A Note on Semi-Super Saturday/Sunday

Nob Akimoto

Nob Akimoto is a policy analyst and part-time dungeon master. When not talking endlessly about matters of public policy, he is a dungeon master on the NWN World of Avlis

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169 Responses

  1. Stillwater says:

    Well, I hope Sanders supporters continue to vote their conscience (and Hillary supporters too!) irrespective of how “the math” looks. Voting for “the winner” seems like a putrid calculus for determining candidate support.Report

    • Kim in reply to Stillwater says:

      At some point apathy takes over… but the more people get involved before then, the more the Democrats win.Report

    • Nob Akimoto in reply to Stillwater says:

      The argument isn’t for them to stop supporting Sanders. The argument is that they need to be more realistic about the level of support Sanders actually has, and try to adjust their messaging and advocacy to reflect that.

      The whole “Bernie’s leading an unprecedented movement and the media is just hiding it!” stuff along with the idea that his supporters represent more than a very narrow segment of the population is a lot of hokum.Report

      • Art Deco in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

        Sanders actually polls better than Hellary against each of the leading Republicans in hypothetical match-ups. He appears to have hit a plateau for the time being, but he currently has the observed support of 45% of the respondents of polls done of self-identified Democrats. I’d not call that ‘narrow’.Report

        • Nob Akimoto in reply to Art Deco says:

          The predictive power of head to head polls this early in the election cycle is more or less nil.

          http://themonkeycage.org/2011/05/do-early-polls-predict-anything/

          That more or less factors in the fact that at this stage in the game, relative name recognition tends to be too low to factor in things like oppo research and negative messaging conducted later in the campaign.

          As for the narrow or at least support plateau, again, look at the results. Again, as noted above, Sanders is actually outperforming in delegate numbers compared to his actual vote share of Democratic voters so far, and he’s performing best in relatively low turnout states.

          That suggests a narrow support base willing to actually vote for him.Report

        • Zac in reply to Art Deco says:

          “Hellary”? I don’t even like her, but jesus, dude, are you twelve years old or something?Report

          • Chris in reply to Zac says:

            He’s an old reg, if you don’t remember him from years ago. “Hellary” is pretty much the whole of what you’ll get from him.Report

          • Art Deco in reply to Zac says:

            I’m of an age to think it rather puerile to attempt to associate Trump with the Nazi Party. Some of your contributors are not. I also have no compunction about insulting herself for her general ghastliness, because I see her for who she is, which you do not.Report

            • Kim in reply to Art Deco says:

              And it was rather puerile to make fun of anti-abortion protesters as women you wouldn’t want to screw.

              Doesn’t mean it ain’t accurate.
              (And, fwiw, the Trump voters are associating him with HITLER, not the Nazi Party. No brownshirts…yet).Report

        • Francis in reply to Art Deco says:

          And how many attack ads have been run against him? If he’s the nominee, it’ll be wall to wall “SOC IALIST” for months. I don’t think he would have a persuasive answer for that.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Francis says:

            I dunno-

            Most of the pro-Trump rhetoric on the right has co-opted so much of the vocabulary of the Left- phrases like “Ruling Elite”, “Crony Capitalism” and constant refrain of the “white working class”, I’m thinking its only matter of time before they go full metal Chomsky and decide that what they need is a Socialism of their own, something that defends their nationalist fervor, with socialist aspects.

            Whoever puts those two ideas together will have a winning shot, I tell ya.Report

            • Nationalism and socialism, you say?

              A powerful idea. Imagine what a good graphic artist could do to encapsulate the thought in a simple, powerful image.

              That sort of thing would be hard to beat at the ballot box.Report

            • Brandon Berg in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              I’m thinking its only matter of time before they go full metal Chomsky and decide that what they need is a Socialism of their own, something that defends their nationalist fervor, with socialist aspects.

              Whoever puts those two ideas together will have a winning shot, I tell ya.

              I don’t know. Doesn’t look like Sanders is going to make it.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Brandon Berg says:

                Nope. Even winning MI (seriously, figuring out how everyone screwed up their turnout models is going to be fascinating), he still falls another dozen delegates behind.

                Clinton +25 in Mississippi. Sanders, at 51-47, will net 10 to 15 — kinda hard to project — in MI. In a system where every state awards delegates proportionally, and he’s now 200+ behind. It was all those lop-sided blowouts. He can’t make those up with razor-thin wins elsewhere, and his few big wins have been in delegate poor states.

                Say what you want about Clinton, but she’s adaptable — and not prone to making the same mistake twice.. She’s rather deftly using Obama’s 2008 primary playbook. And had to have started BEFORE she realized anyone would actually make her work for it.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              @chip-daniels

              YMMV but I have heard right-wing types complain about Crony Capitalism for a decade or two. The sincerity of those complaints depends I guess. The right has been singing this song for years. They complain about crony capitalism but the solutions they offer always favor big business.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                True, it isn’t new, so much as grown tremendously in volume.
                Maybe because my ears are atuned, but Damon defense of the working class Trumpistas, stripped of the modifier “white”, would been right at home in some Pacifica broadcast.

                Which is the seriousness underlying my Godwin snark.

                While everyone on the right reflexively hates the word socialism, they embrace a big part of class based viewpoint.

                Moreover, I don’t think many rank and file are even opposed to direct government intervention and redistribution of wealth, so long as it is veiled as “rightfully earned”, like Social Security or Medicare or ag subsidies.
                In fact their biggest gripe with redistribution isn’t that it happens, so much as it is targeting the wrong people, i.e., not Our Tribe.

                Calling them nationalist socialists is good for a laugh if it invokes Godwin, but not far from the truth if viewed without the baggage.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “Damon defense of the working class Trumpistas”

                I think Damon was more poking snark at bubble liberals in his local environment.

                I have serious doubts there will be a right to left and an up to down shift to get to ‘metal Chomsky’. Socialism or collectivism is a polar opposite force to individualism.

                If Trump fails to ‘make it great again’ and we do see a y-axis flip away from authoritarian, we may see a large pooling of low y-axis libertarians created.Report

          • Hoosegow Flask in reply to Francis says:

            That’s my big concern about Sanders winning the nomination. Unless the GOP has an ace up their sleeve, they would only be able to rehash the same attacks on Clinton that they’ve been using for years already. For Bernie, there’s a host of untapped material. A “honeymoon” in the Soviet Union, praising Castro and the Sandinistas, favoring raising taxes on everybody, etc., etc. Yes, he may be able to provide adequate context and alleviate concerns. Or maybe some of the mud sticks.

            The contest between Hillary and Bernie has largely been free of personal attacks and smears. I don’t expect the general election will be that way, and I don’t think it will be without impact.Report

            • Kim in reply to Hoosegow Flask says:

              Clinton butters the media’s bread.
              Bernie doesn’t.
              Bernie doesn’t even butter the Democratic Bread.

              So, I worry less about the Republicans, and more about the Democratic Knives if Bernie wins.

              Besides, LAST time they had to bribe clinton to get her to stick with the party and play nice. This time? She may actually ragequit.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

        I think Trump’s muddying the waters. If you look at the Democratic primary in isolation, you see a very familiar pattern. You have the establishment politician (and just the one. Hillary’s ‘800 pound Gorilla’ status is actually more unique than anything else on the D side. Normally you’d have two or three prominent, established politicians vying for the top spot) and the outsider.

