22nd February 2016, 6:09 PM
Yeah, DJ, FiveThirtyEight is a great site. I've visited it every so often ever since it first opened. Nate Silver, the guy who runs it, is not perfect -- he was very doubtful of Trump, for one, and Trump keeps doing well -- but his statistical analysis of the polls is some of the best out there.
Additionally, we know most everything the Republicans will throw at Hillary. They've been attacking her for decades now due to their obsessive hate for her and Bill, and continue to. We'll hear Benghazi, emails, etc, etc, again and again. Hillary is EVIL!, as my right-wing aunt said years ago... So, when you look at Hillary v. Republican numbers, you see real matchups. But Bernie? Republicans are being very careful to not say much of anything against him. This results in good numbers for him in Bernie v. Republicans polls, since he's not being attacked on the things that the Republicans will hit him on if he's nominated. "Bernie will raise your taxes massively!" "Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union!" "Bernie calls himself a socialist!" Etc. Once those attacks get out there Bernie's numbers tank, but Hillary can't attack him for the things the Republicans will, she needs his voters in November! And the Republicans won't attack him now, they badly want the easier matchup. Bernie can't win, nationally, in November. It'd be a blowout loss for the Democrats, and especially for the Supreme Court, we NEED this win.
As for 'dirty', both campaigns are guilty of some excesses, but Bernie's have been worse. That 'impersonating union members' thing in Nevada wasn't good, the time when his people exploited a hole and got access to Hillary's VoteBuilder database was REALLY bad, his fans have harassed people who support Hillary online, etc. That harrassment has even happened here in Maine: http://www.pressherald.com/2016/02/19/so...delegates/ Anyway, Lewis didn't slander Bernie... he said he didn't see him, which he probably didn't. Bernie was just one face in the crowd, while Lewis was one of the top leaders of the Civil Rights movement.
As for Citizen's United, though, Hillary has said that she'd have a 'you must say you'd overturn Citizen's United' litmus test on Supreme Court nominees. I absolutely believe her on this because there is a LOT more money flooding from corporations into the Republican Party than the Democrats, so regardless of what you think of her so-called "corruption", it would be very much in our partys' interests to cut corporate spending on elections. It's also the right thing to do, of course.
For debates, that was an issue before Iowa, but after that the next few debates have been on weekdays, instead of only Saturday nights, and they added at least one or two more than previously scheduled. There it was the DNC, not Hillary, making those choices; Hillary actually agreed to the New Hampshire debate before Bernie, for example. He at first wanted to hold out until she agreed to a debate in New York, but she wanted one in Flint, Michigan instead, and I think that's what's going to happen. Anyway, yes, more debates would be good, I agree, but I don't blame Hillary for how few there are; that's on Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the current DNC head.
And of course, the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into near-untouchable majorities in many statehouses and state House of Representatives delegations. No matter how strong the appeal, winning back the House this year would be an insanely difficult task due to their gerrymandered 'majority'. Our best hope is the redistricting after the 2020 election, but even then, who knows... unless we get more court cases against gerrymandering, I'm pessimistic on the Democrats' chances of winning the House, or state legislatures, in large part because of gerrymandering. It is possible and we need to try to do it, but it'll be really hard. This country badly needs fair electoral districts, not partisan ones...
As for why he hasn't won black people, one part is because they like the Clintons, but more importantly, his economics-focused message is insufficient. Hillary had a very strong closing in one of the more recent debates when she said that if we fixed income inequality today then racism, sexism, other forms of discrimination, etc. would all still exist. Bernie's answer to racial discrimination is mostly economic, and minorities, blacks especially, know that that won't be enough.
Weltall Wrote:The world is ending. I am officially to the left of ABF!That is a pretty insane thing if you look back at the early years of this site, yes... :wow:
Quote:That's rite. I'm 100% Feeling the Bern as the kids say. My wife and I have donated money multiple times and I'm going to try my hand at phonebanking.But if you watch or listen to him talk, in any debate, speech, etc, his obsessive focus on banking is extremely clear. Almost everything turns back to the banks if he can come up with an excuse... and while it is important, it is not the only issue. And on most other major issues Hillary is clearly better. She has a MUCH better foreign policy platform, for one of the biggest differences; Bernie clearly just doesn't care as much about foreign policy, which is a big problem for me since I consider foreign policy very important. "I agree with Hillary, but she was wrong on Iraq in 2002" is his constant refrain on foreign policy, and reminding us of her biggest foreign policy mistake (and one done because the Bush Administration lied to her over and over on many issues, in order to get votes for something they wanted regardless of the truth; yes, I, and Bernie, did not believe Bush, but it IS true that the administration lied a lot to get that bill through.) is not enough to outweigh her much more complete, better look at America's foreign policy problems today... as she pretty much says in the debates. She also points out that Obama won in part on the Iraq thing and then chose her for State, and yes, that is also a good point for her; it shows Obama trusted her with foreign policy, despite their disagreement on Iraq.
