Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 445

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

Everybody says ‘Bernie would have won’ or ‘Bernie wouldn’t have won,’ but I won’t really believe either until I see some polling data.

darth_ender said:

I think the DNC as a whole is partially to blame. The very fact that there is a superdelegate system, disproportionally and undemocratically favoring the voice of the elite, allowed Hillary to grab the nomination when the more likable Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump.

While there is no way to prove that he would have won, I feel he easily could have better united the Democrat Party and that his supporters were far more passionate than Clinton’s. Heck, Jeebus here protest voted against Hillary. I doubt there would have been much of that against Bernie, even among Hillary supporters. I’ve no doubt most would have gone ahead and voted for Bernie as their number two pick.

I think the unification problem had more to do with Bernie’s supports (and to some extent Bernie himself) than Clinton herself.

Please explain. Bernie tried to unite his people behind Hillary after he lost. Yes, his people are partly to blame, but that’s the point of politics, isn’t it? Hillary’s supporters were more lukewarm. Bernie’s were more passionate. Many Dems would have gone out to vote for whichever candidate had a (D) by his/her name. Others would consider their vote meaningless and not bother. I believe many Democrats/Hillary supporters stayed home because they either did not like her or did not believe it would have made a difference. On the other hand, I think a greater portion of Bernie’s supporters would have gotten out to vote for him, in addition to those who just vote for the (D) no matter what.

Again, no way to know for sure, but I think if HRC had been a better candidate, she could have captured more passion from her own supporters and redirected the passion of Bernie’s supporters for her. Instead, many of them were deeply offended at gasp the DNC’s shenanigans in securing the nomination for her. To so many, this was unforgivable.

Don’t oversimplify my original statement. Remember, I only said the DNC was part to blame. I think the Comey investigation immediately before Election Day, Hillary’s own campaigning, the Electoral College that I deeply abhor, and numerous other factors also secured her defeat.

darth_ender said:

Don’t oversimplify my original statement. Remember, I only said the DNC was part to blame. I think the Comey investigation immediately before Election Day, Hillary’s own campaigning, the Electoral College that I deeply abhor, and numerous other factors also secured her defeat.

I’m really getting tired of reading sensible Conservative posts in here.

yhwx said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/

I’m not sure how this relates to the current discussion.

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

I think the DNC as a whole is partially to blame. The very fact that there is a superdelegate system, disproportionally and undemocratically favoring the voice of the elite, allowed Hillary to grab the nomination when the more likeable Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump. The fact that the so-called “Democrat” Party represents something so opposite, the fact that the “people’s party” favors the highest ranking officials over the layman by an astronomical ratio, and the fact that the corruption in the nomination process is so widespread, all indicate to me that that they sealed their own fate by pushing HRC to the front of the line. Those who feel that Democratic politicians are morally superior to Republican politicians are simply selective in what facts they recall.

The Republican politicians just about all spinelessly endorsed Trump. Case closed on moral superiority.

While I don’t disagree that it was stupid, I don’t think that necessarily makes them morally inferior alone. Let me give you a personal example: I was the clinical preceptor in my department of the hospital, which basically means on my floor, I was Number 2. The director loved me and thought I was amazing; she promoted me and provided me many opportunities. She also did a whole bunch of stupid stuff that alienated her staff, pissed me off, and set me up for some difficult situations when she decided to leave. I realized that, in order to be a tempering influence for good on my floor, sometimes I would have to tow the line, even when I disagreed with my boss. If I hadn’t played along, I likely would have gotten fired (my predecessor as clinical preceptor had been fired before me for disagreeing too often and too publicly). Now that she’s gone, I’m Number 1, and I am able to make some significant changes/improvements to the department and the hospital as a whole.

I see your point, but sometimes you have to put the good of the nation ahead of your own career and party. I think every Republican who endorsed/supported Trump should be ashamed of themselves.

