Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

slate says: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/05/ted_cruz_s_wins_in_maine_and_kansas_are_great_news_for_donald_trump.html bc cruz is just so gross the the GOP's heart won't be in stopping Trump if Cruz is their savior.

i'm not with morb'z fb friend bc all those points are presented in a tone of frantic, nervous dismissal as if bc no one expected a strong bernie campaign when it began as we saw yesterday that means that everyone is panicked and these are just stupid excuses for his winning made up to reassure the speaker. which would imply that actually there were strong reasons to believe that he was going to continue to gain and soon take the primary. in this year's election i'm not willing to rule out anything happening but the explanations for his winning in OK and NE (primarily the favorably demographic argument) is consistent with other places he has won - and his big loss in louisiana is consistent with the the other places he has lost. so it's not a win - as strong as it was - that has pundits shocked and trying to understand what is going on. there is delusional panic but it's mostly in the bernie4prez subreddit. also i don't think the media isn't downplaying bernie bc they're trying to protect hillary. i think bernie is suffering from the fact that he's a strong dark horse in a year with the donald. (and i think he'd be doing much better in a year without trump when voters could take the time to get to know him).

also i think the dem party base is just more moderate than the left-wing wishes and that's why bernie isn't taking majorities. he's making a strong case that he can persuade a lot of voters and that his ideas are mainstreamable, but the party is not there yet and if there was an opportunity for them to get there this year it's not going to happen w/ the right-wing horror flick running + freaking them all out

also obama is extremely popular in the dem party (80% approval rating) so even tho it might seem to v left-wingers that he's actually a very controversial neo-liberal president it's just not true and if you're thinking the same thing about hillary you should probably consider you might not be on the same page as the rest of the party either.

I took Morbs's fb friend just to be parodying all the continuous goalpost adjustment that we see in every election but which has been particularly noticeable this time around thanks to the considerable media favoritism towards Clinton which has run through the entire race (see the NYT especially) - not sure how this would be a product of Trump's campaign. But, yeah, to the extent that it's trying to offer a narrative where no really he's about to win ---- win big!!! ---- then it's silly comment-box Bernie fandom.

The only interesting thing left, arguably, is that if Sanders can maintain his current crowdfunding stream, he could actually compete in some of the late states that usually fall automatically to the front-runner because everybody else drops out by then. I look forward to voting for him in New York on April 19... which is still somewhat ahead of the point at which Clinton is expected to hit a true majority of pledged delegates. So hopefully the race is still "going" in a sense at that point, even if it's just as obvious then as it has been all along that Sanders can't actually win it.

IIRC, a while back there was some polling and some articles that indicated a majority of Democrats liked Bernie just fine, even if they were planning to vote for Hillary... I'd love to see more stuff probing that. Because I'm sure there are many who think he's too far to the left - and absolutely many who think he's too far to the left to chance in a year when the opposing nominee is likely to be a fascist freakshow. But that's not quite the same thing as him representing a tiny leftie faction of the party. He's drawing crowds and winning votes because people think the neoliberal trickle-down economy's a scam, even if they wouldn't say "Obama is just another dangerous neoliberal" or whatever.

i think a lot of the complaining about biased media is overblown. the NYT specifically has covered the inquiries into Hillary's emails extensively and their two part Libya piece generated from ppl i know some of the most critical comments about her record. also generally speaking:

https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/king-dem-liveblog-google-search-0301.png?w=1150

er.... that graph shows rather straightforwardly that throughout the entire campaign until voting actually started, there was a much larger gap between public interest in Sanders, and media coverage of Sanders, than the equivalent for Clinton.

it does not show a dramatic gap but more importantly it shows that the gap has closed which would demonstrate a responsive media not a biased one. if there's a case it's that the media didn't treat his candidacy seriously before the primaries started which no one can doubt. of course the media missed another really big story this election too and i don't think it was bc they were biased.

