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US Politics - Primary Numbers


Mlle. Zabzie

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9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Touche.

To be more to the point, it's less about the party and more about the candidates staying in and being viable. Trump had a major lead in delegates to the point where there was literally no possible way for Cruz to win at a certain point, and it wasn't very close - but a lot of that happened early on and with pluralities. That doesn't happen in the dem system, and as a result candidates can stay viable for a lot longer - and the party doesn't apparently have much of a say. This is honestly less of a problem if it's Sanders as the frontrunner because other Dems are far less likely to stick around to make a valiant, Pyrrhic point. They would consider falling on their sword or pledging their delegates to someone else who would work. 

I'll have to play with some models on this, but off the top of my head unless Sanders (or really, anyone else) gets something like 40% of the total delegates from Super Tuesday it'll be a major mess. 

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1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

I'll have to play with some models on this, but off the top of my head unless Sanders (or really, anyone else) gets something like 40% of the total delegates from Super Tuesday it'll be a major mess. 

Agreed, but I'd put it a little lower than 40.  Maybe 35?  In, like, the limited history of Super Tuesday, there's always been a clear winner coming out of it but one, and that winner always ends up the nominee.  The one would be Obama in 2008 - that was razor thin in both popular and delegate count - but, he racked up an insurmountable delegate advantage in the states immediately after Super Tuesday. 

Anyway, yes, if no candidate has achieved clear separation, and/or hit that 35% upon the Super Tuesday results - I will start singing your tune.  It's just very unlikely someone hasn't staked out being the clear frontrunner in the aftermath of Super Tuesday.  Be very surprised if it isn't clear by then, even this time with all the weird factors - e.g. Steyer may complicate the SC vote, even though he's otherwise entirely inconsequential.

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'Really shocking': Trump's meddling in Stone case stuns Washington
Alarmed veterans of the Justice Department said the legal system was entering uncharted territory.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/12/trump-roger-stone-justice-department-114684

Quote

 

President Donald Trump’s post-impeachment acquittal behavior is casting a chill in Washington, with Attorney General William Barr emerging as a key ally in the president’s quest for vengeance against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine investigations.

In perhaps the most tumultuous day yet for the Justice Department under Trump, four top prosecutors withdrew on Tuesday from a case involving the president’s longtime friend Roger Stone after senior department officials overrode their sentencing recommendation—a backpedaling that DOJ veterans and legal experts suspect was influenced by Trump’s own displeasure with the prosecutors’ judgment.

“With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions … you can be almost 100 percent certain that there’s something improper going on,” said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.


The president has only inflamed such suspicions, congratulating Barr on Wednesday for intervening in Stone’s case and teeing off hours later on the prosecutors, calling them “Mueller people” who treated Stone “very badly.”

The president said he had not spoken with Barr about the matter, but Ayer called the attorney general’s apparent intervention “really shocking,” because Barr “has now entered into the area of criminal sanction, which is the one area probably more than any other where it’s most important that the Justice Department’s conduct be above reproach and beyond suspicion.”

 

 

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So calculator wise, if Sanders ended up with 35% of the super tuesday haul and the current polling for SC and Nevada, he'd end up with about 622 delegates. If the other contenders ended up with 15% each, they'd have around 230 or so. A 390 delegate lead is pretty great, especially given places like California and Texas are out, but it isn't insurmountable depending. And that's assuming that everyone got 15% - if you have Biden or Bloomberg get 25% or so, it'd only be a 200 delegate lead. 

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1 hour ago, Ice Queen said:

You do realize that when Trump says he's not leaving and drops anvil sized hints about 3rd terms, and when Pence blatantly says that Pelosi may well be the last Speaker of the House for a very long time...they're not kidding? You do know that, right?

Yes, that's precisely what Pence meant.  Soon there is going to be no Congress for unspecified but very long time, until there's a Congress again.  No one is really sure about how it's going to go down, but clearly it's now going to happen.  That he might have misspoke just isn't possible as your interpretation makes total absolute sense.  :rolleyes:

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So more interesting, at least to me, is that after Super Tuesday a total of 38% of the total delegates will have been allocated, meaning 62% are left.

If someone had 625 delegates, in order to capture the nomination no matter what on the first ballot, they would need to get 1365 more delegates out of the 2467 left. Or, they'd have to average 55% throughout the rest of the election. That's not too bad!

If someone had only 200 delegates, they'd have to get 72% throughout. Ouch. Probably not feasible unless you're wanting to act as a spoiler. 

400 delegates? 64%. Also likely unfeasible. 

So what would it take to be below 60%? Around 540 delegates. Or close to 32% of the rest of the delegates going out. 

