Huh? Early voting and spacing out the primaries and caucuses are different things.
They're different but can have the same effect. If I were in one of the first three states and had voted for Pete, that vote would now be worthless. If I had mailed in my Arizona ballot last week (for Pete), that would be worthless as well. I've always hated the fact that just a few states determine who the candidate will be before I even have the chance to vote in the Primary, but I also feel for those who vote in the early states and then have their votes flushed down the drain.
I would love to see a national Primary day - every person in every state would have exactly the same chances. Too big a country to campaign? The national election in November is all on one day. It would be nice if some of us who don't live in Iowa or New Hampshire could meet the candidates, whereas the residents in those two states can't go to their state fairs or out for pancakes without tripping over a dozen candidates. (I did get to meet Chasten recently, but never a candidate.)
And don't get me started on the Electoral College.
Isn't Primary season also a chance to parade your ideas? Right now we are at the crucial point, as I understand things, but soon things will be clearer. Then, all being well, it is a parade of success and endorsements for the putative nominee until the grand and (frankly) tasteless coronation of the Candidate at the Convention.
Personally, I find the whole process just too drawn out. Its an enthusiasm-sucker. But if there is anything the USA seems to have in spades, its enthusiasm. With my personality, I would hate to be a delegate to a convention. I would feel so isolated and alone, and I'd inevitably despise those around me for what I perceived as their falseness. But that's me.
Huh? Early voting and spacing out the primaries and caucuses are different things.
They're different but can have the same effect. If I were in one of the first three states and had voted for Pete, that vote would now be worthless. If I had mailed in my Arizona ballot last week (for Pete), that would be worthless as well. I've always hated the fact that just a few states determine who the candidate will be before I even have the chance to vote in the Primary, but I also feel for those who vote in the early states and then have their votes flushed down the drain.
I would love to see a national Primary day - every person in every state would have exactly the same chances. Too big a country to campaign? The national election in November is all on one day.
I'm not sure a one-day national primary would solve the putative "problem". The unpopular candidate you'd throw your vote away on won't be any more popular if all states voted on the same day.
Huh? Early voting and spacing out the primaries and caucuses are different things.
They're different but can have the same effect. If I were in one of the first three states and had voted for Pete, that vote would now be worthless. If I had mailed in my Arizona ballot last week (for Pete), that would be worthless as well. I've always hated the fact that just a few states determine who the candidate will be before I even have the chance to vote in the Primary, but I also feel for those who vote in the early states and then have their votes flushed down the drain.
I would love to see a national Primary day - every person in every state would have exactly the same chances. Too big a country to campaign? The national election in November is all on one day.
I'm not sure a one-day national primary would solve the putative "problem". The unpopular candidate you'd throw your vote away on won't be any more popular if all states voted on the same day.
Who is popular in the early states might change in the later. One day would stop unrepresentative areas having an outsized influence on outcomes.
Well I have learned my lesson, never again will I vote by mail early. I just threw away a vote, and now I can not vote for who is left. I will however vote for who ever makes it on the November ballot that is not Trump.
One of the reasons having primaries and caucuses on different days is stupid.
Huh? Early voting and spacing out the primaries and caucuses are different things. I never vote by mail because it's possibly and sometimes likely that things will change between the day I fill out the ballot and election day. But I don't have a problem with the primary season being stretched out over several months, as a one-day nationwide primary would make it too hard for a lot of candidates to run -- the country's just too big.
It is exactly the same size country no matter how the primaries are distributed. I am aware that early success can boost funding for poorer candidates, but early failure can kill it as well. The biggest downside to single day is the cost of a nationwide campaign vs incremental costs of local ones. But the states who have representation in early primaries do not represent the country as a whole.
It was a Republican campaign slogan in 1928. And, at least according to that site, it wasn't a promise for the future, but a statement about the present, ie. the US was supposedly very prosperous under Hoover.
But yes, I think many people(myself included) have, at times, wrongly linked it to the Democrats and FDR's 1932 campaign, during the Great Depression. Even after I found out it was from Hoover, I assumed he had made it after the stock-market crash.
I live in New Hampshire. It's a tiny state in both geography and population (1.35 million), and as of the 2010 census was (A) almost 94% white; (B) 100% rural (well, 1 city a bit over 100,000 in population); has neither a state income nor state sales tax (but hefty property taxes and plenty of other fees). Fair amount of revenue from so-called "sin" taxes.
