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[CCS]

After this it's just Wisconsin and Wyoming until New York. These primaries/caucuses aren't happening often enough to feed my need, please help.

 

[Tubie]

Something I don't understand about Cruz's VAT plan is how it's supposed to work with the states sales taxes.

A federal VAT of 16% plus 6-11% state sales tax (depending where you live) sounds like a nightmare for middle to low income people.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Her goal today is basically to limit his win in Washington. A win in Alaska or Hawaii isn't making a difference for either delegate-wise. Winning Hawaii would just be useful so there isn't a Sanders sweep narrative.

 

[CCS]

Her goal today is basically to limit his win in Washington. A win in Alaska or Hawaii isn't making a difference for either delegate-wise. Winning Hawaii would just be useful so there isn't a Sanders sweep narrative.

Pretty much. There's only limited value to winning Hawaii when it comes to controlling the narrative, as most of the Sanders supporters who still believe he can win probably won't be convinced otherwise regardless of the results today, and anyone who doesn't think he can isn't going to change their mind just because he won Hawaii.

 

[User 463088]

Besides, Hawaii was part of the Confederacy, and they don't have Internet there. It's an island. There are no wires.

Your move Shillary.

 

[CCS]

From a particularly stupid HuffPo article:

The final word on electoral math, FiveThirtyEight.com, has Sanders at about 90% of his “delegate target” for winning the nomination via pledged delegates. By way of comparison, that figure for Donald "When did we beat Japan at anything?" Trump — the presumptive Republican nominee — is 96%. What’s striking about this figure is that Sanders is at 90% in this measure with the half of the nominating process that’s most favorable to him yet to come. Meanwhile, as of today Clinton is at her lowest point ever in this measure — 110% — and dropping fast. Things will get worse if, as anticipated, Clinton gets swept by Sanders in this weekend’s Democratic primaries and caucuses.

That's not how those work mate.

That’s the number of delegates Hillary Clinton needs to reach to secure the Democratic nomination without super-delegates. Nate Silver — the nation’s top polling expert — says it is “very possible” she won’t get to that number, which means Bernie Sanders will be in Philadelphia this summer trying to make his case to super-delegates that he’s more electable than Hillary.

That's not shocking either if you understand how the delegate system works mate.

Bloomberg has Sanders beating Clinton nationally, 49% to 48%. Coverage of this poll was dwarfed by coverage of how it’s obviously time for Sanders and his supporters to accept the fact that the Senator is just much less popular than Hillary is.

Outlier I agree with proves every other poll wrong.

Sanders beating Donald "Why is Obama playing basketball today" Trump 58% to 34% could not only give the Democrats the Senate but the House also, and not only the House but possibly a commanding majority in both the House and Senate. Apologies for, you know, wanting that, but it could be a generational shift in the political center of gravity in America. Then again, hey — those demented, in-denial Sanders supporters, am I right? It’s just a historically eye-opening poll by one of the nation’s top polling organizations — chill out, Bernie bros.

Treating GE polls as gospel + passive aggressive strawmanning ftw.

And possibly West Virginia, which was a reliable blue state back when Democrats sounded and acted like — well, Bernie Sanders.

That was before — oh, right. The New Democrats. “Welfare reform.” The “tough-on-crime” Left. The don’t-mention-the-death-penalty Left. The no-gay-marriage Left.

The Clintons.

No bias detected here.

Clinton can’t ever put in play in November most of the states she’s winning by clear margins in March; Sanders at least has a shot at this, as his polling numbers among independents and white voters (particularly in red states like Kansas, Utah, West Virginia, et. al.) tell us.

Who wants to break it to him that Sanders doesn't win Kansas in a million years?

So: though this is one of the closest Democratic primary races in the last half-century, Hillary Clinton definitely has many more pledged delegates than Bernie Sanders.

And she still won’t clinch the nomination with pledged delegates alone.

Get over it.

She and Sanders will make their respective, hard data-oriented cases to the super-delegates in Philadelphia. And they will do so shortly after — if current polling trajectories hold true — Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic primary in the State of California.

FANFIC TIME!

It's like every nonsensical argument you see on reddit coalesced into one article.

The kicker? It's not a Goodman article.

 

[User 463088]

The best thing about that poll that showed Bernie ahead by one? He was trailing when they only considered the States that haven't voted yet. Soooooo....yay?

 

[Officerrob]

The best thing about that poll that showed Bernie ahead by one? He was trailing when they only considered the States that haven't voted yet. Soooooo....yay?

