Please Let This Biden Comeback Celebration Last Only 72 Hours
I've been offline since Thursday to avoid seeing Joe Biden's smug face and the elation of the punditry that Bernie Sanders lost in all the ways.
The TL;DR version of this race so far:
Iowa: "the real story tonight is who comes in 2nd, and yeah, the voting was an unresolved clusterfuck."
New Hampshire: "the real story tonight is who comes in 3rd, and yeah, we want a Republican billionaire Hail Mary in this."
Nevada: "the real story tonight is if you add who came 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, a brokered convention is the right thing to do."
South Carolina: "Biden in 1st, reshapes race, is the frontrunner, fuck you!"
Bonus: "Sanders = Russia, sexism*, communism, guillotining Chris Matthews in Central Park, Bloomberg campaign office vandalism, and HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY FOR IT!?!?1?"
*I wish this didn't exist:
.@BernieSanders is trying to put @ewarren and @amyklobuchar campaigns out of their misery by beating them on #SuperTuesday in their respective home states of #Mass. and #Minn. Mistake. He should be focusing on bigger hauls in bigger states, not trying to humiliate female rivals.
— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) February 28, 2020
Time to call your friends in France and ask where they got their yellow vests from, because that brokered convention is looking more and more likely.
The cat's outta the bag
"One person close to (Warren's campaign) said that tonight is about blunting the momentum for Bernie Sanders" pic.twitter.com/lj4gcMN70H
— Aisha Ahmad (@aishaismad) February 29, 2020
Not that this was unknown, but like Bloomberg outright saying in a previous debate that he bought members of Congress, I'm surprised that they can't keep their shit on better lockdown.
Oh! And just in case you were wondering: yes, shenanigans with voting stations were ON last night (but who gives a shit?):
The biggest county in South Carolina closed 1/3 of its polling stations ahead of the #SouthCarolinaPrimary https://t.co/jv1a1Jv0vm
— Jordan (@JordanChariton) February 29, 2020
Comments
Meanwhile, from Real Progressive Warren:
Pure projection Liz.
It is you who pushes for things that you KNOW will never pass. Thankfully that clip was only 19 seconds or I would not have even attempted to watch her speak. She makes my skin crawl.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Oh God
I'm now convinced...
that the Dems don't actually know how to run a clean election.
They've spent all these decades holding sham contests where the outcomes were predetermined, that accurately tallying votes in a timely manner and reporting the results honestly is completely beyond their institutional capabilities.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Exactly. They can't even land on a losing solution
either. Propping up a centrist does not work; propping up an Obama adjacent did not work. Screwing around with voting processes hasn't worked out perfectly. Smearing Sanders and his surrogates/supporters isn't sticking.
I think (at least, I hope) it's curtains too for the DNC's success of fundraising off the GOP. The party was kept afloat by its agreement with the Clinton campaign. One wonders what the thinking is in the party leadership to stay the course as a long-term fix.
All of those strategies work just fine.
As long as we misunderstand the DNC's goal we will make no progress. They are prepared to lose every election just so long as the party remains in their hands and their hands alone. They are paid well to pursue this goal. They hate progressives far more than they hate Republicans.
“One of the things I love about the American people is that we can hold many thoughts at once” - Kamala Harris
Correct. But those methods haven't worked as well
as they might have expected. Hence the panic and craziness after Nevada. Now, of course, they feel entirely vindicated, cause it doesn't take much.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Their cultural stock-in-trade is decreasing.
(answer frontpaged)
“One of the things I love about the American people is that we can hold many thoughts at once” - Kamala Harris
But . . .
the more they lose and the larger the margin of defeat, the less their value to TPTB. The lower levels may have to start working for a living.
It's kinda like that ad for fluorescent light bulbs, where
someone tries to tell a kid a "how many X does it take to change a light bulb?" joke, and the kid is perplexed; "Why would anyone change a light bulb?"
Except it's: "How many Democrats does it take to count the primary votes?", and the perplexed old-school Dem asks, "Why would anyone count the primary votes?"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
They don't know how to run a clean election.
But, if you ignore their failure to keep it hidden, they're masters at running a dirty one.
But their goal is never an honest election.
