Sanders wins Wyoming Caucus; ties pledged delegates; math; rules :(

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The US system has always been fucked.

People are just realizing it more now because they don't actually want to vote for the establishment candidates.

The most important thing to do in US politics is implement proportional representation and to strike down the Citizens United decision.

Btw Superdelegates aren't committed to candidates though. They can change their minds at any point.

So despite Hillary "winning" so far, much of her lead is based on super delegates that are not guaranteed to vote for her, but are currently supporting her.

Hillary is winning by 3 times the margin of the largest ever comeback win in a democratic primary.

With just pledged delegates. 212 vs 70
 
But why should superdelegates vote for the candidate who wins their state? It's such an arbitrary measure of the will of the people. Historically the superdelegates have always gone for the person who won the most pledged delegates, in effect ratifying the results of the primary process. To me that seems an awful lot like respecting the will of the people.

I do wish the media would stop reporting superdelegates as part of a candidate's delegate totals, since their endorsements are not binding.

Because voting in the GE goes by state? (That's right, right?)Popular vote doesn't mean you win the presidency, If superdelegates exist to make sure the Dems pick the best candidate for the GE, electability-wise, then what's the reason for their rules not to best match the voting rules of the GE.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Either way that part is on the media since it's not like there's an official list somewhere showing who pledges what way. It's not official until the convention so arguing about it is stupid.

Is that for real? Then where the hell do they get a list? By calling each delegate to ask?
 
The US system has always been fucked.

People are just realizing it more now because they don't actually want to vote for the establishment candidates.

The most important thing to do in US politics is implement proportional representation and to strike down the Citizens United decision.

Btw Superdelegates aren't committed to candidates though. They can change their minds at any point.

So despite Hillary "winning" so far, much of her lead is based on super delegates that are not guaranteed to vote for her, but are currently supporting her.
The people are voting for the "Establichmant" candidate and her lead is based on pledged delegates she gained after the primary process.
At least try to follow what is happening.
You don't think that announcing their intention to pledge a certain way before anyone even voted has a significant effect?

The party has no obligation of being neutral especially when the other candidate was above supporting them for more than 20 years.
 
You don't think that announcing their intention to pledge a certain way before anyone even voted has a significant effect?

Do these superdelegates have fans or something?

I don't think any regular voter is keeping track of individual superdelegates' opinions on the matter and if your vote is swayed by something other than the candidate you are allowed to have your vote be swayed because it is yours to cast
 
Because voting in the GE goes by state? (That's right, right?)Popular vote doesn't mean you win the presidency, If superdelegates exist to make sure the Dems pick the best candidate for the GE, electability-wise, then what's the reason for their rules not to best match the voting rules of the GE.

On the off chance someone like a New York mogul who is super racist takes advantage of the rules and would win on a first ballot.

Not that I agree with supers. But that's why.
 
You don't think that announcing their intention to pledge a certain way before anyone even voted has a significant effect?

...no?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that it does?

If anything, I would argue that misinformation on it seems to be doing a fantastic job of rallying up the righteous indignation of the competitor.
 
On the off chance someone like a New York mogul who is super racist takes advantage of the rules and would win on a first ballot.

Not that I agree with supers. But that's why.

Rachel Maddow had a show explaining th history of superdelegates. It is more about winning and before they had supers they went purely on votes and lost huge for 10+ years until Kennedy or something.
 
You don't think that announcing their intention to pledge a certain way before anyone even voted has a significant effect?

Super delegates can influence voters, somewhat, by doing this. Just like a governor endorsing a candidate can... but only to a point.

Super delegates have never prevented the person who got the most pledged delegates from winning however. As I've always said, if the Super delegates didn't stick with Clinton in 2008 to ensure the establishment pick won, why would they break from her to Sanders when he's so far behind?

They won't.
 
Can somebody explain to me the wholly national democratic measures that were used to bring David Cameron and Justin Trudeau to their leadership positions?
 
i never said otherwise. the people are not the superdelegates. focus, guys.



this is nonsense, so is the whole we suck at math thing. it's trashcan politics.

