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

That Politico piece is ridiculous. A whole lot of contorting to avoid the fact that way more actual individual primary voters have voted for Trump than for any other individual candidate. The author should have just extended his dumb "95 yards of a hundred-yard dash" analogy by saying the "not-Trumps" won the race because Ted ran 65 yards, Marco ran 45 and Kasich ran 30 or some such foolishness.

i think he makes a few valid points though. the degree to which non-trump republican voters seem to actually hate trump seems unusual. and they make up a majority of the republican electorate.

for sure, and the party is well within its rights to deny him the nomination according to the agreed-upon rules, I just think it's disingenuous to so blatantly evade the fact that he's gotten significantly more votes so far than anyone else.

berniebro on fb breathlessly pinging me w/ every update on this hillary email case. he claims he doesn't actually want her to be indicted but it seems pretty transparent. i told him to msg me again when they actually indict her but he couldn't help himself :(

i wish she hadn't set up the server in her bathroom. that detail makes the whole thing way better fodder for the conspiracy-minded aka republicans

That Politico piece is ridiculous.

If you say so. But the American political system has never been a direct democracy. It always interposes representatives and procedural rules between the mass of citizens and the power to make decisions. Trump is basing his argument on principles of direct democracy, but even then it is a weak argument, if he does not command the votes of either a majority of voters or a majority of delegates.

In a parliamentary system, someone in Trump's position would have to make a coalition and share power, which is what he'll effectively be expected to do at the convention: seek coalition partners who will allow him to control an actual majority, not just a plurality. If he can't put together a majority coalition, but Cruz or someone else can, then fuck him, he has lost the nomination and it is fair and square.

"fair and square" are not legal principles - they're in the eye of the beholder. and when your system is built on legitimacy what matters is perception not the arcane bylaws of a political party (esp when part of what is under threat is said party's authority as a representative of its voting base)

I just like that they're in an unresolvable bind. They won't be breaking any rules by denying Trump, but they will have a mutiny. And if they give it to him, they'll have Trump. Good luck.

remember they can make any laws they want. they can say first day in cleveland: "electors have been reduced to 1: mitt romney." the problem isn't the breaking the rules, the problem is not picking trump without alienating his supporters. afaict there's no way to do it unless someone else comes into the convention w/ more delegates.

prevailing wisdom is that hillary would never pick bernie or that he would never take it because he'd have more power in the senate. but nothing is getting passed in the senate anyway, and vermont is a safe seat to defend... VP slot is where you make speeches, which Bernie is good at, and it'd allow Hillary to grab a few economic populists from trump, sate the young, etc. why wouldn't hillary offer him?

Nobody cares how they do whatever. clemenza otm. this disastrous shit show couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

xp - they're both elderly. Someone on the ticket needs to not qualify for Early Bird Senior Specials.

sherrod brown maybe? if she was asked i think warren would say yes. there are options in the party who are younger + target similar audiences that bernie does.

clinton/bernie would seem like a one term plan to me, not a plan for another 12-16 years of Democratic control

oh, milo said basically the same thing

Assuming Trump doesn't have an outright majority and none of the other candidates with delegates are anywhere near to being aligned with Trump's positions, then it means the results of the election process were inconclusive. Any conclusion arrived at will be a kludge, one that yokes together pieces that don't fit and don't agree. This falling apart is a natural outcome of the Republican party's internal divisions. The only process that works in such a case is horse-trading, bargaining and compromise, which the Republican base has been taught to revile and will cause many of them to turn away from the result, whatever it is.

So, it's just as many people have pointed out, a case of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. The convention will award the nomination to someone, and whoever they choose will not represent the party, because a party so divided cannot be represented by any one.

Sherrod Brown would be great, if only because it would put his wife, former Cleveland Plain Dealer writer Connie Schultz, at the White House on a regular basis; thereby causing early death via heart attack for thousands of moronic Ohioans whose letters I've seen in the PD over the years and who comment on her Facebook page.

please tell me you guys understand why sherrod brown would be an awful pick for VP

from whose perspective? i can imagine his constituents would prefer him in the senate but i only see upside for hillary's campaign in putting a young white male populist reformer type from a major swing state on the ticket.

prevailing wisdom is that hillary would never pick bernie or that he would never take it because he'd have more power in the senate. but nothing is getting passed in the senate anyway, and vermont is a safe seat to defend... VP slot is where you make speeches, which Bernie is good at, and it'd allow Hillary to grab a few economic populists from trump, sate the young, etc. why wouldn't hillary offer him?