. Their goal is to keep the common folk either brainwashed or OUT.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
Oh, laurel
Beautifully succinct.
Exactly right. And not a Russian in sight.
I worked many a primary in a democratic machine dominated city. Never worked the general--whoever won the primary would win the general hands down. Basically primaries were one faction trying to cheat another faction. This has been going on in democratic controlled towns for so long, cheating is part of the DNA of the party. This is why I never believed in Russiagate. The only people capable of altering elections are the people inside the system. Some troll in Moscow cannot change results.
In general, democrats cheat each other in primaries. Republicans cheat everybody in the general. Which is why the absolutely drubbing of democrats in the age of Obama. Also, the republicans are better than democrats in devising new ways to cheat. Democrats as in Iowa use brute methods like not reporting numbers, misreporting, and just other crap right out in the open.
Why it's the Rehnquist method!
We just don't have time to count all those pesky votes. It would take too long and interfere with our democracy.
Ah, the classics.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
What took so long?
that gives me stomach cramps /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
The only solution
is not to pay attention. Paying attention amounts to hand wringing. Hand wringing amounts to essay's written about the 72 hours of hand wringing. Be in the present moment and stop paying attention to the election for a couple more days.
Breathe.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
No cable news, Raggedy Ann
until 7:00 on Tuesday Night. That's my plan. I'll be living my life as I usually do MINUS even a single second wasted on cable TV "news."
NYCVG
Excellent!
Enjoy your next couple of cable-news-free days!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
However, we do need to raise questions
publicly
about election anomalies. Our few journalists should be focused on how the DNC is cheating Bernie and, by extension, the American people. It must be recorded. It should be investigated.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
I meant for the two days
the essayist is agonizing over. Sorry you got confused.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
No, I'm sorry,
. I didn't mean to imply that you were unaware of the seriousness of their cheating. Sometimes my comments are intended for anyone out there who might be reading, and I didn't want the casual reader to "relax" too much at this point. I sometimes miss nuance in conversations, a lifelong shortcoming I'm working to overcome. You were being especially kind, and it was good advice you gave.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
I just wanted to ensure
you understood what I meant.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
There seems to be a pattern
developing here.
DNC = Dangerously Noxious Clowns
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
Interesting fact:
the first 4 primary contests account for only 4% of all allocated delegates, yet have a hugely disproportionate influence on the race. Of those 4 states, only NV is roughly in synch with the national demographic profile. IA and NH are too lily=white, and SC is too lily-black as well as being too old and conservative.
It's fortunate that SupTues comes along so soon after SC, as that state really should not have been allowed to insert itself, to sidetrack and muck up the process leading up to ST. It's a wildly atypical state wrt race and ideology, and of course is so Red that Dems don't bother campaigning there after the primary. A true one-off state wrt representing most Dems.
For these reasons, the DNC needs to revamp its early primary order of states to allow for more time between NV and STues -- 10 days minimum -- and while they're revamping they can also get around to eliminating all caucuses. I would also prefer NH, which has deeper roots as the first in the nation primary state, to be named as the first to go. If IA objects, the party can disallow their delegates at the convention.
Or the DNC could go more radical with a rotating regional primary system, where the first states to go would only be announced 6 months in advance.
The whole primary system needs a major overhaul. It takes too long and costs too much (e.g., all the wasted $$ Steyer and Tulsi spent in SC). It's an embarrassing wasteful spectacle which only enriches the MSM and hired political consultant hacks. Most voters don't bother to tune in until 10-12 months into the marathon campaign. I would blow it all up and start over from scratch.
Oh, and in addition
to downgrading/eliminating IA and SC in the early contests and getting rid of cactuses, the DNC should not count delegates given in open primary contests. No easy meddling in the party process. Dems only.
"lily-black"? Even for English, that's a pretty bizarre
linguistic construction.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Not entirely uncommon
for me at a very early hour of day to take liberties with the standard presentation of words.
There's likely to be more language fun from me as this delightful primary process drones on.
Might work for some, not for others, but the only thing that matters is that it works for me, but thank you anyway for your interesting input.
Black Lily
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Yes, a little-known
and very underrated flower. A must in the garden for eccentrics and political contrarians like myself.
