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polss · 1 year

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What Dems would run for President if Biden did not and who would have a good shot? (Part two)

continuing our list.

Amy Klobuchar, 62 - Sigh...I don’t want to write this. I LIKE Amy Klobuchar. She is hard working, sincere, and personable with the public. She is EVERYTHING you could want in an elected official (although she is rumoured to be quite mean to her staff). But just like Mayor Pete, the primaries in 2020 revealed a political roadblock in her past that she just cannot clear on her own that will prevent her from securing black support. And given the new primary schedule, she is cooked. Her only hope to the presidency is if someone tabs her for VP to curry the female vote. Black primary voters will vote for VP Klobuchar because she’d be likely to win, but they aren’t going to vote for Senator Klobuchar. “No”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, 53 - Whitmer has deep ties to President Biden. One of Biden’s four candidates for VP, she allegedly removed herself from the running and pushed Biden to chose a black candidate (Harris or Susan Rice.) effectively over the most politically deserving candidate, Warren. Biden pushed Whitmer into a DNC vice chair position. She has a fair amount of support in the party, but she still represents a branch of the Obama Tree and the DNC has a big chunk of aging Hillary supporters who could turn on her for someone like Mayor Pete who will gladly kiss the Clinton ring. Her political capital is at an all time high as Michigan voters pushed back hard against the extremist wing of the GOP. But was that mostly her influence? I think it is unlikely. I don’t know that she has the speaking skills or the empathy to really carry the party... The DNC ranks is littered with candidates who lacked the skillset to make the jump to presidential status. She is hot today. Whether it is all her or not, Michigan now seems once again firmly Democratic. But is she as good of a candidate as she appears? Yes and no. She isn’t perfect. She made a big deal about everyone wearing masks in Michigan during Covid only to be caught on film at a gathering without a facial covering. There is a stink of “run of the mill politician” to her... I think she is better than Hillary as a national candidate though. She would win Hillary’s 2016 map plus Michigan and Pennsylvania... That is almost 270 electoral votes... Does she have the speech giving ability to capture a state like Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina where they may be a little more sexist to win the race? I think she looks great on paper, but less so when you look at the maps...But to me it matters more on her positions. If I ran her campaign I would copy most of Bernie’s platforms and maybe even Yang’s freedom dividend and I would go hard after Bernie Bros. Bernie Bros are largely “Never Hillary” Obama voters... But that is kind of a condemnation of her as a candidate today. I think if left to her own devices, she is a pretty Joe Biden-esque conservative (with a lower case c) Democratic candidate. ie. No liberals love Biden’s policies, but Biden has support in the right states to beat Trump. It is POSSIBLE she does as well. She certainly deserves consideration. especially if she knew she wasn’t likely to be VP and pushed the black candidate narrative to give her a stronger position with black voters in the future. If she did, she is definitely worth considering. Possibly to Unlikely depending on her platforms.

Governor Gavin Newsom, 57 - Handsome and charismatic California Governor who makes coastal liberals swoon and moderates and independents cringe. At the right age to look Presidential and to feel he deserves it as much as anyone. Newsom is out of Nancy Pelosi territory, the San Francisco Bay area in Northern California and likely shares the same big donors and a similar political worldview. None of this sound good to anyone from a swing state. Additionally, he was another COVID mask pusher who was caught maskless and actually faced a recall election challenge over it. He is another candidate who “talks the talk” but doesn’t necessarily “walk the walk”. That kind of stuff eats blue politicians alive in red leaning states. He picks fights to get his name into the papers. He is the liberal version of Ron DeSantis, but as with all liberals, he is simply not as competent in his strategies. Would he duplicate Hillary’s 2016 map? Yes. Would he win Michigan? Based on Whitmer’s work? Yes. Would he win Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, or North Carolina? That is a LOT harder to see happening. Those states to my point of view are somewhat conservative leaning. I can totally see him entering an open race as the front runner and harnessing overwhelming money to win New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan and almost split the vote in Georgia and South Carolina...but the national election.....I think that is tough for him. I think 90% chance he loses. I could see him getting “Hillaried” --- only winning actively blue states. It would be FAR far better for the DNC if he ends up a “Joe Biden/Al Gore-type” VP in 2024 who eventually becomes president after shaking his overly toxic regional tendencies. Possible.