Moral of the story: sometimes, to secure your influence, you have to support those in power, even when you vehemently oppose them personally. I am certain that a number of Republicans in Congress loved Trump. Note, however, how many prominent Republcians opposed him. And note how many were not then holding office or not seeking office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

The Democrat primary system is not about a person; it’s the DNC’s system that has been in place since the '80s, is upheld by the elected, and does not represent the evils of a specific individual. It’s a foolish system that runs contrary to the Party’s supposed ideals. Then again, the whole primary system is pretty screwy.

I agree that the DNC should get rid of Super Delegates. Then again, if the Republicans had them, could they have stopped Trump with them?

I am not saying Republicans are morally superior, as I, myself, have abandoned the GOP. I’m just saying that you can’t lay it all on that one issue.

Well you did say

Those who feel that Democratic politicians are morally superior to Republican politicians are simply selective in what facts they recall

Which made me think you were talking about the individual politicians and not the parties themselves.

https://www.wired.com/2016/11/2016s-election-data-hero-isnt-nate-silver-sam-wang/

Accidentally tripped over this article while looking for something else. It was written right before the election, and it was proven hilariously wrong. Nate Silver via 538 gave Trump something around a 30-35% chance of winning the night of the election, whereas this guy gave Trump a 1% chance. Oops.

yhwx said:

TV’s Frink said:

yhwx said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/

I’m not sure how this relates to the current discussion.

http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1107666

Still not sure.

Warbler said:

I agree that the DNC should get rid of Super Delegates. Then again, if the Republicans had them, could they have stopped Trump with them?

An excellent, and thorny, question.

darth_ender said:

Again, no way to know for sure, but I think if HRC had been a better candidate, she could have captured more passion from her own supporters and redirected the passion of Bernie’s supporters for her.

I vaguely remember a 538 article talking about the idea that Hillary’s supporter’s lack of enthusiasm was generally a myth. However I don’t remember the details (like how they measured it) nor can I find an actual article…so never mind!

yhwx said:

TV’s Frink said:

yhwx said:

TV’s Frink said:

yhwx said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/

I’m not sure how this relates to the current discussion.

http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1107666

Still not sure.

A Bernie primary victory would still be unlikely without superdelegates.

That article is talking about how difficult it would be for him to overcome his deficit as of April 2016, not how difficult it would be in January 2016 without superdelegates.

I think. Honestly I just skimmed it.

yhwx said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/

Let me begin by saying that I bear no ill will towards Mr. Sanders. Nothing that follows should be misconstrued as an attack on his policies, his track record, his electability in November or his character. I’m not a corporate media crony, or a plant from a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC. I’m just a guy who believes in the predictive power of cold, hard data.

And the unsexy truth is that, barring some catastrophic news event, Sanders will not win the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. In fact, most past candidates in Sanders’s position dropped out long before this point in the race, and those who stayed in made little pretense of winning. (The Sanders campaign, which announced Wednesday it was laying off a ton of staff, may be recognizing this.)

Historically speaking, Democratic primary races do not have many twists and turns. Rather, the eventual winner tends to take an early lead — on or before Super Tuesday — and stay there. Runner-ups can kick for a while, but they tend to concede the race by February or early March.

As it stands, Sanders is firmly in runner-up territory. He is losing 9 million to 12 million among those who have already voted, and polls show him lagging by an average of 8.8 percentage points in the states yet to vote. Sanders has gained substantially in national polls but is still the less popular candidate (outside of the Bernietopia that is social media).

To be kind to the Sanders camp, I ignored superdelegates and demographics.

The result is pretty striking: After the early days of the campaign, no underdog has ever won the Democratic nomination. A true come-from-behind victory would show up on this chart as a green line (winners) wandering above the 50 percent line (falling behind) before crossing back over (catching up) and veering toward the bottom of the chart. Instead, after the mad scramble for the first 10 percent of delegates, no candidate ever crosses over the 50 percent line. That is, the king stay the king. (Of course, there haven’t been that many Democratic primaries in the modern era, so I wouldn’t interpret this data as some type of iron-clad rule.)