        Sanders: Not an established Democratic politician, from outside the normal paths of power/promotion. Check.

        Support heaviest among young voters. Check.

        Platform of radical change, heavy on message and lighter on white papers? Check.

        Dean. McGovern even. (Where HRC cut her teeth). Obama was an outlier — he claimed the outsider mantle (despite being groomed as an insider) and then actually won.

        I mean I recognize Sander’s voters. They were Dean voters in 2004 (well, not them. Those guys are 12 years older and probably Hillary voters. But it’s the same enthusiasm, the same idealism, the same age demographic….).

        There’s a real feeling of deja vu. I feel a bit bad for his most ardent supporters. I was there, decades ago. I was them. And I got crushed when my candidate lost too (and this was before the echo chamber effects of social media). But them’s the breaks. Every election, there’s always a loser.Report

        • Nob Akimoto in reply to Morat20 says:

          All this is true (and it’s a point I’ve been making on social media), but I also think how they’ll respond is kind of contingent on how they deal with the echo chamber effect.

          Deaniacs (and by extension Obama) are a bit of an outlier because once they DID lose, they went on to press for positions in the DNC and formed the core of the Democratic activists who started the 50 state strategy and brought off 06 and helped make Obama an “outside insider” (or inside outsider?) in 2008.

          I’m not so sure Sanders supporters have that in them, and moreover, their leadership, so much as it exists on social media and within the Sanders campaign is kind of feeding into their belief they’re the silent majority that’s being stiffled, rather than people who need to do better with messaging and activism.

          What I’m hoping with these sorts of deconstructions is to point out that they have a lot of work to do.

          I want a more liberal Democratic Party, but that’ll take a lot of work, and it’s hard to buckle down for it when you’re deluding yourself about what needs to be done.Report

          • Kim in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

            *snicker* Bernie’s a testrun just like Lamont was. Tweak the system, see who squeaks, see who mobilizes and where they are.

            Potential for the entire world economy to collapse in another 5-10 years (loss of major seaports, climate refugees — wonder if Japan can actually get refugees to agree to genocide in exchange for safe harbor?).Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

      Yeah, Berniebros are big on finding shields to hide their misogyny behind.Report

      • Road Scholar in reply to Jaybird says:

        That’s awfully unfair, Dude. Pretty much on par with Saul’s thinly veiled implication that Sanders supporters are stupid.

        I participated in the Kansas caucuses last Saturday. First time ever, and I had to drive 90 miles to do so*. Democrats are sorta thin on the ground in western KS and many folks travelled even further.

        I don’t know what the atmosphere was for your experience in the Springs, but I didn’t detect anything like misogyny among the Berniacs. It certainly doesn’t animate me. Or my wife. Or my daughter. And we all expressed our support for Bernie that afternoon.

        My preference for Bernie has nothing to do with Hillary’s possession of a vagina. If — realistically when — Clinton is the Democratic nominee I will proudly and enthusiastically cast my ballot for her. I just prefer Sanders’ based on his policies. It’s not complicated or nefarious. Or stupid.

        * We had other business in town that day — my daughter’s BB gun competition — so I can’t say we would have otherwise. But we DID take three hours out of a beautiful afternoon to do so nevertheless.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Road Scholar says:

          “Oh, jeez”, I thought. “Is he criticizing my statement about Trump’s finding the answer to the ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ question? I’m going to have to come up with a quick paragraph discussing The Big Sort, and then another one on populism vs. technocratic government, and then one about the sea changes that seem to show up in America every generation and how we appear to be in the middle of the one that didn’t happen after Dubya got elected…”

          Whew. It was my dumb comment about berniebros.

          So I can just throw something together about how you’re a closet Republican or something for opposing Hillary.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to Road Scholar says:

          @road-scholar

          I did not call Sanders supporters stupid but I do know a lot that strike me as aware and unaware at the same time. They are white guys who talk about how they just can’t vote HRC while not being aware enough to deal with the fact that women and POCs can’t survive 4-8 years of GOP without losing somethingReport

  2. Jaybird says:

    The person who came up with #MississippiBerning to make a last-minute push in Mississippi’s primary today demonstrated poor judgment.Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Sanders seems to be winning Michigan but so far the NY Times Map has him winning largely in the non-African American sections of the State. Basically everywhere that is not Detroit. I guess HRC will catch up as more of Detroit’s ballots are counted and possibly win. The Times is not calling Michigan for Sanders yet.

    @morat20 is largely right I suspect. What the Sanders supporters don’t realize though is that they are largely a minority in the Democratic Party. The majority of the Democratic Party base is African-Americans, Latino(a), and women. Young, white, liberals with a dislike for Wall Street are just a small part of the pie. The issue my guess is a Big Sort within the Big Sort. White liberals who crush on Sanders don’t really interact with the bulk of the Democratic Party base on anything but the most superficial of levels. What they do is know each other.Report

    • Morat20 in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      538 is basically pinning the HUGE polling difference on three things:
      1) More independents voting for Sanders than projected (open primary).
      2) Sanders doing a lot better among blacks than normal (up to 30% from 10 to 15%)
      3) MI being a weird state with no real primary record for polling. (There was some issue in 2008 where either Clinton or Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, and previously it was apparently on tail end of the calendar).

      So it looks like everyone polling it screwed their likely voter model every way possible — from demographic makeup to turn-out projections. Nate Silver did throw out a sheet anchor earlier today, stating that the +20 Clinton polling seemed out of line with national numbers (+13) and demographics.

      Sad to say, the whys of “Jesus, how did everyone get the turnout models this wrong” are probably more relevant than Sander’s win. Delegate wise, he’s going to fall another dozen or so behind. (Clinton netted 25 in Mississippi, and the close to 50/50 MI results will net him half that).

      OTOH, I did get exposed to the habits of some Sanders supporters to point out Clinton’s basically non-electability because she only wins (and I quote) “the ex-confederate states”.

      On the gripping hand, Sanders could use anything for momentum. But even though Michigan was an upset, I can’t help but wonder if the sheer size of it might hurt him. Given the Mississippi blowout, and the net loss of delegates, the story might not be “Sanders surges!” and might end up “Clinton continues to rack up lead, major polling snafu in MI”.

      I look at a 20 point change from polls to reality? I ask “What was wrong with those polls” and not “One week massive 20 point surge based on…maybe one rather boring debate no one watched?” but I’m probably not the average reader.Report

      • Nob Akimoto in reply to Morat20 says:

        Michigan’s really hard to predict for a few reasons.

        Completely open primary system, lack of actual registration by party (they only track primary voting patterns, not actual affiliation) means that the polling models tend to be wildly off within the state. We also saw this in state wide races more recently.

        That plus the fact that we don’t have good Democratic information from 2008 due to the ballot fish-up means that there’s not a lot of good information to base likely voter models on.

        Moreover, the open primary may very well have led to Clinton underperforming in more affluent counties where Kasich has done disproportionately well relative to the rest of the state.Report

        • Kim in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

          Yeah, but let’s get real here: a candidate, even one sinking tons of money into a state, can change things by about 5 points.

          Bernie picked up 20 points. This is a huge, huge upset.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to Kim says:

            No, that’s a huge, huge polling screw-up.