As far as I can tell, our state primary's basic purpose is to bring in out-of-state campaign workers and newsies, etc. to keep our tourism industry afloat between fishing-hunting-syruping-trapping-skiing-boating-swimming-leafpeeping-taxfree Xmas-shopping (but watch out for that killer rooms-and-meals-tax) etc. seasons. For at least the last 3 federal cycles our state primary has been basically useless in suggesting trends among Democratic voters. I frankly wish we could drop it; it makes for traffic nightmares on ancient, narrow, hilly, windy roads often in poor repair.
Of course, the chances of this happening are roughly on par with my winning the next Miss America contest at age 75.
While I'm dubious about Iowa and New Hampshire having permanent first status in the nominating process, I think an iterative process is more useful than a single-day contest. The latter could lead to impulsive decisions.
One interesting and potentially useful suggestion I heard about how to reform this process is for the DNC to look at the three states that it won by the narrowest margins in the last presidential election and the three states that it lost by the narrowest margins and have those six states go first in the primary process. This would focus candidates on issues that would be most helpful in the next general election.
Looking at the 2016 data those six states would be Wisconsin (-0.8%), Pennsylvania (-0.7%), Michigan (-0.2%), New Hampshire (+1.6%, sorry @Ohher), Minnesota (+1.5%), and Nevada (+2.4%). Interestingly two of those are currently early (meaning pre-Super Tuesday) states.
I'm not sure anyone really needed Iowa or New Hampshire to tell them that Deval Patrick or Andrew Yang wasn't going to be the next president.
Mayor Pete is a different story, however. From what I gather, he has a fair amount of support in California. Were he not gay, ISTM his general position would bring more popularity.
I'm not sure anyone really needed Iowa or New Hampshire to tell them that Deval Patrick or Andrew Yang wasn't going to be the next president.
Mayor Pete is a different story, however. From what I gather, he has a fair amount of support in California. Were he not gay, ISTM his general position would bring more popularity.
Despite being something of a media darling, Buttigieg was always a long shot candidate. I believe I commented last year that despite the large number of declared candidates the list of people at the top of the polling (Biden, Sanders, Warren) remained remarkably stable from July 2019 onward.
I'm not sure anyone really needed Iowa or New Hampshire to tell them that Deval Patrick or Andrew Yang wasn't going to be the next president.
Mayor Pete is a different story, however. From what I gather, he has a fair amount of support in California. Were he not gay, ISTM his general position would bring more popularity.
Despite being something of a media darling, Buttigieg was always a long shot candidate. I believe I commented last year that despite the large number of declared candidates the list of people at the top of the polling (Biden, Sanders, Warren) remained remarkably stable from July 2019 onward.
They have money, track record and name recognition, so they were always going to. Barring a major misstep, of course.
Long shots have an even longer shot if they don't appeal to granite staters and corn farmers.
While I'm dubious about Iowa and New Hampshire having permanent first status in the nominating process, I think an iterative process is more useful than a single-day contest. The latter could lead to impulsive decisions.
One interesting and potentially useful suggestion I heard about how to reform this process is for the DNC to look at the three states that it won by the narrowest margins in the last presidential election and the three states that it lost by the narrowest margins and have those six states go first in the primary process. This would focus candidates on issues that would be most helpful in the next general election.
Looking at the 2016 data those six states would be Wisconsin (-0.8%), Pennsylvania (-0.7%), Michigan (-0.2%), New Hampshire (+1.6%, sorry @Ohher), Minnesota (+1.5%), and Nevada (+2.4%). Interestingly two of those are currently early (meaning pre-Super Tuesday) states.
The Democratic Party needs to put you on as a consultant.
Apologies, Americans, for my last post when I generalised and waffled on.
Just watched Elizabeth Warren on a new ep of the "Ellen" talk show. Took up maybe 10 min. of the show (including ads). She was in a great mood; answered Ellen's questions; talked about childhood family situations that drove her to do the work she does. (E.g., her father died (?); her mom had never worked outside the home, but got a minimum wage office job at Sears (?). *Then*, it was possible to live on that. Not now.)
Ellen likes to do games on her show. She had Elizabeth do one about the other candidates, her current celeb crush, etc.
Oh, and Elizabeth said if she's the nominee, she won't let T stalk her across the stage behind her back. (As T did with Hillary.)
