2016 Democratic Thread

[bmags]

Long way to go. I havent been asked and either have most of the younger voting groups that dont have land lines for people to hit up for polling. Lots of factors here before it really matters.

 

Cell phones are included in almost all polling now. Clinton's inroads into the black community is real and substantial.

 

This is what happens when you spend the majority of your political life in a safe, lilly-white state.

[StrangeSox]

Yeah but that's benefit of the EC. You have 10-15 states that collectively don't have the population of the top 3, so why would politicians waste their time campaigning in those sparsely populated states? They wouldn't. They'd focus on California, Texas, New York, etc.

They already don't focus any of their time on those states because 1) they're generally very safe states for one party or the other and 2) still barely have any electoral votes. They only focus on the "swing states" that conceivably could go either way. Look at the bottom 15 states:

 

Wyoming-safe R

Vermont-safe D

Alaska-safe R

North Dakota-safe R

South Dakota-safe R

Delaware-safe D

Montana-safe R

Rhode Island-safe D

Maine-safe D

New Hampshire-sort of a tossup, but only has 4 EV's. lots of attention due to being the second state in the nomination process, but otherwise largely ignored.

Hawaii-safe D

Idaho-safe R

West Virginia-safe R lately, maybe less so if it's a white Democrat, but still only 5 EV's

Nebraska-safe R

New Mexico-safe D lately, still only five EV's

Nevada-the first one that might be a more contested state? Went Obama twice, Clinton twice and R for all other elections back to 1980.

 

 

 

Now compare that to the "Swing states" people actually bother campaigning in:

3 Florida

6 Pennsylvania

7 Ohio

9 North Carolina

10 Michigan

12 Virginia

22 Colorado

 

 

So the EC doesn't actually mean anyone bothers to pay attention to the smaller states, but it does mean that an overwhelming majority of the population gets ignored for a handful of large-mid states that happen to be polling close in that election cycle. I have no problem with Presidential candidates focusing their attention on our most populous states that represent a wide variety of people and industry rather than what we get now.

[Jenksismyhero]

They already don't focus any of their time on those states because 1) they're generally very safe states for one party or the other and 2) still barely have any electoral votes. They only focus on the "swing states" that conceivably could go either way. Look at the bottom 15 states:

 

Wyoming-safe R

Vermont-safe D

Alaska-safe R

North Dakota-safe R

South Dakota-safe R

Delaware-safe D

Montana-safe R

Rhode Island-safe D

Maine-safe D

New Hampshire-sort of a tossup, but only has 4 EV's. lots of attention due to being the second state in the nomination process, but otherwise largely ignored.

Hawaii-safe D

Idaho-safe R

West Virginia-safe R lately, maybe less so if it's a white Democrat, but still only 5 EV's

Nebraska-safe R

New Mexico-safe D lately, still only five EV's

Nevada-the first one that might be a more contested state? Went Obama twice, Clinton twice and R for all other elections back to 1980.

 

 

 

Now compare that to the "Swing states" people actually bother campaigning in:

3 Florida

6 Pennsylvania

7 Ohio

9 North Carolina

10 Michigan

12 Virginia

22 Colorado

 

 

So the EC doesn't actually mean anyone bothers to pay attention to the smaller states, but it does mean that an overwhelming majority of the population gets ignored for a handful of large-mid states that happen to be polling close in that election cycle. I have no problem with Presidential candidates focusing their attention on our most populous states that represent a wide variety of people and industry rather than what we get now.

 

You're right, but this is all cyclical. It might not be this way in 20 years or 50 years. Illinois could become a GOP stronghold. Florida and Ohio can become locks for Democrats. Who knows what can happen going forward.

 

And populous states don't mean a wide variety of people get heard. Look at our beautiful state. It's the people of Chicago versus everyone else. Politicians don't campaign in Springfield and Peoria for Illinois delegates, they focus on Chicago and that's the main reason why this state continues to vote Dem.

[pettie4sox]

I think we're in for a wild ride. Strap in.