Except it is backed up by numerous examples. I've been on r/politics for years and didn't see any significant level of discussion about the "unfairness" or "Undemocratic nature" of super delegates all through 2015. I've been on this board the whole time, and didn't see any sanders supporters making threads about how shitty the current process would be in the coming months. Instead these supporters are aghast and enraged by perceived unfairness when the time to change it would have been before the actual primaries or 2012. It's like they were surprised because many of them had no clue how the primary process works. I knew about this stuff, because I listen to election podcasts and read 538. It isn't hard to stay informed online.

Just to show you some examples, let's use google trends to see how people online have been searching about Superdelegates.

Here I searched the terms "Superdelegates" (blue) and "rigged" (red) on google trends. See how there was barely any activity throughout 2015 until Jan-feb of 2016?


Interesting even though it's admittedly a small sample size, (~100 searches per day at peaks) Clearly no one was searching about these things in 2015.

Oh please. Like anyone knew about the details of Wyoming caucusing until this shit. I like how googling makes people experts around here.

All it would take is googling BEFORE the state primary in question to know the number of delegates at stake, the margins Bernie needed to hit, and the current projections. I found all that on 538 and it's one of the first results when googling 2016 election delegates or whatever. If was SO unprecedented, then why was it spelled out on many websites before the voting?
 
What do you guys think? Is this voter disenfranchisement? Is the system rigged?

Lock if old, I did do a search to make sure.
Nothing old about it, it's just a dishonest look at things.

If super delegates were to vote for a candidate with less delegates, then we'd have a conversation about disenfranchisement, but AFAIK, Sanders is the only candidate who has publicly considered trying to hijack super delegates if he fell short on delegates.
 
Because voting in the GE goes by state? (That's right, right?)Popular vote doesn't mean you win the presidency, If superdelegates exist to make sure the Dems pick the best candidate for the GE, electability-wise, then what's the reason for their rules not to best match the voting rules of the GE.

But should choosing the most electable candidate really be the job of the superdelegates? I'm not a particular fan of the superdelegates, but it seems based on history that, as long as the candidate is seen as acceptable by some (admittedly arbitrary) measure that has always been met, they just ratify the results of the primaries by voting for whoever has won the most pledged delegates. And if we're using primary results as a proxy for performance in a state in the general election (which strikes me as a poor proxy) then superdelegates should be less interested in the results in their state than in swing states such as Ohio, Virginia, or Colorado.

At the end of the day, there's no reason to think the superdelegates will be a significant factor in the Democratic nomination.
 
The US system has always been fucked.

People are just realizing it more now because they don't actually want to vote for the establishment candidates.

The most important thing to do in US politics is implement proportional representation and to strike down the Citizens United decision.

Btw Superdelegates aren't committed to candidates though. They can change their minds at any point.

So despite Hillary "winning" so far, much of her lead is based on super delegates that are not guaranteed to vote for her, but are currently supporting her.

Who is a liberal politician that's not part of the establishment besides Bernie, Jill Stein and Angus King?
 
So let me get this straight.

The campaign that:

1) Has more delegates than it should according to the voting totals

2) Has generally won states through caucus's which are the mostly wildly undemocratic system ever created on god's earth

3) Has openly been abusing selection rules to overturn the will of voters in several states

Is complaining because *maths* is biased now?

This so much.

The only one who is benefiting from an undemocratic system is Bernie.

His supporters are just stuck in their echo-chamber and haven't noticed.
 
On what? On whom?

To you and the others who seem to think it has no effect. Just look at the confusion in this thread among pretty well informed voters. You think seeing after the first primary, news sites reporting delegate totals with superdelegates showing clinton having an insurmountable lead, even though you and everyone else immediately mentions that they still can vote whatever way, has no affect on voters? Especially when most voters don't understand superdelegates and receive no explanation from news outlets? You don't think it enforces the narrative that Clinton is the inevitable candidate for the party and Sanders is a fringe candidate w no chance?

I mean, if you guys don't see that, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying that DECIDED this primary, but to me it's pretty obvious that those numbers affect people, especially the undecided and independent voters that would be more likely to vote for a candidate like sanders. Feeding select information is like THE way you would control or manage narrative.

But should choosing the most electable candidate really be the job of the superdelegates? I'm not a particular fan of the superdelegates, but it seems based on history that, as long as the candidate is seen as acceptable by some (admittedly arbitrary) measure that has always been met, they just ratify the results of the primaries by voting for whoever has won the most pledged delegates. And if we're using primary results as a proxy for performance in a state in the general election (which strikes me as a poor proxy) then superdelegates should be less interested in the results in their state than in swing states such as Ohio, Virginia, or Colorado.