(edit: If I'm not mistaken, it was the favorite flower of Poe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison.)
Why can't the US have all primaries and caucuses
for all the states at the same day? Why can't political ads on TV and radio be limited to 3 months duration before the general election? Why can't all those ads be paid by the government for all states? For the people by the people.
Why are people so afraid to try to change the electoral system? Can it get any worse than it already is?
https://www.euronews.com/live
Because winners make the rules
If you won under the existing system, what's your motivation to change it? If you can't win in the existing system, how are you going to get the power to change the rules?
It takes someone of integrity (uncommon in any area, downright rare in politics) to not only say "a vote for me is a vote to change the system" and then to deliver change once they win.
Even trading Iowa (this isn't their first electoral failure) for some other state as First in the Nation may be more change than the system can accommodate. Dumping it all for a nationwide, vote by mail, ranked choice voting primary is inconceivable. Unless you can find and elect people of integrity.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
There would likely be
some First Amendment free speech objections -- probably sustained -- if we try to get too fancy on restricting campaigning prior to the primaries.
One way around that is to have a regional system, on a rotating basis, which is only announced 4-6 months in advance. Just one suggested possible reform measure.
On the single national primary idea, it makes me a little nervous. A major disadvantage is that a Primary Day wouldn't allow voters time to reflect and reconsider some of their assumptions about candidates. It would also be vulnerable to being so narrow in time that late-arriving and important info about a candidate wouldn't be factored in to the voting. A series of regional primary dates, perhaps 3 weeks apart, would give much more leeway to providing a thorough information flow so voters are well informed when voting and don't have later regrets.
but you could see it also differently
@WoodsDweller
It would also give those less time to manipulate voters' assumption, who buy the most ads to the highest (ie richest) bidder the fastest. If three months is not enough, make it six month. Enough time for dirt diggers and truth misleaders to do their business.
That sounds to me as if you give up fighting before having even started.
and this
could be fought by the voters in saying:
"We have the integrity to vote for you, you better have the integrity to act upon your words".
Well, I guess I am just too disappointed and awestruck by your "fancy electoral college system" that feels so undemoratic and unfair that people give up before the fight has even started. A kind of pre-emptive effort to discourage voters to let their andidates feel to fear their voters. "You they better have intergrity or else." May be laws should be introduced to sue elected officials, if they vote not according what they have been voted into office for.
Sad, indeed.
https://www.euronews.com/live
SC also allows votes from any voter
Only rule is, they can only vite once in the SC primary, and i heard 37% of ballots were absentee. wtf!?! sounds fishy
Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever
States' rights
enshrined in the US Constitution. Good luck in amending it.
Anyone can vote in Dem Primary
Including D, R, & others.
Other states. only Rs in R primary & Ds in Dem Primary
Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever
That's how SC chooses to do it --
and that's a matter of Constitutional state's rights in elections that every state exercises. Some like NY are far more restrictive than others. NH is more liberal.
link
https://www.scvotes.org/sites/default/files/Absentee%20Voting%20History%20(1998-2018).pdf
Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever
It's how the SC
state Dem party chooses to do it. Nothing to do with the Constitution, as I see it. The primaries are all a party process. They can enhance primary voters' participation, or diminish it, or eliminate it altogether. The Const has nothing to say about parties or how these "factions" select their nominees.
If the national DNC then decides, as it should later: We will no longer accept or recognize the delegates selected in so-called Open Primaries; only contests involving registered Ds alone will be seated at the national convention -- it would all be legally sound.
Re "absentee" voting high pct: sounds like SC has an extensive list of reasons to claim absentee status, almost amounting to a straight vote-by-mail option.
Aticle 1 Section 4
Then there's:
Amendment 10:
The US Constitution only granted the USG power over the states for federal general elections. That has never been amended.
States quickly defined who could vote -- white males 21 years old and whatever other restrictions they wanted to add. The USG had no legislative power to change that; only through amendments could that be done.
So, yes, the manner in which states hold primary elections is most decidedly a state's right issue.
No, I don't think so.
The fed Constitution isn't relevant here nor is the issue of states rights enumerated therein.