[DrunkBomber]

 

Sanders supporters posted a video claiming all kinds of fun Clinton polling corruption.

[StrangeSox]

You're right, but this is all cyclical. It might not be this way in 20 years or 50 years. Illinois could become a GOP stronghold. Florida and Ohio can become locks for Democrats. Who knows what can happen going forward.

 

But nobody is ever going to waste time and money on Wyoming's 3 EV's.

 

Sparsely populated states already are overrepresented in the Senate and to a lesser extent the House. There's no reason to give them yet another unnecessary advantage in Presidential elections as well. The bottom 15 states combined match the population of Ohio, but they have 40 EV's whereas Ohio has 18.

 

And populous states don't mean a wide variety of people get heard. Look at our beautiful state. It's the people of Chicago versus everyone else. Politicians don't campaign in Springfield and Peoria for Illinois delegates, they focus on Chicago and that's the main reason why this state continues to vote Dem.

 

A NPV means that downstate voters in Illinois get just as much of a say as Chicago voters.

[StrangeSox]

Just because something is obscure doesn't make it good, it just makes it novel. The caucuses are ridiculous which is why we of course give them so much prominence.

 

Something to keep in the mind is that the real results and awarding of the Iowa delegates doesn't happen for months still, and things can and do change at the "county caucuses." These first caucuses are to elect delegates to the county caucuses, and then these county caucuses meet in June to actually award the state delegates to various candidates. Uncommitted delegates and delegates from other candidates (e.g. O'Malley) who drop out of the race can switch their vote at any time.

 

For example, in 2012 Rick Santorum "won" in January but got zero delegates at the convention. Mitt Romney finished 0.03% behind Santurum and got 6 delegates at the RNC. Ron Paul came in 3rd place on January 3rd. However, his campaign managed to work the rules of the system, and he was awarded 22 out of 28 delegates at the RNC.

 

What an incredibly stupid system. I have no idea why anyone pays attention to Iowa's nonsense.

[bmags]

 

Sanders supporters posted a video claiming all kinds of fun Clinton polling corruption.

 

fuel engine can't melt steel beams

[greg775]

Hillary "won" and we're hearing nothing about the 6-for-6 coin flips. Hilarious. If Bernie had won there's be coin flip mocking going on and investigations. It's her turn to be president for 8 years, folks and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Hope you Hillary backers realize you're setting it up so nicely on a tee for Chelsea to succeed mom. I don't understand why our country wants the Clintons so badly.

Tell me I'm wrong about the coin toss scandal. Six for six? Sure.

[Jenksismyhero]

But nobody is ever going to waste time and money on Wyoming's 3 EV's.

 

A lot of time? No, but some time? Yes. We just had an election won by 5 electoral votes, so they're important. 600k votes out of 115 million is nothing.

 

Sparsely populated states already are overrepresented in the Senate and to a lesser extent the House. There's no reason to give them yet another unnecessary advantage in Presidential elections as well. The bottom 15 states combined match the population of Ohio, but they have 40 EV's whereas Ohio has 18.

 

And I guess we disagree fundamentally that they're overrepresented. That was done by design. Every state gets 2 votes, regardless of population. When deciding matters of the entire country, to me that makes sense. The house compensates for population.

 

 

A NPV means that downstate voters in Illinois get just as much of a say as Chicago voters.

 

True, Illinois is a bad example. No matter which system, downstate Illinois residents get the shaft when it comes to attention. I do think it'd be worse under a popular vote system though. Something like 10 million live in the chicago metro area, 2 million in the rest of the state. There's little incentive to campaign in the rural areas if we did it that way.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Jenksismybitch

[lasttriptotulsa]

Hillary "won" and we're hearing nothing about the 6-for-6 coin flips. Hilarious. If Bernie had won there's be coin flip mocking going on and investigations. It's her turn to be president for 8 years, folks and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Hope you Hillary backers realize you're setting it up so nicely on a tee for Chelsea to succeed mom. I don't understand why our country wants the Clintons so badly.