Oh, and Elizabeth said if she's the nominee, she won't let T stalk her across the stage behind her back. (As T did with Hillary.)
Funny. For some reason, I've been thinking about those old debates a bit in the last few days, and it occured to me that almost any of the current primary candidates would have handled that better than HRC did. Even if they didn't actually stop Trump from doing it, they'd point it out, make a joke of it, etc.
(Caveat: I didn't actually watch those debates where Trump followed Hillary around, but I've always assumed she wasn't prepared for it, and didn't have any sort of response. Is that correct?)
Since the dynamic of the Democratic Party has drastically changed, I have decided to vote in the Democratic Primary. Our state votes next week. I am looking to vote for Warren now.
Biden has such a negative history, and I am concerned about his continual bumbling. He seems to have thought Super Tuesday was going to happen this coming Thursday. He could not even recite the preamble of the Declaration of Independence last night. He just misidentified his wife at his victory rally!
Bloomberg just seems too greasy. He had long been a Republican and then switched to Democrat to defeat Trump. Sorry, Mike, no matter how much money you throw at the elections you will not buy them.
Sanders has a lot of good things to say, but he is-well-old.
That only leaves Warren. I do not think she will win the nomination, but I am willing to give her some bargaining chips in developing a well rounded Democratic platform.
Since the dynamic of the Democratic Party has drastically changed, I have decided to vote in the Democratic Primary. Our state votes next week. I am looking to vote for Warren now.
Biden has such a negative history, and I am concerned about his continual bumbling. He seems to have thought Super Tuesday was going to happen this coming Thursday. He could not even recite the preamble of the Declaration of Independence last night. He just misidentified his wife at his victory rally!
Since the dynamic of the Democratic Party has drastically changed, I have decided to vote in the Democratic Primary. Our state votes next week. I am looking to vote for Warren now.
Biden has such a negative history, and I am concerned about his continual bumbling. He seems to have thought Super Tuesday was going to happen this coming Thursday. He could not even recite the preamble of the Declaration of Independence last night. He just misidentified his wife at his victory rally!
Trump will copy his every tic and win.
I'm so afraid. Why has it come down to this? Why couldn't my party have found a well-spoken, good looking, 60-something, moderate, male, with political experience, a clean record and a few feasible plans? Did they think about it? Did they look? Did they check the peanut farms in Georgia?
I'm so afraid. Why has it come down to this? Why couldn't my party have found a well-spoken, good looking, 60-something, moderate, male, with political experience, a clean record and a few feasible plans? Did they think about it? Did they look? Did they check the peanut farms in Georgia?
Joe Sestak. Jay Inslee. John Hickenlooper. Deval Patrick, if you're willing to accept a non-white candidate. It's not that these guys don't exist or couldn't be found, it's that they failed to generate any interest. If you're willing to accept a 50-something presidential candidate (a much more historically common demographic) you could add Mike Bennet, John Delaney, Steve Bullock, and Bill de Blasio to the list, though de Blasio has that scary inter-racial marriage you might want to avoid if you're picking a candidate by demographic profile.
The point is that these options existed and that the Democratic party decided that factors other than birthdate and penis-having were more important.
Bloomberg is out. There are some things half a billion dollars can't buy.
He won (at current, incomplete tabulation) a total of 42 delegates, including a win in American Samoa. On the other hand it could be argued that Bloomberg's main goal was preventing a Sanders or Warren presidency and with the Democratic party seemingly coalescing around Biden there's no more point in staying in the race.
God help us. How sure can we be that votes aren't being manipulated somehow? American voters are ready to toss aside without a second glance a well-prepared, smart, experienced, savvy, healthy-as-far-as-we-know woman in order to chase after two old white guys, one with painfuly-obvious cognitive glitches and the other with a bum ticker? Oh goody. SO looking forward to November.
Sadly, "votes being manipulated" and "business as usual" are not mutually exclusive concepts. Voting in America has long been about vote manipulation, such as gerrymandered districts.
Hundreds of voters waited in line to cast their vote at Texas Southern University, with the last person in line voting at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.
That last voter, Hervis Rogers, wasn't angry or frustrated though.
He was still smiling at the end with no complaints, telling ABC13 he used the time to watch results on his phone after making some last-minute decisions on who would get his vote.
Not interviewed: anyone not having Mr. Rogers' spare time to wait until 1:30 am to vote. It will probably not surprise you that this seems to be systematically targeted at minority communities.
