Can Clinton find the spark to fend off the challenge from Sanders?
Little noticed in this week’s Des Moines Register-Bloomberg Politics Iowa poll was this finding: a remarkable 43 percent of likely Democratic caucus participants describe themselves as socialists, including 58 percent of Sanders’s supporters and about a third of Clinton’s.
Ann Selzer, who conducted the poll, said that, among those who identify themselves as socialists, Sanders “leads by a lot.”
It is an illustration of one of the unexpected problems Clinton has encountered.
The activist base of the Democratic Party is further to the left than the bulk of its voters and office holders who still support Hillary and are still wary of Bernie, while the activist base of the Republican Party as well as its office-holders are to the right of the bulk of its ordinary voters who are mostly Trump supporters and might end up voting for the Democratic nominee, especially if that nominee is Hillary.
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