December 20, 2015

The pundits on ABC's This Week prove once again that they're completely incapable of calling out the extremism in the Republican party without pretending that there is some equivalent on the left. Cokie Roberts wants the viewers to believe that Sen. Bernie Sanders is too far to the left to win a general election, despite the fact that most Americans actually agree with his policy positions.

And par for the course, her pal and former Bush-Cheney campaign adviser responded with "both sides... both sides!"

STEPHANOPOULOS: Everybody wanted Donald Trump last night.

MATT DOWD, ABC: Yeah, exactly. Everybody was after him. And it's like it serves dual purposes. It helps Donald Trump. I think in the course of today, we're going to be talking more about what Donald Trump had to say about Iran and Putin and all of that then probably the Democratic debate.

But it also helps the Democrats, because Donald Trump has horrible favorability numbers in a general election. He's probably the weakest, most unelectable GOP candidate to go up, but he's the leading candidate.

And so I think all the Democrats should have been happy about last night. They all brought their A game in the course of that. The primary probably doesn't reset itself. Hillary Clinton is still the dominant force in this.

But I think Bernie Sanders does have an outside shot if he could make his GOTV operation in force in Iowa and New Hampshire.

(CROSSTALK)

COKIE ROBERTS: ...win Iowa, but then what? I mean, it doesn't go anywhere.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Wait, if you win Iowa and New Hampshire...

ROBERTS: ...but the -- but still then what? I mean, you still have a 74-year-old Democratic Socialist who is too far to the left to win a general election. And so what you have to figure out is if he's going to be winning the Democratic nomination, is there somebody else?

DOWD: I actually don't think he's too far to win the general election. In the course of America today, what we've seen in the course of these debates is there's no conservatives left in the Democratic Party at all, and there's no liberals left in the Republican Party at all. They've both bombed to the polarized ends of the spectrum.

And if Bernie Sanders happens to win it, which I think is very difficult, he actually could be somebody like Donald Trump is Donald Trump is the nominee.

NAVARRO: Let me tell you, I was at the Vegas debate on Tuesday. And what I heard yesterday -- you know, I don't know about you guys, but Bernie Sanders sounded a lot like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to me. And Hillary Clinton sounded a lot like Lindsey Graham to me.

You know, I think she's gone more hawkish, more to the right. And, you know, I think you're also seeing a libertarian, non-interventionist, spectrum in the Republican Party.

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