DEMS/ELECTION/POLLS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When Bernie Sanders was mulling a 2020 campaign last year, he said he would likely pull the trigger if he thought he was the ‘best candidate’ to defeat President Donald Trump. Now that he’s officially in the race for the White House, a key element of his argument is that he is — in a way that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. His campaign is gearing up to take direct aim at one of the central cases made against him: That the 77-year-old democratic socialist, far from being unable to win a general election, could blaze a nontraditional path to victory on the electoral map unlike any other Democratic candidate. This month, Ben Tulchin, Sanders’ pollster, circulated a memo about an online survey he conducted in late 2017 for progressives who were hoping to flip state legislative seats in West Virginia. The poll found that Sanders would beat Trump by 2 percentage points in the state — despite the fact that Trump won West Virginia, 69-27, and that no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since 1996.”
–Holly Otterbein, “Bernie’s pollster dishes on the path to beat Trump,” Politico, February 19, 2019 8:26 am