            Bernie didn’t change anything (in fact, he squeaked out the sort of narrow victory he tends to get when he wins). The polls were completely wrong, and it’s been fun watching professional pollsters talk about why. Everything from an apparently long-standing belief that MI pollsters are, by and large, incompetents to a complete lack of data to inform turnout models to a surprising amount of crossover voting in both directions.Report

      • Autolukos in reply to Morat20 says:

        I forgot the 2008 Michigan shenanigans. Clinton did soundly beat Uncommitted that year, which was certainly better than the alternative.Report

        • Nob Akimoto in reply to Autolukos says:

          Yeah. The end result is we have a state that’s hard to predict and model on a lot of levels. It’s fun! But I have no idea how to interpret the results.Report

          • Autolukos in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

            Just glancing at the county results, “Pollsters screw up” seems like the main takeaway. Sanders won whiter, more rural parts of the state, and Clinton dominated Detroit, both of which make sense given the dynamics of this race so far. Maybe some weirdness at the margin: some reporters said they were talking to Clinton supporters crossing over to vote against Trump because they thought she had the state in the bag; kind of doubt there were 20,000 of those voters, though.Report

            • Nob Akimoto in reply to Autolukos says:

              To be fair to pollsters, Michigan really doesn’t have a lot of datapoints to use to create good LV models. Again, it’s basically demography…and that’s it.Report

            • gingergene in reply to Autolukos says:

              Sanders also won the Arab vote, interestingly. What this means nationally remains to be seen. There’s aren’t really any other Dearborns in the rest of the country. Northern Ohio (specifically Cleveland) does have a large Arabic population, but nothing like the Detroit area.Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Autolukos says:

              “Pollsters screw up” seems like the main takeaway.

              That’s certainly not how the Clinton camp is looking at it. Apparently, their internal polling over the weekend had her up 7-8%, which is still a pretty hefty swing only 4 days later (9% points).Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                What makes you think Clinton’s internal polling was any different than anyone else’s? It’s not like campaigns keep the good methods to themselves. Everyone had Michigan fudged up. (There’s lots of articles why, and they boil down to ‘turnout models’, ‘independent crossover in both directions’, and MI’s recent weird primary history making it a crapshoot for polling to begin with).

                If I was a big Sander’s supporter, the last thing I’d want to push around is the idea there was some huge Sanders swing. March 15 is gonna be a huge Clinton day, and if I’m talking 20 point surges NOW, how’s it going to look next week after a rather crushing (if well forseen) set of losses?

                Of course, that’s because a look at the exit polls show the change between polling and results was based on actual turnout (the poll models being wrong) and crossover voting. Michigan has a number of reasons to be unique there (starting with it’s polling history meaning everyone was WAG on turnout models and having a fully open primary).

                But to the point: Yeah, I’m sure Clinton’s internal pollsters are making sure they understand how they effed up — and trying to see if it applies to other states. (I rather doubt it. If Michigan was the first primary, sure. But we’ve done almost half the nation, and the only outlier so far is the one state with a history of crap polling, weird wins, and because of 2008 shenanigans, no real useful historical data to use to model turnout).Report

              • Autolukos in reply to Morat20 says:

                Right, internal polling is still polling. I notice that Mississippi, where Clinton outperformed strong polling, is not being talked about by proponents of the Sanders surge.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Autolukos says:

                Sanders should capitalize on a surprise, even if it was one clearly as big a surprise to him as anyone else, and even if it was clearly a polling error and not a shift in the ground underfoot.

                But he should also be playing the expectations game. (Although honestly, that’s not too manageable at the best of times).

                I think PR votes this Saturday, but Tuesday is going to be ugly for Sanders. If his supporters (or his PR) is selling Michigan as a swing and not a polling error, it’s gonna look ugly. I think he’ss down 25 to 30 points in every state — and Florida and Ohio have lots of delegates. There’s almost 700 delegates up for grabs, and he needs half of them just to avoid losing ground.

                Ohio and Illinois are open primaries, though. He could easily outperform there.

                But Michigan aside, he’s never outperformed by 20 points. I would be…very surprised…to see him do it again. I bet he can close up Ohio and maybe Illionois a few points with independents though.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Morat20 says:

                I wanted to add — Ohio and Missouri are Sander’s best bets for wins next week.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Morat20 says:

                Morat20:
                Sanders should capitalize on a surprise,

                And fear and ruthless efficiency, but he can’t quite credibly use fanatical devotion to the Pope.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Morat20 says:

                Morat,

                I think you oughta tell the Clinton campaign about your theory since they are under the impression the unanticipated election day shift was due to politics and her failure to connect with voters on economic issues.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                Do you not know how perception and PR works? What’s she gonna say “Ah, weird polls, man?” and just ignore it? Even if she’s utterly right to do so, she’d be savaged in the media (the same people saying “Ah, weird polls, man”) and looking “out of touch” or “in a bubble”.

                I mean do you think Sanders told his supporters “I’m not going to win, don’t be idiots. I just want to, you know, have some influence on where the party goes”. If he did, they wouldn’t vote. Sanders can freakin’ count. He knows he’s lost unless Clinton keels over on the trail. He knew that before the very first vote.

                But he needs as many people thinking he can win, as many delegates possible, to make the biggest change possible.

                You don’t end up going for the gold ring without knowing how to play the perception game. And step one in responding to a surprise loss is use it as a message. “Sometimes polls are weird” is not a useful message.

                “This loss just means I have to focus more on [insert issue here], a critical issue! One that resonates with [voters of the loss]!” is a useful message.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Morat20 says:

                The amount of effort you’re expending defending Clinton is truly breathtaking, Morat. 🙂Report

              • North in reply to Stillwater says:

                Reality has a Clintonian bias at the moment.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to North says:

                Depends on what aspects of reality we’re talking about. She’s winning and very likely to win. I don’t think anyone disputes that.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                Ah yes, the implied “you must be a secret partisan”.

                My state already voted. Despite being a registered Democrat, I didn’t. And not because I forgot or couldn’t remember how to work a ballot box. I literally didn’t care which of them it was.

                I literally don’t have a horse in this race, but lazy thinking is annoying.

                And having a massive polling failure is far more interesting than the Democratic race. (Which has, basically, gotten to the point where one side is trying to change the rules. ‘We shouldn’t have let these states go first! The privilege Clinton!” and “She’s only winning RED states”, “why do they never let California go early! — seriously, was 2008 that far back?)

                The D race is boring. If this magic repeats, that’ll change. But since I think it’s pretty obvious a massive polling failure, THAT is interesting.Report

          • Kim in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

            This is the single biggest upset in modern primary history.
            It was so big, they had to wake Bernie up to give a victory speech.
            It was so big, they didn’t even have the victory speech written

            And the media is making it like it’s nothing.
            Because they really don’t like Bernie.

            If Bernie wins the primary, we’ll get to see more Democratic knives than we’ve seen since ACORN.Report

            • Morat20 in reply to Kim says:

              This is the single biggest upset in modern primary history.

              Because it’s not the biggest political upset in modern primary history. It’s the biggest polling screwup in modern history. You said it yourself — a 20 point shift in a week never happens. But polling screwups, especially when you can take a look at the polls before and after and pinpoint where they went wrong?

              Those happen. And in this case, seems pretty unique to Michigan. (Mississippi had the polling off in the other direction — Sanders did worse than projected. Just not as visibly so).