The reason for this is pretty simple: Proportional allocation of delegates makes comebacks really, really hard. You can’t just notch wins in a string of states, as Sanders did in late March and early April. You have to start consistently trouncing your opponent by large margins in every contest. You need, well, a political revolution.

But what about Obama? Sanders supporters have compared their candidate’s current deficit to Obama’s in 2008, but at this point in that election Obama was actually winning by 143 pledged delegates — enough that Clinton, despite still holding a lead in superdelegates, was receiving pressure to drop out of the race. In fact, Obama was at no point in 2008 actually behind Clinton in pledged delegates. It’s just that the media usually included superdelegates in their counts in 2008, and the DNC has instructed them not to this time around. That’s because we’ve learned our lesson: Superdelegates can change their mind. Unfortunately for Sanders, pledged delegates can’t.

I hope you’re reading what I’m writing, because I feel like you’re replying to one note while I’m talking about several. I am a psychology major prior to my nursing career, and I enjoy a great deal of sociology as well. Now I am a psychiatric nurse. My point: I spend a lot of time thinking about how others think.

Even with this graph, it does not take into account the influence of the superdelegates. As it points out, a candidate has to win early races to win at all. Well, Hillary had secured most of the superdelegates very early in the campaign. That makes the cause of any other candidate look like a fool’s errand. To what am I ascribing my primary opposition in this particular argument? Hillary? No: the DNC’s practices and the superdelegate system. A terrible Democratic candidate who is entrenched, as Hillary was, in the nation’s politics is bound to win a large number of her peers’ support. How is it a democratic process when the support of her peers outweigh the support of her constituents by orders of the thousands? Nancy Pelosi’s vote is worth more than yours by orders of magnitude. Clearly, when a Joe Democrat goes to cast his ballot on his state’s primary day, he is going to take into consideration who he think has the best chance of winning. The person with the most superdelegates is going to win, even though I like this other person a little better, he thinks. Therefore, he casts his ballot for the person he can tolerate and he believes stands the best chance of winning.

Yes, removing the superdelegate system from the onset may not have made any difference in the nomination, or even if it did, in the general election outcome. But it could have. More importantly, it is an undemocratic system that certainly has affected outcomes before, and I believe the Democrats here should oppose this system in their own party.

TV’s Frink said:

darth_ender said:

Don’t oversimplify my original statement. Remember, I only said the DNC was part to blame. I think the Comey investigation immediately before Election Day, Hillary’s own campaigning, the Electoral College that I deeply abhor, and numerous other factors also secured her defeat.

I’m really getting tired of reading sensible Conservative posts in here.

Up your!

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

I think the DNC as a whole is partially to blame. The very fact that there is a superdelegate system, disproportionally and undemocratically favoring the voice of the elite, allowed Hillary to grab the nomination when the more likeable Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump. The fact that the so-called “Democrat” Party represents something so opposite, the fact that the “people’s party” favors the highest ranking officials over the layman by an astronomical ratio, and the fact that the corruption in the nomination process is so widespread, all indicate to me that that they sealed their own fate by pushing HRC to the front of the line. Those who feel that Democratic politicians are morally superior to Republican politicians are simply selective in what facts they recall.

The Republican politicians just about all spinelessly endorsed Trump. Case closed on moral superiority.

While I don’t disagree that it was stupid, I don’t think that necessarily makes them morally inferior alone. Let me give you a personal example: I was the clinical preceptor in my department of the hospital, which basically means on my floor, I was Number 2. The director loved me and thought I was amazing; she promoted me and provided me many opportunities. She also did a whole bunch of stupid stuff that alienated her staff, pissed me off, and set me up for some difficult situations when she decided to leave. I realized that, in order to be a tempering influence for good on my floor, sometimes I would have to tow the line, even when I disagreed with my boss. If I hadn’t played along, I likely would have gotten fired (my predecessor as clinical preceptor had been fired before me for disagreeing too often and too publicly). Now that she’s gone, I’m Number 1, and I am able to make some significant changes/improvements to the department and the hospital as a whole.