Because, he's definitely not a one-issue candidate. He's loudest about his economic policies, and let's face it: people who are chained to the ground by systematic poverty can never hope to break free of all the other chains. It's sad, but true.
What's not true is the 'one issue' meme. Not even slightly. Here are some others you'll almost always hear come up in any given public speech:
An end to the War on Drugs (and a reminder that it disproportionately targets minority populations)
Removal of cannabis from the controlled substance schedule list + decriminalization
An end to private prisons (and a reminder that we have a higher prison population than any other country on Earth)
Amnesty + a path to citizenship
Strong support for efforts to battle climate change
Champions alternative energy sources (often solar)
An end to police brutality
Demilitarizing police forces
Unconditional support for a woman's right to choose to have an abortion
Insists that health care is a fundamental human right
As is college education
Proponent for campaign finance reform, of public funding for elections, and the abolishment of Citizens United
The restoration of the Voting Rights Act
Supports measures to end discrimination against LGBTQ people in schools, workplaces and in the public sector
Abolish the death penalty
Against police action use of military force, favors military intervention only as a part of an international coalition
Against the War on Terror and unilateral military operations
Against free trade agreements of any kind
Against pervasive government surveillance programs
Against Patriot Act
Strong proponent of Social Security expansion
Proponent of major infrastructure investments in transportation, energy and other sectors
Proponent of net neutrality
Quote:I do not think that Clinton will fare well against Donald Trump in the general election. Imagine the nightmare of Clinton being attacked from the left and the right, except you won't have to. Donald will be able to attack her (and credibly) on issues like SuperPACs and corruption, plus her pro-Iraq War vote, all the while rallying the racists and the bigots as he has been doing all along. She has very high unfavorable ratings (which have proven to be murder in general elections), and nothing will help glue the fractured GOP back together (even if for one final presidential campaign) than the prospect of finally defeating Clinton once and for all, as she is a supremely hated figure on the right. And, independents (who are considerably larger in number than affiliates of either party) are vastly more comfortable with Sanders than Clinton. Clinton has the support of registered Democrats... a shrinking cohort that can't win an election by itself.Clinton won't be attacked from the left in the general election, or at least, not credibly. Trump has his own Iraq War vulnerabilities too, for instance, since we now know that before it started he said some positive things about it, before turning against it later. Hillary was somewhat similar on that regard. Sure, he'll lie repeatedly to make himself look better, but he does that all the time -- and Hillary certainly won't just take it, she'll fight back. Bernie would have a harder time dealing with someone like Trump, I think. Also, I'm sure Trump will hit her on SuperPACs, but Republican SuperPACs will not sit the election out, so that'll look hypocritical. They are not supporting him one bit now, but if he gets nominated, they'll be for him.
Additionally, we know most everything the Republicans will throw at Hillary. They've been attacking her for decades now due to their obsessive hate for her and Bill, and continue to. We'll hear Benghazi, emails, etc, etc, again and again. Hillary is EVIL!, as my right-wing aunt said years ago... So, when you look at Hillary v. Republican numbers, you see real matchups. But Bernie? Republicans are being very careful to not say much of anything against him. This results in good numbers for him in Bernie v. Republicans polls, since he's not being attacked on the things that the Republicans will hit him on if he's nominated. "Bernie will raise your taxes massively!" "Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union!" "Bernie calls himself a socialist!" Etc. Once those attacks get out there Bernie's numbers tank, but Hillary can't attack him for the things the Republicans will, she needs his voters in November! And the Republicans won't attack him now, they badly want the easier matchup. Bernie can't win, nationally, in November. It'd be a blowout loss for the Democrats, and especially for the Supreme Court, we NEED this win.