              Which actually brings up a problem for Bernie. What happens in the next state, when he suddenly hasn’t improved 10 or 20 points? If you’re all in on “BERNIE PULLS OFF THE UPSET OF A CENTURY” what happens next week, when he…doesn’t.

              Expectations game works both ways, on candidates and supporters.Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Morat20 says:

                What sets the conditions for the biggest upset in primary history if not polls being off by that much?

                If this wasn’t it because the polls were wrong, not just wrong, then what upset from the past was it?Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Michael Drew says:

                No idea, really. My criteria would be “Something the candidate did” or at least “Something that changed voting”. “Everyone’s predictions were wrong” just doesn’t feel like an upset.

                Being down 5 runs bottom of the ninth and coming through? That’s an upset. Being projected to win 5-2 and losing 3-4? The Vegas bookies screwed up, not so much one of the teams.

                Unless you can point to specific stuff players did — no-name pitcher throws a no-hitter against a strong batting lineup? Upset. A huge string of errors? Upset.

                But if you can’t point to some specific things, it’s hard to call it an upset in my mind.

                And with polling and exit polls, you can compare reality to predictions — and figure out if reality changed or your predictions were based on false assumptions. It seems more the latter here.Report

      • North in reply to Morat20 says:

        Also there’s a running theory that a lot of potential Hillary voters didn’t bother because MI looked sewn up.

        This will undoubtedly breathe some new life into team Bern. Good for them!Report

        • Kim in reply to North says:

          Having Bernie win would be the BEST TROLLING of the establishment ever.
          One of his top priorities would be trustbusting the media, ya know?
          (I know someone on his campaign).Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    Bernie absolutely had to win Michigan to stay in “I guess he hasn’t been mathematically eliminated yet” territory and keep out of “maybe if Hillary has a stroke in the middle of giving a speech, Bernie will have a shot at winning” territory.

    And they’re calling that he won it.

    So, technically, he hasn’t been mathematically eliminated yet.Report

    • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

      I glanced at the delegate numbers this morning. Worse than I thought for Sanders. He netted 7 in Michigan. Clinton netted 25 in Mississippi.

      So he ended the night 18 further down.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:

        One thing that The Donald is doing a great job of is fanning the flames of the dumpster fire that is the Republican coalition.

        He’s fanning them so much that it’s easy to not notice the dumpster fire that is the Democratic coalition.Report

      • Road Scholar in reply to Morat20 says:

        How many Mississippi’s — meaning states where the Democratic electorate is dominated by AAs — are left on the calendar?Report

        • Morat20 in reply to Road Scholar says:

          A few. Florida and Ohio, for instance, have Clinton up +30 — and without the wonky polling history of Michigan. (Pollsters there have had LOTS of practice. And I know Florida has a closed primary. Not sure about Ohio). North Carolina doesn’t look good for him either.

          And that’s all THIS Tuesday. After that he’s got a string of much better states for him, but they’re by and large small ones with few delegates. And he’s not pulling 30 point leads, so even from the smaller pool he’s netting less delegates over Clinton.

          Bernie’s problem is the Democrats award delegates proportionally. Like Obama, Clinton has run up the lead — and this is ignoring super delegates entirely — to the point where, in order to beat her by a single delegate at the convention, Sanders needs something like 55% of the remaining delegates.

          A guy polling down 13 points nationally, who wins narrowly when he does — and loses big when he doesn’t. And who seems to win most predominately in states with the fewest delegates.

          She’s up over 200 delegates now, and that’s pretty much impossible to overcome without Clinton collapsing entirely. 538 has a delegate tracker that’s pretty useful, and you can find polling for those states.

          In short, Clinton’s running about 13% over her required target to win, and Sanders is down about 17%. And the proportional system just means that he can’t just WIN a state — he has to start winning some overwhelmingly to make up the gap. (Clinton won 26 delegates to Sanders 1 in Mississippi, because she won by so much. But in MI, he only won 65 to her 58. She came out of the night increasing her lead by 18 delegates (her previous lead was 190-something).Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:

            She’s up over 200 delegates now, and that’s pretty much impossible to overcome without Clinton collapsing entirely.

            Washington (CNN) Bryan Pagliano, a former Hillary Clinton staffer who helped set up her private email server, has accepted an immunity offer from the FBI and the Justice Department to provide an interview to investigators, a U.S. law enforcement official told CNN Wednesday.Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

              Drip, drip, drip…Report

            • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

              Ah yes. This time she won’t move the football.

              This is beyond “skepticism is warranted” and into rude gestures.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:

                Ask yourself: what would be the dumbest thing to happen this election season?

                My answer is “some combination of a reality television star running for president on the republican ticket while the democratic frontrunner gets arrested on live television”.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

                What, you think it’s been a 25+ year set up for a joke?

                More seriously, I remember the last email thing (what was it, four weeks ago) wherein a ‘well connected source’ was screaming treason, the CIA or NSA or someone “up in arms”. Turns out it was….emails talking about drones, and then it turned out Powell had the same problem.

                It’s pretty funny because virtually every one of those stories ends with “Officials/Spokesman in the investigation said it was highly likely no laws had been broken, and that no charges had been filed”.

                But hey, having worked with classified information — I recognize what’s going on. (The classification work required for FOIA coupled with a security audit, probably with a working team running an audit on the current Secretary of State to see how the new rules compare. The latter wouldn’t make the news, because there’s no FOIA attached — and I’m not sure an internal security audit would be covered anyways).

                The immunity stuff? If I was an IT contractor whose crap was getting audited by Feds, I’d talk to a lawyer. Whose first statement would be “don’t cooperate without immunity” just as a pure CYA move. Which is the most common trope in cop dramas, actually.

                And hey, maybe I’m wrong. But you’d think after an 11 hour grilling by GOP Congressmen who had the FULL emails, security clearance, and a huge axe to grind would have actually uncovered anything problematic.

                The poor joes doing ongoing security, of course, would be investigating entirely, you know, to improve security.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

                https://youtu.be/I2vVYP8fYpA

                They asked about it during the debate.Report

    • North in reply to Jaybird says:

      Bernie got the win and good on him for it but as Morat notes he’s still falling behind in delegates. I’m actually rather charmed by the result: keeping Bernie in will stoke enthusiasm and draw media attention- both good things, and keep Hillary working instead of coasting- also a very good thing.

      And Rubio is absolutely flailing. I cannot begin to adequately express my delight.Report

      • Kim in reply to North says:

        My delight is expressed quite firmly in dollar signs — specifically, the Bush donors that signed onto the Rubio campaign thinking he could possibly defeat TrumpReport

    • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

      FINALLY. Yes, they FINALLY called it.
      You could totally see the AP didn’t want to call it, and was going to wait until the end of time, rather than take the chance of screwing Hillary over.Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    I saw an argument on twitter last night that went something like this:

    While it’s true that turnout for the Republicans is so much higher than for the Democrats, that’s because the Democrats are okay with whomever gets nominated and the half of the Republicans that loses the nomination will take their ball and go home.

    So the Democrats are fine and the Republicans are in deep trouble!Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      What made this particular argument notable, I suppose, was that it didn’t come from someone who was a Republican Partisan, but it came from a Democratic Partisan.

      If it came from a Republican, I would see it through the filter of “this is a person speaking against his or her own interest and trying to take an accurate assessment of his or her party’s situation and digging into why they have a problem.”

