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

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.

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