I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/02/hillary_clinton_told_the_truth_about_her_iraq_war_vote.html

oh fuck that shit

Aimless writes "Bernie... is making the voting strength of the progressive wing apparent, just as victories by people like Santorum and Cruz make the voting strength of the evangelicals apparent to Republican pols."

And then k3vin writes to Οὖτις: "your cali vote didn't matter tho lol, so don't sweat it."

Well so IF the value of Berniemania is that it shows there is non-ignorable voter engagement behind a position (even if it is not a winning position), then All Votes Matter, surely?

Personally, I've never liked that "oh, well, the result was a foregone conclusion in my state, so who cares if I flush my vote for Nader or write-in Mickey Mouse or The Rent Is Too Damn High Guy." All votes, even the ones on the losing side, communicate which views/candidates have support and which don't. People will look closely at results, and those results will affect any future candidates' decisions to run/not run, embrace/not embrace a given position, etc.

I don't mean to conflate different speakers in what is obv a freeform discussion, but it's a bit weird to see the sentiment "Cali is going blue no matter what, so whatevs" so close to "vote Bernie so that even if he loses, true progressive voices are understood to be a force that Dems ignore at their peril."

goole, the paragraph before that is pretty crucial context (and a source for the quotes) - but the point there is that you don't need to explicitly attack something to erase and sideline it?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-staff-shakeup-218955

grain of salt because it's politico, but, did Mark Penn ghostwrite this?? wtf

At the heart of problem this time, staffers, donors and Clinton-allied operatives say, was the Clinton’s decision not to appoint a single empowered chief strategist – a role the forceful but controversial Mark Penn played in 2008 – and disperse decision-making responsibility to a sprawling team with fuzzy lines of authority.

...

Her advisers were also frustrated by having to play roles they hadn’t been hired for and were ill-suited for. From the beginning, Benenson was frustrated that he was forced to split his time between defending his boss on emails and defining a path for her candidacy. Clinton, meanwhile, longed for a chief strategist in the Mark Penn mold who could take on a more expansive role than playing pollster.

Pro tip: It's not a "Vote for Hil" piece.

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, February 8, 2016 3:17 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how the fuck is it not a vote for hil piece?

@davidaxelrod
When the exact same problems crop up in separate campaigns, with different staff, at what point do the principals say, "Hey, maybe it's US?"

zing

Moreover, several staffers told POLITICO Mook’s data and analytics operation was so well run, he was able to tell Clinton herself that she had won — even as the networks were declaring the race too close to call. “Get over to the hotel now!” he told the former secretary of state, according one aide who was at campaign headquarters on caucus night. “We need to beat Bernie!” — a mad rush to declare victory before Sanders took the stage to declare the contest a draw. Eight years ago, Mook played the same role when he ordered then Sen. Clinton to declare victory in the Indiana primary over Barack Obama — despite network projections that she might lose the state.

ah, maybe this was old news already, but that's the first thing i've seen that tries to explain why the clinton campaign declared victory so early

"Look, she going to be the nominee, but she’s not going to get any style points and if she isn’t careful she is going to be a wounded nominee. And they better worked this shit out fast because who ever the Republicans pick is going to be 29 times tougher than Bernie.”

Apparently the pros think more of the clowncar than you guys do.

At the heart of problem this time, staffers, donors and Clinton-allied operatives say, was the Clinton’s decision not to appoint a single empowered chief strategist – a role the forceful but controversial Mark Penn played in 2008 – and disperse decision-making responsibility to a sprawling team with fuzzy lines of authority.

This kind of jibes with my impression of her campaign strategy and messaging as kind of scattershot.

yeah, but Mark Penn was more than just the "Chief Strategist" - he had soft shoulders to lean on, an easy laugh that could disperse tension in no time at all, trustworthy eyes, rock solid abs.

he was only "controversial" in the sense that no one could seem to agree on whether he was the best person they had ever worked with, or the best person that had ever existed

The Sady Doyle piece supports my theory about Hillary Clinton representing a kind of personal narrative feminism rather than a collective feminism for her biggest supporters. I'm not saying there's no value in that, but I prefer the take of Liza Featherstone who said (paraphrasing) "Hillary says that when she is president, fathers will be able to tell their daughters they can be anything they want to be. I think fathers will be able to tell their daughters that when their daughters have healthcare, income supports, access to affordable education..." And I have daughters, and I genuinely think those things are bigger potential problems for them than whether they "believe" they can be anything.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, February 8, 2016 2:13 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i find it hard to believe that /anyone/ is invested in the kind of "personal narrative feminism" you invoke. i mean, i know they are, but in hillary's case it's so patently obvious that any invocations of this sort of thing are entirely cynical and opportunistic.

you can tell your daughter she can be anything she wants even if hillary isn't elected president! i'm inclined to say that a clinton victory will be virtually meaningless in terms of achieving any traditional feminist goals.

almost typed "feminine"

"Apparently the pros think more of the clowncar than you guys do."