Several of the Super Tuesday states have a significant black population (unlike Iowa and New Hampshire). Here's Bree Newsome Bass (you may remember her as the young activist who tore down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capitol) on the calculus that black voters go through when picking a candidate.
Older black voters, especially, have been saying in interviews that all they care about this year is who can beat Trump. Young folks are leaning more heavily towards Sanders, but older voters overwhelmingly think Biden will be more acceptable to white voters.
Not that it would have changed the vote that much, but some people are questioning why Tennessee did not extend the voting for the precincts that got hit by a tornado. Also some of the machines in California broke down, which causes some delay. However, it seemed people stayed. They wanted to vote.
I'm so afraid. Why has it come down to this? Why couldn't my party have found a well-spoken, good looking, 60-something, moderate, male, with political experience, a clean record and a few feasible plans? Did they think about it? Did they look? Did they check the peanut farms in Georgia?
Joe Sestak. Jay Inslee. John Hickenlooper. Deval Patrick, if you're willing to accept a non-white candidate. It's not that these guys don't exist or couldn't be found, it's that they failed to generate any interest. If you're willing to accept a 50-something presidential candidate (a much more historically common demographic) you could add Mike Bennet, John Delaney, Steve Bullock, and Bill de Blasio to the list, though de Blasio has that scary inter-racial marriage you might want to avoid if you're picking a candidate by demographic profile.
The point is that these options existed and that the Democratic party decided that factors other than birthdate and penis-having were more important.
This year the most important thing is to beat Trump and every vote will count. If 10% of undecided voters simply wont vote for a woman, gay, under 50, or "well-old" person then that's something we should consider. If I just picked who I liked best it would have been Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar but it's clearly not happening, so why not pick someone who has a chance to win?
Does anyone know what happens if a candidate dies (or is severely disabled by something such as a heart attack) between the Convention and Election Day? (Asking for a friend.)
This year the most important thing is to beat Trump and every vote will count. If 10% of undecided voters simply wont vote for a woman, gay, under 50, or "well-old" person then that's something we should consider. If I just picked who I liked best it would have been Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar but it's clearly not happening, so why not pick someone who has a chance to win?
I'm not sure Johnny Unbeatable is a real person. Arguments based on "electability" are often freighted with unwarranted assumptions.
Does anyone know what happens if a candidate dies (or is severely disabled by something such as a heart attack) between the Convention and Election Day? (Asking for a friend.)
Good question. Here's an answer I came up with after consulting my resident expert, Mr. Go Ogle. (Strict accuracy not guaranteed.)
Since the time of Andrew Jackson's run for the presidency in 1828, individual political parties have had the job of filling any vacancy on their national ticket, either that of their presidential or vice-presidential candidate. If one of their candidates vacates the ticket after they are nominated, either because of death or withdrawal, the party selects a replacement.
Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have rules in their bylaws governing how to fill the vacancy. The Party Chair calls a meeting of the National Committee, and the Committee members at the meeting vote to fill the vacancy on the ticket. A candidate must receive a majority of the votes to win the party's nod.
It gets a bit stickier if a candidate dies between the time the electoral votes are cast (early December) and Congress certifies the election (early January).
And similarly for if that happens to the winner between election day and inauguration?
As I indicated in my last post this depends on whether this happens before or after the electoral college casts its votes, which happens on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a presidential election year. (That's December 14 this year.) Presidential electors aren't legally or Constitutionally bound to vote for the popular vote winner in their states*, so the simplest expedient would be to simply have the electors cast their ballots for president for the running mate and elect someone chosen by party consensus as vice president.
It gets a bit tricky if the winning candidate dies between the casting of the electoral votes and when Congress certifies the election of the president (January 6, 2021). There's no explicit provision for this but I can see at least two possible Constitutional interpretations.
One is that the presidency is vacant due to death and the vice president is now president.
The other is that majority of the electoral ballots are invalid since they were cast for a Constitutionally unqualified candidate. (Being dead makes you just as ineligible to be president as being a non-citizen or being under 35 years old.) In that case the Twelfth Amendment specifies that the House of Representatives, voting in state caucuses picks the new president, but only from the top three electoral vote winners. That would limit the pool of eligible candidates to the election loser(s) and anyone who got a vote from faithless elector.
As I said, both of these arguments are Constitutionally plausible and have never been put to the actual test.
*There were seven so-called "faithless electors" in 2016, which I believe is a record for U.S. presidential elections to date.
