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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

> "Sanders would've been a giant risk too."

Nothing is certain in politics, but I'm curious about why you hold that opinion. Why would you consider Sanders a big risk?

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There were serious concerns during the primaries about how well Sanders was doing among minorities compared to Clinton, and now Clinton has failed to secure enough support from minorities to overcome a racist opponent. Plus, there's no telling how much mileage the Republican party could have gotten out of tarring Sanders as a "socialist".

Sanders definitely would have been a big risk. But in hindsight and especially given the weak set of potential candidates available to the Democratic Party, a big risk may have been necessary, and Trump was probably the best opportunity they could have hoped for to gamble on a non-traditional candidate of their own.

Clinton lost because her support among white voters was weak, not because of minority voters.

I know it's being pedantic, but is it fairer to say that Trump's support amongst white voters was strong?

I don't really see the difference, but it should be noted that given Clinton's minority support there weren't many minorities supporting third party candidates, and there was a significant third party candidate vote this year. In the primaries Clinton actually lost the white vote to Sanders, despite winning the minority vote 3 to 1. It also isn't as if Trump is popular, he is one of the most disliked politicians ever to get elected. So I think it is more correct to say Clinton had weak support from white voters.

I thought he was easily the most interesting candidate and would've supported him were it my election, but it seems to me that in the US, "socialist" is a truly horrible label and it would've made for easy attack ads. He would've copped it for his age, with the idea that he'd destroy the economy and whatever else.

I spotted this on Twitter and thought it was insightful:

"Both parties nominated the only candidate that the other side's candidate could beat," Karl Rove, apparently.

if facing Trump as a Jew he would have been implicitly and explicitly vilified for it

just a few days ago Trump's campaign released their final tv ad:

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/07/trump-s-white-n...

to your or I that may seem abhorrent but most of Trump's base would have lapped it up quite hungrily

as well you had surrogates as highly noted as Ann Coulter were saying things like this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/08/de...

It would have been arguably the most socialist presidential nomination ever for the Democrats.

...apart from FDR.

By the standards of the time, sure.

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