Bernie is winning the nomination race and here's whyFollow

To me this election has already turned into an Onion article where all of five people vote in the GE, and three of them are write-ins.

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Gbaji wrote:

Um... Obviously, we are.

Gbaji wrote:

No. I'm saying that poor voter support means "weak candidate". My argument has nothing at all to do with media coverage. I am talking purely about the primary vote results. She should be creaming Sanders by like 50% or more. Probably closer to 80%. She's not.

Sec. Clinton is winning in diverse demographics that is more representative of the US. Sen. Sanders is winning in college towns and caucus states where the population is mostly white. I would argue that the former is stronger.

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Gbaji wrote:

I'm still utterly confused how you leap from the first point to the second. It's like saying that dogs like bones, and that's why the sun rises in the east. Um... what? Total nonsense.

You argued that the DEM party owing the nomination to Sec. Clinton had nothing to with strength. I countered to say that the party nominated an inexperienced person who is weaker on paper over her in 2008 in order to satisfy the base, and that's why the party feels like it owes her. I pointed out that the GOP also acknowledged that Sen. Obama was a weaker candidate on paper in their attacks against the GOP junior senators. That doesn't mean that Sec. Clinton is a "strong" candidate, but it shows that he was a weaker candidate and that the payback had everything to do with strength. Which was the topic of discussion.

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Gbaji wrote:

you're not choosing Clinton above say Cruz. You're choosing to cast your ballot for a Democrat, and among the two Democrats, you're choosing Clinton over Sanders.

False. As a person not tied to a political party, you are voting for your candidate of choice, even in a closed primary. If I'm a registered Democrat, who just so happens to be a Trump supporter, I can change my party and vote Trump. Not doing so means that I'm not choosing Trump.

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Gbaji wrote:

Sigh. I've said this several times. She has won 57% of the pledged delegates for the Democratic party nomination. Sanders has won 43% of the pledged delegates in the Democratic party nomination. That's the only race I'm looking at here. I'm seeing how well Clinton is doing against Sanders. And while she is winning, she's not winning by that much. Certainly, not nearly as much as she should be against a candidate like Sanders. I'm just not sure how many different times and ways I can explain the exact same concept to you before it'll sink in (if ever).

You're playing mental gymnastic games with vote totals, and GOP comparisons, and polling data, and ignoring the most important number: The actual delegate count. That's what determines who wins. And that's what presumably any candidate in the race is focusing on with their strategy. So one has to wonder why she's doing so poorly. She should be wiping the floor with Sanders. If she were the powerhouse nominee that many are claiming her to be, that is. Since she's not, it supports a conclusion that she's much weaker than people are claiming her to be.

You're trying to make something that is really simple into something really complicated. It's just not. Clinton is not leading Sanders by nearly the delegate count she should. That can only mean one of two things: Sanders is much much stronger than previously thought (very unlikely), or Clinton is much weaker, and folks are voting Sanders out of the simple fact of having no other choice. That's a far more likely explanation.

You are comparing apples to oranges. Just like with Trump and the GOP, Sanders is appealing to a different base outside of the establishment. An anti-establishment voter is not going to vote for an established candidate no matter how "strong" you think they are. You would have to compare her to another established candidate in order to make the similar type of comparison.

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Gbaji wrote:

with Sanders being the only other Democrat appearing on the ballot in most states

The establishment wouldn't allow that to happen is the point. Furthermore, you went from August 2015 to November 2015 to January 2016. Keep moving the goal post.

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Gbaji wrote:

You don't understand. The only reason people are talking about Paul Ryan, or Mitt Romney, or whoever, is in the event of a contested convention. That's when no candidate gets a majority of delegates. In that case, the delegates can vote for anyone, even someone who never ran in any primary at all. And guess what? The same thing applies to the Democrats. But you have to have a contested convention for that to even be a possibility. If Clinton had been indicted prior to winning any delegates, then all the delegates would have gone to Sanders, and he'd have a majority in the convention, and there would be no contest, and no opportunity for the DNC establishment to parachute in a candidate.


Since Clinton has already won enough delegates to at least make sure Sanders can't win a majority outright (and in the Democrat's case, the super delegates help out here), even if she were to be indicted tomorrow, the convention would be contested, and the DNC could drop in anyone they want to take Clinton's place. Again though, that can only happen because she's already been in the race long enough. If she'd been forced to drop out back in January, it would have been too late for another candidate to get on the ballot in enough states to prevent Sanders from just walking into the nomination by default.


You really should at least try to learn how the primary process works. It's clear you you have no clue. Which explains why it's like talking to a brick wall here. Learn first. Then post.