I have the general sense at the best of times that elections are always going on somewhere in the USA. Because of your sensational current president, it seems our Canadian media can't stop talking about him and all the elderly people in the other political party who might get more votes than the incumbent. Though we understand that not getting more votes but winning occurs regularly, and that engineering things so brown and black people disproportionately aren't allowed to vote, reinforces the understanding of America as semi-democratic at most, but probably plutocratic. Your process to pick candidates for office is, from the perspective of an outsider, hopelessly complicated, expensive, and never-ending.
Is there any reason that the candidates are all over 70 years old?
You are going to re-elect the current man aren't you? The impression provided is that people who like Bernie Sanders would rather not vote at all in your election than vote for Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, if their guy does not become the candidate. And then there's a chant of "four more years" from choirs of people recorded in the background of the endless newsclips. The impression we have of Republicans is uniformly and strongly negative. Having to do with perceptions of low education and intellect, religious extremism, ignoring of violence toward women (or support of it) and of racism.
In non-presidential election news, apparently Jeff Sessions failed to get a majority in his primary to regain his old Senate seat and will now face a runoff against Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach whose main campaign issue is stopping the spread of sharia law in Alabama. (No, really!) It's still a long shot, but given this internal Republican conflict Doug Jones may just keep his Senate seat after all.
Roy Moore came in 4th in the primary, so I guess we're spared his odious media presence for the moment.
Sanders won’t make the grade, because young people don’t vote and old people are too conservative.
Welcome to your democratic candidate for 2020: Joe Biden.
This ain’t good
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
It's better than a toasted cheese sandwich. Any of the remaining runners is better than Trump. Heck, I'm better than Trump and I'm a UK citizen. I'd certainly vote for Ohher, or Ruth, or Croesos or (fit in US Shipmate name).
Several of the Super Tuesday states have a significant black population (unlike Iowa and New Hampshire). Here's Bree Newsome Bass (you may remember her as the young activist who tore down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capitol) on the calculus that black voters go through when picking a candidate.
Older black voters, especially, have been saying in interviews that all they care about this year is who can beat Trump. Young folks are leaning more heavily towards Sanders, but older voters overwhelmingly think Biden will be more acceptable to white voters.
I'm not good at reading twitter as I decided a few years ago that life was too short to do this wonderful Ship and more than one social media thing. But all I can see is the person making a point about structural bias against minorities.
I'd love to see an analysis of why minorities supported Biden, if only to help defend Warren against the horrible things the Aussie Bernie Bros are saying about her. It is breaking my heart.
@NOprophet_NØprofit Ahh, Hunter S. He was quite quite mad, but also incisive. I saw the Bill Murray flick "Where the Buffalo Roam" more than once in my late teens, and read all his books. Yet another victim of Fat City electoral fraud.
Sanders won’t make the grade, because young people don’t vote and old people are too conservative.
Welcome to your democratic candidate for 2020: Joe Biden.
This ain’t good
And unfortunately, when the issue of cognitive-impairment comes up, the line about "my opponent's youth and inexperience" has already been used. (By a guy who was younger than Biden is now.)
^ That said, I'll still be happy if it's Joe and not Bernie. I think Sanders's fans are seriously overestimating his ability to withstand a GOP smear campaign. They seem to be the kind of people who think "Well, once the voters understand that they'll be better off under our program, they'll just ignore all the negative stuff coming from the other side." Any student of electoral history can tell you it doesn't always work that way.
^ That said, I'll still be happy if it's Joe and not Bernie. I think Sanders's fans are seriously overestimating his ability to withstand a GOP smear campaign.
And overestimating the likelihood of Bernie appealing to enough of the electorate, especially in the key battleground states.
I tend to agree about Bernie Bros, but not all of his supporters, which I will be when Warren drops. The amount of rubbish journalism they post is unbelievable. It's like the National Review at its worst. I mean, People magazine would be proud at the capacity of these hacks to produce copy without depth, nuance or any insight whatsoever.
I just caught this again from GK, and the old Rickie Lee Jones song popped into my head. "Chicken in the pot; chicken in the pot; chicken in the pot: chicken. OOOOh dow-ownstairs at Denny's all-star joint..."