      As it came from a Democrat, I see it through the filter of “this is a person saying that they don’t have a problem”.Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        I agree with your partisan Jay. I think it’d be pretty hard to look at these two primaries and say that the Dems, who’re basically having a run of the mill ordinary primary campaign are worse off than the GOP where they’re basically eating their own limbs.
        Turnout is higher on the GOP side, most assuredly, but primary turnout hasn’t really been shown to historically correlate with much in terms of general election results.
        I mean the risk is always for either party to choose its nominee and then lose a chunk of their base through anger or ennui due to dissatisfaction with that result. Can one honestly say the risk for the Dems of that outcome is higher than the risk for the GOP?Report

        • Jaybird in reply to North says:

          It’s not about whether the argument is sound.

          It could be sound. It could be unsound. I have no idea and won’t until November. Maybe December when all of the newsbytes have been properly digested.

          I just know a “this is fine, everything is fine” argument when I see one. They’re rarely indicators of everything being fine.Report

          • North in reply to Jaybird says:

            Well everything is definitely not fine for team Blue. But on the presidential level? I’d say that specific category is an area where things ideologically and politically are ticking along pretty well. Congressionally and especially on the state level there’s smoke flying and sparks cracking.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to North says:

              I don’t know. It seems to me that the Democratic bench is surprisingly thin.

              Let’s say that the worst happens and Hillary, in the middle of the debate, gets all glossolalia and has a seizure or something. She’s removed from the race.

              Who is her obvious replacement?

              I’m thinking Biden, maybe? Someone in the back just yelled “Warren!” really loudly and, yes, I hear you. Noted.

              The bench doesn’t feel full at all.

              On the Republican side, if Trump goes all glossolalia and has a seizure or something, his numbers go up so that’s not a good example but if he comes out and says “this isn’t fun anymore, I’m going home to play video games” and leaves, the Republicans have a fairly deep bench of people who are almost as worth comparing to Hitler as Trump is/was.Report

              • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

                Biden, Gore, Feingold, Franken.
                Remember, they don’t need to be terribly popular, just competent and able to not screw things up.Report

              • Autolukos in reply to Jaybird says:

                For all that supposed Republican bench depth, the starters sure seem terrible.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Autolukos says:

                Good point. I shouldn’t really dismiss that particular point.

                That said, Trump is a symptom of an underlying problem rather than the problem itself. There are jokes about how he is an Asimovian Mule but I don’t think that those jokes are that funny anymore. He’s not a Historical Great Man. He’s a guy who has, quite by accident, tapped into some *YUUUGE* well of populist fervor.

                He’s somehow accidentally found the answer to “What’s the Matter with Kansas”.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Eh, at this stage it’d cause some chaos for any party. There’s a bajillion politicians that’d eagerly jump into the race. It’d quite possibly fall to the convention because of all the suddenly unbound HRC delegates sloshing around but the idea that the bench is thin doesn’t persuade me much. Not a lot of people ran because Clinton worked long and hard to persuade them that this was a bad year for them to run and she was a bad person for them to run against. Just because they decided not to run doesn’t mean they don’t exist.Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to North says:

                I wonder how they would have been convinced it was a bad year for them to run except by convincing them she was a bad person for them to run against?Report

      • Nob Akimoto in reply to Jaybird says:

        The Democratic Party has some serious problems in terms of winning mid-term elections and winning down ballot, but I don’t think the presidential primary is much of a problem. If anything the excessive attention to the presidential race is obscuring the serious challenge the Dems face in rebuilding the 50 state infrastructure that’s suffered under DWS.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

          This goes back to the thought that “this was supposed to be a coronation”.

          If I were to make a comparison between parties, Bernie is the Ron Paul of the Democrats. (Heck, he wasn’t even a Democrat until recently!)

          I was expecting him to show up, come in 3rd or 4th in New Hampshire, and fizzle out around Super Tuesday and announce that he’d done what he accomplished because now the candidates are talking about his issues 3% of the time instead of the 0% of the time that they had been.

          But that’s not what is going on.

          Something is has gone awry.Report

          • North in reply to Jaybird says:

            I’d only object to the last sentence. A Hillary coronation would probably be worse for both the party and liberalism in terms of both ideas and of electoral chances. So I’d submit that the party is rather fortunate that Bernie has been stirring things up. Hillary would disagree of course, but we’re talking big picture.
            Contra to this being awry I’d say something has gone on course.Report

            • Kim in reply to North says:

              I doubt Hillary herself would disagree.
              Her campaign would, but that’s because they’re lazy pieces of shit who don’t have the talent for the jobs that they’ve got.Report

          • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

            Trolls tend to do that.
            OTOH, if the politicos were actually competent, the trolls wouldn’t be winning.

            Actually, if the businessmen donating to the GOP were actually competent, they wouldn’t be getting fleeced nearly so easily.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

            Something is has gone awry.

            I’ll offer one possibility: the same distaste for Democratic politics we’ve seen at the local and state levels in recent years has finally penetrated to national level politics, and Hillary – as standard bearer for The Party (she’s basically running on a “don’t change Obama’s policies!!!” platform) – is the target and recipient of that sentiment. It doesn’t help that her inner circle continues to be incompetent (just like last cycle) as evidence by the admission that they misjudged the interests of the electorate in Michigan. Pre-election polls had her as a 20 point favorite and she lost by 5. That’s a pretty big “misjudgment”.

            So my take is that something definitely has gone awry within the Democratic party: people want more than they’re currently being offered and the general intransigence of the party coupled with an institutional commitment to a (self)-strangulation-by-triangulation political philosophy means that the party (read Hillary) is, and will continue to be, incapable of adapting to the new political realities. Well, except via pure rhetorical flourishes expressing those view, which Clinton cannot possibly “sell” to the electorate given her (and the party’s) past and current support for trade agreements and etc.

            ETA: which doesn’t mean she won’t win, of course. Just that something has in fact gone awry.Report

          • Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:

            This is still a coronation. This is Ron Paul getting 40% of the vote in Virginia against Romney in 2012. It can’t be stressed enough that Clinton got more delegates yesterday. The various spins towards Sanders (and the media loving them some horserace) is making much of a team that got a lot of yards on offense in the first half, but the team scored fewer points than their opponents did.Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Kolohe says:

              This is still a coronation.

              No, it’s still Hillary most likely winning the race, one in which she was expected to receive only token resistance. As the race moves outa the deep south, expect Sanders to win more states. (Doesn’t mean he’ll win the nom, of course.) For example, without her overwhelming support from AA voters she wouldn’t have the lead she currently enjoys. Which is to say: she’s not the consensus nominee across all demos in the Dem base. She’s sorta barely hanging on…Report

              • Kim in reply to Stillwater says:

                Still,
                Know anyone who’s a politico?
                A coronation is when all the serious players stay the fuck out of the race.
                It’s what got promised to Clinton way back in 2008.

