I’m waiting to see more voter demographic information, and for the final results in California and Maine, before writing much about the Super Tuesday primaries. I have seen commentary saying that where Biden won big, he did so with a combination of suburban and black votes, which certainly is a combination that Democrats need. It’s also the case that, in at least some of yesterday’s primaries, the young folks just didn’t show up. That hurt Sanders. But I don’t know if that’s true everywhere.
Mike Bloomberg has dropped out, at least. He spent more than $500 million on his campaign and earned 12 whole delegates, last I saw. Money can’t buy you love. Liz Warren’s campaign seems to be going nowhere also, and I wonder what she’s going to do.
I’m annoyed with the coverage of California. The Associated Press called California for Sanders as soon as the polls closed. The Los Angeles Times has called California for Sanders. Sanders has a significant lead with 86 percent of precincts reporting. He’s ahead of Biden by 260,856 votes. Yet most major news outlets — WaPo, the New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc. — haven’t called California, and most of its 415 delegates remain unallocated. And I’m wondering if that’s to give more time for Joe Biden to claim to be the front runner, since he might still be behind Bernie in delegates once the matter is settled. But maybe I’m just getting overheated.
My vote in California may not have been counted yet – I showed as vote by mail and I voted at the polls. They need to verify that they didn’t receive a VBM ballot, and those are valid if postmarked March 3 or earlier.
Agreed – the coverage has been awful. They are treating the primary like the general: "Who won each state?" But the delegates are determined more-or-less proportionately. Who got the "most" votes counts differently with pro-rated allocation vs winner-take-all which is how the general election works (usually).
I'm looking for information about how many delegates have been awarded officially. what the projected count is and what's unresolved in the delegate count.
It feels like a football game where all the sportscasters want to talk about is who has more first downs or the ration of pass completions. What counts is the score and I can't find out what the score is – or even a responsible estimate.
That feels like the networks are putting their thumb on the scales and it bugs me – a lot. I suppressed a comment that would have put this in the twit filter. But like Maha, I'm disgusted by the lack of information.
Seems like Trump isn't the only one following the mushroom doctrine. (Keep them in the dark and feed them nothing but manure.)
I am waiting for more complete data, and it will be slow in coming. You are so right, Doug, the pundit class is bending the story beyond proper analysis of the data. That is a fact because they already wrote and broadcast their stories and the data is not yet in and disaggregated. Being first and wrong wins over being later and right. It is the way of 24-7 propaganda, disinformation, faux news, or excrement of the mushroom doctrine. (I had to steal/borrow that one.)
At least the "modeerates" have picked a candidate, Moderate Democrats are like Unicorns, they have a label but no definition or anything but an artistic concept. No one would contend
Biden is the best much less the ideal rendering of the image and voice of what is termed a "moderate" democrat. I would have anointed differently as would most Dems IMO. He represents a lowest common deenominator, which is math for a bit of a pain in the ass. I'll still trade that hemorrhoid for the giant malignant one we presently have in the white house.
Yes, I think you are overheated. I live in San Francisco and California has said for weeks that it would take time for all votes to be counted. Los Angeles, for example, switched to a new voting system in this election.
I'm sure I'm going to get flamed, but I'll say this anyway.
1. I voted for Elizabeth Warren.
2. I will vote for the eventual Democratic nominee, whoever it is, because they will be a million times better than Tr***.
3. I have qualms about Bernie Sanders' health — IIRC he's never released actual records of his cardiac event.
4. Bernie's called himself a socialist for years but does not seem to have done much to build a movement or coalition that would overcome the bad connotations that description has in American politics. Please note that I do NOT agree with those bad connotations; I am only saying they exist.
Welcome aboard, Annie? I'd only flame you for imagining you'd get flamed here 🙂 – that's not our style!
I'm a Bernie Boomer. I'd gladly vote for Warren in November, but not Biden. I don't agree with all your opinions, but I respect them, as a matter of course.
Sounds like you've been flamed (by Sanders supporters?) at other sites? If so, sorry to hear it. The flap about Bernie saying something like "a woman can't win in 2020" which got leaked (?) just before the debate a month or two ago really damaged the rapport between Sanders & Warren (or at least their supporters). It's a crying shame, because Warren is the only other candidate with policies & perspectives that I could support.
"I'd gladly vote for Warren in November, but not Biden."
I, too, would much rather see Liz or Bernie in the job. But, I will gladly and enthusiastically vote for Biden to replace Trump.
Keep in mind that if you don't vote for Biden you are, by default, voting for another four years of Trump. And, as long as you do vote for Biden, it doesn't matter if you do it gladly or do it while spitting and swearing with someone twisting your arm! 🙂
Texas is also a pretty big state. Finalized the results pretty quickly. But it wasn't a place where Sanders was way ahead i the count.