Comments
I would love to see a national Primary day - every person in every state would have exactly the same chances. Too big a country to campaign? The national election in November is all on one day. It would be nice if some of us who don't live in Iowa or New Hampshire could meet the candidates, whereas the residents in those two states can't go to their state fairs or out for pancakes without tripping over a dozen candidates. (I did get to meet Chasten recently, but never a candidate.)
And don't get me started on the Electoral College.
Personally, I find the whole process just too drawn out. Its an enthusiasm-sucker. But if there is anything the USA seems to have in spades, its enthusiasm. With my personality, I would hate to be a delegate to a convention. I would feel so isolated and alone, and I'd inevitably despise those around me for what I perceived as their falseness. But that's me.
I'm not sure a one-day national primary would solve the putative "problem". The unpopular candidate you'd throw your vote away on won't be any more popular if all states voted on the same day.
After the crash some wag took the slogan "a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard" and rendered it as "a chicken in every backyard".
Exactly.
As far as I can tell, our state primary's basic purpose is to bring in out-of-state campaign workers and newsies, etc. to keep our tourism industry afloat between fishing-hunting-syruping-trapping-skiing-boating-swimming-leafpeeping-taxfree Xmas-shopping (but watch out for that killer rooms-and-meals-tax) etc. seasons. For at least the last 3 federal cycles our state primary has been basically useless in suggesting trends among Democratic voters. I frankly wish we could drop it; it makes for traffic nightmares on ancient, narrow, hilly, windy roads often in poor repair.
Of course, the chances of this happening are roughly on par with my winning the next Miss America contest at age 75.
One interesting and potentially useful suggestion I heard about how to reform this process is for the DNC to look at the three states that it won by the narrowest margins in the last presidential election and the three states that it lost by the narrowest margins and have those six states go first in the primary process. This would focus candidates on issues that would be most helpful in the next general election.
Looking at the 2016 data those six states would be Wisconsin (-0.8%), Pennsylvania (-0.7%), Michigan (-0.2%), New Hampshire (+1.6%, sorry @Ohher), Minnesota (+1.5%), and Nevada (+2.4%). Interestingly two of those are currently early (meaning pre-Super Tuesday) states.
Despite being something of a media darling, Buttigieg was always a long shot candidate. I believe I commented last year that despite the large number of declared candidates the list of people at the top of the polling (Biden, Sanders, Warren) remained remarkably stable from July 2019 onward.
Long shots have an even longer shot if they don't appeal to granite staters and corn farmers.
The Democratic Party needs to put you on as a consultant.
Apologies, Americans, for my last post when I generalised and waffled on.
Ellen likes to do games on her show. She had Elizabeth do one about the other candidates, her current celeb crush, etc.
Oh, and Elizabeth said if she's the nominee, she won't let T stalk her across the stage behind her back.
Oh, and Elizabeth said if she's the nominee, she won't let T stalk her across the stage behind her back.
Funny. For some reason, I've been thinking about those old debates a bit in the last few days, and it occured to me that almost any of the current primary candidates would have handled that better than HRC did. Even if they didn't actually stop Trump from doing it, they'd point it out, make a joke of it, etc.
(Caveat: I didn't actually watch those debates where Trump followed Hillary around, but I've always assumed she wasn't prepared for it, and didn't have any sort of response. Is that correct?)
Of course everyone is an expert on what to do after the fact...
Biden has such a negative history, and I am concerned about his continual bumbling. He seems to have thought Super Tuesday was going to happen this coming Thursday. He could not even recite the preamble of the Declaration of Independence last night. He just misidentified his wife at his victory rally!
Bloomberg just seems too greasy. He had long been a Republican and then switched to Democrat to defeat Trump. Sorry, Mike, no matter how much money you throw at the elections you will not buy them.
Sanders has a lot of good things to say, but he is-well-old.
That only leaves Warren. I do not think she will win the nomination, but I am willing to give her some bargaining chips in developing a well rounded Democratic platform.
Trump will copy his every tic and win.
I'm so afraid. Why has it come down to this? Why couldn't my party have found a well-spoken, good looking, 60-something, moderate, male, with political experience, a clean record and a few feasible plans? Did they think about it? Did they look? Did they check the peanut farms in Georgia?
Joe Sestak. Jay Inslee. John Hickenlooper. Deval Patrick, if you're willing to accept a non-white candidate. It's not that these guys don't exist or couldn't be found, it's that they failed to generate any interest. If you're willing to accept a 50-something presidential candidate (a much more historically common demographic) you could add Mike Bennet, John Delaney, Steve Bullock, and Bill de Blasio to the list, though de Blasio has that scary inter-racial marriage you might want to avoid if you're picking a candidate by demographic profile.
