Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The civil war in the Democratic Party is worse than we think. While the media continues to fixate on the internal disagreements of the GOP, almost 50% of Bernie Sanders supporters refuse to support Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.
In the two weeks since Hillary Clinton wrapped up the Democratic presidential primary, runner-up Bernie Sanders has promised to work hard to defeat Donald Trump — but he’s given no sign he’ll soon embrace Clinton, his party’s presumptive nominee. Neither have many of Sanders’s supporters.
A June 14th Bloomberg Politics national poll of likely voters in November’s election found that barely half of those who favored Sanders — 55 percent — plan to vote for Clinton. Instead, 22 percent say they’ll vote for Trump, while 18 percent favor Libertarian Gary Johnson. “I’m a registered Democrat, but I cannot bring myself to vote for another establishment politician like Hillary,” says Laura Armes, a 43-year-old homemaker from Beeville, Texas, who participated in the Bloomberg poll and plans to vote for Trump. “I don’t agree with a lot of what Trump says. But he won’t owe anybody. What you see is what you get.”
Conversations with two dozen Sanders supporters revealed a lingering distrust of Clinton as too establishment-friendly, hawkish or untrustworthy. As some Sanders fans see it, the primary was not a simple preference for purity over pragmatism, but a moral choice between an honest figure and someone whom they consider fundamentally corrupted by the ways of Washington. Sanders has fed these perceptions throughout his campaign, which is one reason he’s having a hard time coming around to an endorsement.
As of right now, Real Clear Politics has Clinton ahead of Trump in the national polls by a little over 5%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is actually helping Trump in the polls right now, which is very interesting to note. Usually a Libertarian Party candidate takes votes away from the Republican candidate, but that isn’t the case here.
Without Johnson, Hillary holds a 5.8% over Trump. But with Johnson, Clinton only holds a 5.4% lead over Trump.
Forget #NeverTrump…. the real boycott to watch is #NeverHillary.
