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

in case anyone else was curious who wrote trump's AIPAC speech for him:
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/04/paper-whose-editor-helped-donald-trump-with-speech-vows-no-more-such-input/

thread filled with Hillary socks

so where's the Brooklyn debate to be held?

barclay center, they're going to suit up for the nets first

I suppose the poetic ending to this saga is this election is going to make Trump die much younger after he loses.

ffs the reason it makes sense for a candidate like Sanders to campaign in the South or other states he "can't win" is that "winning states" doesn't matter; most Dem delegates are awarded proportionately, and improving your results by 10% in a given state by 10% means 10% more delegates.

however "winning" states drives the media narrative, which drives a sense of possibility, which drives donations. i can see both sides of this argument.

there is no necessity for votes in different states to be uniformly winnable, say in proportion to spending and trail time.

ffs the reason it makes sense for a candidate like Sanders to campaign in the South or other states he "can't win" is that "winning states" doesn't matter; most Dem delegates are awarded proportionately, and improving your results by 10% in a given state by 10% means 10% more delegates.

― sean gramophone, Monday, April 4, 2016 10:51 PM (41 minutes ago

this is true, but it is also true that resources + actual physical presence spent here are resources not spent elsewhere. so maybe he does a little better in the south (but still doesn't win any of the states) but a bit worse in the whiter/more liberal states. maybe it's a wash in terms of delegates, maybe it would have netted him another...40 delegates, who knows. but he could have lost a couple of the states he did end up winning. as amateurish points out, the effect of "winning" states (which was never going to happen in the south) might matter vis a vis perception of the campaign/momentum.

anyway as i mentioned before i think second-guessing the tactics of this campaign, considering where it started from, is pretty silly

j. otm

these days the internet aggregators know about as much about us in abstract as ward heelers used to know concretely, and analyzing that knowledge at the national level is easier than ever before. a very savvy campaign should be able to allocate resources very efficiently on a resource-per-vote basis.

I agree with this idea but don't see how it's particularly relevant as a critique of the Sanders campaign: his southern numbers saw a huge boost thanks to his campaigning in many of those states. This was very effective as a strategy, I thought, rather than fighting to increase his lead on home ground, where his target audience already knew about him.

**BREAKING NEWS**

the new kasich TV ads (about his "hardscrabble" upbringing) feature a looped slide-guitar riff that sounds a lot like the one in beck's "loser" -- which is kind of beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDn3zA-YtOY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE

thats the kind of generic drop d blues slide thats in truck commercials and whatever the fuck my father in law watches on tnt or netflix

yeah but i like hearing "loser" looping in back of the kasich ad

you can play both of those youtubes at the same time

generic drop d blues slide

it's sort of the audio equivalent of beef jerky

that's a good ad

it's sort of the audio equivalent of beef jerky

― wizzz! (amateurist),

http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-blog/blogs/jack-links-beef-jerky.jpg

Trump seems to have the emotional range of a Power Rangers villain and the social skills of a teenage Minotaur. He looks like a pumpkin having a nervous breakdown, talks like the words are being fired out of his mouth by a tennis ball launcher and has the general manner of an arrogant televangelist suspected of murder by Columbo.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/04/donald-trump-arrogant-televangelist-clinton-sanders-frankie-boyle

have to say, i'm really tired of the stupid "electability" narrative that keeps getting stuck to clinton- and i'm a clinton supporter. you poll clinton and sanders against any republican candidate you can think of and sanders does better, but people invested in the narrative that clinton is more "electable" will then tell you that polls don't matter this far out. oh, ok. so if empirical data doesn't matter as far as electability, what does? your personal gut instincts? we went through this shit for a year with everybody assuring me that the polls were wrong and trump would never get anywhere in the republican race, and now "pragmatic" clinton supporters are feeding people the same line.

if your only reason for supporting clinton is the idea that she's more "electable", go ahead and switch your vote to bernie now. your fake realpolitik does neither clinton nor america any favors.

I think people are basing Clinton's electability on the fact that she is currently beating Sanders decisively in the dem primary, plus 'conventional wisdom' about what kind of candidate normally has an easier time winning.

those Nov matchup polls all show Bernie beating Trump/Cruz more decisively, however.

these Sanders camp (and wife!) quotes in the NYT were... strategically mystifying. (probably posted yesterday, but i sure as fuck am not reloading)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/04/why-did-bernie-sanders-help-the-new-york-times-bury-him.html

We discussed it a bit upthread. And I said I thought the Sanders campaign were assholes. Not Sanders himself, but the guys running the campaign.