The point is that these options existed and that the Democratic party decided that factors other than birthdate and penis-having were more important.
He won (at current, incomplete tabulation) a total of 42 delegates, including a win in American Samoa. On the other hand it could be argued that Bloomberg's main goal was preventing a Sanders or Warren presidency and with the Democratic party seemingly coalescing around Biden there's no more point in staying in the race.
There's no evidence of that. Or rather there's no evidence that votes are being manipulated besides the ways Americans usually manipulate the vote:
Not interviewed: anyone not having Mr. Rogers' spare time to wait until 1:30 am to vote. It will probably not surprise you that this seems to be systematically targeted at minority communities.
Older black voters, especially, have been saying in interviews that all they care about this year is who can beat Trump. Young folks are leaning more heavily towards Sanders, but older voters overwhelmingly think Biden will be more acceptable to white voters.
This year the most important thing is to beat Trump and every vote will count. If 10% of undecided voters simply wont vote for a woman, gay, under 50, or "well-old" person then that's something we should consider. If I just picked who I liked best it would have been Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar but it's clearly not happening, so why not pick someone who has a chance to win?
I'm not sure Johnny Unbeatable is a real person. Arguments based on "electability" are often freighted with unwarranted assumptions.
Good question. Here's an answer I came up with after consulting my resident expert, Mr. Go Ogle. (Strict accuracy not guaranteed.)
It gets a bit stickier if a candidate dies between the time the electoral votes are cast (early December) and Congress certifies the election (early January).
As I indicated in my last post this depends on whether this happens before or after the electoral college casts its votes, which happens on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a presidential election year. (That's December 14 this year.) Presidential electors aren't legally or Constitutionally bound to vote for the popular vote winner in their states*, so the simplest expedient would be to simply have the electors cast their ballots for president for the running mate and elect someone chosen by party consensus as vice president.
It gets a bit tricky if the winning candidate dies between the casting of the electoral votes and when Congress certifies the election of the president (January 6, 2021). There's no explicit provision for this but I can see at least two possible Constitutional interpretations.
One is that the presidency is vacant due to death and the vice president is now president.
The other is that majority of the electoral ballots are invalid since they were cast for a Constitutionally unqualified candidate. (Being dead makes you just as ineligible to be president as being a non-citizen or being under 35 years old.) In that case the Twelfth Amendment specifies that the House of Representatives, voting in state caucuses picks the new president, but only from the top three electoral vote winners. That would limit the pool of eligible candidates to the election loser(s) and anyone who got a vote from faithless elector.
As I said, both of these arguments are Constitutionally plausible and have never been put to the actual test.
*There were seven so-called "faithless electors" in 2016, which I believe is a record for U.S. presidential elections to date.
Is there any reason that the candidates are all over 70 years old?
You are going to re-elect the current man aren't you? The impression provided is that people who like Bernie Sanders would rather not vote at all in your election than vote for Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, if their guy does not become the candidate. And then there's a chant of "four more years" from choirs of people recorded in the background of the endless newsclips. The impression we have of Republicans is uniformly and strongly negative. Having to do with perceptions of low education and intellect, religious extremism, ignoring of violence toward women (or support of it) and of racism.
I recall your Richard Nixon, and regret that your Hunter S. Thompson is deceased. He wrote a nice obit for Nixon, and I suspect about the same could be written for trump, if there are any literate media people left by that time: Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy.
Roy Moore came in 4th in the primary, so I guess we're spared his odious media presence for the moment.
Welcome to your democratic candidate for 2020: Joe Biden.
This ain’t good
I'm not good at reading twitter as I decided a few years ago that life was too short to do this wonderful Ship and more than one social media thing. But all I can see is the person making a point about structural bias against minorities.
I'd love to see an analysis of why minorities supported Biden, if only to help defend Warren against the horrible things the Aussie Bernie Bros are saying about her. It is breaking my heart.
And unfortunately, when the issue of cognitive-impairment comes up, the line about "my opponent's youth and inexperience" has already been used. (By a guy who was younger than Biden is now.)
I just caught this again from GK, and the old Rickie Lee Jones song popped into my head. "Chicken in the pot; chicken in the pot; chicken in the pot: chicken. OOOOh dow-ownstairs at Denny's all-star joint..."