AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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OscarGuy
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

Post by OscarGuy »

As a quick note...you are correct, but everything I've heard suggests that Obama is going to be breaking with tradition and actively campaigning for his successor. That's a fact I'm not sure about as I also heard it second (or third) hand.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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So, I heard someone point this out today:

FDR died in office, Truman, in 1952, was too unpopular to offer help to the Democratic candidate. Kennedy died in office. Johnson, in 1968, was toxic. Carter was defeated for re-election in 1980. Gore stupidly thought he had to distance himself from Clinton, and shunned him during the campaign in 2000.

Which means that this is the first time in the history of the modern (post-New Deal) Democratic party that a candidate will have the luxury of a popular Democratic president campaigning for him.

(And, with this, maybe it's time to abandon this thread, and return to the Election 2016 thread for further campaign updates.)
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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And, as everyone presumably knows by now, the bigger news is that Pres. Obama has endorsed Hillary -- officially signalling the party is on board, and the general election match-up is finally underway.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

Post by Greg »

Bernie Sanders to Campaign Through DC Primary, but Vows to Work With Hillary Clinton:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bernie-s ... d=39719810
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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I don't wish to get into a detailed argument, because it will go nowhere, but for the record I wholeheartedly disagree with Sanders' analysis on race and economic inequality. Not that he's wholly wrong, but it's taken to the farthest extreme. I'm suspicious of any theory that denies the concept of racism its own autonomy.

But there's no point arguing because we are united in our quest to defeat Donald Trump. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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The caucuses, which I've been railing against all season, are far more democratically bankrupt than superdelegates. Unless you have hours to waste arguing with other people (it's not a debate if neither side refuses to budge or concede), you aren't going to go to a caucus. I think the Dakotas are a prime example of what can happen, but so too were Nebraska and Washington, both of which held caucuses that went to Sanders and later held pointless primaries where Clinton handily won. I suspect that, had all the states had primaries instead of caucuses, the rout would have been more extreme.

Yes, social issues are important, but what good does it do to give blacks, Hispanics, gays and women equal treatment under the law if you're going to allow corporatocracy destroy their livelihoods. I may not agree with how Sanders handled the campaign season, but he's right in many things, including: to help drive equality for those minorities (and majority since women are in the majority), economic equality is a key to that. Blacks have equal rights under the law. Muslims have equal rights under the law. Women have equal rights under the law. Hispanics have equal rights under the law. Gays don't have equal rights under the law, but we're getting there. The problem is that Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and Women still face demonization or even discrimination, especially from religious and some corporate structures.

Look at Jesus Chicken and Snobby Lobby. They were allowed to discriminate based on religion even though each are public operations, even if privately held. The Koch Brothers would likewise run ramshod over those who disagreed with their ability to use arcane trickery and deceit to make more money at the expense of those who work for or around them. It's only the laws, and education and the judiciary that keep this kind of thing in check. Favoring liberal social issues while championing extreme conservative economic issues, especially a rejection of globalization, is not only dangerous, it's more dangerous than people give it credit for because of those pro-equality social issues.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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Heksagon wrote:A significant reason why the Democratic Primary appeared to be closer than what it deserved to be is the causus system. It's ridiculous how much the caucuses favored Sanders.
That was more obvious than ever yesterday with the Dakotas. Two demographically identical states which produced dramatically different results solely because one used a primary and the other a caucus.
Mister Tee wrote: Probably no one but me cares about this, but I point to any sign that Lichtman's rigorous system just doesn't seem the right way to measure this year.
Well, if there is anyone that could disrupt Lichtman's system that's certainly The Donald.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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A significant reason why the Democratic Primary appeared to be closer than what it deserved to be is the causus system. It's ridiculous how much the caucuses favored Sanders.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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Libertarians aren't necessarily more conservative, or, put better, consistently more conservative. On matters of economics or civil rights, yes, for sure...but on matters of sexual morality, or use of the military, not at all. As Samantha Bee put it when she interviewed Johnson the other night, "I completely agree with every other thing you say".

The history of even successful third-party runs is they do less well in November than they poll in Spring or summer. Anderson ended up in 6-7% range, but there was a time when he was polling 20%. Perot actually led polls in June, over 30%, making his still impressive 19% on Election Day pale a bit. And the third-party candidacies of Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace in 1948, which had been thought to doom Truman's bid, faded to a combined 4.5%, enabling the famous miracle comeback.

I think right now, with Sanders fan resentment not having cooled, third party numbers are likely inflated. Johnson may still do better than most libertarians, but that I think will come almost all at the expense of Trump in the end -- there are too many prominent Republicans who just can't bring themselves to vote for him.

It's still too soon to be certain of the margin in CA, but clearly Clinton won there, as well as SD, NJ & NM; she even did better than anticipated in MT -- leading one to think Democrats as a whole decided it was time to wrap this up. Sanders may take a little while to bow to reality, but the treatment he's getting from Obama/Biden/Warren, while gentle and careful, will not indulge any "carry it forward" fantasies.

Nate Cohn, a good analyst, said NJ last night was something of an archetypal primary for this season: delegate-rich, won in a rout by Clinton, and utterly ignored by the press, The press spent most of its time this year covering won/loss situations: focusing on close outcomes or upsets like MI, while the name of the game was delegates. But Clinton's runaway totals in the Southern and mid-Atlantic states were what decided the race. (MI, an even delegate split, was an utter non-factor.)