So he's trailing among states that have yet to vote, is behind a couple million votes among states that have already voted, yet he's +1 nationally?

 

[User 463088]

So he's trailing among states that have yet to vote, is behind a couple million votes among states that have already voted, yet he's +1 nationally?

According to that poll...yes. Which tells you how good it was.

 

[CCS]

According to that poll...yes. Which tells you how good it was.

Who exactly is he leading with then? Leprechauns?

 

[User 463088]

Who exactly is he leading with then? Leprechauns?

Pigeons, clearly.

 

[StopMakingSense]

Who exactly is he leading with then? Leprechauns?

Millennials who couldn't be bothered to actually vote. REVOLUTION!

 

[Officerrob]

Millennials who couldn't be bothered to actually vote. REVOLUTION!

This is the only answer

 

[Y2Kev]

I am actually really surprised that NY and CA were moved out of super tuesday this year. This is a huge disadvantage to Hillary. She would have swept both and this would be really over. I have no idea what that moron Debbie is doing.

 

[CCS]

I am actually really surprised that NY and CA were moved out of super tuesday this year. This is a huge disadvantage to Hillary. She would have swept both and this would be really over. I have no idea what that moron Debbie is doing.

Be fair to DWS, she's an inspiring role model who proves that you don't actually have to be able to think to succeed in politics.

 

[Black Republican]

im glad bernie will do good today, my bernie supporting friends were near suicidal last super tuesday, had to log off the internet for a while lol

 

[Officerrob]

im glad bernie will do good today, my bernie supporting friends were near suicidal last super tuesday, had to log off the internet for a while lol

Is false hope really what's best though?

 

[Maledict]

I reckon today is going to be an amazing day for Bernie. I wouldn't be surprised to see three complete blow-outs - he's going to pick up a lot of delegates today. I don't think he can make Clinton not viable in any of the three states, but it might be possible in Alaska.

She just needs to remain calm and focus on Pennsylvania and New York.

 

[gaugebozo]

According to that poll...yes. Which tells you how good it was.

Is there a link to the points both of you made? This could be an example of Simpson's Paradox, where say, a drug is found to be better than another for treating disease a and b separately, but not as a general cure for a and b. I read the poll (Selzer right?), but didn't find anything about states.

 

[noshten]

I'm surprised you guys haven't accused Matt of spreading right wing propaganda to undermine the presumptive Democratic nominee


Why Young People Are Right About Hillary Clinton

In many ways, the endorsement by my boss and editor, Jann Wenner, read like the result of painful soul-searching, after this very magazine had a profound influence on a similar race, back in 1972.

"Rolling Stone has championed the 'youth vote' since 1972, when 18-year-olds were first given the right to vote. The Vietnam War was a fact of daily life then, and Sen. George McGovern, the liberal anti-war activist from South Dakota, became the first vessel of young Americans, and Hunter S. Thompson wrote our first presidential-campaign coverage. We worked furiously for McGovern. We failed; Nixon was re-elected in a landslide."

The failure of George McGovern had a major impact on a generation of Democrats, who believed they'd faced a painful reality about the limits of idealism in American politics. Jann sums it up: "Those of us there learned a very clear lesson: America chooses its presidents from the middle, not from the ideological wings."

But it would be a shame if we disqualified every honest politician, or forever disavowed the judgment of young people, just because George McGovern lost an election four decades ago.

For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income inequality, among others.

And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.

Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales.

Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one.

Take the mass incarceration phenomenon. This was pioneered in Mario Cuomo's New York and furthered under Bill Clinton's presidency, which authorized more than $16 billion for new prisons and more police in a crime bill.

As The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander noted, America when Bill Clinton left office had the world's highest incarceration rate, with a prison admission rate for black drug inmates that was 23 times 1983 levels. Hillary stumped for that crime bill, adding the Reaganesque observation that inner-city criminals were "super-predators" who needed to be "brought to heel."

You can go on down the line of all these issues. Trade? From NAFTA to the TPP, Hillary and her party cohorts have consistently supported these anti-union free trade agreements, until it became politically inexpedient. Debt? Hillary infamously voted for regressive bankruptcy reform just a few years after privately meeting with Elizabeth Warren and agreeing that such industry-driven efforts to choke off debt relief needed to be stopped.

Then of course there is the matter of the great gobs of money Hillary has taken to give speeches to Goldman Sachs and God knows whom else. Her answer about that — "That's what they offered" — gets right to the heart of what young people find so repugnant about this brand of politics.

