Why it a Important for Bernie to Differentiate Himself from Clinton

In United States presidential primary elections you'll find a great deal of agreeing. This agreement happens between candidates fighting for the same party nomination. To gain party favor from both professional party members and voters the candidate has to have a platform that is in step with the parties platform. This means that in a general sense every candidate of a certain party will have the same platform.

However, thoughtful voters need a way to determine which candidate is better suited for the job. This means campaigns often lead to candidates disagreeing about how much they agree. They have arguments about how much more “Democratic” or “Republican” they are than the other candidates. This is not to say that they do not have more meaningful discussions about experience, leadership ability, and policy. But when you are in a primary it is often hard to show voters how the candidates are substantially different. This is because the candidates overall agree with each other. This gives a significant advantage to candidates who have more name recognition or those who have been on the campaign trail for longer.

When one looks the Democratic nomination candidates there a too clean front runners. Those candidates are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. With Clinton in the lead. Her last name has a great deal of name recognition. With her husband being a previous president and her status as former Secretary of State for President Obama. Mrs. Clinton has also been able to garner a great deal of support, including from the media.

This means if Bernie Sanders wants to beat Hillary for the nomination he will have to show voters how he is different than her. He will have to show that it is worth the risk to put their support behind him despite Hillary's clear power advantage. Sanders can do this without focusing on Hillary's public relations setbacks. These setbacks include her email scandal and Benghazi, but both have not hurt her that much. Emphasis on a consistently Democratic track record and emphasis how their platforms differ will help him immensely. He will have to make it widely know that he supported gay marriage, opposition to the Keystone pipeline, and other Democratic ideals earlier and more consistently than Hillary.

Differentiating Sanders and Hillary will be important for Sander's campaign if he wants to capture voters who are not too heavily into either camp as well as individuals who have lost faith in politics. Hillary's campaign also gives off the appearance of the a same-old-same-old Democratic campaign. Sanders can use this to his advantage especially since his campaign has the appearance of new ideas.