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

it was one of the top moments of all time

big bang
et tu, brute
the walk-on debacle

i like how pretty much nobody emerged with any integrity whatsoever except maybe kasich by omission - the other nominees just smirking and walking past, even the moderator coming off like a little shitstain, justifying himself, not thanking whoever it was that reminded him to introduce kasich, pleading that, what, the room was "loud" or something

it was like, here you go, America, these are your tribunes. do you like what you see in the mirror? how did we get here??

That train wreck was caused by two things:

1) The debate moderators completely stepped on applause in their haste to introduce candidates, causing the candidates to not hear their names when they were announced.
2) The candidates didn't trust that the stage manager knew what he was doing and wouldn't walk out when he told them to.

My ultimate takeaway was "always listen to the stage manager" and the hubris involved in not doing so caused Carson, Trump, Kasich AND the moderators to look like jackasses.

Also, Kasich WAS introduced; it was in the middle of a bunch of screaming and barely audible on the TV feed, but he was introduced.

it was a moment straight out of duck soup except that none of the actors were in on the joke

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.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, February 8, 2016 4:58 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hate to keep citing the same person rather than a variety of views, in this case it's because this is all I've found so far with googling...

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/do-romneys-favorability-ratings-matter/

conclusion is that late-stage favorability issues are far better predictors than early-stage, but that it's hard to determine causality vs correlation, about what I expected.

I think the knock with Trump is that he is perceived as someone disliked by the party and may cause defection during the 2016 election. However I'm nervous about that speculation because it's one thing to talk that way about a heavily disliked candidate during a primary, another when a candidate you dislike is going against "that socialist" Sanders or "the corrupt Hillary" and wouldn't be surprised if the number of people who claim they'll vote against GOP if he runs turns out to be lower.

still, think he'd be embarrassed in a general election.

sady d's top issue is feminism; of course she supports the more obviously feminist candidate, who also happens to a woman with a wealth of very high-level political experience

there are also fairly obvious reasons why even feminists might not choose to support HRC in a primary-- iraq vote, wall st. ties, hawkishness, touting the approval of henry kissinger, etc. everybody weighs the various issues differently, but SD insinuates that the only reason a progressive *wouldn't* vote for HRC is sexism, which seems myopic

xxp I was going to say that Cruz definitely knows there's a Supreme Court, and have been struck by the idea of a Republican president nominating him to it.

xp The thing is I think SD is identifying real sexism, I don't think it's just a matter of seeing everything through a distorting lens. I do see a lot of ugly, stupid comments from male Sanders supporters. Granted, we're talking about the internet, so you don't really know who you're dealing with or how many there are. But I have seen a few friends or friends of friends do it, and I really, really wish men would just stop accusing women of only voting for Hillary because she's a woman, that is just so not men's place to say, and it smacks of conservative "race card" type rhetoric. And I get how that probably makes SD feel even more like circling the wagons around Hillary.

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.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, February 8, 2016 4:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah - i mean in general 538's coverage has felt very tone-deaf and bro-ishly stubborn this time around, and this is a great example - they sort of hedged their debate coverage with "mind you, we're watching these candidates a lot and maybe regular people won't have the same reactions we did," but they still seemed to really miss the potency of the christie/rubio exchange. they parsed the debate through kind of bland filters that fit their expertise but in the process i think miss the emotional/affective narrative stuff that people often respond very much to.

like a lot of it will sound like "candidate x keeps talking about squirrel-hunting - that probably won't help him, as polling suggests most americans consider squirrels a minor issue, and a slim majority support the right to hunt squirrels on your own property" which seems fine except that in the exchange they're analyzing, candidate x accused candidate y of engaging in bloody ritualistic sacrifice of squirrels to an elder god. which you think might get the voters excited, but won't register. "but it doesn't look like the byplay hurt candidate y - there was a burst of googling his name right after that! back over to you, nate."

i'm sure she is! xp

xp comment deleted because man alive otm.

Animal spirits. Elections aren't all about "policy." Trump should make that clear enough.

xp The thing is I think SD is identifying real sexism, I don't think it's just a matter of seeing everything through a distorting lens. I do see a lot of ugly, stupid comments from male Sanders supporters. Granted, we're talking about the internet, so you don't really know who you're dealing with or how many there are. But I have seen a few friends or friends of friends do it, and I really, really wish men would just stop accusing women of only voting for Hillary because she's a woman, that is just so not men's place to say, and it smacks of conservative "race card" type rhetoric. And I get how that probably makes SD feel even more like circling the wagons around Hillary.

