Would Corbyn or Mélenchon do worse than Bernie Sanders in US Democratic Party primaries?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Yes to both.

The Democratic Party, for all its many flaws, does not reward sectarian candidates like the gentlemen juxtaposed with Bernie Sanders in the thread title. And Sanders, for all his flaws, is a far less divisive politician (and a better person, just FWIW) than either Corbyn or Mélenchon.

[S019]

Yes absolutely, and I doubt either one could win a general election outside of a wave election type year (i.e. 2008)

[Dr. MB]

If either one was an American politician they'd be different on both style and policy. Same with if Bernie Sanders grew up in France or the UK. So it's hard to say.

[Schiff for Senate]

Don't know who Melenchon is so can't answer that, but I'm fairly confident Sanders would do a lot better than Jeremy Corbyn.

EDIT: Though given how hugely popular Sanders is and well he was doing early on in 2020, and the fact that French politics and French politicians are obviously different from American politics/politicians, I'd be willing to be that Melenchon (who I just did a Google Search of and discovered is some French politician) would also do worse than Sanders. On that accord, I vote for 'Yes to both.'

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yes to both is the obvious answer if we are talking their RL equivalents and not adjusting. It gets a bit harder if we re-imagine them as Americans; Melenchon would not really be anti-American if he was an American politician, he might be very much anti-China instead.

[Red Velvet]

Yeah, because US is more right-wing. Bernie looks like a centrist neolib next to those two, not by accident, but because you have to in order to politically survive in the US political system.

Bernie ran a pretty mild campaign and the system and its followers got scared as hell, losing their sh**t to block him, imagine if it was someone to his left.

Wrong first post saying Bernie is better politician than the others though. The difference is is that the system he’s inserted on is more resistant to change and against dissent / incisive confrontation.

Big difference from say, France, where if you’re young and you don’t burn your car to protest for radical change then that’s more of a reason to be looked down on.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Probably.

[Mr. Smith]

Easily.

Making few adjustments, Sanders is simply more pragmatic and telegenic.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Both largely perform like Mike Gravel, I think. There just isn't a market in the US for their brand of ugly, unreconstructed authoritarian socialism. Baruch Hashem.

[Former President tack50]

The antisemitism alone is probably already enough to sink them. If that doesn't do it, then Melenchon's lack of internationalism and some tankie-like tendencies will be enough. Corbyn is a bit harder (and I'd expect him to marginally overperform Melenchon) but he also has plenty of other "foot in mouth" issues

[Statilius the Epicurean]

A Corbyn-nominated Democratic National Convention would be wild. All those Palestine flags!

[Samof94]

A Corbyn-nominated Democratic National Convention would be wild. All those Palestine flags!

Just imagine the GOP describes him as an anti semite and their evangelical fans have Israeli flags on display.

[All Along The Watchtower]

A Corbyn-nominated Democratic National Convention would be wild. All those Palestine flags!

Corbyn/Talib ticket comes in third to Republicans and the breakaway Democratic faction

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Much worse.  The machine is never going to allow anything close to a 2016 to happen again.  And if we are talking a hypothetical where Bernie never happened and it was Corbyn/Melenchon, probably worse because Bernie's delivery was an important factor in how he caught on. 

[Walker Jones]

Yes because both are foreigners and cannot be president

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

You know I was wondering once if there is anywhere in the US where Corbyn could be elected. The answer is obviously no but then it got me thinking if his base had an equivalent anywhere in the US, comparing European cities to US ones is usually a bad idea because most American cities demographically simply couldn't exist outside of the US (or at least outside of North America), but if you stretch it you could maybe argue that somewhere like Bay Ridge, Brooklyn or the working class parts of Boston serve as a rough parallel to Corbyn's district. So in the US it would still be Democratic, but a lot less Democratic than it is Labour and obviously wouldn't be electing someone like Corbyn.

[morgieb]

I mean given Sanders got crap for his Israel position, imagine how someone who actually is anti-semitic as hell (Melenchon) or someone who was at the very least indifferent towards antisemitism (Corbyn) would fare.

Sanders is a much savvier politician than certainly Corbyn, there's no way that he would've been able to tap into the populist fervour as well as Sanders. Melenchon would've had problems too even though he's reasonably charismatic.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

yes as neither Corbyn nor Melenchon are born American citizens and therefore would be unable to become POTUS according to the constitution. This would damage their voter appeal in the primaries.

[Alcibiades]

You know I was wondering once if there is anywhere in the US where Corbyn could be elected. The answer is obviously no but then it got me thinking if his base had an equivalent anywhere in the US, comparing European cities to US ones is usually a bad idea because most American cities demographically simply couldn't exist outside of the US (or at least outside of North America), but if you stretch it you could maybe argue that somewhere like Bay Ridge, Brooklyn or the working class parts of Boston serve as a rough parallel to Corbyn's district. So in the US it would still be Democratic, but a lot less Democratic than it is Labour and obviously wouldn't be electing someone like Corbyn.

Don’t see what’s exceptional about Corbyn’s seat really. It’s a socially mixed inner city constituency — a blend of working class social housing, young professionals and the more established middle classes. It’s also highly university-educated and — by UK standards — ethnically diverse, as well as the most densely populated constituency in the entire country. Seems like there are quite a lot of places roughly like that in most major American cities, and they’re all monolithically Democratic. Islington North voted 64% Labour at the last general election, whereas I struggle to see a similar place in the US giving anything less than 80% to the Democrats.

From the comparisons you made you seem to be under the impression that Islington North is some mildly socially conservative “WWC” district, which, well, it really isn’t — it voted 77% Remain, the tenth highest percentage of any constituency in the country. And of course the seat doesn’t really represent his “base” as such because the UK doesn’t have primaries; Islington North just happens to have been the seat Corbyn was selected to fight almost 40 years ago, and well, it’s the kind of place which would vote Labour under almost any circumstance.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

You know I was wondering once if there is anywhere in the US where Corbyn could be elected. The answer is obviously no but then it got me thinking if his base had an equivalent anywhere in the US, comparing European cities to US ones is usually a bad idea because most American cities demographically simply couldn't exist outside of the US (or at least outside of North America), but if you stretch it you could maybe argue that somewhere like Bay Ridge, Brooklyn or the working class parts of Boston serve as a rough parallel to Corbyn's district. So in the US it would still be Democratic, but a lot less Democratic than it is Labour and obviously wouldn't be electing someone like Corbyn.

Don’t see what’s exceptional about Corbyn’s seat really. It’s a socially mixed inner city constituency — a blend of working class social housing, young professionals and the more established middle classes. It’s also highly university-educated and — by UK standards — ethnically diverse, as well as the most densely populated constituency in the entire country. Seems like there are quite a lot of places roughly like that in most major American cities, and they’re all monolithically Democratic. Islington North voted 64% Labour at the last general election, whereas I struggle to see a similar place in the US giving anything less than 80% to the Democrats.

From the comparisons you made you seem to be under the impression that Islington North is some mildly socially conservative “WWC” district, which, well, it really isn’t — it voted 77% Remain, the tenth highest percentage of any constituency in the country. And of course the seat doesn’t really represent his “base” as such because the UK doesn’t have primaries; Islington North just happens to have been the seat Corbyn was selected to fight almost 40 years ago, and well, it’s the kind of place which would vote Labour under almost any circumstance.

Neither Bay Ridge or anywhere in Boston would qualify as "mildly socially conservative" today.

Didn't know it was that educated though which surprises me considering how long it's been a Labour stronghold e even in the 80s.