I see your point, but sometimes you have to put the good of the nation ahead of your own career and party. I think every Republican who endorsed/supported Trump should be ashamed of themselves.

Admittedly, I agree, and were I an elected Republican politician, I hope I would have the moral courage to oppose our loony president.

Moral of the story: sometimes, to secure your influence, you have to support those in power, even when you vehemently oppose them personally. I am certain that a number of Republicans in Congress loved Trump. Note, however, how many prominent Republcians opposed him. And note how many were not then holding office or not seeking office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

The Democrat primary system is not about a person; it’s the DNC’s system that has been in place since the '80s, is upheld by the elected, and does not represent the evils of a specific individual. It’s a foolish system that runs contrary to the Party’s supposed ideals. Then again, the whole primary system is pretty screwy.

I agree that the DNC should get rid of Super Delegates. Then again, if the Republicans had them, could they have stopped Trump with them?

Perhaps, but that is not the point. I hate him, but he was democratically nominated. I don’t want to sacrifice the principles of democracy simply because the GOP elected a nutjob once. How often would this seeming “safeguard” be a tool of abuse in the future?

I am not saying Republicans are morally superior, as I, myself, have abandoned the GOP. I’m just saying that you can’t lay it all on that one issue.

Well you did say

Those who feel that Democratic politicians are morally superior to Republican politicians are simply selective in what facts they recall

Which made me think you were talking about the individual politicians and not the parties themselves.

I am saying that both parties (meaning the elected individuals and not the constituents) are corrupt and amoral swine.

darth_ender said:

TV’s Frink said:

darth_ender said:

Don’t oversimplify my original statement. Remember, I only said the DNC was part to blame. I think the Comey investigation immediately before Election Day, Hillary’s own campaigning, the Electoral College that I deeply abhor, and numerous other factors also secured her defeat.

I’m really getting tired of reading sensible Conservative posts in here.

Up your!

Although I get the gist of it, I really don’t know what Ross is going for specifically there.

What is this, Be Reasonable In The Political Thread Day?

Where’s the name-calling and mindless bickering over nonsensical things that don’t really matter?

Come on guys, I’m disappointed. :p

CatBus said:

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

Everybody says ‘Bernie would have won’ or ‘Bernie wouldn’t have won,’ but I won’t really believe either until I see some polling data.

darth_ender said:

I think the DNC as a whole is partially to blame. The very fact that there is a superdelegate system, disproportionally and undemocratically favoring the voice of the elite, allowed Hillary to grab the nomination when the more likable Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump.

While there is no way to prove that he would have won, I feel he easily could have better united the Democrat Party and that his supporters were far more passionate than Clinton’s. Heck, Jeebus here protest voted against Hillary. I doubt there would have been much of that against Bernie, even among Hillary supporters. I’ve no doubt most would have gone ahead and voted for Bernie as their number two pick.

I think the unification problem had more to do with Bernie’s supports (and to some extent Bernie himself) than Clinton herself.

As documented earlier, Bernie’s supporters notably moved to support Hillary at higher rates and faster than Hillary’s supporters moved to support Obama eight years earlier. While there are always some holdouts in any primary race, the 2016 Democratic Party was notable for its lack of a unification problem, at least when compared to prior years.

Since I’ve wasted a lot of precious time today talking to you Star Wars nerds 😉 , I won’t do any more substantiation of my comments and again will speculate that, in spite of giving support to Hillary, I do not necessarily believe they all got out and voted for her. As I said, General Election Day is not a black and white popularity contest. In a nation where voting is optional, it’s a measure of who has more passion. Hillary voters in key states didn’t get out to vote. Trump voters, unfortunately, did. In 2012, Obama garnered approximately the same popular vote as Clinton in 2016, but Romney voters failed to materialize. However, in 2008, Barack brought out 3.5 million more than he did four years later. Passion can play an important role.