^^^ This is an actual problem.

A college friend of mine (one who I referenced in an earlier thread, the one who dismissed Black Lives Matters protesters' complaints about Sanders as not mattering unless they turned into votes) was called a feminazi cunt by a Sanders supporter for saying that she didn't think that all concerned parties agreeing to use a coin toss to break a voting deadlock at a caucus site was by definition a bad idea. She had been waffling between Sanders and Clinton before that conversation with a strong lean towards Sanders; she is now firmly and irrevocably supporting Clinton.

I expect this in-fighting is gonna get worse before it gets better, but thankfully it should all be over in a month or so

xp ugh Dan, that's disgusting

yeah, bleah. very disheartening. i definitely don't discount the existence of 'bernie bros,' especially with stories like that in mind.

were there 'Obama bros'?

kind of, but the dynamic there was different since race was a factor as well

just really illustrates one can be a purported "social progressive" and still be a complete asshole/waste of oxygen. there was a dude on another message board I posted to years ago who would post really well thought-out progressive liberal essays and yet would address women like "shut the fuck up, bitch!" on the board.

lots of my FB friends are what I call "theatre liberals" which = basically when you break down their politics, they're really right of center, but they like gay people and minorities and don't have any money.

I think the berniebro phenom is overstated but has a grain of truth and that's why it won't die in the media.

BTW yeah there was some version of "Obama bros", I think it was "Obama boys"

tbh Progressives at the turn of the 20th century were assholes by our standards.

there's a popular gay blog called JoeMyGod, and if you'd like to read some vicious, stupid comments made by homos for Hillary to Sanders supporters i recommend the comments there unto you.

were there 'Obama bros'?

posted an '08 salon column about them this morning

our "progressive" candidate in 2008 didn't even support gay marriage at the time of election. really all that illustrates is how far the nation shifted on that topic in a very short period of time (cos he flip flopped on that issue a number of times in the 90s/early 2000s)

bernie bros were definitely former ron paul bros

...after supporting gay marriage in the Illinois legislature in the '90s!

xpost

thank you ilx for sparing me the trouble of going out to confirm the existence of these aforementioned bros

anytime!

http://cdn3.thr.com/sites/default/files/2015/06/donald_thumbs_up.jpg

hah! ilx as "exploratory committee"

bernie bros were definitely former ron paul bros

― lute bro (brimstead), Monday, February 8, 2016 5:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sadly this is otm

I mean "Berniebros"TM is a branded smear campaign, but also berniebros do exist. Or maybe a lot of people are capable of having a little bit of berniebro in them in bad moments, in keeping with the idea that "sexism" is not just about identifying the "sexists," just like racism is not located only in "racists."

Berniebro, c'est moi

bernie bros were definitely former ron paul bros

― lute bro (brimstead), Monday, February 8, 2016 5:53 PM

lol this is definitely true of a lot of them (killer mike, for example). though you could come up with some unflattering characterization of the supporters of any candidate

i don't know what the appropriate term is for obnoxious hillary supporters but they're awful too fwiw

"Condescending"

TBF that could be said about any candidate, eye of the beholder, etc.

"Hilsplainers" - the ones that are like "here's how politics actually works, which I know from my experience as an insider of the party that has been really good at losing ground and ceding the center for the last three decades."

Did you just sarcastically Bernsplain Hillsplaining?

man FOX News is still talking about FBI investigations and "emails" -- that's the shorthand.

bernie bros were definitely former ron paul bros

― lute bro (brimstead), Monday, February 8, 2016 5:53 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yeah I un-"liked" a state Bernie Sanders FB group after they posted some article that was like "Ron Paul calls Bernie Sanders the real free market candidate" as though that should be considered a good thing

has everybody seen the 'free' Bernie Sanders tattoo people are getting

I'm voting for Sanders in the primary mainly for "push the country to the left" reasons but would vote for Clinton without hesitation

'90s nostalgia. Can't see that this would hurt, but it doesn't help.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-women-idUSMTZSAPEC288843FQ?utm_source=Facebook

posted upthread

I searched "Willey," maybe should have tried Willie.

http://i.imgur.com/cCJ4uwl.jpg

i think hesitating before voting for anyone is a good idea

https://twitter.com/Abunass3r/status/696876640790519813

I'm voting for Sanders in the primary mainly for "push the country to the left" reasons but would vote for Clinton without hesitation

― example (crüt), Monday, 8 February 2016 23:57 (Yesterday) Permalink

This, although my "without hesitation" is because I've never believed that voting should be equated with liking