This is a political party right -- the DNC, a private entity -- and it calls the shots as to seating its national convention delegates. Sure, the state political party can decide to hold a caucus, or regular voting process, where any registered voter can vote regardless of party registration, but only the DNC (or RNC), via its stated rules, is in a position to agree to recognize the delegates allocated by that state for the party national convention.
If you have some fed court or Scotus case law to show me contradicting this, I'd be happy to give it a look.
On your comment about states generally being able to further restrict who can vote, that's a little too sweeping and misleading, and there are already numerous Const provisions -- Amends 14, 15, 19, 24 and 26 -- and the CivRts Act of '65, which act as a major check upon states. Although states can restrict if not otherwise prohibited by the Con or federal law. Such as upon felony conviction.
What are we arguing about?
I thought it was the issue of SC holding a completely open primary. SC voters, regardless of political affiliation, can vote in whatever primary contest they wanted, but only one. Someone here objected to that SC open primary system and said that the DNC should change it. I pointed out that the DNC has no power to do that.
The legislative branch of each state is the sole controlling power of all elections in its state with the exception of holding general elections for federal office in accordance with the terms of office for House Reps, Senators, and President. State governments delegate power to local governments including that for local elections.
States, and not political parties, can choose to hold primary elections or not. In California there are no primary elections by political party except for president. (The DNC and RNC spent millions to prevent this change.) If a state declines to hold a presidential primary election, the political parties are free to hold and pay for nominating caucuses or gather party bosses in a smokeless back room to select whatever.
How the RNC and DNC use the results of primary elections to select their presidential nominee is up to them, but they wouldn't last long if they didn't collaborate with the state and local party committees. Nor would states be willing to hold and pay for presidential primaries if the results were ignored, and today those results must reflect to some degree the will of the voters; so, no more winner-takes-all primary elections. Do you know how the DNC allocates delegates to each of the states? It's complex and the end result is that all primary voters are not exactly equal, and that inequality may be more distorted the the electoral college inequality.
All of this has been a work in progress over the past hundred years and remains on-going. The push and pull between TPTB that want it all and the people that want it all.
wrt voting rights -- didn't think I needed to spell out all the amendments on that to you.
On this matter
of states controlling primary methods
We were disagreeing apparently b/c imo you were overstating things, as above. Yes, the states run their primaries, but it's not entirely true in a real sense that the DNC has "no power" to change the states' way of conducting those contests. This is b/c the DNC can just refuse to accept a state process that doesn't adhere to DNC rules. Since no state will usually want to bother with a largely meaningless beauty contest, and b/c they want to be relevant in the process (with all the economic benefit that implies) and have their citizens' voices heard in a meaningful way at the national convention, they can fairly well be persuaded to change if they are not in compliance with DNC guidelines. That is certainly something more than "no power" for the DNC.
So far, the DNC allows open primaries as well as caucuses. This should change, and it's up to the DNC to clamp down on those undesirable situations by rules changes. When they finally do, the states will fall in line. That is wielding power.
This illustrates the difficulty in discussing
a complex matter in short comments. Wires get crossed even as we're not in too much disagreement.
Would it have been clearer if I'd said that political parties have no direct and legal power over states as to how elections are managed? I gave you the example of the RNC and DNC spending millions to stop the non-party, open primaries in California reform and lost? Of course as all legislative and executive branches of states are nearly exclusively run by members of the two major parties, national and state parties can lobby those elected officials. But in CA, there's an old (originally intended to be progressive) direct democracy feature of the CA Constitution. It trumps the legislative and executive branches (except when the courts find the change unconstitutional*). So, the people chose open primaries and the state government had to comply.
A couple of points because as worded you don't seem to be clear on:
The DNC/state DP affiliate run caucuses. So, "allow" is inoperative. For political parties it was an alternative to the preexisting backroom deals in selecting delegates to the national conventions because voters were sick and tired of those backroom deals and wanted a voice, but their legislatures declined to hold and pay for what was a private matter for political parties.
Might want to strike that "no state." Until this election cycle, the DP held caucuses in WA State from which convention delegates were chosen. After the caucuses the state held a meaningless primary. Why did the DP decide to go with the primary results instead of voting at the caucuses this time? Don't know, but based on the '08 and '16 caucus results (Obama and Sanders) compared to the primary, the primary results favored conservadems which may have been a flip from the past. This is an all mail-in, open primary (as all are in WA). The WA DP central committee agreed to accept the results.