Tulsi Gabbard, 41 - If any Yang Gangers or Bernie Bros think they had it hard, just think about what Tulsi went through in 2020... She had epic moments the few times she made debates only to see Google make her non-searchable apparently at the personal request of Hillary Clinton. Clinton was miffed that Gabbard did not endorse her in 2016 and it very much seems like Clinton set about calling in every favor she could to ensure Gabbard would not be the country’s first female president. They screwed her every moment of the way. Even after she earned delegates they didn’t invite her to the Democratic National Convention. I mean, how petty can you be? They made her life a nightmare and because of the tough minded military vet she is, she fought them every step of the way, which probably didn’t help her experience. But I have to tell you there WAS a LOT to like about Tulsi Gabbard, even though she has issues that a lot of Dems could not support. She has a legacy issue about gay marriage that suggests a level of bias against gay people that is honestly appears petty and is quite ugly. Sadly it was her Dad’s signature issue, so it appears something she can’t shake. She does look like a supermodel, but that wasn’t her appeal. She is generally smart and former military. Her signature issue was being against involvement in the middle east as it was a drain on resources that didn’t improve anyone’s lives. She failed in 2020 because she never was able to tie those wars to being a drain on the economy. She also shot well from the hip, once famously tweeting to Trump, "Hey @realdonaldtrump: being Saudi Arabia's bitch is not "America First," If she captured the Democratic nomination she would absolutely win the election on the strength of her appeal to independents and the military., but... like Yang she is livid with DNC insiders and has likewise salted the earth on her way out the door. Unlike Yang she has done it in a very permanent way talking a job at Fox News, becoming somewhat tolerant of Trump, and endorsing crazy ass GOP election deniers. Sadly the DNC appears to have run off a very strong, but flawed candidate at the behest of Hillary Clinton and turned her into a full on crazy ass Fox News hosting Republican with all of the Hillary Klan’s shenanigans. It is not lost on me and shouldn’t be on you that this “Feminist Icon” Hillary Clinton tore down another woman because that woman wouldn’t kiss Hillary’s ring. Sad. Really Pathetic. How small of a person do you have to be to sabotage a peer? Yet another reason to abandon fizzling embers of the Hillary element of the DNC at a gas station somewhere in Iowa. Anything Hillary touches ends in defeat, and Hillary has definitely left her indelible mark on Tulsi, who appears to have committed political suicide as a Democrat. Sadly that makes Tulsi a “No”.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, 56 - Tammy Duckworth kicks ass but has a huge problem ---her place of birth. But she is awesome.... I know most don’t like talking about physical features, but they DO matter in elections. She has a wonderful warm smile that voters would love and a resume they would love even more. She is another veteran who does her political job competently. There are no pathways for her as a citizen born in another country (Thailand), just as there were not for Arnold Schwarzenegger. If that hurdle went away though....I think the existence of Tammy Duckworth is the EXACT reason I would push the Hawaii primary to the very front of the list. Duckworth isn’t showy but she is beloved by Democrats who know of her. Making her a frontrunner in a political race for even a moment via advantageous scheduling would likely be all it would take for her to be a viable contender. Duckworth is the kind of democratic candidate who doesn’t turn off Democratic voters and she will bring in additional military voters. Additionally, being from Chicago she is likely to be very strong in the rust belt, the very thing that made Joe Biden’s run to victory so overwhemingly likely. The current primary schedule is likely to block her from earning the nomination, but If that too was addressed, she would likely dominate in the general election. Sadly those are a ton of hurdles. Such a bummer. “No”.

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polss · 1 year

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What Dems would run for President if Biden did not and who would have a good shot?

Lets take a look at the list.