Quote:Furthermore, Clinton depresses voter turnout. It's been the case in each primary so far. Sanders set an all-time record for New Hampshire votes received, even though turnout was down something like 30% from 2008. Clearly, low turnout wasn't his fault. Her message is not inspiring, and what's worse, her campaign is simply dirty as fuck. She's personally been spreading false memes about Sanders, and she's having surrogates, famed civil rights icons, slandering Bernie Sanders (how about John Lewis trying to imply that Bernie Sanders wasn't involved in the Civil Rights marches!?).None of this is true. For turnout, Bernie was hoping for better turnout than we have been seeing so far. This is why he's lost two of the three states so far. He won New Hampshire because demographically it is one of his best states, and he was the well-known longtime senator and congressman from the next state over, and also did well in Iowa, another one of his best states demographically (very white, decent education level in the Democratic voting base), but he needed Nevada to show that he could expand his base beyond that, but instead we saw Hillary's broader appeal won the day, thankfully. I'd say that Hillary and Bernie are both inspiring to some people, but not to others. Hillary is particularly inspiring to 30+ women, Bernie to younger men.
As for 'dirty', both campaigns are guilty of some excesses, but Bernie's have been worse. That 'impersonating union members' thing in Nevada wasn't good, the time when his people exploited a hole and got access to Hillary's VoteBuilder database was REALLY bad, his fans have harassed people who support Hillary online, etc. That harrassment has even happened here in Maine: http://www.pressherald.com/2016/02/19/so...delegates/ Anyway, Lewis didn't slander Bernie... he said he didn't see him, which he probably didn't. Bernie was just one face in the crowd, while Lewis was one of the top leaders of the Civil Rights movement.
Quote:And, she's corrupt. She won't release transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, almost 90% of her fundraising comes from wealthy donors maxing out, she takes full advantage of Citizens' United and has no interest whatsoever in solving problems of income inequality or corruption in government. The DNC has been limiting debates to deny Sanders national exposure, and has lifted bans on SuperPAC money so as to give Clinton a fundraising advantage.She is no more corrupt than most any other politician; that is to say, sure, people give her money, but they may or may not get what they want from it. A lot of those same corporations gave Obama money, and he did some things they don't like such as the banking reform bill. It would be nice if she'd release the text of those speeches, but I'm sure we'd learn that they are quite innocuous and have nothing "corrupting" in them. But beyond that, Hillary has gone pretty far left during this campaign, you know. She's got a solid banking-reform plan, steps to improve health care, etc. Certainly some of her policy statements have been in response to Bernie, but that's why he's in this race, to move her to the left. I was quite happy when she came out against the TPP, for example...
As for Citizen's United, though, Hillary has said that she'd have a 'you must say you'd overturn Citizen's United' litmus test on Supreme Court nominees. I absolutely believe her on this because there is a LOT more money flooding from corporations into the Republican Party than the Democrats, so regardless of what you think of her so-called "corruption", it would be very much in our partys' interests to cut corporate spending on elections. It's also the right thing to do, of course.
For debates, that was an issue before Iowa, but after that the next few debates have been on weekdays, instead of only Saturday nights, and they added at least one or two more than previously scheduled. There it was the DNC, not Hillary, making those choices; Hillary actually agreed to the New Hampshire debate before Bernie, for example. He at first wanted to hold out until she agreed to a debate in New York, but she wanted one in Flint, Michigan instead, and I think that's what's going to happen. Anyway, yes, more debates would be good, I agree, but I don't blame Hillary for how few there are; that's on Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the current DNC head.
Quote:All this runs the significant risk of alienating Sanders supporters come November, and she's screwed if that happens.This always happens, though, and almost always the party unites. There have been instances where party infighting helped damage the party in November, such as the Democrats in 1968, but those are rare. Bernie has said he'll support the Democratic nominee, and of course Hillary would do the same if he manages to win. I'm sure she'd campaign for him, and I hope that he will for her -- that kind of thing goes a long way to heal these wounds. The Republican Party has much bigger problems on this regard right now than the Democrats do, of course, with how many people in their party hate their current front-runner and likely nominee, Donald Trump! At least most Democrats are okay with both of our candidates.