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/

Let me begin by saying that I bear no ill will towards Mr. Sanders. Nothing that follows should be misconstrued as an attack on his policies, his track record, his electability in November or his character. I’m not a corporate media crony, or a plant from a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC. I’m just a guy who believes in the predictive power of cold, hard data.

And the unsexy truth is that, barring some catastrophic news event, Sanders will not win the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. In fact, most past candidates in Sanders’s position dropped out long before this point in the race, and those who stayed in made little pretense of winning. (The Sanders campaign, which announced Wednesday it was laying off a ton of staff, may be recognizing this.)

Historically speaking, Democratic primary races do not have many twists and turns. Rather, the eventual winner tends to take an early lead — on or before Super Tuesday — and stay there. Runner-ups can kick for a while, but they tend to concede the race by February or early March.

As it stands, Sanders is firmly in runner-up territory. He is losing 9 million to 12 million among those who have already voted, and polls show him lagging by an average of 8.8 percentage points in the states yet to vote. Sanders has gained substantially in national polls but is still the less popular candidate (outside of the Bernietopia that is social media).

To be kind to the Sanders camp, I ignored superdelegates and demographics.

The result is pretty striking: After the early days of the campaign, no underdog has ever won the Democratic nomination. A true come-from-behind victory would show up on this chart as a green line (winners) wandering above the 50 percent line (falling behind) before crossing back over (catching up) and veering toward the bottom of the chart. Instead, after the mad scramble for the first 10 percent of delegates, no candidate ever crosses over the 50 percent line. That is, the king stay the king. (Of course, there haven’t been that many Democratic primaries in the modern era, so I wouldn’t interpret this data as some type of iron-clad rule.)

The reason for this is pretty simple: Proportional allocation of delegates makes comebacks really, really hard. You can’t just notch wins in a string of states, as Sanders did in late March and early April. You have to start consistently trouncing your opponent by large margins in every contest. You need, well, a political revolution.

But what about Obama? Sanders supporters have compared their candidate’s current deficit to Obama’s in 2008, but at this point in that election Obama was actually winning by 143 pledged delegates — enough that Clinton, despite still holding a lead in superdelegates, was receiving pressure to drop out of the race. In fact, Obama was at no point in 2008 actually behind Clinton in pledged delegates. It’s just that the media usually included superdelegates in their counts in 2008, and the DNC has instructed them not to this time around. That’s because we’ve learned our lesson: Superdelegates can change their mind. Unfortunately for Sanders, pledged delegates can’t.

I hope you’re reading what I’m writing, because I feel like you’re replying to one note while I’m talking about several. I am a psychology major prior to my nursing career, and I enjoy a great deal of sociology as well. Now I am a psychiatric nurse. My point: I spend a lot of time thinking about how others think.

Even with this graph, it does not take into account the influence of the superdelegates. As it points out, a candidate has to win early races to win at all. Well, Hillary had secured most of the superdelegates very early in the campaign. That makes the cause of any other candidate look like a fool’s errand. To what am I ascribing my primary opposition in this particular argument? Hillary? No: the DNC’s practices and the superdelegate system. A terrible Democratic candidate who is entrenched, as Hillary was, in the nation’s politics is bound to win a large number of her peers’ support. How is it a democratic process when the support of her peers outweigh the support of her constituents by orders of the thousands? Nancy Pelosi’s vote is worth more than yours by orders of magnitude. Clearly, when a Joe Democrat goes to cast his ballot on his state’s primary day, he is going to take into consideration who he think has the best chance of winning. The person with the most superdelegates is going to win, even though I like this other person a little better, he thinks. Therefore, he casts his ballot for the person he can tolerate and he believes stands the best chance of winning.

Yes, removing the superdelegate system from the onset may not have made any difference in the nomination, or even if it did, in the general election outcome. But it could have. More importantly, it is an undemocratic system that certainly has affected outcomes before, and I believe the Democrats here should oppose this system in their own party.

