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.