Candidate, Age in 2024

Kamala Harris, 58 - One would think that being Vice President would make one more Presidential. It’s very questionable if that has occurred. She seems to be the Democratic version of Dan Quayle. On the campaign trail in 2020 she consistently failed to excite the voting public. Her one moment of success was raking Joe Biden over the coals about his policies in the early 1980′s that applied specifically to her as a young child. That moment of success shot her up to poll at 18% and gave her a ton of big Donor money. By time the Primaries rolled around Harris had disinterested her voters and was polling at 3%. In real terms she is a black candidate black people don’t really like. She frankly seems self centered and puts out a “very full of herself” vibe. She COULD learn and improve, but for now the highest I can rate her is “Unlikely”.

Bernie Sanders, 83 - Look, I know Bernie fans love the man, but age is a HUGE part of why Democrats (56-58%) and Independents (66%) hope Joe Biden won’t run again when he is 81. Bernie is older than Biden or Donald Trump (78 in 2024). There is a pretty good chance Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (46 in 2024) will be the candidate barring him facing kidnapping charges over his publicity stunt of misleading illegal immigrants into flying to another state under the promise of work. Is 83 year old Bernie going to keep pace with DeSantis’ fresh batch of regular Trump-level nonsense? Will he be able to keep up with that dog and pony show? Will he be able to handle the strain of campaigning? The answer to all of those questions seems to be “Unlikely”. That will leave the “Obama track”, the large number of socially liberal independents capable of challenging the voting numbers of the Democratic core, up for grabs.

Michael Bloomberg, 80 - Bloomberg’s career as a Democratic Presidential Candidate appears to have been strangled to death on the stage in Nevada by Elizabeth Warren. He has winning attributes, but Democrats will not get behind a guy who has innumerable non-disclosure contracts out there with women he offended. Plus the Democratic party is TIRED of Clinton era leaders. His moment as a DNC candidate has passed....Now that said, if he chose to change parties and run as a republican, I think he could earn the presidency. But as a Dem? No.

Elizabeth Warren, 73 - The Nevada Debate Strangler. When she isn’t ending political dreams, she is following her own horrible political instincts. Her moment was the 2016 election but she instead chose to be a Hillary Clinton fan girl as the fierce drumbeat of Now POUNDED on her door for over a year. Does she have another run in her? Probably. Could she be a valid contender....Tougher to say. The mood in both parties is for new younger blood. That is especially so for the Dems. Warren would need to start building alliances with younger Dems rather than hanging out with the Hillary crowd as they descend into nursing homes and dementia. That’s really blunt and not very PC, but maybe Warren might read this and realize that she is wasting Presidential level talent. Her best approach would likely to be guaranteeing a codification of Roe v. Wade into federal law if elected. She among most of the female candidates seems able to take an ownership position over that, the most important issue to democratic voters. Unlikely today, but with a ton of potential to correct.

Jay Inslee, 71 - Jay Inslee does intermittently give off a very presidential vibe, but given the mood of today’s dem he is probably too much of an “old white guy” candidate to secure the nomination. Unlikely.