I don't think that it's a matter of the candidates being stronger as it is of the supporting players being nastier and more polished at this.

http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/02/ted-cruz-unable-to-answer-question-about-his-favorite-band-because-hes-a-human-robot/

how the fuck is it not a vote for hil piece?

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, 8 February 2016 20:33 (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, she doesn't tell us to vote for Hil is a good start, only mentions Bernie a half-dozen times, including pointing out that this isn't about his views or his candidacy as much as it's about the state and history of progressivism v women.

Have to ask, Amateurist - have you read the piece in question here, or are you surfing on vibes?

presumably some parents are encouraging their daughters to be something better than Imperial Manager of the Corporate State and Drone Missions.

Apparently the pros think more of the clowncar than you guys do.

When it gets down to just two major party nominees, all the money and all the surrogates are focused on the single point of opposition. It gets tougher. Even a candidate as weak as Rubio would have a ton of throw weight behind him pushing.

xpost the Empire phased that role out years before the destruction of the 2nd Death Star

as Nate Silver has pointed out, don't be so quick to assume Rubio just shat the bathtub. while he was the loser of the debate, these things are often hard to translate into actual results.

that being said, he wasn't in the driver's seat to begin with so while it might not *hurt* him as much as feared, it definitely won't help.

still feel like Trump isn't getting the nom, even if it will require some backdoor convincing of a candidate to withdraw sooner than they want to. but then again, the Repub party just whiffed trying to take out Cruz's kneecaps, so maybe they're just giving up and hoping they can reshape him.

how the fuck is it not a vote for hil piece?

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, 8 February 2016 20:33 (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, she doesn't tell us to vote for Hil is a good start, only mentions Bernie a half-dozen times, including pointing out that this isn't about his views or his candidacy as much as it's about the state and history of progressivism v women.

Have to ask, Amateurist - have you read the piece in question here, or are you surfing on vibes?

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 8 February 2016 21:07 (7 minutes ago) Permalink

It ends with "this is why I'm voting for Hillary," and describes Bernie Sanders as someone who "ran to keep feminists out of office." And she regularly writes pro-Hillary and anti-Bernie pieces.

DJP the continuing power of the Tea Party to affect local elections and cumulatively to affect national politics is proof that Americans can and do get engaged in a sustained way on specific legislative issues if they feel a strong connection to them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_the_Tea_Party_movement

as Nate Silver has pointed out, don't be so quick to assume Rubio just shat the bathtub. while he was the loser of the debate, these things are often hard to translate into actual results.

It's not that he "lost the debate," it's that his extreme vulnerabilities as a candidate became obvious, much like when Rick Perry gave those garbled speeches that helped tank his campaign. Silver is great at certain kinds of analysis but I'd bet he's wrong on this point.

So according to that Politico article, HRC should have hired someone like the guy who helped her lose in 2008.

xpost I get that, but this has also been a campaign where the (perceived) frontrunner has publicly face-planted multiple times without the expected blowback.

this what was a Google Analytics poll had to say halfway through the debate:

https://twitter.com/hunterschwarz/status/696167531711750144

and here's Time magazine's results after it concluded, which actually had Rubio tied with Christie.

(Slate had results more fitting in with the narrative, with Rubio nowhere to be found).

so it's hard to say. remember, this is a party that viewed Biden's dismantling of Ryan to be "bullying behavior".

meanwhile, Trump is the frontrunner in all those polls (admittedly not the most scientific ones), despite having been deemed a 2nd/3rd place finisher by the majority of experts who graded the debates.

who knows. I hope they all die in a tractor pull accident.

oops forgot link:

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/268556-online-poll-trump-triumphant-in-latest-gop-debate

Have to ask, Amateurist - have you read the piece in question here, or are you surfing on vibes?

i was responding to your comment which referenced the piece but wasn't /about/ it. no, i didn’t read the piece. not sure what "surfing on vibes" means but it sounds dangerous.

Tough But Wrong is my new favorite slogan, thanks Alfred

not sure what "surfing on vibes" means but it sounds dangerous.

Brian Wilson solo album iirc

xpost I get that, but this has also been a campaign where the (perceived) frontrunner has publicly face-planted multiple times without the expected blowback.

True, except what happened with Rubio in his exchange with Christie wasn't a face-plant or gaffe in the conventional sense.

gaffes are "human all too human" moments

The Christie/Rubio exchange was a straight-up Mortal Kombat fatality situation

And then k3vin writes to Οὖτις: "your cali vote didn't matter tho lol, so don't sweat it."

