"date":"2016-03-14T00:21:10","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T00:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=231408"},"modified":"2016-03-14T01:44:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T01:44:23","slug":"proof-ignorance-drives-clinton-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/proof-ignorance-drives-clinton-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"Proof that Ignorance Drives Clinton Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Although no organization that predictively polls the Democratic Presidential primaries has sampled the question (or its equivalent) \u201cWhat is the most important reason why you prefer that candidate?\u201d the assumption by political pundits has always been that, regarding Hillary Clinton voters, perhaps the most important reason for their choice of Clinton over Sanders is that she would be a stronger candidate against the Republican nominee in the general election than Bernie Sanders would be. The widely presumed argument there is that Clinton \u201chas more experience\u201d and is more \u201cmainstream\u201d than Sanders, whom \u2018too many people\u2019 consider to be \u2018outside the mainstream\u2019 because he is \u2018farther left\u2019 than she, who is the more \u2018centrist\u2019 of the two Democratic candidates.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, the exit polls<\/i>\u00a0 in the individual state primaries<\/i>\u00a0 consistently do<\/i> \u00a0test for \u201cTop Candidate Quality\u201d explaining their vote; and, almost each time, \u201cHonest\u201d and \u201cCares\u201d are very high for Sanders voters, while \u201cElectability\u201d and \u201cExperience\u201d are overwhelmingly high for Clinton voters. The exit polls are just about as definitive a confirmation as could possibly exist showing that Hillary Clinton is, to a large extent, preferred by her voters because they view her as being far more \u201celectable\u201d than is her opponent (Sanders)<\/b>. She is even more overwhelmingly viewed by them to be more \u2018experienced\u2019 than Sanders, and we\u2019ll get to that later in this article.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, whatever the argument is, that\u2019s given for her to be stronger in the general election than he is (i.e., to be more \u2018electable\u2019), it\u2019s a false argument, because its conclusion is demonstrably false: the data on that matter \u2014 the\u00a0opposite-Party pairings in the predictive polls<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 are convincingly to the exact contrary:\u00a0he\u2019s far more electable than she is<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look at the match-ups against Trump (and other potential Republican Presidential nominees), on the part of Clinton, and then in the same place the matchups on the part of Sanders (just click onto the following link):<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/epolls\/2016\/president\/2016_presidential_race.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

What has long been very clear there, for quite some time, is that in the general election, Sanders is overwhelmingly stronger against the Republican nominee (whomever that might turn out to be) than is Clinton.<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to come to a less-shallow and more-truthful analysis of what explains the relative ability of each of the two Democratic contenders to defeat the Republican nominee, an examination of\u00a0the perceived-honesty factor<\/span><\/a>\u00a0should play a large role. For example, in the shocking Michigan win by Sanders over Clinton, the answers on the \u201cTop Candidate Quality\u201d factor showed that\u00a0Sanders was voted for by 78% who chose \u201chonest\u201d as the top trait, but only by 27% of those who selected \u201celectability,\u201d and by 18% of those who opted for \u201cexperience\u201d as the top trait. He was also selected by 56% of those who chose \u201ccares\u201d as the top.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Those are the only four factors asked in the exit polls, and they provide deep understanding of why<\/i>\u00a0 each candidate was winning or losing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Other factors too might be significant, but, whatever the reasons for Sanders being the stronger of the two Democrats to win in the general election against the Republican nominee are, is not important in the present context, because the data consitently do show that the result<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>(whatever the reasons<\/i> \u00a0for it) is that Sanders is the stronger general-election candidate against the Republican<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, in\u00a0the Hillary blowout win in South Carolina,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Clinton was the candidate voted for by 51% of the voters who rated \u201chonest\u201d as the top quality, by 82% who rated \u201celectability\u201d top, by 94% who rated \u201cexperience\u201d top, and by 68% who rated \u201ccares\u201d top. That\u2019s why she received an unprecedented 74% to 26% blowout win against Sanders in that state.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the general-election-tossup state of\u00a0Virginia, exit polls<\/span><\/a>\u00a0showed that 78% of the voters who rated \u201chonest\u201d the \u201cTop Candidate Quality” were Sanders voters, 86% of the voters who rated \u201celectability\u201d the \u201cTop Candidate Quality\u201d voted for Clinton, 95% who chose \u201cexperience\u201d as the top, voted for Clinton \u2014 and, of these four traits, \u201cexperience\u201d was overwhelmingly<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>the \u201cTop Candidate Quality\u201d for more voters than any of the other three, which is the main reason why Clinton won Virginia (i.e., because of her having been overwhelmingly viewed there to be the more \u2018experienced\u2019).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the point is, yet again, that,\u00a0in the general-election match-ups, Sanders really and authentically IS the more electable of the two Democrats to become the U.S. President.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0That\u2019s just a fact, though consistently Clinton voters assume the exact opposite of the fact. Their assumption on that is\u00a0plain false<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

What, then, about \u201cexperience\u201d? That\u2019s not a factor which is decidable merely by means of numerical evidence. However, judgmental though it is, a stunningly strong case can be made that Sanders rates higher on \u201cexperience\u201d than does Clinton, because she voted for the Iraq-invasion and she also has been extremely eager for other invasions such as in Lybia and Syria \u2014 all of which have been disasters. Specifically, her experience as Secretary of State was catastrophic<\/span><\/a>. (Click on that for the evidence \u2014 which, of course, is non<\/i>-numerical or \u201cqualitative\u201d regarding each one of her six catastrophes there.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore,\u00a0Sanders\u2019s experience has been both lengthy and outstanding<\/span><\/a>. (Unfortunately, he doesn\u2019t talk much about it. He even didn\u2019t talk much about\u00a0his having been arrested in Chicago as a college student demonstrating peacefully for racial equality in the 1960s.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Apparently, he doesn\u2019t like to brag about his legislative achievements, nor even about his having a real record of fighting for racial equality, whereas Hillary has nothing but talk on racial equality and brags about whatever she possibly can, even if she needs to lie in order to do it.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So, also on \u201cexperience,\u201d Clinton\u2019s voters assume to be true what\u2019s actually false.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, returning to our main topic, electability: there is also this: What Hillary did by destroying her federal records, her government emails on the private server she kept in her basement,\u00a0was a federal crime, and she\u2019s dependent upon Obama\u2019s blocking the FBI from pursuing it in order for her to be able to make it all the way to electoral victory in November<\/span><\/a>. So far as can reasonably be determined about Senator Sanders, there\u2019s nothing criminally prosecutable in his record. So, his advantage in electability is \u00a0even higher than would appear merely by\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>today\u2019s numbers<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only reasonable conclusion, then, is this:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overwhelmingly, her voters are ignorant, misinformed, deceived. They are suckers, the dupes of a practised liar. She is taking advantage of their gullibility. That\u2019s the raw fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps they\u2019ll be angry at me for reporting this fact to them; but, it\u2019s the fact nonetheless, and the person they ought to be blaming for it is: Hillary Clinton. Not the messenger: not me. To get angry at the messenger is to choose<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to remain<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>deceived.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Although no organization that predictively polls the Democratic Presidential primaries has sampled the question (or its equivalent) \u201cWhat is the most important reason why you prefer that candidate?\u201d the assumption by political pundits has always been that, regarding Hillary Clinton voters, perhaps the most important reason for their choice of Clinton over Sanders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":231420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[968,30,1036,951,96,535,954,698,522,804,524,949,754,523,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-231408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-bernie","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-clinton","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary","15":"tag-hillary-clinton","16":"tag-obama","17":"tag-politics-2","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-sanders","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-warfare","23":"tag-white-house","24":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}