Beto O’Rourke- 50 - Now that is an interesting name. O’Rourke has lost a high profile race for a Senate slot to Ted Cruz and just lost the Governor’s race in a less contested manner. There is a perception that his star has faded and is going out, but is that really what we have seen? I live in Texas and to my perception O’Rourke lost BOTH races because he inexplicably took a hard line position against guns....Like a New York position on guns. He is very capable of charming a group of voters. And these losses and his disappointing presidential run where he appeared to lack insight are potentially great opportunities for personal growth. The man is white Obama. He has an Obama like positivity and is a very strong orator. But like Obama, Beto is very very light on substance beyond being rabidly anti-gun. If Beto O’Rourke had for example some of Andrew Yang’s policy positions, that would be a hard candidate to ignore. The youth vote always gravitates to new positions that the core doesn’t trust. He is a candidate who can capture the youth vote. I am going to say this because I want this blog to continuously be very blunt....A wiser Beto in a narrower field could be like a straight Mayor Pete. O’Rourke’s challenge would be winning the nomination, not the election. His campaigns have always excelled at registering new Democratic voters at a very high rate. That is a good horse to ride should he get that far. Possibly.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttieg, 40 - “Mayor Pete” is a very talented speaker with a lot of admirable political skills. He is a brilliant performer, but there are moments when the window cracks open and you see a cutthroat bastard. He OBVIOUSLY way overperformed in 2020, but that was entirely because of the alabaster white states that lead into the nomination processes. Once the color of the states turned tan, Pete was done. He has issues in his past that will prevent Black Democratic voters from embracing him and he seems to have little talent for courting Hispanic voters to offset that. But he is a sharp guy who used his run in 2020 to buy his way out of his political dead end job as a mayor in a red state. He could easily learn Spanish and apply his Leonard Zelig-like skillset to suddenly become beloved by that community as well. He cleverly realized his campaign was running exclusively off his hypnotic rhetoric and no platforms of substance, so he plagiarized Andrew Yang’s platforms in an effort to stave off his fall. He is very much the kind of “for sale to the highest bidder” Democratic candidate the DNC loves. He is clearly being groomed by rich donors and party insiders for another race. While he could again be somewhat relevant in the campaign, I think the view of him by black voters (who frankly are generally out on gay candidates anyway) is likely to prevent him from ever earning the nomination. Additionally I expect a very similar candidate to run in Colorado Governor Jared Polis. Unlikely.

Governor Jared Polis, 49 - Polis is the only openly gay Governor in US history. He is a successful businessman and he seems to have presidential asperations. While probably not as polished as Mayor Pete, I think there is a lot more earnestness there. I think the positives run out about there. I don’t think he has done enough as Governor of Colorado to climb out of the faceless contender field. Unlikely.

Andrew Yang, 47 - Another Successful Businessman. He is young and vibrant. Yang frankly grossly underperformed in the 2020 election and in retrospect probably let it get to him and got out of the race a state too soon. Since then he ran for Mayor of New York City before realizing it was a lot of work. He was ill-suited for that position and seemed to realize it halfway through the campaign. He has walked out on the DNC and formed some weird pseudo party. He has a disarming smile that screams ‘buddy you play basketball with”. Yang is capable of alternating between presidential and totally approachable. He seems honestly kind and his platforms are unique and thoughtful. Yang had something like 105 well thought out items on his site from platforms like his very expertly conceived and fully funded Freedom Dividend that would replace unemployment and awarded every citizen $1000 a month funded by taxes on companies like Amazon to allow every citizen to pursue greater happiness with less stress in their lives --- to getting rid of the penny, a surprisingly sound proposition that would save the country money. But Yang came across as a game show host at times with his overcommittment to the Freedom Dividend. Really at this point he has created a ton of debris in the way of him earning the Democratic nomination, but his strength with Independents and with much of the Bernie Crowd would make him a likely winner if he did win the nomination. He should be a possibly, but with all the baggage he is carrying, “Unlikely”.

Julian Castro,48 - He wants to be President yesterday, but lacks the intelligence to see the obvious pathway to that goal(An odd criticism for one with his collegiate background.) ....Or he is too lazy to pursue it... Or too arrogant... Or all of the above. Has an inability to connect with the public at a presidential candidate level. I hate to pick at this, but he has a disturbing “joker-like” smile. Picks stupid issues to fight with other candidates over in debates ala Mayor Pete. With only Nevada having a significant Hispanic population among the 2024 pre-Super Tuesday contests and Castro’s inability to charm anyone outside of his native ethnic group, Castro is another hard “No”. He should really park his ego at the Door and run for Texas Governor. He would win and that would open the door for a more mature Castro to win the presidency down the road.

Marianne Williamson, 70 - Williamson is weird as hell, but not hopeless. Her campaign issues are fixable with training. She talks around points far, Far too much, but she did reach a surprising number of people. Honestly, I felt she was spewing unstructured babble, but after debates I talked to a lot of people who thought she was weird, but that she did make some sound points. I am going to put her down as “Unlikely.”