This pattern, of modern Democrats bending so far back to preserve what they believe is their claim on the middle that they end up plainly in the wrong, has continually repeated itself.

This is why her shifting explanations and flippant attitude about the email scandal are almost more unnerving than the ostensible offense. She seems confident that just because her detractors are politically motivated, as they always have been, that they must be wrong, as they often were.

My worry is that Democrats like Hillary have been saying, "The Republicans are worse!" for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything. It makes me nervous to see Hillary supporters like law professor Stephen Vladeck arguing in the New York Times that the real problem wasn't anything Hillary did, but that the Espionage Act isn't "practical."

Young people don't see the Sanders-Clinton race as a choice between idealism and incremental progress. The choice they see is between an honest politician, and one who is so profoundly a part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore.

They've seen in the last decades that politicians who promise they can deliver change while also taking the money, mostly just end up taking the money.

And they're voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral "revolution" that bars corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of success, the only practical road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption.

Young people aren't dreaming. They're thinking. And we should listen to them.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-young-people-are-right-about-hillary-clinton-20160325

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income inequality, among others.

Nope. I don't think young voters care at all about those things right now.

Bernie isn't really particularly honest either.

 

[Iolo]

I guess young voters don't care about gay or minority rights as foundational issues of our age.

 

[Slayven]

I guess young voters don't care about gay or minority rights as foundational issues of our age.

But Bernie was at Stonewall

 

[Y2Kev]

For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been [every issue I care about], among others.

I am not a representative millennial voter because I do not live with my parents and am successful, but I would suspect 18-35 year olds care about energy policy/climate change, sensible gun control regulation, and high paying jobs being available /minimum wage / paid leave more than mass incarceration and the Iraq war. The Iraq war was and is invisible to the average citizen in the country. I don't mean to create a priority list of problems in the country but his list looks more like the concerns of a hodgepodge of activist concerns than what young people actually think about in this country.

I think the focus on those things is why millennials aren't voting, actually. Ain't nobody* getting out of bed in the morning because of the financial crisis of 8 years ago, and latte liberals are not voting en masse because of police brutality.

*some people clearly do

 

[noshten]

I guess young voters don't care about gay or minority rights as foundational issues of our age.

Right the Iraq War, mass incarceration, financial crisis, debt and income inequality have nothing to do with minority rights - after all no one cares about Muslim people in Iraq, the fact that the mass incarceration is massively effecting minority communities, the financial crisis effected black communities by far bigger and profound way than any other subset of the American population, that minorities are effected by predatory lending schemes far more than anyone else and generally haven't seen a transfer of wealth to their communities for generations.

 

[Y2Kev]

No one does care about Muslim people in Iraq. I mean...not to be callous. I would say the number of people who were opposed to the Iraq war because of how Muslims and minorities were treated in Iraq is like 5% of the population.

I also really disagree with Taibbi on how "everyone" saw through the sham of the evidence presentation. Is this the common consensus now? That this was easily and obviously fake and everyone knew it?

Effectively every single is interrelated when you have to blame everything on income inequality though.

 

[Iolo]

Issue championed by Bernie? Foundational issue of our age.

Issue championed by Hillary? On the wrong side.

Issue championed by both? "Other issues", so as not to muddle our argument.

 

[noshten]

Issue championed by Bernie? Foundational issue of our age.

Issue championed by Hillary? On the wrong side.

Issue championed by both? "Other issues", so as not to muddle our argument.

According to millennials - hence the article

 

[Slayven]

One of the biggest mistakes of the Bernie campaign is saying punishing wall street will fix everything when faced with minority specific issues. Sure he has changed it up a bit, but too little too late

 

[B-Dubs]

According to millennials - hence the article

That's not an article, it's an editorial. He gives no real proof, it's just him talking out of his ass about what he thinks millennials like. An article is actually researched and can back it's claims up. He needs actual numbers to back his inferences up and he has none.

 

[Officerrob]

According to millennials - hence the article

Millennials who have decided that these issues are so important, they can't pull themselves away from their cellphones to vote

 

[HylianTom]

For whatever reason, I'm amused by the idea of Lindsey at a Kermit show..

 

[royalan]

I was confused by that article when I read it yesterday.