Now, here's the bad news. While there's very little chance of that actually happening, a 60% requirement is something that a lot of candidates will stick out. If it's Sanders, he'd probably do even more. That means that the race will likely be entirely decided, but the race will also keep going for like fucking ever unless everyone bows out at once. And the more that happens, the more likely we'll get no one with enough votes on the first ballot, because it's really hard to hit 55% when there are multiple vaguely viable candidates.

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9 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Rampant hypocrisy does go down a lot smoother when the media is ideologically aligned and will you give you cover.  Am I reading your post correctly that her dishonesty is a feature?

No if anything Bernie is the one who is being dishonest; neither of them actually want to abolish capitalism (at least on their stated platforms). Yet Bernie wants to play this quixotic game of calling himself a democratic socialist when advocating for social democracy. The average older American likes capitalism and dislikes socialism, so why identify  with a word that polls so poorly, when your not actually advocating for that thing?

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1 hour ago, Darzin said:

No if anything Bernie is the one who is being dishonest; neither of them actually want to abolish capitalism (at least on their stated platforms). Yet Bernie wants to play this quixotic game of calling himself a democratic socialist when advocating for social democracy. The average older American likes capitalism and dislikes socialism, so why identify  with a word that polls so poorly, when your not actually advocating for that thing?

I wonder if he used to be an actual democratic socialist decades ago and for whatever reason clings to the label even though his policies are now social democracy.

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4 hours ago, Darzin said:

No if anything Bernie is the one who is being dishonest; neither of them actually want to abolish capitalism (at least on their stated platforms). Yet Bernie wants to play this quixotic game of calling himself a democratic socialist when advocating for social democracy. The average older American likes capitalism and dislikes socialism, so why identify  with a word that polls so poorly, when your not actually advocating for that thing?

 

3 hours ago, dornishpen said:

I wonder if he used to be an actual democratic socialist decades ago and for whatever reason clings to the label even though his policies are now social democracy.

Both of these strike me as pretty unfair. It's possible to be a socialist in the sense of ultimately wanting to see see a system other than capitalism, whilst also believing that the process of achieving that is going to be the work of generations, one policy or institution at a time. He's an incrementalist, not a revolutionist, but I don't see any reason to doubt that his desire for a different system is sincere.

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33 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

 

Both of these strike me as pretty unfair. It's possible to be a socialist in the sense of ultimately wanting to see see a system other than capitalism, whilst also believing that the process of achieving that is going to be the work of generations, one policy or institution at a time. He's an incrementalist, not a revolutionist, but I don't see any reason to doubt that his desire for a different system is sincere.

Perhaps but that's one the reasons I don't want to support him I don't want a socialist system even a democratic one I want humane capitalism healthcare for all, universal childcare, six months of leave for having a child, for both a mother and a father, affordable education, labor rights all that good stuff, but I fundamentally believable in a capitalist economy of private enterprise. I almost included in my original post that if there was say a vote to abolish capitalism I doubt Bernie would vote against, but it didn't flow. I used to be a huge Bernie fan and defend him by saying he just wants to make the US like Sweden, which he does in his platform, but well I'd rather put my support behind a capitalist. I will of course vote for Bernie in the primary but I do have a hard time defending some of his positions and labels in an intellectually consistent way, words mean things, and Bernie is old enough to know that. 

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12 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

None of the moderates have incentive to drop out, however, which means that Sanders could very likely keep winning. And the vote will be split even further when Bloomberg enters the race.

Well, yea, that’s what’s making me wet the bed about this- I am totally in agreement that he looks the likeliest to take it.   It’s no secret that I’m not in love with Sanders as a candidate (though, in a vacuum, his agenda is only my second choice after Warren). My real issue with Sanders is his electability in the general.  I’m fully for bringing out the youth vote and people who normally don’t vote.  My fear is that these people are notoriously unreliable voters, and that they aren’t spread out geographically to win the game the way the much more ambivalent suburban bloc is.  And I believe the suburban bloc is more likely to show up and vote, sometimes for the other guy.  On top of that, I know it’s still early, but so far Sanders’ needed ability to expand the electorate isn’t coming to fruition yet.  It also looks like the vast majority of democrats want the other lane based on the results so far.

If the winner of the general was based on popular vote, I’d be here for that, I could much more easily get behind Sanders, who I have no doubt would beat Trump on those terms.   If this was a lower stakes election, I’d also be approaching this much differently.    

There doesn’t even need to be some absurd soshulism narrative to get the suburbs (or anyone who is fairly comfortable, complacent or ambivalent about politics) against this guy.    The fact that he’ll simply raise their taxes is likely enough to curb a lot of these voters’ enthusiasm to vote blue no matter who.  I also worry that his name on the top of the ticket will hurt downballot candidates in a number of areas.   And again, his age and health are disastrous liabilities that I really do not think are worth the risk to go through this particular election.

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