Edsall interviewed professional Democrats -- pollsters, consultants, political scientists and economists -- allowing them to speak on background (why is that necessary?), and his findings reveal a party completely out of touch with reality.
The principal attack will be that Sanders can't win a general election because he is a "socialist." "Socialism" will scare off the mythical suburban moderate whose allegiance a presidential candidate must secure in order to win the White House.
Then Edsall tills the soil of Sanders' free-wheelin' '60s/early-'70s lifestyle, a lifestyle from a bygone era which will somehow disqualify Sanders with an electorate accustomed to presidential tales of balling Playboy bunnies and porn stars.
Then, in the last one-third of the article, Edsall explores Sanders' strengths, and a little reality is allowed to shine in:
Two large surveys — one by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the other by the Voter Study Group — showed that in 2016 12 percent of Sanders’ primary voters cast ballots for Trump in November. If Sanders could return a substantial share of that 12 percent, which translates roughly to 1.58 million voters, to the Democratic fold, it would significantly enhance the party’s prospects up and down the ticket.
On Monday, the Sanders campaign released internal campaign polling by Tulchin Research that shows that at the moment Sanders is running ahead of Trump in the three key industrial states that gave Trump his 2016 Electoral College victory.
When voters were asked, “If the election were held today, who would you vote for, Bernie Sanders, the Democrat, or Donald Trump, the Republican,” Sanders led 52-41 in Michigan, 52-42 in Wisconsin and 51-43 in Pennsylvania.A double-digit lead in two out of the three states that Trump won by a narrow margin in 2016, handing him the White House -- that's the only argument you need about Bernie's chances in a genral election.
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