'moderate candidates are more electable' is based on evidence from elections not gut instinct. sanders has less baggage than clinton but most of the country hasn't been fully introduced to his platform, which contains tons of things that the majority of Americans don't actually want.

right, but conflating the nomination process and the general election is a really basic error. being the most likely candidate to be nominated by your party doesn't make you the most electable candidate- in fact, in the republican party those two qualities are basically mutually exclusive at this point. it's true that clinton's "inevitability narrative" in terms of the nomination is by this point not just a narrative, but a statistical likelihood, but i can see why sanders supporters are frustrated- a lot of those votes were obtained under basically false pretenses, and if sanders had a do-over he'd win. that's not how politics works, mind you, but sanders supporters tend not to be completely political creatures and are more motivated by an arbitrary and idealistic sense of "fairness" than by the actual rules by which political campaigns are conducted. they feel like the game was rigged, which it was! and there's little point in explaining that the sorts of rigging that goes on in the campaign exists largely to prevent the sort of rules lawyering that mcgovern pulled on them in '72.

Um, no. That's hilariously wrong.

Clinton is winning because she has the broadest support - while Sanders definitely has the deepest.

And the whole idea that the typical Clinton voter was scammed by the media, simply wasn't smart enough to look through the lies of the MSM, is close to offensive. Harry Enten pointed out recently a new theory, that Clinton won black areas because that coincided with low internet use.

I'm confused what the false pretenses were... that Hilary was more well known and had more money (initially anyway)?

xp Krugman made the argument that non-white votes were so savvy that they saw right past the horrible MSM lies about Hillary.

Clinton is winning because she has the broadest support - while Sanders definitely has the deepest.

about that deep support

http://i.imgur.com/RnbdaYn.png

bernie definitely has the most enthusiastic internet posters tho.

Democratic supporters only in that poll though.

"definitely" followed by meaningless statement

love election season

democratic/democatic leaners xp

That's a weird question. Is that enthusiasm for voting for their candidate or enthusiasm for voting in general?

here's the link to the poll:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/190343/trump-clinton-supporters-lead-enthusiasm.aspx

i got up to the part of the 538 podcast last night where they said they got more questions about this poll than any other thing this election (guess why) but i was done walking my dog before they started to really discuss it. if they have any interesting insight i'll report back.

They don't, I don't think so.

So excitement for race in general... given that their preferred candidate is likely going to lose it makes sense that Sanders supporters would be less enthusiastic at this point.

There is something to what Fred is saying because the level of Sanders' support under the $200 level is pretty impressive. Is that broad or deep or just okay that's pretty cool I'm not sure but it is a little different than Hillary's support

I'm less sure about the numbers. Perhaps Sanders supporters are less enthusiastic about the election because at this points it seems more likely than not that he will lose + a lot of them hate Hillary, much more than Hillary supporters hate Sanders (I think. Hillary still has more favorability amongst dems, iirc)

the "How much thought have you given to the upcoming election for president -- quite a lot, or only a little?" question is also interesting vis-a-vis the claim that hillary supporters are low information voters

people's enthusiasm for voting in the election

If they were polling people's enthusiasm for voting in the general election, and not people's enthusiasm for their preferred candidate, then it is not surprising that supporters of the most likely nominees are most 'enthusiastic'.

non-white votes were so savvy that they saw right past the horrible MSM lies about Hillary

the whiter/more liberal states

Sanders has done well with a number of non-white regions/communities, e.g. Asian-dominated Hawaii, Alaska with its large Native population, Arab-Americans in Michigan, etc. Non-black != white.

3xp

That question is dumb though. Having thought about something doesn't mean you have a lot of information or even good information about it.

I'm less sure about the numbers. Perhaps Sanders supporters are less enthusiastic about the election because at this points it seems more likely than not that he will lose + a lot of them hate Hillary, much more than Hillary supporters hate Sanders (I think. Hillary still has more favorability amongst dems, iirc)

― Frederik B, Tuesday, April 5, 2016 8:39 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"definitely"

"Perhaps"
"I think"
"iirc"
"less sure"
"supporters"
"amongst"
"numbers"
"caek"

Clinton is winning because she has the broadest support - while Sanders definitely has the deepest.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, April 5, 2016 8:17 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is baseless (and meaningless) and you act like someone reading their horoscope when shown a poll

you are very bad at this thread imo

Ok, I give. Sanders has nothing.

Is that better?

There's no support for Sanders in the US, and the future for progressivism in the country is nonexistent.

I don't think you understand my point but if you stop posting then we can call it even

Oh, too bad. Then you lose :(