Now that the dice of the debates have been thrown, the two leading candidates for the Democratic Nomination will stack their weight across the nation. While Hillary Clinton has the lead in the majority of polls state by state, Bernie Sanders has shown contention where it matters.
The two candidates are now going back and forth for the lead in Iowa while Sanders maintains a sizeable lead in his neighboring state, New Hampshire. All of this has been done with the minimal media coverage that Sanders has received due to Clinton being the presumptive nominee.
As strange as this may sound, if Sanders is able to win Iowa and show that he is not just a small time candidate who can win his neighboring state, he will gain momentum from there through New Hampshire and into South Carolina.
While Clinton is leading in the money race ($29.9 million), Sanders ($26.2 million) has a more donors, over two million which is twice as many as Barack Obama had at this point in the race. That’s important because those small donors can each donate more whereas the big donors that Clinton has received are maxed out.
But what is so interesting about this race is that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has positive favorability ratings. Literally every other candidate including Clinton, Ben Carson who has raised the next largest amount of money ($20.8 million)and Donald Trump are all thought of by the majority of Americans to be “not honest and untrustworthy”.
Again, if Sanders wins Iowa he’ll most likely receive a lot more attention from major media outlets as the trend has already started to shift. The question then becomes if that attention will persuade the American people to believe that he is not honest and trustworthy. or there may be other issues that Sanders faces.
There has been some suspicion that the reason Sanders doesn’t receive the coverage from large media outlets is because of the motions that he has put forth, wanting to raise taxes on the top fraction of the top 1% of earners and also his support for campaign finance reform. Campaign finance would be seen as a deterrent to a large company’s success because it would limit their ability to empower candidates that support their goals.
A socialist by any name raises concerns for many Americans. Though Sanders is a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” citing Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, many Americans are hesitant to throw their support behind something that has been vilified in this country.
However, as one many put it, “I don’t agree with half of what comes out of that guy’s mouth (Sanders), but I can tell that he actually believes in what he’s saying, that he thinks it’s the right thing to do.”
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