Well so IF the value of Berniemania is that it shows there is non-ignorable voter engagement behind a position (even if it is not a winning position), then All Votes Matter, surely?

just to be clear (because I *hate* how these distinctions are elided) - Nader did not run in a party primary, he ran in the general election. Primary votes matter *to the party*. My general election vote for Nader didn't matter to anyone, because he ran *as a Green*, and he had no hope of winning California's electoral votes.

many many xposts

Democrats don't care about Green voters in a national election, because they aren't Democrats.

xxxxp

iow, trump's face-plants are read as unfettered self-expression

rubio's "face plant" otoh is read as a symptom of inauthenticity, a mind hijacked by the script.

No just wondering - I know it's kind of your thing to say "I don't think anyone from that group could think this" just after someone from that group has explained why they think this, but you might, y'know, if you've got some time to spare..

(I think that was man alive's comment?)

The Christie/Rubio exchange was a straight-up Mortal Kombat fatality situation

― its subtle brume (DJP), Monday, February 8, 2016 4:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. As long as enough people see that clip, I bet Rubio plummets in the polls. Being made to look like you have zero testosterone is still unfortunately very hard for a male candidate to recover from, especially on the GOP side, and that's pretty much what that clip was. I don't even think it matters that much what Christie said, it read as "I'm a man, you're a little boy, go sit down little boy." I don't see how he recovers.

The Christie/Rubio exchange was a straight-up Mortal Kombat fatality situation

― its subtle brume (DJP), Monday, February 8, 2016 4:41 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can Karl Malone get on making a graphic of this

never forget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ZxJVnM5Gs

he's assembling quite a greatest hits at this point

in other news, the inevitable happens: http://news.yahoo.com/woman-accused-bill-clinton-assault-campaign-against-hillary-113320282.html

Meanwhile Rubio pisses off a gay man:

MANCHESTER, N.H. – A middle-age gay man confronted Senator Marco Rubio here on Monday over his opposition to same-sex marriage, pointedly asking, “Why do you want to put me back in the closet?”

“I don’t,” Mr. Rubio replied. “You can live any way you want.”

The tense exchange inside the Puritan Backroom diner ended with Mr. Rubio walking away and the displeased voter calling him a “typical politician.”

Mr. Rubio, who is seeking to win over conservatives, is seldom asked about gay rights at his campaign stops. But courting voters in a crowded New Hampshire diner on the eve of the primary is an unpredictable business.

The voter, who identified himself as Timothy Kierstead, was seated at a table with his mother and his husband when Mr. Rubio walked up behind him, according to pool reports of the encounter. During a brief conversation, Mr. Kierstead, 50, told Mr. Rubio that he was married but complained that the senator’s position amounted to him declaring that “we don’t matter.”

Mr. Rubio, who was standing with his youngest son, Dominick, 8, by his side, gently disagreed. “No, I just believe marriage is between one man and one woman.”

“Well,” replied Mr. Kierstead, “that’s your belief.”

Mr. Rubio continued: “I think that’s what the law should be. And if you don’t agree you should have the law changed by a legislature.”

Mr. Kierstead said the law had already been changed, referring either to a Supreme Court ruling that has legalized same-sex marriage across the country or to state legislation in New Hampshire that did the same.

Mr. Rubio decided to conclude their conversation. “I respect your view,” he said, patting Mr. Kierstead on the shoulder and starting to walk away.

Mr. Kierstead was unsatisfied. “Typical politician,” he said loudly. “Walk away.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/08/gay-voter-to-marco-rubio-why-do-you-want-to-put-me-back-in-the-closet/

Mr. Rubio continued: “I think that’s what the law should be. And if you don’t agree you should have the law changed by a legislature.”

man is this guy stupid

seriously, this is their guy?

i don't think it's any sort of fatality situation, although it may be a babality.

before the debate:

https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/mehta-net-favorability-liveblog-0206-full.png

even if he somehow took a big hit from it, he'd still be better off than the establishment crew

guys:

the Puritan Backroom diner

xxxpost normally one would think that was simply a verbal fumble but given the recent debate I wouldn't be surprised if that was exactly what he intended to say.

I've known plenty of Puritan backrooms, there's lots of them

Tough But Wrong is my new favorite slogan

I believe Bill Clinton's descrip of this is "Strong and Wrong."

I did read that Rubio had a pancake breakfast that served no pancakes

Is there any good work on the relationship between "favorability" and votes? This also came up when I was discussing Sanders/Clinton, because I'm just guessing there can sometimes be a disconnect if the "favorable" candidate isn't seen as the one that can win the general election. People vote partly to block the other side, not just for who they like best.