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

xp I take it you won't be voting for the silly purist liberal savior grandpa then.

Tim Robbins at a Sanders rally, really hitting the point that it matters what all the primary voters think:

"After the Southern primaries, you had called the election. And who's fooling who? Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam. No Democrat is going to win in the general election. Why do these victories have so much significance?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/04/tim-robbins-figures-that-clintons-south-carolina-win-is-about-as-important-as-winning-guam/

Yeah that's a dumb argument, and I would like to take the opportunity to formally disassociate myself from Tim Robbins, though I may still finish watching that tape of The Player sometime.

Howard Dean was not elected DNC chair until February 2005, so holding whatever he accomplished in that post over what Sanders should supposedly be doing right this second is, uh, odd.

Dean also withdrew way earlier and made it clear he was willing and eager to work with the party apparatus. Bernie's not going to replace Debbie Wasserman-Schulz (lolzy as that would be, and I would welcome such a development) precisely because he demonstrates no interest in the party machinery - and when he does express an interest it's usually one of contempt. After decades in congress he has few allies, very little congressional support, etc. This guy is not a team player, he never has been and he doesn't want to be. But you need a team to make legislative gains.

if, in 2018, Bernie is not all over the fucking place making speeches with Candidate X in cities where Bernie did well this year, working the crowd, doing some of his 'greatest hits' and speaking about how excited he is that Young People like Candidate X here are the real future of the Political Revolution In This Country.

yeah this isn't going to happen. setting this aside for future reference fwiw

xp

oh good, well, since we both already know exactly what sanders is going to do with his time in the future, it's probably safe to hold whatever it is against him

I'm holding what he's doing right now against him - all those primary donations, pissed away

on things like billboards in the most liberal distict in the country

i consider my donation money pretty well spent tbh. you've probably given him a lot more though.

Doctor Casino, what do you think of the Sanders' campaign's election strategy in the south? From the nyt story upthread:

The morning after the Nevada vote, Mr. Sanders pulled Mr. Devine away from church and Mr. Weaver from breakfast to talk about strategy. They agreed that Mr. Sanders would still compete for the South Carolina primary on Feb. 27, but he would shift his plans for the March 1 “Super Tuesday” contests. Instead of spending money on ads and ground operations to compete across the South, Mr. Sanders would all but give up on those states and would focus on winning states where he was more popular, like Colorado and Minnesota, which would at least give him some victories to claim.

The reason: Mr. Sanders and his advisers and allies knew that black voters would be decisive in those Southern contests, but he had been unable to make significant inroads with them. He had hoped to. At one meeting with advisers in December, he suggested campaigning hard in Alabama in January, but his team insisted that he focus on winning Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Mrs. Clinton went on to rout him in Alabama, as well as in South Carolina and other Southern states, running up huge margins in African-American areas.

These victories allowed her to compile a significant delegate lead, given that Democrats award delegates based on the candidates’ vote totals.

[...]

Mr. Weaver, the Sanders campaign manager, called South Carolina “a disappointment” but said the senator had had no choice but to focus on winning states on Super Tuesday rather than competing everywhere for delegates. Had Mr. Sanders not, he might have carried only his home state, Vermont, on March 1.

“What would the media narrative have been after that day? I can tell you: It would have been devastating,” Mr. Weaver said.

Instead, he won there, as well as in Minnesota, Colorado and Oklahoma.

I'm holding what he's doing right now against him - all those primary donations, pissed away
--Οὖτις

I think continuing to focus attention from Hillary's left is pretty valuable actually.

I'm making a point to avoid all Bernie v Hillary stuff at this point, just had enough of it. Regardless of whose campaign is doing what I kinda don't wanna know.

i think it's pretty ridiculous to play armchair quarterback on bernie's campaign considering how much of a longshot he was at the outset. i'd ay whatever they decided to do it worked pretty well.

as far as punting the south -- delegates are awarded proportionally. if he had committed more time and resources to the south at the expense of some of his stronger states, maybe he only loses by 20 points in states like alabama and FL, but then maybe some of the states he won landslides in clinton gets closer to him too. in the end it's probably a wash

yeah he's run a good, smart campaign imo, albeit a quixotic one

Doctor Casino, what do you think of the Sanders' campaign's election strategy in the south?

I think we talked about his Southern performance for weeks on this board. I file the 'strategy' part under areas where I wish he'd done more to live up to the kind of candidate I'd like him to be. Since we Sanders supporters are famously idealists unable to reckon with the real world, it has been a real strain to repeatedly note on this thread my disappointments in his shortcomings, but there it is. I don't like the idea of a candidate who's trying to build a progressive base seemingly writing off whole swaths of the country and whole groups of people. I also don't like the idea of Bernie being driven out of the race months ago, and his ideas relegated to the dustbin as discredited losers with no traction outside of New Hampshire. I dunno what exactly I would have wanted him to do there. Maybe pick a couple of Southern states and try really hard in them, like a clearer "I haven't given up on wanting to hear what African-American voters are thinking, and try to win them over" approach.

