Election 2016

[Ancient History]

Sanders still has skin in the game: he "won" in Indiana, but not enough to beat Hillary to the number of delegates she needs to cinch it. My guess is he'll wait until he loses a primary.

[Kaelik]

Think Sanders will finally drop out?

I think at this point it is clear that Sanders has allowed himself to believe that admitting defeat would be "failing" and the death of the revolution or something.

Not terribly surprising in hindsight, that the guy famous for not being part of the democratic establishment because he refuses to compromise might fail to appreciate that without winning the nomination he can still help move his goals forward by shifting the conversation to the left, showing Clinton that there is a lot more support for leftist policies than she thought, and forcing Clinton to stake out positions to the far left of what she might otherwise if she didn't have to set anything out until the general under the belief that the left electorate didn't care about left policies.

[MGuy]

Think Sanders will finally drop out?

I think at this point it is clear that Sanders has allowed himself to believe that admitting defeat would be "failing" and the death of the revolution or something.

Not terribly surprising in hindsight, that the guy famous for not being part of the democratic establishment because he refuses to compromise might fail to appreciate that without winning the nomination he can still help move his goals forward by shifting the conversation to the left, showing Clinton that there is a lot more support for leftist policies than she thought, and forcing Clinton to stake out positions to the far left of what she might otherwise if she didn't have to set anything out until the general under the belief that the left electorate didn't care about left policies.

Isn't he doing that by staying in the race and continuing to spout his beliefs all over the nation? I mean if he drops out the the establishment no longer need to give a shit about him at all. The longer he marches around grandstanding the longer his views get shoved in people's faces. What better way to continue spreading his message then to ride the tide of his recent ( if temporary) popularity.

[Ancient History]

You reach a point of diminishing returns. One of the blessings of the bloody GOP primary season was that the candidates were forced to piss away money attacking each other instead of the Democratic candidates. At this point, where Trump has become the presumptive nominee, he can build up a warchest to attack Clinton - who still has to spend money campaigning against Sanders (whose donor dollars also don't go to Clinton's warchest). And Trump has been running a pretty light campaign because of all the free advertising he gets from being a mediagenic asshole. The Democrats benefited from the GOP being a hot mess, but ideally they should now be striving to get unified before the convention.

That being said, I don't think Trump is going to buy his way out of this election, no matter how many Republican billionaires decide to bless him with their golden showers - Jeb Bush showed that spending an order of magnitude more than your opponents doesn't move the needle when the product isn't worth buying.

[Kaelik]

Isn't he doing that by staying in the race and continuing to spout his beliefs all over the nation? I mean if he drops out the the establishment no longer need to give a shit about him at all. The longer he marches around grandstanding the longer his views get shoved in people's faces. What better way to continue spreading his message then to ride the tide of his recent ( if temporary) popularity.

A month ago I would have said that. But 1) Clinton has moved as far to the left as she is going to. 2) Clinton has seen the support for left policies, she's not going to forget it any more in seven months than she will in six. 3) When he started, he proposed leftist policies, and then Clinton said she totally agrees, this was productive. But because he was trying to win, he had to focus on beating Clinton, not positions they then agreed on. So for the last month, the only thing I can tell you about Sanders positions is how much he definitely hates Wall Street and people who take money from evil bad companies. Which is, if not his weakest position, his second weakest after foreign policy.

He's not talking about issues anymore, he's not getting his message out. He's not helping at this point, he's just refusing to settle for anything but revolution, when revolution is clearly not on the table.

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, it is very obviously time for Sanders to bow out. If only so some of the Bernie supporters I know would stop sounding like crazy people everytime Clinton comes up.

SLIGHTLY SLOWER PROGRESS THAN I WANTED? SHE'S PRACTICALLY A REPUBLICAN! SHE CAN'T WIN THE GENERAL! BENGHAZI! EMAILS! FBI INVESTIGATION!

[MGuy]

Why is the FBI thing still a thing? Didn't the FBI come out and say a long time ago that there was nothing really to see?

[DSMatticus]

Why is the FBI thing still a thing? Didn't the FBI come out and say a long time ago that there was nothing really to see?

BERNIE 2016

[name_here]

Has the FBI announced anything? I'm pretty sure that the fact that they haven't actually filed charges does mean they think there's nothing to see, but I don't recall hearing any official announcement to that effect.

[Koumei]

Oh, just because the FBI says there isn't anything you believe them? Are you just a SHILLARY supporter? ONE OF THE SHEEPLE?

I'm pretty sure that's basically what the argument boils down to.

[DSMatticus]

ONE OF THE SHEEPLE?