(or if they were biased, it's in similar ways - to assumptions that party approved, big money candidates are sure fire things which benefits hillary but is not a sign of a conspiracy, just of outdated political wisdom)

also yknow, quantity not the same thing as quality, and charts aren't really good at measuring the spin of articles, terms chosen, narrative-framing adjectives and verbs, quotes selected, yadda yadda. you know the deal. it'd be a project for a later historian of this campaign to reconstruct week by week, but ffs sanders just could not get coverage through most of the campaign. major thematic speeches with big press releases foreshadowing them would get buried. i definitely agree that part of this is, yes, them choosing consistently to make a trump story the headline news. but i really don't think it takes any crazy elaborate conspiracy thinking to say, yknow, the corporate centrist media kinda didn't give the socialist challenger a fair hearing before the public.

(I may also be a bit biased from having, for some reason, continued to read 538 pretty regularly through the whole process, and they, especially Harry Enten, have been among the most consistent goalpost-movers, oracles of self-fulfilling prophecies, and missers of forests for the trees. Not so surprising: the racehorse is their business and it's sort of outside their whole intellectual frame that someone could be running for some reason other than 'winning.' But yeah my exasperation may partially reflect this one particular filter.)

i feel like i've been following the sanders campaign closely and i could not tell you what major thematic speeches he gave as every time i've heard him speak it has sounded like the same thing. is this bc the media hasn't been reporting it or bc there really haven't been many? what's the last major policy idea or theme that he's released?

i hate to leave it like this but like i said that really would be a job for future historians. give me a year and a grant and i'll go back and read all the ILX threads and pick some out - i swear i remember at least a couple, like, IT'S COMING! THIS FRIDAY, SANDERS WILL GIVE A MAJOR ADDRESS ON RACIAL INJUSTICE! and then he did and it got absolutely no coverage on the news, just zero. i realize this is totally vague and anecdotal but recovering individual moments like that out of months and months of a campaign is kind of burdensome to contemplate even for someone who spends way too much time scrolling through old-favorite ILX threads.

but really if you can look at that 538 coverage chart above and not see anything even slightly unbalanced there, i'm scratching my head. i would be more convinced by a critique of the methodology itself (are google searches really the best indicator of public interest? i guess but it still feels wrong). but if you accept the method it seems pretty plain: she was getting at least twice as much coverage as sanders even when interest in him was the same as her or much higher. i think the spikes correspond to debates, which would even give a particularly newsworthy hook for a story on sanders specifically - but no, the narrative and the stories were about clinton. idk man.

it looks to me in that chart that since mid-jan stories have tracked w/ bernie interest perfectly and has even overtaken hillary in early feb. it's now early march. everyone is paying attention to the race that is going to pay attention during the primaries.

i said "throughout the entire campaign until voting actually started." so okay yes for a month and a half sanders has arguably gotten fairer coverage. not sure that cancels out him being basically shut out in the cold for half a year or more but i've sorta said my piece on this so i'll let others speak, hopefully someone can confirm that i'm not just a crazy person.

look arguably speaking bernie has had 30 years to work on getting more coverage and eyeballs on his agenda. the media didn't help him early in this race but he owns a lot of the responsibility for starting from scratch during this campaign

jeez, Doc, you've written 900 words in an hour!

and yes Sanders should stay in the race as long as he can. I don't think HRC's gonna move much farther to the left; she only started to when he was a threat, and the threat's been nullified.

xposts yeah what an asshole, how dare he not spend the last sixteen years running for president. people who really deserve to have their ideas heard know to do that.

there are very high profile senators who didn't have to run for senator to become that way. when warren ends up running she will not have the issues bernie has had.

who didn't have to run for president* i meant

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc3rwC9VAAQnyrV.jpg

he got more coverage than cruz or rubio fwiw, and much more than them as a fraction of his party

well, trump can have been severely over-covered and sanders severely under-covered. also, those guys were in a field of seventeen candidates at one point; while clearly that wall of trump coverage doesn't suggest each of their ideas in turn was given a fair hearing, it's at least a little different.