Keeping up with my "what if the races were winner-take-all" survey: Clinton would be winning 3050-952 -- an utter blowout, even before super-delegates. In a modified winner-take-all (giving all delegates to anyone getting 60% or more), Clinton's lead would be about 2500-1500. Add Clinton's super-delegates to that, and you get 2/3 -- which fits Lichtman's criterion. Probably no one but me cares about this, but I point to any sign that Lichtman's rigorous system just doesn't seem the right way to measure this year.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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I'm just worried that people are going to vote Libertarian without realizing just how dangerous their platform is. They want to do away with public education. They want to turn over most government functions to private corporations. They're like the Republicans, but worse. They are truly the "Me" party.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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I mention this only because the Libertarian party has been on my mind ever since an old High School girlfriend of mine became a delegate this year. One of the perks of growing up in Arizona. Invariably, you're going to date someone that the Republican party isn't conservative enough for.

Several publications are polling Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party somewhere been 10 and 15%. This is a huge number for the party, and a story that the media is slowly picking up: "Two candidates that are so despised that an unknown governor from New Mexico could get over ten million votes." I don't buy it as remotely possible for a few reasons. One of them seems to be that independent candidates only seem to succeed when they are larger than their party. Candidates like Theodore Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette, George Wallace, and Ross Perot were giant egos with a party more or less custom-fit around their personalities (with LaFollette it didn't exactly happen like that, but close enough). Even John Anderson had a strong constituency against discontent for Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, he got some debate time (not against Carter and Reagan), and he only walked away with 6-7% of the vote.

Gary Johnson has the personality of a Gary Johnson, which puts him more in line with Ralph Nader, someone who's more or less running for the party. Third party candidates who can't win have to compete with not only fear of a greater evil winning but also just staying home. He isn't going to be allowed to debate. He'll probably triple his results from 2012 and walk away with 3% if he's lucky.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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Sonic Youth wrote:OK, NOW would've been an acceptable time to release that news item... :p
Agreed. The Clinton campaign opted to act as if they needed NJ, so not that much harm was done. But it was a pointless intrusion.

This has turned out to be one of Hillary's best nights. An upset win in SD (where demos projected a 15-point Sanders win) and a way-closer-than-anticipated race in Montana, along with the expected huge NJ margin. CA is hard to be sure of, given how early vote and day-of-vote returns are broken out, but most analysts think it'd be very hard for Sanders to come back given the numbers at this hour, and the more likely outcome is Clinton by a significant margin.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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OK, NOW would've been an acceptable time to release that news item... :p
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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OscarGuy wrote:I think we should get rid of Caucuses first. They are far more undemocratic than superdelegates.
Ban Caucuses AND superdelegates AND regular delegates AND the Electoral College. Get rid of them all. Also, ban campaign road signs for good measure, for no reason other than I really don't like them.
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Re: AP, ABC & NBC have decalred Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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No one was happy about this AP/NBC call last night. For the Clinton camp, it was the equivalent of a baseball team winning the division via the second place team losing -- yeah, you still get to pour the champagne, but you want the celebration to start on the field. And for the most dead-ender-y of the Sanders people, it reinforces all their imaginary feelings of persecution. Some are even claiming AP did this specifically to help Clinton -- because the press has been so in the tank for Clinton all along./incredulous snark. They evidently didn't read any of the stories all afternoon about how the Clinton campaign KNEW they had enough super-delegates to put them over the top, but the specifically asked them NOT to declare, because they wanted to be pushed over via the legitimacy of the NJ vote tonight. A combination of "me! ask me!" narcissism from some supers combined with the media's insatiable need for "FIrst!" created this -- so, of course, let's blame Hillary for it.

I'm not sure it's so much that super-delegates are a horrendous idea -- as Magilla says, the GOP would love to have them right this minute, and Dems would have felt the same had John Edwards been their candidate in Fall '08. The problem is, the party doesn't seem to know what to do with them, other than ratify the pledged delegate count, and the fact that there are so many of them -- over 700 -- makes it almost impossible, absent a Gore/Bradley blowout, for any candidate to reach a convention majority without them, which enables fantasies of overturning the primary results like the Sanders camp has been feeding its more gullible supporters.

Super-delegates were created in a moment of pique -- not, as many assert, in reaction to the McGovern disaster (Congressional Democrats actually survived that intact), but to the Carter failed re-election, which cost Dems the Senate for the first time since the 50s and ideological control of the House. Feeling then was, hey, we barely knew this guy Carter four years ago, and we should have had more say in whether he got the nomination in '76. Recall: this was a long time ago, when primaries as determinative for the nomination was a pretty new concept (Humphrey in '68 hadn't even run in the primaries, and, though JFK in '60 had won a few of them, it was the party leaders that gave him most of his support). But as years have passed, and voters have become accustomed to being sole arbiters of the party candidate, the concept feels more musty and un-democratic all the time.

It doesn't even matter this year: Clinton has won easily, by any measure, even with Sanders' advantages from caucuses and open primaries. But it leaves an opening for the Sanders camp to gripe, and for the press to continue (up till last night) to pretend this contest wasn't settled in March or April.

Can we just finish this up and get on to annihilating Trump, who seems determined to make his convention even more contentious despite having no credible GOP opponent?
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