Corey Booker, 53 - Sort of a hybrid of Mayor Pete and Julian Castro. He is polished, but there is no sense of empathy that a candidate like Beto O’Rourke has in spades. He isn’t nearly as artful of a speech maker as the brilliant Mayor Pete. He is another young politician who picks fights on the wrong issues in debates. He’s kind of full of shit. He’s the kind of Politician who cries in a speech because it tests well. One gets the feeling that if Booker ever does become president it will be because some white Democratic nominee will make Booker his vice President to solve their own “black problem” and Booker can ride those coattails into the white house. The trouble is that scenario is much less likely with the new primary schedule. He is a very capable politician...I just don’t see the right instincts to win on the campaign trail without a sizable head start. “No”.

Reverend Raphael Warnock, 55 - As the recipient of over 100 text messages begging for cash, I am not a fan. Warnock seems like a strange relic to me. The black preacher who on the surface is fighting a race war but inside is chasing money and power...at least that is my impression. I personally feel like he offers nothing to non-black voters. After a phone worth of messages all I know is that he started with nothing and now he is a well dressed priest with political power --- “send me money”. His advocates admire his ability to raise money and think that makes him a contender, but they fail to compute in that the man has been in two runoff elections with the fate of the Senate in the balance. There is no precedence for America electing a religious leader...especially on the democratic side. He will be seen as a risky choice by non-black voters when he inevitably runs for president. He would probably do better than most “failed” black candidates because as a preacher he will pick up additional black female votes that other black male candidates might not. This makes him the worst kind of Democratic Candidate...the one likely pursue and capture the nomination only to lose the election. But the primaries are stacked in his favor... “Unlikely”

Kristen Gillibrand, 55 - I think her moment has passed, probably for good. She has played the power card too much, delaying votes to get what she wants. Some candidates can get away with that a little, but I think she will find that she is not one of them. It’s tough enough being a female politician from New York...just ask Hillary. The presumption among Dems in the rest of the country is that you will be difficult and prickly. You have to have an Amy Kloubachar-type personality to overcome that. Gillibrand has played into that stereotype. She did not show any traits in 2020 that make me think she can charm black votes in Michigan, Georgia, and South Carolina and win the nomination. “No”.

Deval Patrick, 66 - I think if he doesn’t have “it” yet, he isn’t going to get it. I think he is actually bordering on too old! He is a slightly more personable version of Cory Booker. I had been quite interested to see him work as I was told he was Obama-esque. I did not see any of that. I think everything I said about Booker’s path to the presidency is true about Patrick. “No”

Tom Steyer, 63 - Steyer is a Yale and Stanford educated businessman is worth $1.6B who has spent his millions of dollars of his money in fighting Donald Trump at every abuse of the government. He has credibility among democrats in that. In 2020, that alone had him creeping up to the 15% threshold where the DNC decides you matter. Steyer had moments of weirdness dressed in insecurity in his answers followed by moments of George Washington level righteous ass kicking focus with a Presidential demeanor in 2020. He presents with sincerity. Does he want to run again? If he is capable of allowing a campaign manager to aggressively coach the weirdness out of him, he could be a strong candidate. He seems to do well with all races. But what are his positions? Pro environment; anti- Trump....that’s just a start if he wants to be an electable candidate. He could absolutely capture the Obama path (black voters = black voters + independents) if his platforms became more interesting and distinct. “Possibly”

To be continued...

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polss · 1 year

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The DNC -- “advocates of Democracy”-- except when they are pushing down on the scale against Darkhorse candidates.

After writing my piece on the flaws of the DNC’s new horrifically flawed plan to Black Filter to get future presidential frontrunners, I got angry again at how apparently institutionally corrupt the DNC has always been in stifling minority opinions and new ideas in an effort to bring Democratic voters to vote how the party insiders want them to vote for the old familiar standbys.

Sound “conspiracy addled”? Give me a moment to open your eyes to how the system works.

The DNC is all about talking up democracy and counting every vote in national elections, but in their own elections...not so much.

The DNC has a weighted system. They award delegates to states based on things like “how often a state votes Dem”....Well, you don’t have to think about that too long to see the self-defeating nature of that.