It's really hard to believe that the college-town liberal who makes up the bulk of Bernie's support really gives that much of a fuck about free trade, or is as staunchly opposed to it as Bernie positions himself to be. Or mass incarceration, let's be real. Bernie indeed played a huge roll in setting the tone of this election season, but it wasn't completely by his policy positions, it was by positioning himself as a revolutionary. It's the most attractive thing about him; wonder why the article glosses over that.

It's also exhausting these days reading articles by journalists who seem to want to put herculean effort into painting Bernie's base as the future of the Democratic party, despite how overwhelmingly white and fickle his base is. I would think the Democrats would want a coalition of diversity; but I guess they do, which is why Hillary Clinton is winning.

 

[Slayven]

That's not an article, it's an editorial. He gives no real proof, it's just him talking out of his ass about what he thinks millennials like. An article is actually researched and can back it's claims up. He needs actual numbers to back his inferences up and he has none.

He included a variation of "Heres why" in the title, that makes it fact B-Dubs

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Millenials like free trade. We like our iPhones and video games and cheap consumer goods. And nobody my age wants to work in a factory. They want these creative jobs which aren't really threatened by free trade (and are likely helped because cheaper goods means more money to spend on the things these jobs produce)

As The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander noted, America when Bill Clinton left office had the world's highest incarceration rate, with a prison admission rate for black drug inmates that was 23 times 1983 levels. Hillary stumped for that crime bill, adding the Reaganesque observation that inner-city criminals were "super-predators" who needed to be "brought to heel."

You can go on down the line of all these issues. Trade? From NAFTA to the TPP, Hillary and her party cohorts have consistently supported these anti-union free trade agreements, until it became politically inexpedient. Debt? Hillary infamously voted for regressive bankruptcy reform just a few years after privately meeting with Elizabeth Warren and agreeing that such industry-driven efforts to choke off debt relief needed to be stopped.

For someone who is arguing for honesty this is pretty rich.

The super predators speech was in 1996 a year and a half AFTER the crime bill was law. But let's pretend Clinton helped trick people into voting with her racism.

Also I love the random Warren reference

 

[royalan]

For someone who is arguing for honesty this is pretty rich.

The super predators speech was in 1996 a year and a half AFTER the crime bill was law. But let's pretend Clinton helped trick people into voting with her racism.

Also I love the random Warren reference

And, as usual when Bernie's supporters bring up those crime laws, it completely ignores that Bernie voted for those laws. Pretty much all of them

But hey, he gave a noble-as-fuck speech before he did it, so we're cool.

 

[Abinash117]

Right the Iraq War, mass incarceration, financial crisis, debt and income inequality have nothing to do with minority rights - after all no one cares about Muslim people in Iraq, the fact that the mass incarceration is massively effecting minority communities, the financial crisis effected black communities by far bigger and profound way than any other subset of the American population, that minorities are effected by predatory lending schemes far more than anyone else and generally haven't seen a transfer of wealth to their communities for generations.

They don't care , or it was never big priority in their time. If they did I doubt it was the main reason they support Bernie of vote to begin with. People are inherently self-interested. Also Millennials are still pretty liberal, but it is the minority millennials that are making the difference and making millennials appear so, white millennials are slightly split, but lean Republican still. Those minority millennials still vote for Hillary, but maybe not as much.

http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/4-6-2015_07/

 

[Slayven]

And, as usual when Bernie's supporters bring up those crime laws, it completely ignores that Bernie voted for those laws. Pretty much all of them

But hey, he gave a noble-as-fuck speech before he did it, so we're cool.

and he is a lot looser on gun control

 

[NYCmetsfan]

And, as usual when Bernie's supporters bring up those crime laws, it completely ignores that Bernie voted for those laws. Pretty much all of them

But hey, he gave a noble-as-fuck speech before he did it, so we're cool.

Hey just like Clinton gave a speech before her vote that she wasn't voting for war and she hoped the power was never used!

My vote is not a vote for any new doctrine of preemption or for unilateralism or for the arrogance of American power or purpose, all of which carry grave dangers for our Nation, the rule of international law, and the peace and security of people throughout the world

 

[Macho Madness]

And the crime bill myth as if the Clintons are purely the only ones who wanted to have the law because they're evil racists:

This is an important point: Many black Americans, including black leaders, welcomed "tough-on-crime" policies as a way to protect their communities. A majority of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for the 1986 law that created the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. And in 1994, it was the CBC that saved President Clinton's crime bill after an unexpected loss on a procedural vote.

http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum...ed-white-supremacist-violence-against-black-c

 

[noshten]

No one does care about Muslim people in Iraq. I mean...not to be callous. I would say the number of people who were opposed to the Iraq war because of how Muslims and minorities were treated in Iraq is like 5% of the population.