Both parties want voters to believe their votes count; so, to some extent they have to "allow" those votes into their nomination decision process. The DNC and RNC would prefer no primaries in election cycles when its nominee has been pre-selected by the party poobahs because primaries/caucuses can reveal party disunity without changing the decision of the poobahs. But states can't be that accommodating to political parties; so, the Democratic and Republican primary elections are held even when the outcome is pre-ordained. Fortunately for the DNC and RNC there aren't many contested primaries for a sitting presidenti. When there is -- as in '68, '70, and '92 -- that party lost the general election. It's not much better for a party to make a nomination a foregone conclusion as in 2000 and 2016. Bradley didn't last long in the 2000 election, but it left a bitter residue in NH, the state Gore needed to win regardless of FL but was out of reach for him after the primary. Sanders was like the DNC's black swan in 2016.
While the "1st in the nation NH primary"
goes back about a hundred years, the whole "people's choice" in presidential nominations is of recent vintage and more illusion than fact. Consider that HHH won the '68 nomination without having competed in a single primary election. Most states by then didn't even have primaries. HHH won the old-fashioned through national, state, and local party bosses and affiliate.
The 1971 reforms were in response to that. The IA caucus was part of those reforms. To steal a bit of thunder from the NH primary that had suddenly gone from an irrelevant, quirky New England thing to mega-important without challenging NH's long-held claim to "first in the nation primary." The IA caucuses were too new and untested to carry much weight in '72, and only rose to important in '76 because Carter got in there while other potential candidates had yet to form a campaign and the media ran with Carter in IA. Carter didn't even win IA; "undecided" did by a substantial margin.
Among Democrats, IA and NH faded in importance after '76. NH rose again in '92 when the media put renewed emphasis on it because of questions about Bill Clinton. Clinton lost to Tsongas, reminding the national public that the NH primary was still a quirky local electon. Bur it did put Clinton on the national stage. It also raised questions as to why, other than tradition, NH was first. That was quickly squelched by NH amending its constitution that it would forever hold the first presidential primary.
The importance of IA and NH began solidifying in 2000 and became the be-all and end-all in 2004 for Democratic nominations, and also became hugely expensive. As small states IA and NH greatly appreciated all the dollars that flowed their way and they aren't about to give that up.
There are actually reasons what we have today came into being. And those reasons make it very difficult to change. It carries a connotation of democracy for ordinary voters; so, they don't get exercised about the oddities and don't see a reason for changes. And those in positions to effect change have many reasons not to propose any, and with each election cycle less open to change because we're nearing the point where voters are again irrelevant to a nomination. (The GOP is lagging a bit on this aspect.)
There are also reasons why armchair analysis and reform recommendations aren't as good as they appear and are extraordinarily difficult to impossible accomplish within a short time-frame. The old saying, "can't fight City Hall" is applicable.
Nah, no need to be
that pessimistic. It's just the very mortal hacks running the DNC. Very susceptible to various ways of getting important reform done. A little public exposure and shaming should get their attention.
A victory by Bernie, carrying with him further landscape changes in Congress, should help this party reform process along.
What we can count on is that
positive changes for greater real democracy will not happen with this Congress and Trump, Biden, or Bloomberg in the WH.
And at least a decade if Bernie doesn't win now
If Bernie is squashed now, who/what is going to emerge that will even come close to approximating the critical mass supporting him?
AOC? I like her a lot but I don't think she can wage a successful national candidacy. I doubt that she can win higher office in NYS.
A new People's Party? Good luck in even so much as getting on the ballot in all 50 states in the next decade.
This is it and Super Tuesday, tomorrow, is pretty much the decisive battle for our future.
So please think twice before voting for someone who won't be winning any delegates. And even worse, having your vote proportionately distributed to other candidates who do reach the 15% threshold because your candidate won't even come close (and this in many states includes Warren).
Last Ditch Effort to Stop Sanders
First this:
Rick Wilson has a plan for Obama to help snatch the White House away from Trump
Gotta love these Republicans who have our best interests at heart.