Tell me I'm wrong about the coin toss scandal. Six for six? Sure.

 

You're such a drama queen.

[StrangeSox]

A lot of time? No, but some time? Yes. We just had an election won by 5 electoral votes, so they're important. 600k votes out of 115 million is nothing.

In 2000, nobody paid any attention to the small states. They are rarely if ever in play, and when they are, it's still much more effective to spend your money on states like Florida or Ohio. Point to some actual historical examples of people bothering to campaign in low population states.

 

edit: for that matter, why is it so important that we try to design a system that has different states specifically campaigned for rather than ensuring that every single eligible citizen has exactly the same voting power?

 

And I guess we disagree fundamentally that they're overrepresented. That was done by design. Every state gets 2 votes, regardless of population. When deciding matters of the entire country, to me that makes sense. The house compensates for population.

The House also overrepresents small population states. Just because they designed it a certain way doesn't mean it's a good design, either. The bottom 20 states get 40 Senate seats and still don't have the population of California. It maybe made sense as a compromise when states were still quasi-nations and forming the Constitution, but it doesn't make much sense in 2016. And as I said, it also skews the Presidential voting powers of each state. It's silly that someone living in Wyoming has roughly 5x more say in who is President than someone in California or New York.

 

True, Illinois is a bad example. No matter which system, downstate Illinois residents get the shaft when it comes to attention. I do think it'd be worse under a popular vote system though. Something like 10 million live in the chicago metro area, 2 million in the rest of the state. There's little incentive to campaign in the rural areas if we did it that way.

There's zero incentive to campaign there now, and there's no incentive to campaign to 10 million people living in metro Chicago, or the tens of millions living in and around NYC, LA, SF.*

 

If we had a popular vote and someone came along and proposed the EC, everybody would wonder why you'd ever do something like that.

 

*not entirely true, lots of campaigning for donations, but not so much campaigning for votes like you see in contested states. Still leaves rural areas high and dry.

Edited February 2, 2016 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

I decided to watch it. That was a huge mistake. Did you actually watch that video?

 

Aside from raises taxes on the 1%, when did they even bring up what Sanders is standing for? Fox News continues to use the word "socialism" because people don't understand it and are scared by it, it's a buzz word.

 

What did they actually say in that video? What did you take from it? It's incredible that in 6 and a half minutes, they could actually say nothing. Socialist media? REALLY?

[caulfield12]

In 2000, nobody paid any attention to the small states. They are rarely if ever in play, and when they are, it's still much more effective to spend your money on states like Florida or Ohio. Point to some actual historical examples of people bothering to campaign in low population states.

 

edit: for that matter, why is it so important that we try to design a system that has different states specifically campaigned for rather than ensuring that every single eligible citizen has exactly the same voting power?

 

 

The House also overrepresents small population states. Just because they designed it a certain way doesn't mean it's a good design, either. The bottom 20 states get 40 Senate seats and still don't have the population of California. It maybe made sense as a compromise when states were still quasi-nations and forming the Constitution, but it doesn't make much sense in 2016. And as I said, it also skews the Presidential voting powers of each state. It's silly that someone living in Wyoming has roughly 5x more say in who is President than someone in California or New York.

 

 

There's zero incentive to campaign there now, and there's no incentive to campaign to 10 million people living in metro Chicago, or the tens of millions living in and around NYC, LA, SF.*

 

If we had a popular vote and someone came along and proposed the EC, everybody would wonder why you'd ever do something like that.

 

*not entirely true, lots of campaigning for donations, but not so much campaigning for votes like you see in contested states. Still leaves rural areas high and dry.

 

Obama did it in 2008 to pick up some EC votes that historically haven't gone Democrat in a number of years.

 

I'd have to look it up...it seems he either went to West Virginia or Montana or both. Obviously he campaigned for North Carolina and Indiana, but that depends if you consider Indiana a small state or not.

 

Obama spent a lot of time back in Iowa in 2012, for example.

 

I'd have to check about Wisconsin, New Hampshire and New Mexico.