I also really disagree with Taibbi on how "everyone" saw through the sham of the evidence presentation. Is this the common consensus now? That this was easily and obviously fake and everyone knew it?

Effectively every single is interrelated when you have to blame everything on income inequality though.

Some young people care about a foreign policy based on bombing the fuck out of brown and black people in the middle east and northern Africa with drones. Some care about the humanitarian costs of the Iraq War rather than focusing on how much money the US "lost". These issues do have a lot to do with minorities, those minorities are simply outside of the US borders. Whether they are as major as Matt is another issue. To me one of the major reasons I loathe Clinton is her "foreign policy experience", I might be an outlier - I might not be. I'd say in 2008 the Iraq War played a large part in winning Obama the nomination and considering it's the situation in Iraq/Syria/Libya and the terrorist threats - these issues are still pretty important to young voters who've historically been the anti-war vote.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

And the crime bill myth as if the Clintons are purely the only ones who wanted to have the law because they're evil racists:



http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum...ed-white-supremacist-violence-against-black-c

Well many in the Sanders camp had no problem throwing John Lewis and the CBC under the bus

 

[Macho Madness]

My 2 biggest concerns about a Clinton presidency are this:

1. Foreign policy
2. Cutting entitlements for the sake of crossing the aisle

I think both are fair concerns that take into account her history. Another war would disappoint me greatly, as would cutting any of the programs many people rely on.

 

[noshten]

Well many in the Sanders camp had no problem throwing John Lewis and the CBC under the bus

And John Lewis has no problem calling into question Sander's civil rights record and implying he has none

 

[T'Zariah]

My 2 biggest concerns about a Clinton presidency are this:

1. Foreign policy
2. Cutting entitlements for the sake of crossing the aisle

I think both are fair concerns that take into account her history. Another war would disappoint me greatly, as would cutting any of the programs many people rely on.

I don't think she'd start a war. Democrats will be able to use Iraq as a selling point for foreign policy for at LEAST a decade or two. No need to poison that well.

 

[Slayven]

And the crime bill myth as if the Clintons are purely the only ones who wanted to have the law because they're evil racists:



http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum...ed-white-supremacist-violence-against-black-c

people remove a lot of the context. Shit was real back then, folks were looking for anything and everything to stop it.

 

[CCS]

My 2 biggest concerns about a Clinton presidency are this:

1. Foreign policy
2. Cutting entitlements for the sake of crossing the aisle

I think both are fair concerns that take into account her history. Another war would disappoint me greatly, as would cutting any of the programs many people rely on.

I don't think she'd make sacrifices like that for the sake of crossing the aisle, given how uncooperative the GOP have been for the last 8 years.

 

[T'Zariah]

And somehow Bill Clinton went from being the only Presidential Candidate to be ballsy enough to have a pro-gay platform in the form of open service to somehow having a terrible record on gay rights because DOMA!!!!1

 

[Poodlestrike]

And the crime bill myth as if the Clintons are purely the only ones who wanted to have the law because they're evil racists:



http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum...ed-white-supremacist-violence-against-black-c

Yeah, the crime bills are pretty clearly a well-intentioned thing that backfired horribly.

 

[royalan]

My 2 biggest concerns about a Clinton presidency are this:

1. Foreign policy
2. Cutting entitlements for the sake of crossing the aisle

I think both are fair concerns that take into account her history. Another war would disappoint me greatly, as would cutting any of the programs many people rely on.

I really don't understand Hillary's characterization as hawkish. I honestly may need to be educated, because to me it seems like a gendered attack.

Hillary has stated countless times that she has no intention of getting the US involved in another ground war. Her position on Libya was grounded in the fact that Gaddafi was about to slaughter a shit ton of his own people, and the US was being called to help by our allies. And yeah, people are free to disagree with the intentions behind her Iraq vote, but her stated logic is sound (Bush DID lie to the American people, and he did mislead he Senate into believing that he would give the UN inspectors time before jumping into a ground assault).

To me at least, Hillary Clinton has come across on foreign policy in a way that I would best describe as "shrewd", and I can't help but feel like a male in her position, with her views, would be characterized in just that way. Hawkish is a word best left for the Republicans currently fellating themselves over who can best fanfic-ize military intervention in their speeches