Read above.

Gbaji is generally a good barometer for what's not going to happen.

He just exposed the biggest scandal in late night talk show history! There's a person under there!

They are job creators! They are creating jobs for all the time travelers who come to kill Hitler, Super-Hitler, his final solution form and shop at the gift shop!

Sanders is winning so much that campaign officials are already conducting the post-mortem with the NYT.

That document is pretty amusing. It basically boils down to "We needed to have more money to be a more aggressive campaign, but since we declared war on big money interests, we did not have the resources to fight big money interests. Also, coulda woulda shoulda."

Eh, part of it. It seems obvious that there were decisions made by Sanders on how to run that campaign that had an impact and also that he frankly didn't start his campaign as a serious endeavor (as opposed to just a mouthpiece for pet issues) until too late in the game. That wasn't a financial decision, that was just planning. Had he been serious about it from the start, he would have started raising his small contributions earlier.

There's nothing odd about the Times running the story -- everyone runs "how it went wrong" analysis stories about campaigns. The interesting part here is that it's happening prior to the campaign actually officially folding and Sanders campaign people talking on the record about it.

For select audiences. Go back to your pony cartoons.

I think it was a Washington Post article that pointed out the dilemma of Sen. Sanders winning the nomination. Will he not use all of the money and resources from "big money" given to the party in order for him to win the general election? The answer is obviously "no", with a hypocritical spin.

That's what Trump supporters say!

Except for nearly every pundit predicting that Clinton would have the nomination sewn up by early March, right? Well. Until she didn't, and they they just moved the goalposts, or declared her the winner, despite not really having much of a lead in terms of pledged delegates. You mean that kind of evidence? Do I actually have to go back and find editorial after editorial written between say summer of last year, and early February of this year, or can we both just rely on our memories of them? No one predicted Sanders doing as well as he is. No one.





Yeah. You're missing my point (to be fair, I didn't clearly state it). These exit polls show us mostly that Democrat voters are more willing to accept any candidate with a (D) after their name, no matter who it is. That's not really new, nor is it surprising. Democrats tend to care more about the party in power, than the principles and positions of the specific candidates, while Republican voters tend to be the opposite (You don't hear a lot of Democrats calling people DINO's do you?). You're also arguing against a point I'm not making. I'm not arguing that if Sanders wins, Clinton will be disliked by Dem voters, or vice versa. I'm not sure why you're even going down this line. I'm quite certain that Democrats would be fine with Clinton as second choice, if it comes to that.

That says nothing about her relative weakness as a candidate though. That is evidenced in her inability to simply wipe the floor with a candidate like Sanders.



Uh huh. Still not seeing how this reflects at all on the question of whether Sanders should be doing as well against Clinton as he is. Heck. If she'd done her job properly, there should be a lot more of a gap in terms of which candidate they'd be happy with. I see these poll numbers more as resignation by the Democrat voters. They know their primary choice is an establishment politician with very questionable ethics and history, and their backup choice is an avowed socialist. They know that they don't have much (any) choice here, so may as well put the best face on it they can, and move forward, hoping that as long as they all stick together and show solidarity, things will work out ok for them.

Well, and that's also remembering that this is the 80% of normal primary voters who are bothering to show up this time around. Probably most of the folks who don't want either candidate just aren't bothering to vote. Again, like I said above, these numbers don't really say what you think they do.



Again. Do I have to link to editorials before the voters actually started voting? Or can we just acknowledge that she was expected to get far more delegates than she's gotten at this point? And if we do acknowledge that, then there are only two explanations: Sanders is a much stronger candidate than anyone thought, or Clinton is much weaker (or, I suppose, some combination of the two). I'm not just insisting something is true. I'm presenting data to support my argument.

You, on the other hand, are doing exactly what you're projecting onto me: Just insisting it's not true. All the evidence says that Clinton is taking far longer to win delegates than projected. What do you think that means, if not that she's weaker than expected? You can sing the one that goes "tum te tum tum tum" all you want, but the island is still sinking.



Three quarters of the 80% of primary voters who bothered to show up, you mean? The data you're showing supports my allegation that Clinton is a weak candidate. What you're failing to get is that Sanders is also weak. When you have two equally weak candidates, you get the kinds of numbers and polling you're seeing. When a candidate is strong, then people feel strongly about them, and they tend to translate that strong feeling into strong negatives against their opponents. When the voters showing up don't seem to care much which one wins? That's apathy Joph, not excitement.

Edited, Apr 5th 2016 5:12pm by gbaji