I felt so sorry for those CA voters as I watched TV and heard that some people were waiting in line for several hours. Don't know what the problem is but we should be making it easier for people to vote rather than harder. Personally, I like the process we have in WA. We can mail in our ballots or use drop-off deposits. If I had to go out and wait in a line, I wouldn't vote.
The mushroom doctrine sounds very interesting but I'm not sure they rely on manure.
I don't think it's state-wide yet, but CA recently passed a law making it really easy to vote. Everyone now receives a mail-in ballot, or they can show up at dozens of "voting centers" within a range of days, not just Election Day. I was super-impressed at this change, no doubt in response to Republican voter suppression elsewhere.
The pattern in California is that conservatives vote early, liberals late. This is why, in 2018, we watched district after district go blue, after Election day, but it took days for this happy event to happen. And so I expect Sanders' lead to hold, or even grow.
It simply takes a few weeks for all the ballots to be counted in CA.
It doesn't matter any more. Sanders will not have a significant lead no matter what happens in California and without that, the rest of the electoral map is very bad for Bernie.
He can whine all he wants about how everyone is out to get him, but his problem is very simple: Not enough votes. After running for president for five years and spending close to half a billion dollars, he has not increased his support at all. If anything he has gone backwards.
Not enough votes. All of the new voters he was supposed to energize and turn out are phantoms. He is going to get pasted in Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida and Biden's lead will then be insurmountable.
Where is Bernie's path to the nomination? At this point last cycle, Hillary had it wrapped up and Bernie and his supporters pretended he could win right up to the convention. Is that the plan again?
“Where is Bernie’s path to the nomination? At this point last cycle, Hillary had it wrapped up and Bernie and his supporters pretended he could win right up to the convention. Is that the plan again?”
As I remember — and I’m going by memory here, because it would take a while to find the data — Sanders wasn’t utterly and completely mathematically shut out of a plurality of earned delegates (not counting superdelegates) until after the California primary, which in 2016 was on June 7. At that point it was a long shot and I had mostly given up, but it was not impossible. Until the New York primary on April 19 I had hope that he might pull it off. There was a lot of confusion on this point because news media persisted in reporting earned delegate and superdelegate totals added together, which made the gap between the two candidates look bigger than it was. If you just looked at the earned delegate vote, the contest was a lot closer than you may have realized. Since Clinton never earned enough delegates with votes to secure the nomination outright, she needed the superdelegates at the convention to “wrap up” the nomination. But if Sanders instead of Clinton had the plurality, it would have been a fight, I think. But she sure as hell hadn’t secured the nomination in early March.
Further, you may have forgotten that Clinton refused to concede to Obama after it was mathematically possible for her to beat him. It’s said she was holding out to be named vice president. Sanders stayed in in 2016 so he could have a say in the platform.
I urge you to look it up because I do not think you will take my word for it. One of the reasons democracy is failing is because everybody has a different set of facts. Your facts are wrong.
1) I agree that Clinton held on for too long in 2008, but that primary was much, much closer than 2016. Clinton was within 100 delegates and she actually won the popular vote.
Clinton also won the popular vote in 2016 – by more than 4 million. A crushing.
2) On March 15, 2016, Clinton led in earned delegates by 250. It was virtually impossible to make up that deficit in the remaining contests because delegates are divided up proportionally. Sanders needed to win about six states in landslides to come back. It was all but impossible.
3) Clinton did not need any super delegates to win. She won a majority of the earned delegates. At the end of the primary cycle, Sanders was asking super delegates to overturn primary results! Again, don't believe me, look it up!
4) Sanders had a chance to win a majority of earned delegates right up to the end, but that is only because California went last, not because he really had a chance. He needed to win California 95-5 to secure all the delegates.
I'll take a chance on being flamed too. There's no evidence the DNC had anything to do with Tuesday's voting patterns. Black and less left suburban voters just preferred Biden, believing him the "safe" candidate. That was especially true in the south east, which has always been least left. Biden will probably win the remaining states down there too.
Young people didn't show up for Bernie in the numbers he expected either. In my limited experience a lot of them think that buying reusable shopping bags and a composter is more important than voting. They simply haven't had anything like the Vietnam War to personally involve them in politics early, the way our generation did.
First report on vote count fraud has surfaced.
http://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/02/south-carolina-2020-democratic-party-primary/
South Carolina was hacked.
Very Suspicious. Some of those old voting machines are as corrupt as Trump. Third world country here we come.
Thanks for the link.
I don’t know who tdms research is, and exit polls are not always that accurate.
In the 60s a massive political shift was engineered. Black citizens conditioned by a century of voter suppression registered to vote and became a political force. That black coalition put Biden on top not because they are more numerous but because they showed up. Young voters must show up or become comfortable with the chains they forged for themselves.