At the end of the day, there's no reason to think the superdelegates will be a significant factor in the Democratic nomination.

No, that shouldn't be the job of the superdelegates, but that's why they were created. It's hard to have this conversation where one reply will be claiming Sanders supporters are ignorant of the history of superdelegates then have other people come back and ponder what the point of superdelegates are.

You're right, there's a whole host of ways superdelegates could or should vote, the fact is that they are essentially a super vote. They vote for their own reasons, whatever they may be, whatever the intention of giving them that super vote might have been. But whatever the reason, they're a person who has the voting power of a large sum of people. That's... well, I and other people don't like it I guess is the point.
 
Jesus, just about the entire front page of /r/politics is people whining that Bernie is being screwed by a rigged process, when he is the candidate that's got a higher percentage of delegates than his popular vote share reflects.
 
Jesus, just about the entire front page of /r/politics is people whining that Bernie is being screwed by a rigged process, when he is the candidate that's got a higher percentage of delegates than his popular vote share reflects.

It's an echo chamber of people always thinking they're being screwed. Facts don't matter, emotion does.
 
To you and the others who seem to think it has no effect. Just look at the confusion in this thread among pretty well informed voters. You think seeing after the first primary, news sites reporting delegate totals with superdelegates showing clinton having an insurmountable lead, even though you and everyone else immediately mentions that they still can vote whatever way, has no affect on voters? Especially when most voters don't understand superdelegates and receive no explanation from news outlets? You don't think it enforces the narrative that Clinton is the inevitable candidate for the party and Sanders is a fringe candidate w no chance?

I mean, if you guys don't see that, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying that DECIDED this primary, but to me it's pretty obvious that those numbers affect people, especially the undecided and independent voters that would be more likely to vote for a candidate like sanders. Feeding select information is like THE way you would control or manage narrative.

You say narrative, I say the cold hard truth. Sure, it's mathematically possible that Sanders could mount a turnaround three times more impressive than the largest turnaround in primary history... and that it'll start today, despite the lack of any evidence that this is going to happen, and despite it not happening all the other times I was told it was about to.

Remember when Clinton won the candicacy in 2008 because the large majority of super delegates came out in support of her?

Oh, you don't? Huh.

Sanders IS a fringe candidate with no chance. Less young people are voting for him than voted for Obama. He's losing the race... because he's losing.

He's as 'close' as he is, because his fewer supporters are much more passionate about him than your average Clinton voter, which tends to lead to him over performing in caucuses.

The system is what it is. He has measurably benefitted from it.
 
To you and the others who seem to think it has no effect. Just look at the confusion in this thread among pretty well informed voters. You think seeing after the first primary, news sites reporting delegate totals with superdelegates showing clinton having an insurmountable lead, even though you and everyone else immediately mentions that they still can vote whatever way, has no affect on voters? Especially when most voters don't understand superdelegates and receive no explanation from news outlets? You don't think it enforces the narrative that Clinton is the inevitable candidate for the party and Sanders is a fringe candidate w no chance?

I mean, if you guys don't see that, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying that DECIDED this primary, but to me it's pretty obvious that those numbers affect people, especially the undecided and independent voters that would be more likely to vote for a candidate like sanders. Feeding select information is like THE way you would control or manage narrative.



No, that shouldn't be the job of the superdelegates, but that's why they were created. It's hard to have this conversation where one reply will be claiming Sanders supporters are ignorant of the history of superdelegates then have other people come back and ponder what the point of superdelegates are.

You're right, there's a whole host of ways superdelegates could or should vote, the fact is that they are essentially a super vote. They vote for their own reasons, whatever they may be, whatever the intention of giving them that super vote might have been. But whatever the reason, they're a person who has the voting power of a large sum of people. That's... well, I and other people don't like it I guess is the point.

Not a single poster on this board (or anywhere I've seen) is saying her lead is insurmountable because of supers. It's literally over 3 times higher than the largest primary comeback in modern history. 3X. That's insurmountable as hell.

You want WTA? lol here's why you don't


Current

1311
1093

WTA

1653
751

That excludes supers.