Bernie is just fine in the Senate, thanks. Why would he be veep when he'd be reliant on the generosity of the president for any power or influencee?

that seems to be the CW but i think when you're asked to be VP it's very hard to say no

assume k3vin means that kasich would get to appoint his replacement, in a year when retaking the senate is more precarious than winning the presidency

when a senator vacates his seat to work in the executive branch, his replacement is picked by that state's governor. sherrod brown represents ohio. ohio's governor is john kasich

bernie has said any endorsement of hillary would come with a 'so what are you going to do for me/my supporters' sort of leveraging. i feel like he could add a lot to the ticket and he might do it if given certain concessions/leeway. i dunno.

he loses any ability to continue exerting that leverage in the future when he agrees to be her subordinate

whatever movement Sanders leads dies when he enters the White House. I don't get it. It's like libs who wanted Warren to run for president.

how marvelous to have some fiction of a liberal firebrand cohort in the Senate. Ted Kennedy was the last of'em.

Hillary Clinton is not going to pick a 70+ y.o. socialist from the northeast to be on her ticket you guys cmon

It's like some of you guys post on this thread without having read all of the article links that other people have posted to this thread.
I thought this was for serious people.

Sanders needs to pass on his recently-acquired mantle of leadership of the progressives to someone else as soon as he is able. Warren would prob be a fine choice for this. Then Sanders can become the elder statesman of the 'movement', such as it is.

I think Bernie accepting VP is even less likely than Clinton offering it -- it gives him nothing.

how marvelous to have some fiction of a liberal firebrand cohort in the Senate. Ted Kennedy was the last of'em.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 28, 2016 4:22 PM (3 minutes ago)

you've made this point about 100 times but i've never really been on board with it. senators have a lot of power, but ultimately they're one of 100 people making up one half of the legislative branch. the president runs the executive branch. i'd rather warren be president. (why does anyone run for president, then? ego?)

Senators don't have term limits.

she's 66!

Should Warren ever for prez and lose, she becomes a losing prez candidate who may have also lost her seat for the sake of running for the presidency. Perfect way to destroy her.

*ever run for prez

in a hypothetical nomination process where warren replaced bernie, running against hillary clinton, i think warren would be winning. bernie has surprised a lot of people and has been a better campaigner than i think most people expected. but (this is anecdotal, yeah) before this election cycle started (or wait...they don't end or start anymore, do they?), most of my friends were way more fired up about warren than any other national politician, and it wasn't even close. the fact that bernie sanders has done this well suggests to me that warren would be doing even better.

and i also don't get the thinking where she has more influence as a senator than she does as the president of the united states. i also don't understand why she'd lose her senate seat if she ran for president. she's senator until 2018, right?

BASICALLY WE DISAGREE ALFRED

the mailman...delivers

the mailman always relies on anecdotal information to make a point

xposts agreed there's no way Hillary picks Bernie Sanders for that slot. There's no value-added, it gives oppo the add'l "Commie" target, and anyway as Alfred says upthread why would he ever accept? It's asking to be marginalized. Same for Warren. Unfortunately, balancing the ticket will not mean appeasing disgruntled progressives. Esp. for HRC.

and i also don't get the thinking where she has more influence as a senator than she does as the president of the united states. i also don't understand why she'd lose her senate seat if she ran for president. she's senator until 2018, right?

BASICALLY WE DISAGREE ALFRED

― Karl Malone,

Not if we swap Warren for k3vin

xpost anyway not trying to be confrontational or anything, i just don't think warren running for president is/was a ridiculously bad idea. my gut is that she would do well. i'm biased because i personally think she's fantastic, i think she's a great public speaker, and a great communicator. also i really really really want to help elect the first female president, and i would be sooooo much more into that if it were warren instead of clinton.

ultimately they're one of 100 people making up one half of the legislative branch. the president runs the executive branch.

This is reductive in the extreme. The president "runs" the executive branch - by adhering to laws, made by the legislature - for up to 8 years. A single Senator, even one who only wins two terms, can powerfully influence the direction of the executive branch for 12 years, and can, with sufficient committee influence, subpoena any member of the executive branch to hold them accountable and hence the entire President's administration.

An influential Senator decides to run for President entirely because of ego and perhaps for a change of pace (i.e. recesses are boring for them)

Not if we swap Warren for k3vin

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 28, 2016 4:44 PM (3 minutes ago)

i would bring the people togethuh

you just get a bunch of birds to follow you around and fly all over you, people love that

xpost the Captain and Tenille platform

EW still biding time w/ endorsement. If she ever did sign onto Sanders (I don't believe she will) and they made the highly unusual move of announcing her as running mate in the next few weeks, I don't see how they wouldn't sweep past HRC. If in such a scenario Bernie, at 74, announced his intention to serve a single term making EW presumptive 2020 nominee/pseudo-incumbent they would probably get a double-digit bounce.....

the president "runs" the executive branch by appointing all of the people who run its divisions (departments), who answer either directly or indirectly to the president; appointing the members of the federal judiciary, including the supreme court, when vacancies arise; and by signing into law or vetoing bills voted on by the legislative branch. among other things. no one is gonna slatepitch me that a senator *well actually* has more power than a president

look, guys, we all love Elizabeth Warren -- we're fighting about where she'd do the most good.