See also the reaction to Corbyn in the UK.
Sadly, as much as I like him, I’m not convinced he’s especially competent, and he is also saddled with a parliamentary system and Blair stacked the Labour deck with neoliberals, so he’s stuck with a load of centrist MPs who won’t/can’t work with him.
He’s not running for the House or the speakership. His House days are over. He’s a senator, currently, and running for President.
In 2008 Obama had some major advantages over Clinton. Her sense of entitlement at the time was even stronger than it is now (which is saying something) and her advisers were supremely incompetent. Also, in her Boomer hubris she neglected her digital game while Obama was young enough to recognise its importance. Even with those handicaps she still managed to get 1973 delegates to Obama’s 2285 (tellingly, she won major strongholds like NY and CA and FL, although Obama got IL due in part to his favourite son status).
Losing a primary that way would be the end of most candidates’ chances at the Presidency, and yet here she is, back again, running at the moment at about 50-50 with Sanders in the more mainstream Dem polls (which, let’s be clear, is an impressive showing by Sanders). If nothing else that shows the power of her name recognition and her hold on the DNC establishment, which can’t just be hand-waved away during the primaries.
Sanders is more competent than Corbyn, but he faces essentially the same problems: a Third Way party establishment doing everything to keep him from a leadership position, and a bunch of legislators from his own party who won’t work with him so that they can preserve the party status quo if he somehow does get that leadership position.
Bernie might win. People keep forgetting there are tides in Presidential elections. The tide turned against Hillary Clinton in early 2008, and towards Obama. The tide has turned against Bernie this fall after it turned towards him in the summer. It might be turning back towards him, heading into IA and NH. The race will be tight.
But then after that, if he wins both, then the Democratic tide will turn towards him in a big way. Stop all this prattle about Super PACs and all that crap. If Bernie gets the early wins, then a whole lot is going to be done on his behalf whether he likes it or not. And whether or not we like it. It’s a whole nother can of worms after February 20th.
To put it mildly. Clinton has so much establishment support and built-in advantages that the fact that she hasn’t put this to bed shows how weak a candidate she really is (although I still think she’d win the general, because the Republican slate is unbelievably awful)
It’s Republicans that are meant to fall into line and Democrats that fall in love. Support for her seems to be grudging, at best, purely because she was the anointed candidate from the start.
And if Elizabeth Warren had run, Clinton would be dead and buried by now.
A lot of Dem voters (myself included) are turned off by the fact that she was the anointed candidate from the start, in greater numbers than in 2008 when she was also the anointed candidate. She’s being forced on us and the natural response is to support someone else. I like Sanders and like his policies, but I don’t think the non-activist and non-wonky Dem voters are going to fall in love with him the way they did with Obama.
Sanders got into this mainly to push the party back to the left. He’s the kind of guy who’s honest about his own prospects on the national stage, and I doubt that exceeding his own expectations here has changed that (even though it has for some of his supporters). Warren, on the other hand, would have gotten into it to make a real attempt at the Presidency. And you’re right, she would have buried Clinton and then her GOP opponent like Obama did.
Yeah, too bad Obama didn’t get anything passed like, say, Obamacare.
If you mean the gutted, doomed-to-fiscally-fail, watered-down Obamacare that we’re stuck with now, the one that is already revealing itself to be unsustainable, the one that didn’t actually lower health care costs for most of us middle-class folks, and that basically handed over a ton of new customers to the already-bloated health insurance corporate giants, then I’m not sure what your point is.
Especially when Obama originally claimed the only system he would ever support was single-payer.
Mmm hmm.
I’m feeding a troll, I get it.
But here goes:
Or maybe look at Kynect in KY:
http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2015/01/07/how-is-kynect-doing-100-000-plus-and-counting.html
Finally since I was being snarky talking about strictly Obamacare:
Haha, the old reverse the scale of the axis trick. They need to be wiped from the earth so that we may live in peace and math.
I would tear up my membership card tut suite.
Yup, that one! The one that lets me get medical insurance despite having a medical history and pre-existing conditions. The one that keeps me from being a slave to corporate America because otherwise I’d be uninsurable. The one that partially subsidizes medical care for the poor. The one that rewards my doctor for staying on top of my wellness goals. The one that lets me help the employees of my small business get healthcare without otherwise penalizing me. The one that removed lifetime limits from my medical coverage.
Yeah, that sucks.
Of course I’d rather have single-payer, like they do in almost every other first-world country. The harsh reality is that we will never do that in a single step. We the people do not have enough control of our government to make that happen. The healthcare and insurance industries will never allow it. (And yes, they ARE separate industries!) But we can continue to chip away at it.
To an extent, I agree with you: the ACA is indeed gutted and watered down. That had to be done to get it passed. But it’s an important first step toward a goal we have been discussing for at least a generation. Let’s move forward, not backward.
And as someone who would be unemployed about 2.5 seconds after we get single-payer: I still want it. It’s the right thing to do, and if I’m a casualty, so be it. I may end up unemployed but I won’t be uninsured.
Yeah, that one, you a-hole, why aren’t you dead yet??? XD 
Yeah, well, a) I’m not a troll b) I’m not a Republican. I’m just someone who understands economics. Unfortunately, Obamacare, like most things Obama, gets lost in the tug of war between Republicans who will criticize everything he does for the dumbest of reasons, and Democrats who will defend everything he does for the dumbest of reasons. If Fox attacks Obamacare, then the knee-jerk reaction is to contradict them, because they’re assholes.
The reality is a lot less black and white and has nothing to do with partisan lines. Obamacare has a couple of nice thoughts in it, which will be totally usurped by it’s poorly-planned structure. I’m glad there’s some Americans that now have affordable or free health-care because they don’t make any money, but the large majority of us have been forced into feeding a criminally-expensive system against our will, with costs that have not been lowered despite promises that they would be. Before the ACA, we had some options, and now we have none- it’s join or get fined. Which would be absolutely fine if “join” meant a single-payer system, but it’s not. It’s “join a system led, controlled, and benefiting an insurance industry reaping billions of dollars purely because it can.” As anyone who has ever looked at a hospital bill can tell you.
But yup, I’m a troll.
Probably because that would cost the insurance industry more than paying for part of my doctor’s visits every so often. Well, that and the fact that, thank the gods, I do not have to rely on the VA for my medical care. 
Yeah, we are better off than we were in the 90s and early 2000’s by far.
Citation needed.
My before and after story for the ACA look exactly the same. I have the same employer based coverage I’ve had since starting at my current employer in 2007. All of my corporate or start up employed engineer friends are in the same boat. I’m not sure who your “majority” is…
