2016 Election Thoughts of the Week

Welp, I made a sort-of promise to myself to not post too entirely much about Election 2016.  There is literally something new on Twitter to be irritated about every 10 minutes or so, so I'm really trying not to be as reactive as I could be.

So, I'll address the following points only because I keep seeing them come up.

One, and this seems like a fairly obvious point, so I'm not sure why so many Sanders supporters keep parroting it, but let's discuss the polls showing that Sanders would do better in the general election against Trump than Clinton would.

Well, okay. But, via The New York Times:

"...Sanders just hasn't faced any major attacks on his record. The Republicans have cheered him on against Clinton, whom they realize they're inevitably going to face. Clinton never really attacked him either - no big television ad buys, for example - in no small part because she didn't want to alienate his supporters."

The Democratic Primary is effectively a contest between the most vetted and attacked candidate in the race and the least vetted and attacked.  The way I see it, the Republicans would not play fair against Bernie Sanders and, instead, are probably itching to compete with a candidate against whom they could engage in red scare tactics, who wrote a bizarre (at best) gang rape fantasy piece in his 30s, and who could be framed as having a sketchy slacker job history for much of his adult life.

What fun nicknames might Trump come up with for Sanders?  Bernie the Pervy, perhaps? Bernie the Bolshevik?  His supporters are naive if they think this polling lead would last in any significant way once Republicans actually began targeting him with large-scale attack ads.  Come November, the media and the Republicans would have many in the electorate believing that they were casting a vote for, like, the lesser of two evils or something.

Which, of course, we would be. Just not to the extent presented.

Two, I'll also note that it seems Clinton is now battling on at least four fronts:

• Sanders in the Democratic Primary;
• Trump, who is already looking to the General;
• Jill Stein of the Green Party, who has been attacking Clinton since at least Mother's Day and who, over the weekend, Tweeted that she would be "horrified" if either Trump or Clinton were elected. That she has not criticized Saint Bernie despite the fact that he, too, is not perfect, leads me to believe she's attempting to pick up his supporters after Clinton wins the Democratic nomination. We'll see how that goes. I guess for those who would definitely vote for a female candidate "just not Hillary," this is their big chance to do so.
• The media. Clinton receives more negative media coverage than all candidates. Even Donald Fucking Trump.

What? You didn't think being the leading contender to be the first female President would be easy or something did you?

(Ha ha, of course you didn't. You read Fannie's Room).