Quote:We need a candidate who will inspire voters to not just vote for a president every four years, but to replace the GOP in state houses, legislatures, governor's mansions and Congress. Bernie Sanders repeatedly maintains that it's not about him, and he can't do it alone. It's true. We need an energized, motivated base of voters. What do we have now? A Party that has basically given up all hope of ever dislodging Republicans from Congress, who puts up weak candidates who are afraid to be progressive and end up losing to fucking cavemen like Matt Bevin and Paul LePage, when an even halfway competent candidate who would actually give Democrats a reason to show up on Election Day should have slaughtered both of them.This is definitely extremely important, and the Democratic Party's consistent failures to find answers to this problem is crippling the party. I agree with Bernie that we need to come up with a way to get people to actually come out and vote, but while he probably has made a small difference so far, I don't think his personality-focused appeal will convince people to come out and vote next year, and the year after that, and so forth. A big part of the issue there is demographic, that Republican-leaning voters are older and older people historically always vote at much higher rates. That problem is not a hurdle the party has managed to overcome yet, and I don't see Bernie actually putting in the work to get what he says is needed done, beyond talking about it repeatedly in speeches that is.
And of course, the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into near-untouchable majorities in many statehouses and state House of Representatives delegations. No matter how strong the appeal, winning back the House this year would be an insanely difficult task due to their gerrymandered 'majority'. Our best hope is the redistricting after the 2020 election, but even then, who knows... unless we get more court cases against gerrymandering, I'm pessimistic on the Democrats' chances of winning the House, or state legislatures, in large part because of gerrymandering. It is possible and we need to try to do it, but it'll be really hard. This country badly needs fair electoral districts, not partisan ones...
Quote:Finally, the trend is definitely in Sanders' favor. Clinton has done nothing but bleed away her lead since Sanders began his campaign. He achieved a virtual tie in Iowa, a blowout in New Hampshire (where Clinton won in 2008), and a 5 point loss in Nevada (where Obama lost by 6 points in 2008). In all of these places, Clinton started out with enormous leads. She was up double digits in Iowa and Nevada within weeks of those caucuses. If he manages to keep SC and Super Tuesday close, the rest of the map is actually quite favorable (as polling trends indicate that his numbers will continue to rise as hers fall). It's a long fight.After the Nevada win, Clinton has this campaign won; Bernie badly needed a win there to still have a chance. Next is South Carolina, where he's likely to be blown out by 20 or 30 points. There is no sign that he is closing. Then after that is Super Tuesday, a day when nine Southern states and several northern ones vote. A PPP poll of a bunch of those states from this month shows that eight Super Tuesday states, all southern, where Hillary has 20-plus point leads, probably mostly thanks to Bernie's failure to win over the black vote. Bernie may win Massachusetts on Super Tuesday, but not much else. Obama beat Hillary in '08 in part by winning those southern primaries in states with large black populations; this time they'll go to Hillary.
As for why he hasn't won black people, one part is because they like the Clintons, but more importantly, his economics-focused message is insufficient. Hillary had a very strong closing in one of the more recent debates when she said that if we fixed income inequality today then racism, sexism, other forms of discrimination, etc. would all still exist. Bernie's answer to racial discrimination is mostly economic, and minorities, blacks especially, know that that won't be enough.
Quote:The GOP is fracturing now. Clinton wants to board the windows and hope they don't hurt us too badly. Her message is that there's no hope of achieving any substantial progressive policy victories, so we might as well just try to avoid being rolled back. That's not an inspiring message! Sanders wants to break them. There may be no better opportunity than 2016.He has no plan to break them, no plan to win back congress beyond "people will come out to vote because I say so", but so far that isn't happening at the levels he needs. In general, Clinton is looking at political reality as it exists, while Bernie is not. As some press person said, it's hard for Hillary to beat Bernie when she is bound by actual political reality, while he is not. She says things that actually can be done, while he says impossible things that sound good but won't happen.
Quote:If America could vote in that Marxist Socialist Muslim Kenyan Nigger Barry Soetero twice, by comfortable margins, then I am not afraid of the 'socialist' tag harming Sanders.You should be -- it really is true that in a recent poll "socialist" ranked below "atheist", "black", "muslim", "jewish", etc -- it was the only word polled that failed to get 50% support for "would you elect a president who was this?". Maybe Bernie could turn that around, and it'd be great if it did because America would be better off if we were more like Sweden or Denmark, but it is an issue.