Shit like that sketch really doesn't help, either. Poking fun at people for hating on superdelegates is just really fucking dumb. There genuinely is no point in counting them - after all, if they really flip the results then it doesn't matter who wins the Democratic primary because Trump will win the general. Which is why it was so fucking bullshit that the DNC waved their superdelegate dick around at the start of the race to disillusion Bernie supporters, and why it's so fucking bullshit now that Bernie is suggesting they should give him the nomination despite being the clear loser.

Meanwhile I have yet to see any Bernie supporter defend caucuses. It's worth noting that bullshit as caucuses are, Bernie's share of pledged delegates is within a couple percentage points of his share of the popular vote. Ultimately even caucus states use a county-proportional system, so while Bernie was able to pick up a few delegates on the margins that he clearly didn't deserve it's barely distinguishable from rounding errors. Indeed, I abso-fucking-lutely guarantee that the bullshit that was the New York Democratic primary is the single most egregious distortion of the pledged delegate assignment that has occurred on the blue side of the race. Sanders lost more delegates to New York being a shithole of electoral disenfanchisement than he picked up anywhere else in the country. Very obviously not enough to flip the state, let alone the race, but certainly more than he picked up because Bumfuck Nowhere is a caucus state.

And while ultimately the superdelegate dick-waving and New York bullshit weren't needed to clinch the nomination for Hillary, they're the sorts of things Bernie supporters are going to remember, and a lot of them are really fucking flaky voters to begin with. It was just all around such a shitty fucking idea to run the primary this way. Bernie would have lost even if you'd given him a fair shot, so why expend political capital locking him out? You've got a general election to win after this, dumbfucks.

God I hate everything about this race. The longer it goes on the more I hate every single person involved in it, Sanders included.

[Koumei]

I really hate the self-titled Bernie Bros that support Sanders. Or rather, that just hate Hillary.

But remember before the actual race when it looked like it was going to be Bush vs Clinton: Clash of the Dynasties? Man, if only we could have predicted how crazy things would get.

[GreatGreyShrike]

Remember when people in this thread were talking about how Trump was an obvious scam that would make a lot of money/fame and drop out of the race? Those were much happier, more innocent times... The fact that Trump actually won the Republican primary is just super depressing.

[Kaelik]

I really hate the self-titled Bernie Bros that support Sanders. Or rather, that just hate Hillary.

But remember before the actual race when it looked like it was going to be Bush vs Clinton: Clash of the Dynasties? Man, if only we could have predicted how crazy things would get.

I really hate the self titled "I WANT TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY WITH MY BIG WALL STREET DONATIONS FUCK EVERYTHING LET IT BURN" that support Clinton.

Oh wait, that isn't what Clinton supporters call themselves, it is a pejorative name used by their opponents specifically to imply completely untrue bullshit as character slander?

Oh. That's interesting.

In fact the Bernie Bro name is indicative of literally everything that is wrong with the most vocal Clinton supporters in this election.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that being a reasonable person and having a reasonable conversation about politics is hard, so most Clinton supports are just not capable of accurately and intelligently talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, because most people aren't. But at least Sander's supporters short form memes are actually about issues. At least "Wall Street Bought and Paid For/Shillary" is about an issue, and briefly touches on things that are actually relates to Hillary positions.

Bernie Bros is basically just Clinton supporters saying "I have nothing to say about the actual issues or candidates, so I'm just going to call you a sexist racist until you vote for my candidate!" But tons of people who should damn well know better seem to think that counts as a viable addition to their argument, instead of literally them just being a fucking idiot.

[RobbyPants]

Meanwhile I have yet to see any Bernie supporter defend caucuses.

My wife has. I don't remember her exact line of reasoning, but I think it had to do with "fostering a discussion". I pointed out the issues of accessibility and time commitment. She didn't have much of a response.

[Prak]

Meanwhile I have yet to see any Bernie supporter defend caucuses.

My wife has. I don't remember her exact line of reasoning, but I think it had to do with "fostering a discussion". I pointed out the issues of accessibility and time commitment. She didn't have much of a response.

I find them conceptually interesting, but I haven't participated in one so I don't really have a stance from which to actually defend them. Don't some of the caucuses allow mail in (defeating the entire point), though? I thought I heard that mentioned, but I could be misremembering.

[RobbyPants]

I find them conceptually interesting, but I haven't participated in one so I don't really have a stance from which to actually defend them. Don't some of the caucuses allow mail in (defeating the entire point), though? I thought I heard that mentioned, but I could be misremembering.