Last week in Nevada it was Sanders who beat Biden like a rented mule, inflicting a crushing defeat across almost every demographic group. But that was then, this is now, and a Republican stratigist says "It's now or never" to defeat
SandersTrump.Super Tuesday is ... Tuesday. Biden, as I noted yesterday, hasn't visited any Super Tuesday state in a month, has almost no money, is not on the air, has little or no ground game. Early voting is already in progress in several states. What can be done in one day to turn things around?
Realistically, nothing. Yes, a big endorsement by Obama could have an impact, but how many voters would even hear about it before voting? Biden will definitely get a bounce from his win in SC, but how big will it be? How much did Sanders' win in Nevada help him in SC?
Then there's this:
Why Biden still needs Klobuchar and Warren in the race
Not to win. Not to hoard delegates for a convention fight. But just taking every opportunity to slow Bernie down.
Finally, and I only saw one tweet about this and can't find any confirmation, that Bloomberg hasn't made any ad buys beyond Super Tuesday. Anyone know anything about this?
Steyer has spent $200 million, got nothing for it, and has dropped out. I'm hoping that's what we see for Bloomberg as well. Is Bloomberg trying to win? Or just to stop Bernie? Super Tuesday will tell the tale.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
They're all trying to stop Bernie.
They don't give a shit whether it's Trump or Biden or Bloomberg as long as it isn't Bernie.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
yeah, well, remember, these are the same geniuses
(or of the same ilk, at any rate) who contrived to win the 2016 nomination for Trump, cuz ya know, he was so beatable.
i don't spend much time worrying about their strategery. Their malfeasance on the other hand ...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
It's interesting how each of them
-- Biden, Bloomberg, Warren, Klobuchar -- is stepping in to do his or her part for the overall goal of stopping Bernie. They are 100% loyal to the Dem establishment which is 100% loyal to the neocon, neoliberal, oligarchic, globalist Deep State. They know the Dem establishment will reward them -- and you can practically smell the certainty of that knowledge on Liz. She'll do and say whatever they ask of her.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
I can see her being the VP
pick for whichever neo liberal gets the nomination as the token "lefty" thrown as a bone to progressives. Biden-Warren? Bloomberg-Warren? They'll use that to say "look, we really did try to get some of the left on the ticket but that wasn't good enough for those purity pony Bernie Bros so now we have 4 more years of Trump!" "Damn you misogynistic leftwing dirty hippie purity voters, now look what you've gone and done again!"
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Yeah, looks like it's been offered to her
, much as it was dangled in front of her 4 years ago by Hillary. She just clicks her heels and gets in line for the bait. She'll stab anyone in the back. Did you see her second "beer swigging" ad where she asks her husband if he wants a beer to which he replies, behind his newspaper, "No thanks?" Quick little pause and then she's back on message. Also interesting that her brother openly refuted her claim that their dad was a janitor. Seems like she's been this way for a long time. The night she stabbed Bernie in front of everyone, he was visibly hurt, shocked and angered. Now she's stabbing him everywhere she goes.
Yes, she seems to see herself as a future VP, but if Bernie somehow makes it to the nomination, I hope he will not offer her a thing.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
Frankly, I never believed Bernie's candidacy was going to be met
with anything but a full on assault by the DNC, the media, and their respective surrogates. What I didn't expect, especially from dubious "progressives" like Warren, was to hear non-viable candidates openly talking about blunting Bernie's momentum with their only goal being to collect delegates into the convention. Yes, most of us anticipated this was going to turn into a contested convention by design, but I don't know how many of us believed they'd tip their hand so blatantly and so soon into the process. Now that they have, it gives Bernie time to prepare his own strategy for meeting their threat at the convention. Maybe someone could refresh his memory on how effective the bus loads of people that GWB arranged were in shaping the media narrative of "civil disruption vs. accurate counting" in Florida? Taking a page out of that playbook, Bernie's people really need to start thinking about organizing an army of supporters in strength that rivals his numbers at his rallys, and descend onto Wisconsin. And maybe as an added bonus, conjure up the image of the 1968 convention Buttigieg seems to believe Bernie is so nostalgic about resurrecting. If the Establishment is going to twart the will of the people, let the will of the people be heard.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
"Won't you please come to Milwaukee ..."