                And it’s still happening.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Kim says:

                Between intention and reality falls the shadow…Report

              • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

                We need more Eliot allusions on this blog. I’m gonna make sure to demand that of Burt now that he’s in charge.Report

              • El Muneco in reply to Chris says:

                At first I thought it was a Devo reference. But then I realized it couldn’t be, because I’m just about the only person who actually bought “Total Devo” (which peaked at 189 on the US chart)…Report

              • Stillwater in reply to El Muneco says:

                Devo is effing ineffable, dude.Report

              • Kim in reply to Stillwater says:

                Poetic, that.
                Devo is also surprisingly perceptive.Report

              • Chris in reply to El Muneco says:

                The poem contains one of the most quoted pair of lines in the history of poetry, though perhaps ironically, they’re not the lines alluded to here.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Chris says:

                If I were a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of a silent sea I’d know what lines you’re referring to.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Stillwater says:

                Ahhh. I think I’ve got it: do you mean the “this is the way … but a whimper” couplet?Report

              • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

                That’s the one.Report

              • Kim in reply to El Muneco says:

                I actually thought it was referencing The Shadow at first… then I googled for it.
                (I’ve been known to reference poetry that isn’t even available online…)Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Stillwater says:

                The only person left against her is not even a Democrat. (and only one of the other three were Democrats longer than they were something else). That’s token resistance. That’s a Vince McMahon fix.

                I grant you that the Michigan loss was unexpected by Team Clinton, but the loss was a little under 2 percentage points.

                Hillary is the consensus nominee across most of the demos of the Democratic base – the missing voters have been voting in the GOP contests.Report

              • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

                PA still has half the Republicans that switched to Democrats in 2008. (Most people couldn’t be bothered to switch back).

                These presidential elections are really mucking up party affiliations…Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Kolohe says:

                I’m not sure what we’re arguing here Kolohe: if you’re denying that something’s gone awry in the Dem party, then I obviously disagree. If you’re merely saying Hillary is very likely to win, then agree. My view is that those two things can, and in fact are, both true. Hillary wins and something gone awry.

                Eg, your response to my comment was that Sanders isn’t even a democrat, and you apparently intend that observation to support the claim that the coronation is proceeding apace. From my pov, tho, the fact that Sanders isn’t a Democrat is evidence that something is very wrong in Dem-land.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Stillwater says:

                The coronation is preceding apace itself doesn’t contradict that there’s something awry with the Dems – the very fact that there’s an overwhelming presumptive frontrunner who is not a sitting Vice President nor in any other formal government office at this time should raise eyebrows.

                But of course, the fact that the GOP is in the middle of its biggest existential crisis in 100 years makes any problems the Dems have seem puny.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Kolohe says:

                But of course, the fact that the GOP is in the middle of its biggest existential crisis in 100 years makes any problems the Dems have seem puny.

                Agreed. Which brings us back to another point Jaybird made: seems to me that Clintonistas of all stripes (establishment insiders, voters, Party Loyalists!, etc) view the self-inflicted dismantling of the GOP as a delightful assurance that Hills will effectively walk into the White House.

                And that strikes me as a mistake, given that the Dems are experiencing a mini-me-Existential Crisis of their own.

                Or IOW: it’s the same type of insular thinking that allows insiders to continue to misunderstand the issues animating the current disruptions in the electorate.Report

              • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

                I wonder, the next time there’s a presidential election that doesn’t include Clinton (whether that’s ’20 or ’24), will Democrats be saying essentially that Clinton screwed the party, since her inevitability in ’16 made potential candidates who would have run but lost in ’16 avoid doing so, resulting in no obvious candidates for the next Clintonless election?

                I don’t follow Democratic politics that closely, but since Jim Webb isn’t really a Democrat, and since the country showed O’Malley that they don’t care about him as a candidate even a little bit, who else is likely to run in the next Clintonless election? And would we have a better idea of that if Clinton hadn’t been seen as an inevitability for the last 7 or so years?Report

              • Kim in reply to Chris says:

                Webb’s a democrat all right. He’s got chutzpah too, and that’s why he’s out of office right now.

                He’s not a mainstream democrat, however.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Chris says:

                Not necessarily. Gore also had a field that was cleared for him, and while that might have hurt Gore in that election, it didn’t hurt the Dems long term.

                There’s about a half dozen US Senators and 3 or 4 governors or former governors that I could see throwing their hats into ring (and/or are already on the short list for Clinton’s VP)Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Kolohe says:

                I’d be interested in seeing that list.Report

              • Kim in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Okay, what’s the usual:
                Pick out a few Women,
                Pick out a few Democratic Libertarians,
                Find the next Russ Feingold (Al Franken?).Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Michael Cain says:

                In alphabetical order (I’m not sure of their actual strength to give them any sort of ordinal ranking)

                US Senators – Booker, Brown, Franken, Gillibrand, Kaine, Warner, Warren.

                Govs or former Govs – Cuomo. Hickenlooper, McAuliffe, O’Malley (again).

                Some of these campaigns may be DOA (Cuomo comes immediately to mind). Gillibrand would be in the sweet spot for a VP nomination right now, if anyone else but Hillary was the top of ticket. (besides the NY electoral college thing, which didn’t bother Bush-Cheney overmuch, she’s too political aligned with Clinton and Clinton’s ideological preferences to be a good ticket balancer).Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Kolohe says:

                I’d add Klobuchar to @kolohe’s list of senators. I’d also probably take off Franken; I just don’t see him running for prez. Could be wrong.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Chris says:

                Chris,

                In my anecdotal experience there’s definitely a bit of animosity directed at the Party Elites for effectively shutting out other candidates from entering the race. But I think that sentiment cuts against the Party more than specifically Hillary herself. So in my opinion (which ain’t worth much) I think the critique you offer (or wonder about), IF it were to take shape, would flow more along these lines: Hillary was the best The Party, as it was then constructed, could do. (Which is a “to her personal credit but the party’s discredit” sorta thing.)Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Stillwater says:

                Still,

                In terms of lasting conscious animosity for having such a thin field, it’s only a problem if Hillary loses the election.

                But if she does, believe me, there will be plenty of blame to go around, and Hillary herself won;t be spared – nor should she be. She engineered the clear-out as much or more than The Party as such did.Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Chris says:

                Chris, I’d say that the issue isn’t that they’ll all be left blinking at each other in 2024 wondering, ‘Okay, now who’s running?’ It’s just that all the leading candidates will be stuck having left the chance at a good trial run to gain experience at it on the table in 2016 – they’ll all be essentially total neophytes. That’s a loss. Romney ran in ’07 and it was a disaster. He ran in ’12 and it was a smooth operation. I mean, hell, same thing with Clinton. Obama was a once-in-a-generation phenomenon in terms of running a world-beating presidential campaign on a first try.Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Michael Drew says:

                …That being said, it’s perfectly clear why she cleared the field given what a socialist pre-2015 non-Democrat is doing to her in the race that remained. She’s a highly vulnerable (not to say “bad”) candidate, and by now surely understands that. There was no way for her to feel assured that a field filled with people who were supposed to be understudying for future party roles wouldn’t, between them, quickly had her on the outside of the thing trying to get back to the rail – if any of them had had name recognition that was just a little better than Martin O’Malley’s that is.

                In retrospect she was pretty much right to clear it out like she did, if she could, from her perspective as an individual pol. Whether the party was right to go along, that’s another question. It;s looking like we might never find out, since the opposition would have to put up a credible challenger to find out whether going all-in with one candidate like they did was a mistake in this case.

