You have made a lot of very specific claims about Bernie Sanders supporters which appear to be based on little else than wild speculation. You opened by claiming that Sanders supporters "don't think he's plausible but like him anyway" and now you're claiming they "know nothing of him" except that he's likeable.
I didn't say that all his supporters don't think he can win. I said that some Dems like him but don't think he can win. Of those people, the one's who care most about a Dem winning are supporting Hillary, while those who value their ideal more than any Dem winning are willing to support Bernie. If young whites are more willing to risk the General for their ideals, then this would explain part of why they are much more likely to support him than other Dems.
As for the ignorance of most of his supporters, that is not a knock against them in particular, just a fact about voters in general, especially young voters.
The ignorance of the voting public and their near total reliance on major media outlets for their political knowledge are very well empirically established. It is beyond any reasonable doubt few of his current supporters would have ever even heard of him a year ago, and polls show that the majority of his supporters did not support him just 5 months ago. Thus, they only would know (at most) what the mainstream media outlets have said, which is almost nothing of any substance.
I have observed NOTHING of Sanders supporters that corroborates this. Quite the contrary, in fact: his relative obscurity in the media means that almost all of his current supporters are people who have gone out of their way to FIND OUT more about him and wound up liking his positions on key issues.
No. His very early supporters back when they were less than 5% of the electorate may likely have been non-typical in their high level of knowledge about him. But for the majority of his "fans" who just jumped on board in the last few months, Bernie is an amusing twitter meme, especially among young adults who get most their information from twitter and viral videos. His current support is too large a sample to be anything but typical voters, and specifically typical young voters, who generally know only whatever is plastered ad nausea in the news cycles and social media. Bernie is all over the mainstream media and social media, but only as a lovable ranting, say-whatever-he-thinks grandpa, absent any substantive information about his actual policies and what they entail.
It isn't that Hillary's supporters are smarter or more generally informed about politics. It is that they, like 99% of the population, know much much more about Hillary because she has been at the center of the national spotlight and the harshest possible scrutiny for 23 years.
His current sparsity of support has the same feature: it's primarily because MOST voters don't even know who he is and don't pay enough attention to politics to bother finding out (and the majority of Hillary supporters are voting for her because "Hillary Clinton").
Bernie is by far the most likable candidate out there. The people who don't really know his policies and are just going on superficial likeability are the one's most likely to support him. That is why he closed to gap on Hillary so fast, because it isn't based on policy knowledge that takes time, but on superficial qualities that you can tell by 10 seconds of hearing he and Hillary speak. From a personality standpoint, its all positive for Bernie. Thus, his support can only go down as people move past that and the details of his policies start to be attacked in force by the GOP.
His policies are extreme (not a judgment just a fact), and many current Bernie leaners will get scared off once the GOP turns their sites to him
Implying that people who like his policies will stop liking them because his ENEMIES will criticize those policies?
No. I am saying that people who like Bernie, like Bernie the amusing old man, and know little of his policies, so once all the more extreme details of those policies are highlighted and cast in the most negative light, the many who support him now only as a likable guy will not vote for him. Obviously, this doesn't apply to voters committed to voting (which includes showing up on election day) for whatever Dem is on the ticket.
Right now many of his more luke-warm supporters are ignoring the "Socialist" label as a smear tactic
I didn't know Bernie Sanders HAD Luke-warm supporters.
Then, you know very little about human beings and politics. All candidates have plenty of luke warm supporters. They are who decide elections. They are why we cannot predict with near certainty the 2016 winner right now, or even 2 weeks prior to the election. Most of Bernie's supporters have backed him for only a few months. How deep a commitment do you think they all have? Little of substance has been discussed in the Dem debates or anywhere else that most voters get their information. Thus, for many of his supporters, their support cannot be that strong or based on much but superficial personality.
Remember, most of his and all candidate's supporters are not people showing up to rallies and donating to his campaign. They are the typical voter when asked in either a poll or an election booth to choose who they support, find some basis to check one bubble rather than another and that is all. They determine elections.
As far as I know, everyone who has voiced support for Bernie Sanders has also been heard saying something along the lines is "What's wrong with being a socialist?"
Sure, because most of them have no clue what Socialism even means or how it relates to any of the things they care about. That's the point. Many of them will come to learn what it means to be a socialist and will find things wrong with that.
Sanders called HIMSELF a socialist on many occasions. Having the balls to stand by it is one of the things people like about him.
When they find out what that means (including that most of them will pay much more in taxes and see little personal benefit from it within their lifetime), then him admitting he is a socialist won't be as cute. The GOP calls every Dem a socialist and a tax raiser, but its always overblown. So many people are naively assuming the same is true with Bernie, but it isn't.