"As people have noted on ilx before, the Dems are actually having a civilized discussion about politics, which is a pretty good contrast to what's going on on the other side."

this is perfectly good reason for him to stay in the race, IMO. The Dem process has been great so far, bringing good issues to light; the more that continues, the better they look as a whole to the general public (or so I'd hope). I really feel let down when trump does things like reverse his stance on torture (which he did, then I think he kind of didn't the next day) because I don't want those guys starting to sound reasonable to anyone.

also, you know, clinton could get indicted or some shit. I doubt it but you never know.

https://twitter.com/mega_vac/status/706330950100131841

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc3wKPYVAAA21bW.jpg

so Sanders should gang up with Kasich and Rubio. "They don't want us, screw'em, let's divide Rome."

the weird thing to me that i kinda don't understand is that the US is not some Weimer Republic w/ out of control inflation and painful terms dictated by a recent surrender. unemployment is apparently at a two decade low, and no other country in the world has bounced back from the recession as strongly. there's obv still inequality and things that need to be fixed but these ppl are acting like this country is going down the toilet and needs some radical shakeout for its survival - it's insane. these americans must be experiencing some kind of psychotic break.

― Mordy, Thursday, March 3, 2016 11:38 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Precisely that.

― Telephone Meatballs (Old Lunch), Thursday, March 3, 2016 11:39 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's bizarre

― robbie ca$hflo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, March 3, 2016 11:41 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

.....

rumors were flyin that they left Sanders off of the Dem sample ballot in Illinois primary but naturally it turned out to be just a political advertisement which was obvious to anybody who bothered to read it (cos only one candidate was listed per race for all races). the Sanders Dems on my feed are so goddamn aggravating.

https://media.giphy.com/media/yoJC2t0BqEXx1J1aCY/giphy.gifBREAKING NEWShttps://media.giphy.com/media/yoJC2t0BqEXx1J1aCY/giphy.gif

rubio wins puerto rico

are his balls brittle?

https://i.imgur.com/9VS5kHy.jpg

really confused... why are these people angry???

the weimar germany comparison should be taken seriously because if the elites keep forcing people to pick between Romneys & Clintons they will undercut their own legitimacy soon enough

they're angry bc black people (and now messicans and mooslems) are getting the exact same socialism they are. the anger makes them die sooner.

funny spelling

think it's kinda problematic to attribute any one feature to Trump voters cos they span many walks of life (tho the one being focused on lately, the middle class/collapsing industries, is one for sure)

unemployment is apparently at a two decade low, and no other country in the world has bounced back from the recession as strongly

the obliviousness of this still has my jaw on the floor... i guess it accounts for maintream dems/GOP all around the country reeling backwards clutching their chests like Redd Foxx upon discovering there's a big chunk of the electorate that responds to populism. the demo shafted by free trade (and the demo responding to trump's economic populism) aren't bouncing back from SHIT

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

what is your conclusion from that data?

isn't conventional wisdom that a large part of that is due to baby boomers retiring en masse?

We have fewer people working than in 2006. Sure some of those non-workers are retirees, but the story is less full-time work than before as a "new normal". The generation of workers in their 20s and 30s is the first in a long long time to not have a realistic expectation of a more secure/better working life than their parents.

unemployment is apparently at a two decade low, and no other country in the world has bounced back from the recession as strongly

A-hem

here was a more in-depth analysis of that stat: http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/07/16/unemployment-is-low-but-more-workers-are-leaving-the-workforce

it isn't that jobs aren't available, a lot of it that *certain* types of jobs aren't available in either industries that have vanished or shrunk considerably

"certain" i.e. good, full-time jobs

That article quotes a guy trying to explain the non-retiree side of the story with the old chestnut that our dadgum American workers just don't have the right skills. But the majority of jobs being created are low-skill service sector jobs. It doesn't compute. And in any case, there's a simple solution to finding workers with the "right skills" - you increase your wage offer. Companies aren't doing this.

Sure some of those non-workers are retirees

approximately half of the decline was due to retiring boomers leaving the workforce. it's the other half nobody can agree on.