Edited February 3, 2016 by caulfield12

[Balta1701]

Attention media: You do know you made up the whole 'won on a coin toss' story, right?

The delegates that were decided by coin flips were delegates to the party's county conventions, of which there are thousands selected across the state from 1,681 separate precincts. They were not the statewide delegate equivalents that are reported in the final results.

 

The statewide delegate equivalents that determine the outcome on caucus night are derived from the county-level delegates, but are aggregated across the state and weighted in a manner that makes individual county delegate selections at a handful of precincts count for a tiny fraction of the ultimate result.

 

[iowa Democratic Party spokesman Sam] Lau said seven coin flips were reported statewide, and Bernie Sanders won six of them.

 

The Des Moines Register has identified six coin flips through social media and one in an interview with a caucus participant. Of those seven, Clinton was the apparent winner of six. It's unknown if there is any overlap between the coin flips identified by the Register and the coin flips the state party confirmed.

[bmags]

Unbelievable! The media once again covering up for Hillary. Just rolling out a red carpet for her!

[greg775]

Basically the coin toss story is runresolved. This new story makes absolutely no sense at all. It's unreadable.

Edited February 3, 2016 by greg775

[StrangeSox]

Hillary won some coin tosses for the 11,000 county delegates. These delegates meet later and chose the 1,400 statewide delegates that then choose the 44 delegates that will actually go to the DNC.

 

The "state delegate equivalents" are the numbers that get reported as far as who "won" Iowa this week. It's not the actual delegate count because those aren't set for months still and are subject to some level of shenanigans (e.g. Republicans in 2012). But what the media stories are conflating are the SDE's and the coin flip delegates that Clinton won. They aren't the same thing.

 

The news story makes no sense because Iowa's system makes no sense.

[Balta1701]

Hillary won some coin tosses for the 11,000 county delegates. These delegates meet later and chose the 1,400 statewide delegates that then choose the 44 delegates that will actually go to the DNC.

 

The "state delegate equivalents" are the numbers that get reported as far as who "won" Iowa this week. It's not the actual delegate count because those aren't set for months still and are subject to some level of shenanigans (e.g. Republicans in 2012). But what the media stories are conflating are the SDE's and the coin flip delegates that Clinton won. They aren't the same thing.

 

The news story makes no sense because Iowa's system makes no sense.

And all of the "coin tosses" aren't being reported either, so the story that there were 6 coin tosses and Hillary won all of those is just the 6 that were reported to one paper. Another paper got reports of different ones and they got a different pool which Sanders dominated.

 

And there are probably more out there not being reported. But if someone already believes everything is a Hillary conspiracy, they'll ignore that.

[bmags]

11,000 delegates from Iowa. That is a ridiculous number. What is that dumb conference like.

[caulfield12]

And all of the "coin tosses" aren't being reported either, so the story that there were 6 coin tosses and Hillary won all of those is just the 6 that were reported to one paper. Another paper got reports of different ones and they got a different pool which Sanders dominated.

 

And there are probably more out there not being reported. But if someone already believes everything is a Hillary conspiracy, they'll ignore that.

 

At the end of the day, because not all the precincts were using the new Microsoft tech, at least 40% of the other set of toss-up situations that were (all supposedly 6/6) going Clinton's way were impossible to validate other than hearsay/video/Twitter reports...so, in the end, no smoking gun.

[bmags]

The serious candidate

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/695056822336622596

[Brian]

The serious candidate

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/695056822336622596

 

Marco sees things as half empty.

[bmags]

Sure, people are discriminated against, but it's only okay to point out of they are white Christians who are forced to say happy holidays!

[caulfield12]

Bernie Sanders has become a much better debater and taking O'Malley out of the equations has added to contrast between the two.

 

I think the biggest question is how many of the young people that he's getting out there between ages 18-29 will still be motivated to vote for Hillary in a national election when/if Sanders has to concede the nomination?

 

It's something like 75-80% right now. Even Obama wasn't close to that number in 2008.