I did read your momentum argument. I can’t really agree or disagree with it, because I don’t know how people factor that in. I tend to think people vote for whoever they’re going to vote for, but I don’t know if that’s how all people think. That’s why the conversation infuriates me.

I promise you, momentum matters and sways people’s votes. McCain was not favored to win the nomination in 2008; Giuliani was. However, McCain won enough early primaries and gathered enough momentum that his victory seemed inevitable, and therefore, more people voted for him or simply didn’t bother voting against him.

hairy_hen said:

What is this, Be Reasonable In The Political Thread Day?

Where’s the name-calling and mindless bickering over nonsensical things that don’t really matter?

Come on guys, I’m disappointed. :p

Up your!

yhwx said:

hairy_hen said:

Where’s the […] mindless bickering over nonsensical things that don’t really matter?

It was back in the Ted Cruz

Reported.

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

I think the DNC as a whole is partially to blame. The very fact that there is a superdelegate system, disproportionally and undemocratically favoring the voice of the elite, allowed Hillary to grab the nomination when the more likeable Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump. The fact that the so-called “Democrat” Party represents something so opposite, the fact that the “people’s party” favors the highest ranking officials over the layman by an astronomical ratio, and the fact that the corruption in the nomination process is so widespread, all indicate to me that that they sealed their own fate by pushing HRC to the front of the line. Those who feel that Democratic politicians are morally superior to Republican politicians are simply selective in what facts they recall.

The Republican politicians just about all spinelessly endorsed Trump. Case closed on moral superiority.

While I don’t disagree that it was stupid, I don’t think that necessarily makes them morally inferior alone. Let me give you a personal example: I was the clinical preceptor in my department of the hospital, which basically means on my floor, I was Number 2. The director loved me and thought I was amazing; she promoted me and provided me many opportunities. She also did a whole bunch of stupid stuff that alienated her staff, pissed me off, and set me up for some difficult situations when she decided to leave. I realized that, in order to be a tempering influence for good on my floor, sometimes I would have to tow the line, even when I disagreed with my boss. If I hadn’t played along, I likely would have gotten fired (my predecessor as clinical preceptor had been fired before me for disagreeing too often and too publicly). Now that she’s gone, I’m Number 1, and I am able to make some significant changes/improvements to the department and the hospital as a whole.

I see your point, but sometimes you have to put the good of the nation ahead of your own career and party. I think every Republican who endorsed/supported Trump should be ashamed of themselves.

Admittedly, I agree, and were I an elected Republican politician, I hope I would have the moral courage to oppose our loony president.

I think you would.

Moral of the story: sometimes, to secure your influence, you have to support those in power, even when you vehemently oppose them personally. I am certain that a number of Republicans in Congress loved Trump. Note, however, how many prominent Republcians opposed him. And note how many were not then holding office or not seeking office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

The Democrat primary system is not about a person; it’s the DNC’s system that has been in place since the '80s, is upheld by the elected, and does not represent the evils of a specific individual. It’s a foolish system that runs contrary to the Party’s supposed ideals. Then again, the whole primary system is pretty screwy.

I agree that the DNC should get rid of Super Delegates. Then again, if the Republicans had them, could they have stopped Trump with them?

Perhaps, but that is not the point. I hate him, but he was democratically nominated. I don’t want to sacrifice the principles of democracy simply because the GOP elected a nutjob once. How often would this seeming “safeguard” be a tool of abuse in the future?

As has been pointed out to me by conservatives in this forum: America is not a pure democracy. We are a Democratic Republic. Finally, if we really don’t want to sacrifice the principles of democracy, then we have to get rid of the electoral college.

I am not saying Republicans are morally superior, as I, myself, have abandoned the GOP. I’m just saying that you can’t lay it all on that one issue.

Well you did say

Those who feel that Democratic politicians are morally superior to Republican politicians are simply selective in what facts they recall

Which made me think you were talking about the individual politicians and not the parties themselves.

I am saying that both parties (meaning the elected individuals and not the constituents) are corrupt and amoral swine.

I agree with you there.