No, you got the argument wrong. It should be WTA in Bernie states, and then Hillary states should be proportional (excluding the old Confederacy, which should be allocated on a 3/5ths proportion).
 
Rachel Maddow had a show explaining th history of superdelegates. It is more about winning and before they had supers they went purely on votes and lost huge for 10+ years until Kennedy or something.

not quite

before they had supers, they had three elections with primaries/caucuses deciding most of the pledged delegates, and a ton of elections before that where state party machinery decided which delegates got sent - it's the big reason why Humphrey was the nominee in 1968 even though Eugene McCarthy won most of the states that actually held primaries

in the three elections with basically pure primary/caucuses, they lost 2 by absurdly huge margins (80 and 72) and barely won 1

and then their previous record basically speaks for itself (lost 68, won 64 and 60, lost 56 and 52, so on and so forth until you get to 1832)
 
Jesus Christ.

If Bernie gets the most pledged delegates, he will become the Democratoc nominee. If Hillary does, she will be the nominee.

How can either of them achieve that goal? By getting the most goddamn votes, which Hillary is doing.

This isn't that hard people.
 
not quite

before they had supers, they had three elections with primaries/caucuses deciding most of the pledged delegates, and a ton of elections before that where state party machinery decided which delegates got sent - it's the big reason why Humphrey was the nominee in 1968 even though Eugene McCarthy won most of the states that actually held primaries

in the three elections with basically pure primary/caucuses, they lost 2 by absurdly huge margins (80 and 72) and barely won 1

and then their previous record basically speaks for itself (lost 68, won 64 and 60, lost 56 and 52, so on and so forth until you get to 1832)

Ironically enough, the first election with the superdelegates was 1984. Walter Mondale had won the most pledged delegates, but not enough to clinch the nomination without superdelegates. The superdelegates overwhelmingly backed Mondale, who was more of an establishment figure than his closest challenger, Gary Hart. He went on to lose the general election in a landslide. In terms of the electoral vote, it was even worse than George McGovern's infamous loss in 1972, though a little better in terms of the popular vote.
 
Jesus Christ.

If Bernie gets the most pledged delegates, he will become the Democratoc nominee. If Hillary does, she will be the nominee.

How can either of them achieve that goal? By getting the most goddamn votes, which Hillary is doing.

This isn't that hard people.

But conspiracy...
 
Check my math on this - If you adjust the delegates needed for democrats to win to remove superdelegates, the total needed for either candidate to win would be 1668 (right? 70% of the total?). Hilary will likely have more than that with New York and California added, certainly with New England added, so why the controversy over superdelegates?
A bit late, but incorrect.

Total number of pledged delegates is 4051. That makes a clear majority of pledged delegates 2026.

Supers total to 714.

Yes, it's likely by the end of the primary, Hillary will have the majority of pledged delegates.
 
Samantha Bee has a great breakdown of Super Delegates.

As much as people bitch, it does avoid a huge mess if Hillary goes and kills baby Ben Ghazi and winds up in prison. Then the super delegates help avoid the headache of having to deal with the fallout.

This is a good video I'm quoting so more people get to see it

Superdelegates also have a latent function. They require that the person who wins the nomination actually have support from the elected officials that make up the party. A President who would be opposed by their own party's Senators and Congresspeople is absolutely useless. It's important that a candidate, you know, have a coalition to help them govern.

Also this is fucking important and more people should think of this angle.
 
Come on. Even after being explained the math and rules multiple times, people still insist on crying about some made up conspiracy that everything is rigged and undemocratic? What?

Even if you could magically change all the rules retroactively, Hillary would still be winning based on popular vote alone. Take the L and move on. I get that the wonky caucus system is some bullshit (and ironically, probably the most undemocratic method being used), but it has worked in Bernie's favor in a majority of every other caucus state until now.
 
I like how everyone (esp. the Sanders camp for some reason, which I can't fathom since he has benefited greatly from the caucus system) is convinced the system isn't representative and a travesty to democracy and each person has a unique solution to the problem with zero flaws.

Know what makes them not representative and a travesty to democracy? How about that maybe only 1/4th of people bother fucking participating at all. You guys are coming up with problems for solutions instead of the other way around.
 
