What I liked so much about this article was that it seemed so realistic. It was neither dismissive, as many have been so far, nor was it to the other extreme (not that many of those exist anyway).
Is this a fairly popular opinion in the US? Seems to be a similar vibe in Australia when election time comes around. Everyone's terrified of voting for the Greens or an Independent because they're not one of the two main parties. A lot of people I know don't agree with the politics of our major parties but continue to vote for them because that's what they've always done, or that's who their families voted for... Then you end up with Tony Abbott as your Prime Minister and the country goes to shit... But Sanders... He's a good guy with good ideas. And it seems he is getting through to a lot of people who are ready for change. #feelthebern :D“I’m with Hillary because I don’t have any choice”
It definitely seems to be a pretty common thought. It doesn't help that nearly every article about Sanders dismisses his chance of being elected. I'm hoping that as it gets closer to election time more people will decide not to settle. The thing about this is that as much as he feels like a third party candidate, he's not. He's an independent, but he's running as a Democrat. That means that mathematically he can actually be president if he wins the primary. That's such a huge difference.
The campaign is in slow-mode right now. Right near the ending of this year and the beginning of 2016 is when the political season ramps up. The media will begin tearing into whatever they get paid to report. As for why people don't think they can stand up to Hillary, it's because she's a household name. We've been seeing her face on screens and in print for a very long time. This gives her a huge advantage. I hadn't heard of Sanders until the beginning of this year.
The Democrats have five nominees at the moment. The other three haven't really been making headlines. They may get fleshed out a bit as the campaigns run onward or they may just kind of hang in the background if they don't get much buzz. So first we have the primaries where if you're registered to a party you get to vote to decide who we'll try to run, and then we've got the general election.
Oh, really? Man, there you go. Very little about US politics makes the news in Australia at the best of times unless it's something pretty important. I've really only been keeping up with Sanders because my ex is from Oregon and she's in love with him haha.
This was a really good read, yeah. My favorite so far was the interview that Vox did - it really dug into the meat of all of Bernie's viewpoints and politics and was just generally really, really interesting: http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/bernie-sanders-vox-conversation