                But you’re right that there are costs beyond just selecting the strongest candidate for this cycle. Developing bench experience at doing this is one cost. I had thought that having a fulsome discussion of policy that defined party thinking on the major issues of the Obama era as another. I do think that the Clinton-Sanders dialogue, while spirited, has been too stilted and not fleshed out enough, since it’s not really a debate among parts of the party at all, but rather a Dem-vs-left-dissident debate. But I’m starting to question whether that is really such a loss going forward for this party, as I’m starting to suspect that the party strategists are moving away from a policy appeal altogether to a demographic/identity appeal going forward. There’s not that much point to getting bogged down in the particular issues of 2016 and the problems of a presidency soon to be part of history when, in the future the party is going to primarily appeal to voters based on who they are, not what the party stands for or really offers them.Report

              • Kim in reply to Michael Drew says:

                Obama knew enough to hire the trolls… and to get them to like him enough to work for him. (that second part is the difference between trolls working for Rubio and working for Sanders).Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Will Truman says:

                Hillary. 2008 wasn’t such a smooth effort; this is, well, I wouldn’t say smooth, but they appear to have the bulldozer approach fully figured out this time.Report

              • Sorry, my comment was unclear. What I meant to say is that Bill had a good first outing, too. So did Carter, though that was a long time ago. But Hillary seems kind of the exception on the Democratic side.Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Will Truman says:

                Bill’s outing was kind of a long, strange trip. Not sure I’d call it “good” in the conventional sense. Sort of meandered around to good eventually. Good enough not to lose, to be sure. Not exactly smooth, though.

                Carter was right-guy-right-time guy, big time. Fresh face when that’s all anyone wanted. Obama too, sort of, though Obama’s skill as campaigner was much more apparent, I think. Can’t actually really speak to how well Carter was prepared for or skilled at it in ’76.

                The larger point isn’t that it’s certainly necessary, though (to have candidates who have been through it). Just that it’s an advantage being left on the table.Report

              • Michael Drew in reply to Michael Drew says:

                I’ll add that the apparent lack of concern with this is another thing that distresses me about the various signals that this primary season on the D side is sending off from my perspective.

                Is the reason that they aren’t concerned about banking experience in winning competitive primaries that there’s a plan in place for there not really to be competitive primaries anymore?

                And, to the extent that primary experience contributes to readiness for general election campaigns, that there is also a plan based in structural and demographic analysis for how the party plans to win presidential elections going forward as well – that it’s basically going to be out of individual candidates hands for the foreseeable future if things go to plan?

                I’m sort of in this whole thing for freewheeling presidential primary fights. Without those, the extent to which there is actually choice being offered at this level of politics in our duopolistic system really drains away very quickly. I realize that’s not news to some, but to me 2004 and 2008 were (I thought) quite formative years in which true choices beyond the broadest of left/right options (whose outcomes are governed structurally anyway) were offered by the parties. 2012 and 2016 on the GOP side as well.

                So I guess there’s more evidence against this than for it. But the lack of choice for Dems this year makes it much harder to buy into the limited amount of choice the system overall offers than I had experienced in previous cycles – because this is the first year I’m aware of in which there really isn’t a competitive primary despite there not being a sitting VP seeking the nomination. Hopefully it’s just a one-off thing where a whole party feels it knows where its bread is buttered (but they don’t all usually act that way, even when they mostly all feel that way!), and perhaps a lot of them feeling that something is owed to someone for very particular reasons (I’m just spitballing now).Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                Which is to say: she’s not the consensus nominee across all demos in the Dem base.

                Women, blacks, Hispanics….whites over 45. That’s a pretty HUGE chunk of the Democratic base, actually.

                White males under 44 is much smaller, and Sanders does seem to win in open caucuses and primaries to boot.

                I mean sure, if you don’t count blacks or women or Hispanics, Clinton’s barely acceptable!Report

              • Kim in reply to Morat20 says:

                Bernie’s winning a lot of young liberal women as well, unsurprisingly enough.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Kim says:

                Ah, well, if he’s winning the 18-24 females (if less than the males), why do we care what the 25+ crowd thinks? There’s just more of them, after all. That’s hardly anything.

                Seriously, Sander’s primary support is young whites and independents. Clinton wins everyone else. So far the only state that’s been different in is Michigan (on the same night when that pattern was held in Mississippi).

                And you can tell Clinton represents more of the Democratic base by the simple fact that she’s clearly winning. I mean you can run the actual vote totals (Clinton has a sizable lead in votes cast), or use delegates (regular, not super) — but in the end, Sanders has a problem called “Having fewer voters” which is, I am afraid to say, a bad sign in an election.

                When you’re reduced to making claims about how things “don’t count” or are “bad signs” (turnout is low! Clinton is only winning in red states! Clinton isn’t winning young whites!), that’s a good sign you’re losing. It was true of Clinton herself in 2008, and it’s true now.

                The people winning just point to votes. Delegate counts. Whatever is used to determine ‘winner’. The people losing make excuses.

                But back to Stillwater’s point — Clinton clearly isn’t the number 1 candidate across all demographics of Democrats. Has there every been a primary candidate that was? (If so, why did they have a primary?)Report

              • Kim in reply to Morat20 says:

                Sanders is losing.
                I’m eating popcorn.
                (Hey! at least I don’t do it in the operating room! I swear to god I know someone who did!)

                When you’re in it for da lulz, there’s plenty of ways to win a campaign!Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Morat20 says:

                Morat, having been down this road with other Clintonist Party Loyalists, I know that you can play this game all day. 🙂Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                Does the “if you think Clinton is winning, you must be a loyalist” thing actually convince anyone?

                I mean I can compare two delegate numbers and determine which is bigger without having to sign a loyalty pledge. Or, strangely, given I didn’t vote for her. Or at all. Despite being a registered Democrat AND being able to locate my polling place.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Morat20 says:

                See? Yer still at it!Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Morat20 says:

                Sort of what I expected, and it terrifies me. I know I’m a nut, but absent Hickenlooper and Franken (who have both said they’re not interested), it’s NE urban corridor and the Rust Belt. As a registered Democrat from elsewhere, I am very, very scared that the national party is on the verge of deciding policy is (almost exclusively) about the needs of states that are no longer growing and are falling apart.Report

              • Kim in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Oh, fuck all! don’t be worried so much, dearest, for today, of all days.

                Worry for 5-10 years from now, when the entire world economy may be in ruins.

                And don’t be so sure we won’t be growing again, soon enough (at least hereabouts… Pittsburgh’s got plenty of room to grow. And next up might very well be detroit.)Report

              • North in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Not interested now is -NOT- the same as not interested then though.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Yeah, I find the sudden claims of “Ex-confederate states shouldn’t count” as surprisingly short sighted. (California was once quite Republican, and the folks running Texas seem to think imitating California might be fun).

                I mean they don’t say “shouldn’t count” they just, you know, don’t think those wins really matter compared to other wins. (The scale shifts, but the one constant is ‘Sanders wins count’ and ‘Sanders losses don’t’).

                Same with the focus on demographics (young! Independents!) with a willful blindness to the concept of “choice” and “sample”. Yes, Sanders is winning with the young and independents! But it’s a primary. That does not mean they won’t vote for Clinton in the fall. It just means that when the choice is “Clinton or Sanders” ONLY they prefer Sanders. (And vice versa).

                You can make good arguments over demographics, but they’re hard — and most people aren’t bothering to do the hard work. And extrapolating from a primary (turnout! Independents!) to a general is a fool’s game.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Michael Cain says:

                I am very, very scared that the national party is on the verge of deciding policy is (almost exclusively) about the needs of states that are no longer growing and are falling apart.

