You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

So, Biden won by a LOT in South Carolina, and has resurrected his candidacy and pushed two moderates out of the race. (Yes, watch out, the moderates are combining!). That is probably good, because nobody else has managed to take off and we need somebody who has a chance in November, which I maintain Bernie most certainly is not. Once again, there are a lot of very, VERY good reasons why the Republicans so badly want to face Bernie in November and not someone like Biden! On a somewhat related note, it's pretty sad that 78 year old Joe Biden is now the youngest Democratic man running for president -- seriously, what has happened to this party? -- but it's true...

I mean, on policy I'm very much in Warren's camp as I have said before but electability and who has more support matters, and I'm still not sure who I will vote for Tuesday because I don't have any idea what the situation here is now -- like, between the two of them, Biden or Warren, who's stronger in Maine? There is so little polling and the race is so fluid right at the end here, with Buttigieg and Steyer withdrawing, that I have no idea. I expect Bernie to win this state by a good margin but don't know beyond that.

I can say that Bloomberg, of course, has by far the most campaign ads here -- I've gotten multiple mailers and such from him, versus nothing from any other candidate other than a few phone calls. That won't get my support for him though, that's for sure, not with his track record.

Warren was my favorite for a long time, but I can't deal with this kind of dishonesty. At a time when we're reaching an epistemological crisis in this country's politics, where both sides are engaged with an enitrely different reality, we need leaders that are champions of truth and honesty. Ugh.

She's not being dishonest about why she's still in the race at least, at this point her only route to victory is a contested convention and then being picked because nobody else can agree. It's a pretty unlikely case but there has to be some tiny chance of it happening.

Well, unless you believe that it's all a conspiracy and she's only staying in to hurt Bernie, but while not totally impossible I doubt it. She still has the money to stay in and wants to stay in.

Buttigieg quit the race because he had no path to victory in any states and decided that leaving was the right thing to do in order to make it a little harder for Bernie to win, since he doesn't want that. Klobuchar is staying in in order to take votes away from Bernie in Minnesota, pretty much, probably; she's probably out after Tuesday. I mean, she'd say she's staying in because she has a chance at winning her home state and that is true, but she won't be doing very well anywhere else. It's a bit like Kasich in the Republican primary in 2016, staying in just to win in Ohio... but if she's also staying in to hurt Bernie that would make sense, like Biden and Buttigieg she surely does not want him as our nominee.

As for Bloomberg, though, at this point all he does by staying in is make it much easier for Bernie to win. If he actually wanted to stop Bernie he'd withdraw tomorrow and endorse Biden, but he won't, so... as I said, that will help Bernie. Oh well, at least there is some consolidation.

Due to his age and centricism I am far from enthused by Biden, but he's a nice guy who means well and probably will be a totally alright President, and if he can win and stop Trump that's enough... I mean, if Bernie actually could win, hadn't been in control of a campaign so awful to Hillary in 2016, wasn't connected to so many problematic people, and had better plans for actually accomplishing his goals instead of just stating them, etc, etc, Bernie would be a great President with obviously much better policies in a lot of ways that Biden, but he has none of those things. And he has the Republican attack machine weight hanging over his head the moment he potentially gets nominated, which will rapidly decrease his approval ratings once they start it up. The anti-Biden attack machine is already in full operation, that's why Trump was impeached after all, because he's much more scared of losing to Biden in November.

Seriously though, both of them are in their late 70s and it sure would have been nice if we had come up with some younger top candidates, but as has been clear all along this year we have a somewhat weak field. I just hope it's enough...

I disagree with the notion that the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries, though. Certainly Hillary had the advantage with DNC backing. But like it or not, she won by 3.7 million more votes, and no DNC advantage could have given her that kind of sway. Even without superdelegates involved, Hillary won more pledged delegates by a comfortable margin (447, if I'm reading the results correctly). I know there was debate chicanery going on, like the DNC setting primary debates on days that would get less viewers, and Hillary being given some questions in advance. But still... 3.7 million? Pretty sure only political nerds watch primary debates, anyway.

Nothing in the 2016 primaries was rigged, Bernie just had a pretty much whites-only coalition and lost because he had minimal minority support. And then after it was obvious he could not win, Bernie stayed in the race for no reason anyway, all the way to the convention, pretty much only to create hard feelings among his faithful and make it harder for Hillary to win in the end... or something, but that was the effect! And yea, superdelegates had nothing to do with who won beyond the usual edge that getting endorsements brings, which is often not much in most cases.

In 2020 Bernie has improved on that with latinos, but his numbers with black people are still very low, as we saw in South Carolina.

(I am still not convinced that there was not any vote rigging in the 2016 general election, but that's a different story... that was a tiny, tiny margin in the three key states that won it for Trump, quite unlike what won Hillary the primary nomination.)

and these dishonest claims like that Sanders loved Superdelegates back in 2016... well there's direct video showing the opposite

Sanders, like everyone else running for President, has a position on superdelegates and the convention rules that are entirely based on what their current status is in the race. So, in 2016 he stayed in the race after his victory was impossible with a goal (which he failed to achieve) of forcing a contested convention or winning with the superdelegates at the convention, regardless of who had more votes, which was Clinton by a lot. Now, he's saying that no the convention should nominate the person with the most votes regardless of what the rules say. Everybody just says the thing that helps them make their case for victory, Bernie included.

Aaaand today they're claiming Sanders is praising Castro. That's rather dishonestly representing what the interviewer was talking about. The interviewer wasn't asking "Do you think Castro had some good points?", he was comparing a democratic socialist revolution (though social democracy is a more accurate term for what the progressives want, but whatever) to Cuba of all things and saying "Do you want us like CUBA?!" and of course, in THAT context Sanders is going to point out that Cuba has some good social welfare programs.

Any other Democrat would have couched that praise in much, MUCH more criticism than Bernie did, that is the problem. Well, that and that you can't say good things about Castro if you want to have any chance of winning in Florida. Are Bernie's points right? On those specific issues, sure. But did he really need to praise awful dictators?