First of all, (the minor quibble) it doesn’t work in favor of the DNC

If, for example, a GOP state like Texas has some percentage less influence than they would have in a system that isn’t weighted, it would also follow that the favorite candidate of Texas voters is going to be statistically less likely to be available to them on election day.

In a very real sense, weighing votes likely diminishes their chances in swing states.

That is mind-blowingly stupid. Why would you want to stilt the system to do that?

If you look at the last election you will see that 46% of the state voted for Biden. That is 46% of a state of 30 million people who live in constant depression for having absolutely no say in Texas Politics due to grossly partisan jerimandering. If you give them a fair shake in voting for their candidates in the primaries, Texas could easily become a much, much more robust national fund raising hotbed.

Secondly (and what angers me) it is wildly unfair.

There were 36,922,938 votes placed in the democratic primary system in 2020. Those votes...in theory... dictated who received what portion of 3,979 total pledged delegates. In theory if all votes were equal, it should take 9279 votes to earn a delegates.

If the democratic primary was an example of Democracy in progress, in 2020 my vote should have been worth 1/9279th of a delegate.

In contrast, a voter in Nancy Pelosi’s district’s single vote bought 1/1009 of a delegate.

A vote in Peolosi’s hoity toity backyard could be worth 9.2 times that of the average voter.

That is indefensible.

Texas’s 2,094,428 votes were only worth 228 pledged delegates so 1/9186. So a Pelosi voter’s vote is worth roughly only 9.1 times my vote.

But wait...There is more.

The DNC actively tries to kill the campaigns of dark horse candidates.

The DNC clearly doesn’t like certain candidates.

They HATED how the Obama Campaign found the loopholes in their setup and leveraged independents to outvote their chosen candidate in 2008.

They didn’t like Bernie Sanders when he tried to do the same thing.

A lot of lesser candidates who could appeal to a broad base of audiences also get shut down by DNC rules. The DNC will often deny them access to debates for example. (One can argue the merits of their execution of that so I am going to move on to an employed strategy that is more difficult to argue its merits.)

One rule in particular is the DNC’s “Fringe Candidate” rule.

I would argue this rule took down non-approved candidates Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, and to small degree, Tulsi Gabbard, in the last election. (It also hurt Pete Buttieg and Amy Kloubachar’s runs to some degree, but both campaigns were sunk by bad narratives in their past with the African American community and were dead in the water after South Carolina showed just how weak they were beyond a white audience.) It also very much damaged the campaign of a favored candidate for DNC insiders in 2020...Elizabeth Warren.

The crux of the rule is this. If I have the audacity to vote my heart and vote for a “fringe candidate” like I wanted to in 2020 in Andrew Yang, there are rules in place that prevent my “fringe candidate” from earning delegates if he captures less than 15% of the vote in a state.

It is crazy. In some states candidates win the state with 25-30% of the vote. A candidate could capture over half as many votes as the winner and not get any delegates???? That is wildly mucking with the election results.

In other words, If I have the audacity to vote for someone who isn’t mainstream, the DNC just ignores my vote entirely.

It’s about this point where my desire to vote really waivers and becomes replaced with a desire to flip two birds at the DNC.

(The Yang situation is a personally upsetting one for me and it will come out in my writing. I hope you can bear with me, just focusing on the facts of what I am saying and not getting sucked into the emotion of it. It is literally the perfect story to explain how anti-democratic the rules are and how they kill viable campaigns. I am not even going to address the lack of time given to him at each of the debates as if you want to see how hard the DNC pushed against wild card candidates Yang and Tulsi Gabbard there are TONS of articles tracking that. I am just going to focus on the “fringe candidate” rule.)

Soooo... in this last election my preferred candidate Andrew Yang went to Iowa and finished 6th, capturing 8914 ballots out of the total 5.1% of the popular vote.

An irrelevant total? A fringe candidate you say?

Iowa was the first contest of the year. People don’t know who will win the election in the early races. They vote their heart and hope their candidate does well enough to have some momentum in the next race, even if he or she doesn’t win their state.