I like how everyone (esp. the Sanders camp for some reason, which I can't fathom since he has benefited greatly from the caucus system) is convinced the system isn't representative and a travesty to democracy and each person has a unique solution to the problem with zero flaws.

Know what makes them not representative and a travesty to democracy? How about that maybe only 1/4th of people bother fucking participating at all. You guys are coming up with problems for solutions instead of the other way around.

They honestly think he should be winning with 42% of the popular vote. Cognitive dissonance to the max.
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

As for me -- I'll be traveling a few hours and doing everything I can to support Tim Canova and defeat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz -- she's in a deep-blue district and I believe there is enough outrage against her and the DNC to assure that she loses her seat

Don't worry about Debbie though -- If she loses she'll be able to land a cushy job as a lobbyist
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

As for me -- I'll be traveling a few hours and doing everything I can to support Tim Canova and defeat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz -- she's in a deep-blue district and I believe there is enough outrage against her and the DNC to assure that she loses her seat

Don't worry about Debbie though -- If she loses she'll be able to land a cushy job as a lobbyist

Is this like a Dem Tea Party thing? The 'Revolution'? Good grief.
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

As for me -- I'll be traveling a few hours and doing everything I can to support Tim Canova and defeat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz -- she's in a deep-blue district and I believe there is enough outrage against her and the DNC to assure that she loses her seat

Don't worry about Debbie though -- If she loses she'll be able to land a cushy job as a lobbyist

Sorry, haven't paid much attention to her career as a Representative. What did she do that was so bad?
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

As for me -- I'll be traveling a few hours and doing everything I can to support Tim Canova and defeat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz -- she's in a deep-blue district and I believe there is enough outrage against her and the DNC to assure that she loses her seat

Don't worry about Debbie though -- If she loses she'll be able to land a cushy job as a lobbyist


Ideology purists are the worst. Not saying she is my favorite politician, but I'm not going to ascribe the a tea party mindset
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

As for me -- I'll be traveling a few hours and doing everything I can to support Tim Canova and defeat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz -- she's in a deep-blue district and I believe there is enough outrage against her and the DNC to assure that she loses her seat

Don't worry about Debbie though -- If she loses she'll be able to land a cushy job as a lobbyist
That's ok don't try to campaign for getting rid of a republican incumbent where possible, that would be too effective.
 
Superdelegates are there to correct the fact that Hilary as a woman earns only 70% of the vote of a man in equal position of running for president. That's why she has a fuck ton of them
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

As for me -- I'll be traveling a few hours and doing everything I can to support Tim Canova and defeat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz -- she's in a deep-blue district and I believe there is enough outrage against her and the DNC to assure that she loses her seat

Don't worry about Debbie though -- If she loses she'll be able to land a cushy job as a lobbyist

Or, you know, maybe focus on the 26th Congressional district instead?
 
The party should be able to pick their nominee how they want to. Democratically or no. I don't think the primary system has given us as good of candidates as the classic smoke filled room.
 
If the data on http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_vote_count.html is accurate, Clinton has 57.4% of the popular vote (considering just Clinton and Sanders votes) and 55.4% of pledged delegates.

The superdelegate number can look unfair and there's certainly reason to debate the point of it, but Clinton has the majority of the popular vote, yet has been awarded a smaller fraction of delegates than the popular vote would indicate. Regardless, superdelegates aren't changing the lead on their own, and if the popular vote did indicate it, they (superdelegates) could switch their candidate.

None of it screams "rigged" to me.
 
Sorry, haven't paid much attention to her career as a Representative. What did she do that was so bad?

Someone or several people from Bernie's campaign stole proprietary polling data from Clinton's campaign and the DNC blocked Bernie's campaign from accessing their polling data for 24 hours.

Monstrously evil, I know.
 
You can't change the rules in the middle of a contest unfortunately -- however after the primary season is over we should not let our outrage over this subside

The faux outrage will subside when this election is over and the hipsters hop on the next "fad".

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that many of Bernie's "supporters" don't actually give a fuck about Bernie, the political system, or his (or any) actual platform (Clinton supporters to an extent as well, Trump supporters too). They're basically just on the bandwagon because Bernie and all the memes are all over social media. Once this election is over they'll go back to being the apathetic moderate they really are in their ivory tower of privilege.
 
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