The point I'm hoping to make here is that both parties suck, hardly anybody likes them, and it's mind-boggling that somebody put up by organizations that are so disliked will be elected President and that we pretty much have no say in the matter.

Dems and Repubs are both minorities

In February 2015 the Gallup people found that 29% of all Americans of voting age identified themselves as Democrats, with 25% saying Republican and 43% saying they were "independent". When those indies were asked which way they leaned, and those people were added to the major parties, the Dems came out ahead 44-43.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

Which is interesting because back when Obama could have done something, when he was seen as a leader of the people (right after the 2008 election), the D/R split was, with leaners included, 55-37. So that's how much goodwill he wasted.

The most recent poll had Dems up somewhere in between those two points, ahead 32-26 in self-identification. The number of people who say they're Democrats has fluctuated between 26% and 32% for a couple of years now and Republicans have been as low as 20% (!) of the voting population (2013).

Will either go the way of the Whigs?

Over the last few decades we've heard either the Dems or Repubs were about to become extinct but they never do. That's because both parties are incompetent and corrupt and when one fails the other becomes the "in" group....until it, too, fails. And we're only allowed two parties. Forget the labels, Democratic and Republican. They are always "In" and "Out". We're entertained by stories of court intrigue in foreign places, where we know little about the people, the issues, the factions, just that knives get drawn, people get stabbed and power passes to the new king or dictator or group. We can see it, in those cases, for the naked power grab that it is but we sometimes miss that that is exactly what goes on here, because we know too much about the situation and we get drawn into thinking it matters and that Person X will fix things. Person X, it turns out, is just another guy with a knife.

What does this minority status mean for the general election?

Now back to this 29% business....it's been mentioned that if we have two candidates and they split closely, like Obama and Hills or Hills and Bernie, then the nomination will be decided by about 15%. Right? 'cause half of 29%, add a little for one candidate, that should come to about 15%.

Let's say Her Ladyship wins the Democratic nomination with 15% of the total voting population and Trump wins the Repub nod with half of the Republican votes, or 13% of everyone. That leaves 72% of the grand total to be divvied up. Shouldn't Hills appeal to a lot of those people? I mean, in order to win she'd have to be popular enough. How does she do with that 72%? It isn't a pretty picture. But then I'm sure the dopes at the DNC, knowing they can't make her a winner will try to make the Repub a loser.

Why don't we have a third major party?

You'd think if the number of people who are independents is larger than either party we wouldn't have to put up with this nonsense but "independent" doesn't have the money behind it that either D or R have. Should someone decide to invest a ton of cash into a third party it would probably work and one of the current major parties would fade away until we'd be left with the remaining party plus the new party...which would then become the new "In" and "Out".

Who are the low information voters?

I recently read an article in the market research publication, Quirk's, entitled "How political marketing influences voters: Part 1", that got me to thinking.

http://www.quirks.com/articles/2016/20160425-1.aspx

It asks the question "When does the public start researching candidates?" Now this is interesting because we like to think we're well informed, that we've been following the issues and the candidates since forever. We're not low information voters. Before we look at this article, what are our assumptions? Mine were that people in the 40-65 year old range know the most about politics and that Democrats, in general, being smarter than Republicans, are more aware. Now let's go to the videotape...or the text.

When asked how early respondents begin researching presidential candidates, KSM’s political marketing survey uncovered that Millennials are actually more likely than Baby Boomers to vet candidates very early in the campaigning process. The difference is a statistically significant 38 percent of Millennials who say they begin researching presidential candidates one year or more prior to an election, compared to 27 percent of Baby Boomers who do the same. In other words, Millennials are 1.4 times more likely than Baby Boomers to research candidates early on. Generation X nearly splits the difference at 31 percent. Thirty-five percent of Baby Boomers (this group’s most popular answer) and 31 percent of Gen X research just three to 11 months prior.

In short, the older one gets, the more likely he/she is to get into the details later. Since older people are still more likely to vote it means that less informed voters are going to the polls in primaries and voting for people they know little about...but they've heard that one candidate or another is inspiring. Now dig this:

When it comes to research timing comparisons among party affiliations, the numbers also vary substantially. For instance, about one-fifth of Republicans claim they begin the research process for midterm candidates between six to 11 months prior to that region’s respective Election Day....Compare this with midterm numbers for Democrats and independents, and some stark differences arise. The latter two groups claim they either don’t start their research process until a couple of months prior to Election Day (17 percent for both Democrats and independents) or go as far as stating that they don’t research midterm candidates at all (25 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents).

That's about midterms but the article points out the Presidential election numbers are similar. 24% of Democrats say they do NO candidate research.

So the least informed voters are the Democrats who pushed Hillary into the big pledged delegate lead. Swell.

What about the general election in November?

Now for some more numbers. I'll try to make this easy to understand. I don't want anyone glazing over! I started talking about this with shaharazade and realized I'd have to get to the point quickly!

Let's say Bernie has about 45% of the Dem vote (which we've seen is only a smallish portion of the overall voting population). It works out to about 17 million voters that we can identify as Berners. Obama won the last election, with his great "Better than the Mormon!" slogan, by 5 million. If 1/3 of the Bernie people don't vote for Hillary then the Republicans win.

I want to make the point again that Obama lost about 4 million votes in 2012 off his 2008 total. Were those the same people who now support Bernie? Who decided, in 2012, not to vote for President or who voted for Jill Stein? It's an interesting question.

http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/popular-vote/

But it could also be argued that Obama's total in 2008 was a fluke, since the total number of voters was so high compared to 2004. 2012 showed a decline in total vote from 2008 but was still higher than 2004. I think if we take the 2012 numbers we're fairly safe in using that as a base, thus reinforcing the conclusion that Hillary is in trouble in the general election.

And yet, going back to the two party system and whether or not one of the parties will fade away, and that they're both corrupt and incompetent, the Republicans look about ready to out-incompetent the Democrats. That's Her Ladyship's best chance for a win, that the Repubs nominate either Trump or Cruz. Against any real human being she'd lose badly.

Ok, enough chat. Now for some music!

Some songs I like. The titles amuse me in the context of this diary. Some Beatles

And another...the original by the Valentinos

Perhaps Hillary will sing this song to voters on election night. This is Skeeter Davis

enough of that...here's a rockin' number to cleanse the mind, clear out the political nonsense...Ritchie Valens!