The fringe candidate rule steals that momentum.

Eventual President Joe Biden captured 14.9% of the vote. If it had been a primary state as the DNC is now asking every state to embrace, eventual PRESIDENT Joe Biden wouldn’t have gotten ANY delegates. That suggests this “fringe candidate” rule is skewing the results.

Yang captured more than 1/3 of Joe Biden’s votes. Due to the bullshittery of caucuses, Joe Biden ultimately got 6 delegates, but Yang got none. In a fair Democracy, Yang would have earned 5% of Iowa’s 41 delegates, 2 delegates.

Yang captured 1/4 of Iowa winner Pete Buttieg’s vote total. Buttieg captured 21% of the vote to Bernie Sanders’ 24%, but Buttieg won the most Delegates with 14.

If it were just strictly based on percentages of the vote, Bernie would have won the state and Yang would have been one of only 6 candidates on the scoreboard at that point ahead of people like Tom Steyer, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris and others.

Capturing 5% should have put him on the scoreboard and given him credibility as at least being a player in the field, but the DNC rules effectively tossed all of those votes in the garbage.

“You aren’t voting for a candidate we like, so we are throwing out your ballots.”

Yang’s lack of delegate success in Iowa cost him the perception of marginal viability.

There were polling indications that Yang might do as well or better percentage wise in New Hampshire but he was only able to pull 8312 votes in New Hampshire, good for 8th with 2.79% of the vote.

It appears that the DNC’s “fringe candidate” rule made a lot of people who polled as liking Yang, worried about “wasting their vote”.

This is what the “fringe candidate” rule is all about. Forcing marginally competitive candidates out of the race before their message catches on.

The “fringe Candidate” rule isn’t about removing people who lack the support to be in a race. If you can’t crack 1-2% in few states, you are going to run out of money and be out of the race soon.

It is about forcing out darkhorses to prevent them from catching fire right before super tuesday.

In New Hampshire, Yang was again filtered out at non-relevant for not earning 15 % of the vote and his voter’s ballots were again ignored by the DNC.

Now despite the fact that at this point Andrew Yang had captured 17,226 votes, good for the 6th best total in the entire field he had earned no delegates due to the DNC ignoring all of his voter’s votes and awarding the delegates his voters earned to other candidates like Pete Buttieg.

The was the DNC’s Alabaster Filter of launching the campaign system in two abnormally white states (90%+ white) taking out a minority candidates by artificially making them seem non-viable.

Yang knew that his two “non-viable” finishes would drag down his support in his best projected state, Nevada, where with 8% of the population is Asian, so, feeling the pressure to be a good party loyalist, he ended his campaign.

Yang had been likely to finish 3rd or better and likely to clear the 15% hurdle in Nevada... if he had earned some delegates in the first two states.

He was still polling in the low teens in Nevada prior to ending his campaign.

With Joe Biden surprisingly surging to 2nd in Nevada with 17% of the vote in Yang’s absence, despite Biden not spending any additional effort in that state, it seemed likely that Yang might have been a live dog in that state, with the high end, but very realistic potential of finishing 2nd.

This was leading in to South Carolina where Biden dominated the field and Bernie and Bloomberg had niches of support, but no other candidates had any support of note.

Biden's support in SC was soft entering Nevada. South Carolina’s black voters had grown to love Barack Obama. They had lingering affection for Joe Biden, but like all of America were less than impressed with his 2020 campaign to that point.

Yang had beloved (at the time) comedian/philosopher Dave Chappelle (prior to his pointless and career damaging feud with the transgender community) in place ready to vouch for Yang with the predominantly black democratic populace in that state.

On top of that, Yang historically did well with black voters.

One only had to go back to 2008 to see a similar dynamic in place in South Carolina. In 2008, South Carolina voters loved former President Bill Clinton and were marginally into Hillary Clinton. Then a candidate with some recent campaign momentum who did well communicating his ideas to black voters showed up in Barack Obama. The young black voters were taken with Obama and eventually the older ones were too. Obama crushed Hillary in South Carolina.

