they're essentially tied in hypothetical head-to-heads and the sanders base is a lot more solid and enthusiastic, going by other polls
So, we don't have good poll aggregators for the general right now (because the good aggregators don't work on general election polls this far out, by and large), but glancing at RCP that doesn't really check out. They've got a lotta junk though, so you could very well be right, but the point is - most polls still give Biden the bigger lead in the general, so it's not really the safest rhetorical ground, IMO.
i don't think the response from pro-bernie people was anything other than "well yeah that's all true" because it is. the warren people are the ones who hyper-overreacted to any attempt to differentiate between the candidates.
i mean, what are canvassers supposed to say? "yeah warren is great too, just as much as sanders. in fact you should just vote for her." or maybe "here's a detailed breakdown of aggregated demographic polling data, draw your own conclusions."
Oh, trust me, there were plenty of other responses. We had people quoting Shaun King of all people accusing Warren and her supporters of engaging in a massive smear campaign by inventing the script. It was deeply dumb, and even though it wasn't all that many people in the grand scheme of things, it definitely served to advance the needless agita.
As for canvassers, most of those scripts are terrible, so in that grand tradition I would have them say something like "Senator Warren is a great friend of Senator Sanders, but Sanders' policies are better for XYZ reasons" or something to that effect. Truth be told, it's a
small hit, so like, the distinction here - between saying Bernie is more electable and Warren is
less electable - is going to be small. But hey, it'd be another way of going about it.
TIL that one of the essential rules of realpolitik 69-dimension chess is that any and all mention of factual data about your opponents' records, demographics of support, etc that reflect poorly on their campaign are direct acts of violence and are immediately disqualifying
Eh, something can be bad without being catastrophic. Hell, it can be bad without even being
bad-bad. Nothing about this needed to be escalated.