                Well put. And if I was as eloquent as you are I woulda said something similar…

                The presumption that Bernie’s success doesn’t reflect really poorly on the Democratic party is just mystifying to me.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                I’m curious if you feel this is substantially different than any other contested primary? Did Obama winning in 2008 over Clinton reflect poorly on the Party? Kerry in 2004? Gore in 2000?

                When is a primary just a primary, and when is it some apocalyptic struggle for the soul of the party? (I mean Dean sang that sound in 2004).

                Most primaries are contested. 2012 wasn’t because, you know, President running for re-election. But each and every primary has seen a struggle between priorities.

                It’s rare to see a two-person race like this (2008 was pretty unusual too!) but Clinton has a bit of a unique status and so was unopposed but for Sanders.

                (I do like the juxtaposition of “ignoring states that are falling apart” contrasted with the complaining, by some Sanders supporters, that Clinton keeps winning in pointless states like Louisiana and Mississippi — which certainly seem to be falling apart to me.)Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Morat20 says:

                I’m curious if you feel this is substantially different than any other contested primary?

                If you’ve read any of my comments on this topic going back to about three months ago, then you should know the answer to that. Or any of my comments on this thread, in fact.

                But to your point, yes, I think this primary is different.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Stillwater says:

                On the GOP side, I can understand. But on the Democratic side — other than being down to two people from pretty much the get-go, how is this different than a bog-stander insider/outsider fight?

                Complete with the usual demographics represented on both sides?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:

                Back in 2004, I looked at the Democratic field and thought “even though these guys are going to lose, they’re going to have great position in 2008”.

                In 2008, I thought “Holy crap, a Clinton/Obama ticket would own the White House for 16 years!”

                Which is cute, now that I look back on it.

                In 2016, I look at the field and think “holy crap, if they lose this, they’re going to have to rely on the crappiness of the Republicans to win in 2020 instead of the strength of their own politicians…”

                Who knows what the Democrats would look like today if Dean came in 2nd in Iowa…

                Hell, who knows what they’d look like today if Dean had stayed in rather than DWS.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

                I was and remain quite a Dean fan. 🙂

                Not so much DWS, although I doubt her horns and forked tail are quite as prominent as they might sound.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Michael Cain says:

                I am very, very scared that the national party is on the verge of deciding policy is (almost exclusively) about the needs of states that are no longer growing and are falling apart.

                I’m genuinely curious. What sort of needs are they, that are exclusive to these states?

                I mean, Flint and Los Angeles have very different sets of challenges, but the broader issues of de-industrialization, immigration, outsourcing, racism and wealth inequality are not exclusive to the NE corridor or Rust Belt states.Report

              • @chip-daniels
                I wish I could explain this more clearly, as much for my benefit as for others. Certainly my opinion is colored by where I live.

                One part of it is that in the West, post WWII, the Democrats had to become a party of the suburbs. California’s not blue because the D’s win LA and San Francisco; they win a whole bunch of the suburbs of those cities as well. Not just 600,000 people in Portland, but 2,350,000 people in the Portland metro area. Colorado didn’t shift from red to purple/blue this century because the D’s won in Denver — they were already winning in Denver, and Denver didn’t get hugely bigger, but they started winning in the suburbs as well. This has required moderation in policy — not “everyone must live in San Francisco densities without cars”, but “first, cars have to get cleaned up a lot.” California didn’t vote to stop expanding the freeways — they voted that when freeways are expanded, transit has to be included (San Diego has gotten itself caught up in that one).

                My perception — certainly colored by where I’ve lived, and possibly wrong on a bigger scope — is that western cities have a much better working relationship with their suburbs than “back East.”Report

              • Names that are probably going to be very important in 2020/2024.

                Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard, Martin Heinrich, Kasim Reed, Joaquin/Julian Castro, Lucy Flores.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

                That’s a good list, though most of them are babies and really need one more state wide office to play for a spot in the big show. Though that’s fine Clinton’s going to be the top of ticket for this cycle and the next one, giving everyone enough time to get that experience (and/or a cabinet appointment) under their belt.Report

      • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

        Turnouts being deliberately suppressed by Hillary’s team and their incompetence.Report

        • Kolohe in reply to Kim says:

          Incompetence can’t be deliberate, but you knew that.

          Turnouts are being depressed by a baseline in 2008 that’s comparing once in a lifetime enthusiasm for Obama (and disillusion with the Republicans) and is including a bunch of open and mixed primaries where Clinton does have it in the bag while the Republicans are interesting in the fake Chinese proverb sense.Report

          • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

            K,
            Clinton benefits wherever she can get people NOT to turnout. Just let the machine vote, and let her roll on to victory.
            Machine is easy to get to vote, anyhow.

            (except in Pittsburgh, where apathy overcame the machine. A miracle, I tell you!)Report

            • Kolohe in reply to Kim says:

              Alright, how does apathy overcome a diminished machine-driven turnout? Apathy is how the machine works.Report

            • Morat20 in reply to Kim says:

              Let me add my favorite talking point for you — She only wins in ‘ex-confederate’ states. I frequently hear that one right after the turnout one, and it’s just as valid! Because the clear correlation between primary and general turnout (which you have to share, as everything I’ve seen says it’s completely unlinked, as if the primary electorate was a self-selected subset operating under entirely different drivers) is ironclad.

              The South shouldn’t count for the Democratic nomination, obviously. Nor black voters, really. Nor anyplace that turnout was low. You know what, let’s go ahead and make it clear: Wherever Sanders lost, shouldn’t count. They’re not real Democrats or they’re harbingers of disaster.

              I mean that’s what’s really going on. That Darn Clinton keeps winning, and it’s just going to kill the party! Gosh, it’s like it’s 2008 all over again. I suppose it’s pretty ironic — that’s why Obama was supposed to kill the party, per Clinton supporters.Report

          • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

            Incompetence can’t be deliberate???
            Oh, ye of little faith.
            A troll can convince people of many idiotic things, and get them to waste millions of dollars being completely incompetent. But see? That’s engineered.

            You can engineer incompetence by putting the wrong people in place.
            Or simply deliberately failing to catch mistakes that incompetence makes.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

        I’ve been saying that for a long time — about the Democratic party, leastwise. I have no idea what’s going on on the other side other than “fundamental argument”.

        I can point that polling of Democratic voters show both candidates with similar approval and enthusiasm ratings. It’s hard to believe there’s a hardcore anti-Sanders or anti-Clinton vote when both — in the midst of the primary — are hovering in the high 60s in favorability, which is at least some evidence that my personal ambivalence is at least possibly widespread.

        (To be honest, the only argument that might have swayed me is ‘electability’ and the GOP is so crazy right now that it’s both a compelling argument — none of the front-runners over there should be near any lever of power — and uncompelling, because they’re so awful I have a hard time believing they had a chance to win).

        And I might add — my primary came and went, and I didn’t vote for the first time since…well, let’s say many, many cycles.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    Fiorina has just endorsed Cruz… which means that we’ve got Trump/??? or Cruz/Fiorina running on the (R) ticket come November.

    Maybe it’s just my experience working at HP talking but Cruz/Fiorina will get schlonged.Report