Bernie Sanders Has a Stronger Lead Over Trump Than Hillary Clinton in a New National Poll

Respondents to CNN's new poll are feeling the Bern. A KATZ / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

A new CNN poll today shows Bernie Sanders has the highest favorability rating among all presidential candidates, and it shows him trouncing Republican candidates by wider margins that Hillary Clinton:

In the scenario that appears most likely to emerge from the primary contests, Clinton tops Trump 52% to 44% among registered voters... When the former secretary of state faces off with either of the other two top Republicans, things are much tighter and roughly the same as they were in January. Clinton trails against Rubio, with 50% choosing the Florida senator compared to 47% for Clinton, identical to the results in January. Against Cruz, Clinton holds 48% to his 49%, a slight tightening from a 3-point race in January to a 1-point match-up now. Sanders — who enjoys the most positive favorable rating of any presidential candidate in the field, according to the poll — tops all three Republicans by wide margins: 57% to 40% against Cruz, 55% to 43% against Trump, and 53% to 45% against Rubio. Sanders fares better than Clinton in each match-up among men, younger voters and independents.

These poll results are far from definitive; the poll has margin of error of 3 percentage points. But it's not just this poll. "In virtually every poll," Glenn Greenwald pointed out last week, "Bernie Sanders, does better, often much better, in head-to-head match-ups against every possible GOP candidate" than Clinton.

Frizzelle said earlier today that Clinton is "way more qualified."

But national polls consistently find that Sanders is the strongest candidate.

Some have said Clinton is the "most experienced" candidate to ever run for the presidency. Experience in what, exactly?

This piece purporting to lay out her experience in all of its glory is more a recitation of titles than a demonstration of what she's gotten done.

As the New York Times shows in painstaking detail, Libya—not Benghazi per se, but the process by which she pushed for regime change in the country at large and failed to follow-up—was a disaster redolent of Iraq for which she was largely responsible.

Post-earthquake Haiti is another area where her State Department had an enormous opportunity to do great good. Clinton made the crisis worse, not better, by pushing with her husband to open a new low-wage factory (what many view as a sweatshop) and billing it as earthquake relief. They both attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, tying each other's policies and advocacy together for the same purpose. The factory has not created nearly as many jobs as they claimed it would.

Clinton supported a coup d'etat in Honduras. "As is well known, she supported the coup d’etat in my country," Honduran feminist Melissa Cardoza told TeleSur, "which has sunk a very worthy and bleeding land further into abject poverty, violence, and militarism.”

Electing the first-ever woman president would be a hugely significant. So would electing a socialist Jew from Brooklyn. In any case, we should resist the temptation to mistake electing a single person from any marginalized background with substantive, landmark political change improving the living conditions for marginalized groups. (Because duh: Electing Obama did not make America post-racial, much less close the wealth gap between African-Americans and Caucasians. That's what reparations are for—and it's incredibly disappointing that neither Clinton nor Sanders support them.)

There are plenty of things to like about Clinton, but it can't be denied that she has baggage that Sanders simply doesn't—namely her ties to this country's wealthy elite, whether through SuperPACs, lobbyists or her secret speeches to Wall Street banks. During the primary, she's tacked left and flip-flopped on issues including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. During the general election, if she's the nominee, I fully expect to her tack right. Don't say you weren't warned ahead of time, Democratic primary voters.