Googling "mail in caucus" brings up a crap ton of stuff about Washington state. Beyond that, I don't really know.

[fbmf]

The NY Primary was a crock of shit. (Slight paraphrase).

What did I miss?

Game On,
fbmf

[Username17]

The NY Primary was a crock of shit. (Slight paraphrase).

What did I miss?

Game On,
fbmf

New York requires registered people who want to vote in a different party's primary to change their registration six months in advance, which is a fuck long time. New York polls are not open all day, and are not open the same amount of time all over the state. New York only updates their voter rolls to purge the names of people who no longer live at some address or another very infrequently and so when they do it there are like a hundred thousand deleteds in each district all at once. Obviously, when big tasks like that are done at the last minute, things get fucked and the appeals process is shit.

Excited conspiracy theorists claim that hundreds of thousands of bernies were prevented from voting, which is probably off by two or three orders of magnitude.

-Username17

[Maj]

I find them conceptually interesting, but I haven't participated in one so I don't really have a stance from which to actually defend them. Don't some of the caucuses allow mail in (defeating the entire point), though? I thought I heard that mentioned, but I could be misremembering.

Googling "mail in caucus" brings up a crap ton of stuff about Washington state. Beyond that, I don't really know.

We don't have a mail in caucus. We have a caucus, and a mail in primary. I think the Dems go by the results of the caucus and the Repubs go by the primary? I don't understand it, really.

[DSMatticus]

Other than photo ID's, if you name some shady election practice a Republican state government has been sued over, odds are good New York already does that thing. No early voting. No election day registration. Excuse-only absentee voting. No preregistration for those who will be of age at the time of the election. National, state, and local primaries are each held a couple weeks apart for no reason other than to reduce turnout. [Changes in] party affiliation needs to be declared six months in advance. The board of elections has been sued for purging or changing voters' party affiliations without their knowledge or consent, preventing them from voting in the primary.

New York is a closed primary state running every item from the Republican disenfranchisement playbook except voter ID laws and then some. I mean, fuck. The combined turnout from both party's Ohio primaries was ~27% of the state population. The combined turnout from both party's New York primaries was ~13% of the state population. And that disparity is in large part because New York states' primary system is complete fucking bullshit. So would this have mattered? Yes and no. New York is demographically favorable to Clinton, and she should have won that state regardless. If she hadn't, it would have implied some kind of crazy revolt among her base. And closing the gap sure as fuck wouldn't have turned the race around, because the New York gap was 19 delegates and Bernie is behind by 321. Even a better showing in New York is "too little, too late." But the fact is that Bernie does very well among youth voters and Democratic-leaning independents, and those two groups in particular are shut out much harder by New York's bullshit than the average Clinton supporter. The gap would have been smaller - almost certainly significantly smaller - if New York had more accessible primaries.

[Ancient History]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opini ... -time.html

[tussock]

I can't see that's a particularly new or novel thing, AH.

Sort of inherent to democracy, people who don't know shit about politics and how it works are exactly who elects people to do politics, based on whatever takes their fancy at the time, which is mostly based on fear and hatred and greed. Go humans!

Still better than the alternative, which is largely where the motivated authoritarians just impose their will on your ass through a constantly demonstrated threat of violence, and there's not really a 3rd option.

Well, you can have citizen-initiated and voted-on laws, but that's just voting for more services and less taxes on the majority all the time until the state collapses and is replaced by one of the previous.

[Ancient History]

I think what's novel is how much it's come to rule this election - it's not just that the Republican party policies are bad or that the Democratic party lacks the local-level game to effectively contest Congressional seats or governorships, but everything building up to this election has been the result of a growing distrust in democratic government, and a class of politicians dedicated to doing absolutely nothing on the national level and basically failing at governing at a local level - as epitomized by Kansas, where the Executive and Legislative branches are in the middle of a death-struggle with the Judicial branch because it won't let them defund every school in the state to pay for disastrous tax cuts. And so many of the Republican candidates were a direct product of that kind of toxic ideal, and even the Democratic primary is largely a group of angry people that are tired and distrustful of "the establishment."

[Kaelik]

Apparently Republicans have taken to trolling Democratic Primaries now that they are done.

"44% Sanders voters take Trump over Clinton," sounds like Sanders voters are all crazy assholes right?

"39% Trump over Sanders, " so really, like 8% of Sanders voters crazy assholes, and 39% of Sanders Voters were Republicans who didn't have a primary to vote in, so came over to troll.

My brief investigation into California primary law shows them using Closed primaries, but doesn't show how they can label themselves as Democrats for the purpose of the primary. Wonder if this might become a problem.