[video:https://youtu.be/gsKzZXtF2_U]
(special attraction for music geeks: stills plays his solo on the 12-string instead of the 6-string. i used to leave the extra B and E strings off my acoustic 12-string, so i could still get the big 12-string blast on the chords, while getting precision and clarity on the leads.)
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Good suggestion
Maybe we could ask sympathetic musicians to come along as well.
Nice choice of music btw, even if I didn’t understand anything you said about musical notes or strings...
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I'm surprised by how in the open it is
I also expected an onslaught of smearing, but I truly never expected party operatives to openly say they want a brokered convention and will not support Sanders, and I didn't expect the campaigns to actually admit that they are in it to thwart Sanders/other campaigns are useful to thwart Sanders.
Here's a little tidbit
Democrats ‘very nervous’ says Sanders as he campaigns on Warren’s home turf
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Oh, shit. So there really was fraud.
The voter suppression variety.
I thought it was just people being idiots and assholes this time.
Here we go again.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
There are threee possible scenarios
for how the pre primary polls were so far off:
First, a wild methodological error. Bernie actually received more votes yesterday than in 2016. Perhaps only people who voted in 2016 were polled.
Second, everyone knows that Bernie is the person most likely to defeat Trump and Biden is the worst possible candidate. Perhaps thousands of Trump supporters came out pretending to be Democrats to vote for Biden. This has supposedly happened before.
Third, the quisling Democrats have given up all pretense of being honest and are blatantly stealing the nomination from Bernie. This is the most likely.
On to Biden since 1973
2016 Deja Vu
.
In many ways, this race is now the same exact contest that was fought back in 2016. It has come down to Joe Biden -- The Establishment choice -- despite his obvious Ukraine corruption, family payoffs, obstruction of justice and abuse of office, etc. -- and despite Biden being 100% wrong on every issue from the Iraq War to NAFTA to the TPP to Syria (more Regime Change) to Libya to saying China is not an economic threat, etc. -- and despite him being a bumbling buffoon and gaffe machine who doesn't even know what State he is in, and constantly mangles sentences, and arrogantly yells at or insults prospective voters -- and despite him on multiple occasions caught sniffing the hair and fondling young girls in public.
How is this different from Hillary Clinton .. just without the Cackle?
Bernie Sanders, as in 2016, is the only other option now that has a multi-state Campaign support structure. While Mike Bloomberg can buy million dollar Ads and saturate them everywhere across TV and the Internet .. he has no real voter base, a phony message, and no charisma.
So it is Sanders .vs. Biden, which is essentially a rematch between Sanders and Clinton -- or -- essentially a rematch between Sanders and the DNC Establishment (who also control the rules of the game).
My question is, who in earth would ever want to vote for the doddering and incoherent Joe Biden under any circumstance? Clearly, Biden just represents the anti-Sanders vote here, and The Establishment, with Bloomberg, Buttiburger, and Klobachar all failing, has closed ranks to consolidate around the one dog-faced, pony soldier left standing in the race: Quid Pro Joe.
Come on man! Get down and do some pushups Jack. I don't want your vote.
Polls and Votes and super delegates and Media narratives will all now be fixed around Biden from this point on (if they weren't already). So expect a whole lot of Malarkey upcoming, and this means that Sanders will have to win by big margins, and win a whole lot more States than he did in 2016, in order to survive.
--
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-y_w0O5Bw]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04SBKjkuzYU]
.
some people are funny in how they report things
Chris Cilizza at CNN rounds Biden's margin, 48.4% to 19.9% (28.5% difference) to "almost 30 points".
Cilizza also makes the all-too-common "mistake" of comparing Bernie in a 2 person race to Bernie in a 6 person race. Bernie's AA vote rose from 14% vs Hillary to 17% vs Biden and Steyer and
ButtigirigeridgMayo and Warren and Klobuchar. No mention of how Biden, as the establishment favorite, dropped from from Hillary's 73% all the way down to 48%. Probably because he can mentally make the connection, with Biden, that it was a 6 person race, but is unable to do the same with Bernie.