I don't like the idea of a candidate who's trying to build a progressive base seemingly writing off whole swaths of the country and whole groups of people.

rich tradition of this with the left, sadly

hey maybe if Bernie had a bloc of votes in Congress they could pressure President Hillary from the left, wouldn't that be nice? eh too much work...

― Οὖτις, Monday, April 4, 2016 5:41 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.wakely2016.com/

hey if yall hate climate change deniers, this guy is running against lamar smith who is on a the space, tech,etc cmte and also i am volunteering in this campaign. wakely worked with cesar chavez and did labor organizing, was unitarian minister, and was recruited by the green party, ultimately ran as a dem.

sure. complicated in this case by the limited resources of any campaign etc. etc. basically it hinges on, how crucial to the bigger 'cause' is it that he rack up some 'wins' even though the delegates are awarded proportionally? i think pretty darned important, given a) the way these things play out narratively, in the media etc., and b) the value of showing that you can WIN a statewide election (of democrats, obv) campaigning on this stuff against a mega-politician with a million advantages. but then, i'm not among the groups being potentially written out of the picture that way.

that said, i'm in the difficult position of defending bernie against two contradictory charges: that he should pragmatically quit races he can't win (which i don't agree with), and that he should for the good of his base-building project, compete enthusiastically in places he can't possibly win (which i endorse, but which, if followed consistently, might have deep-sixed the campaign). i can, with my disappointments and mixed feelings acknowledged, have a reasoned conversation about the latter, but not if i'm simultaneously having to talk the talk of the former. this is further complicated by the fact that the pragmatist charge is being leveled by shakey, who i'd rather argue with, and the shoot-the-moon national referendum is being strongly implied by freddy b, who drives me up a wall pretty consistently.

guy looks great. I hate Lamar Smith. I will be in San Antonio in a few weeks, will tell everyone to vote for him

actually wait, i managed to already forget that freddy was outed as a mordy sock, so please ignore most of the above

I expect to learn more about open conventions the next few months that any Canadian need ever know. (I know about them to an extent already, insofar as all our conventions work that way. A few years ago the Liberal leadership was won by Stéphane Dion, who was nobody's first choice but had the least resistance and came up through the middle, from third or fourth on the first ballot to winning it in three or four.)

I didn't realize till a few minutes ago that a few states, at least on the Republican side, send delegates who are completely unbound. They mentioned North Dakota: 28 delegates, they can all do whatever they want right from the first ballot, and they don't even have to declare before the convention. Truly, what's the point of even having a primary there?

Most states seem to have delegates committed to reflecting the primary/caucus results for the first ballot or two.

guy looks great. I hate Lamar Smith. I will be in San Antonio in a few weeks, will tell everyone to vote for him

― Οὖτις, Monday, April 4, 2016 6:29 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thx, plz send money

A few years ago the Liberal leadership was won by Stéphane Dion, who was nobody's first choice but had the least resistance and came up through the middle, from third or fourth on the first ballot to winning it in three or four.)

I'm pretty sure that when I voted in the 2011 NDP leadership race, there was just one vote held of all party members in the country. We voted with a ranked ballot, using instant runoff voting, basically. I don't remember any business with delegates or voting on multiple ballots.

OK, Wikipedia makes a slight correction: it was one-member-one-vote but you only submitted a ranked IRV ballot if you voted early. If you voted on the day of the convention, you submitted a ballot for each round.

actually wait, i managed to already forget that freddy was outed as a mordy sock, so please ignore most of the above
--never ending bath infusion (Doctor Casino)

Really?

actually i'm really sad to report that i double checked and i think this pet theory of mine was based on day-drunkenly misreading a mordy post. i was really stoked about it though, felt it would explain a lot. "morderik b."

(xposts) I realize "nobody's first choice" was an exaggeration with regards to Dion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada_leadership_election,_2006#Results

He had about 900 delegates support him on the first ballot, good for third; it took four ballots in all. (For anybody who checks the link, yes, that Ken Dryden.) Anyway, the upcoming Republican convention does seem to have the potential for something similar, with delegates drifting in Cruz's direction (or, god forbid, Kasich's) over the course of three ballots.

I thought Dean a terrible candidate but his 50-state strategy was a marvelous and impressive thing that at least suggested the possibility of another motley New Deal type coalition. To date it's the only Dem strategy that sought to flip local races .

idk if it's a joke or not, but frederik b. is not a mordy sock xp

Clemenza: OK, this is interesting. Apparently, both the CPC and NDP use a simple one-member-one-vote system with ranked ballots but the Liberals have this whole deal with delegates.

Anyway, back to US politics, socks, etc.

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.