Now to be clear, Joe Biden was going to win South Carolina. That was absolutely 100% going to happen. But the Yang plan was clearly to exceed 15% in Nevada finishing 2nd or 3rd and then use that momentum to peel away younger Black voters who would like his message more than Biden’s.

There were only 2 candidates in the race who could pull African American votes in South Carolina. Joe Biden and Andrew Yang. With Yang out, Joe Biden dominated the black vote capturing 48.6% of the state’s Dems. Bernie Sanders finished 2nd with 19.8% and Tom Steyer likely inherited Yang’s non-black support and peeled a little bit from the faltering Buttieg and Warren campaigns, finally having a strong race, pulling 11.3% for third.

(It should be noted that Steyer got no delegates for South Carolina, so despite showing exceptional momentum out of nowhere, the rules robbed him of actual momentum ...ie. delegates...leading into Super Tuesday.)

It is entirely possible that if Yang had exceeded 15% in Nevada, that he would have pulled 8% from Biden’s black vote, 6% from Steyer (who literally came from nowhere) and another 2% at least from Pete Buttieg whose policy empty campaign by that point was running on Yang’s platforms.

I think the plan was to build up to finish 2nd or 3rd in Nevada and South Carolina and enter Super Tuesday as one of the 3 candidates with momentum. And if not for the DNC’s Alabaster Filter, it almost worked.

It was possible that just as Nevada and South Carolina set Biden up to do well on Super Tuesday, it could have done the same for Yang.

Yang was a candidate with ideas people liked, but he lacked election day credibility. That is the right recipe for a dark horse.

It was a decent plan, but because the DNC threw out the votes of his supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire his campaign collapsed before the payoff..

So.... I never got to vote for my preferred candidate.

I had to vote for my second choice, Joe Biden.

I at least was able to take solace that the DNC party insiders, clueless fucks that they are, didn’t think Joe Biden was viable vs. Trump and absolutely didn’t want him as a candidate.

I could at least take solace in casting my 1/9th of a San Francisco vote to give them the bird.

Now this isn’t just a Yang guy complaining...Look at what this did to Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

Warren got gutted by the fringe rule.

I like Elizabeth Warren a lot, but I think her campaign instincts are garbage. She entered the scene beloved by moderates. Warren and Biden were literally the only people who could have walked into the 2016 race and captured 100% of Obama’s voters.

This terrified Hillary Clinton. Biden had personal issues that lead him to bow out of that race before starting. Clinton was terrified Warren would enter the race.

2016 was warren’s moment. She blinked. Warren was a Hillary Clinton fangirl and ignored the “fierce drumbeats of now” to let her hero have a run at it.

That earned her the spite of non-black Obama voters (who were now forced to consider voting for someone they considered morally dispicable and really despised) and the adoration of Hillary’s much smaller and rapidly diminishing (ie. dying) fanbase.

But she was one of the leading choices of the Hillary crowd of party insiders in 2020.

Now entering Super Tuesday, Warren had maybe the greatest debate performance in the last 20 years in her pocket in her performance in Nevada, but she couldn’t pull delegates in the last two primaries before Super Tuesday because of the “fringe candidate” rule.

If you take a close look at her finishes, Warren did well in every state. In Iowa she won 18% of the vote and won 8 delegates. In New Hampshire she underperformed winning only 9% of the vote, but she finished 4th ahead of Biden. In Nevada she won almost 13% and finished 4th. In South Carolina she finished 5th with 7%.

Take a look how this would have worked out for your preferred candidate Warren without the fringe rule.

The system made it a two horse race entering Super Tuesday due to Warren’s absolute dismantling of Michael Bloomberg in the Nevada debate. With only 8 delegates to Biden’s 54 and Sander’s 60, Warren was done. Even 3rd place Pete Buttieg was finished as South Carolina loudly revealed he had a flaw that would never give him any black votes.

Now look at what simply making it a straight percentage does. Now Bernie and Joe are 20 delegates closer to the pack. It’s still looking like a 2 horse race entering super tuesday, but there is a chance for a strong debate performance to change that.

Mayor Pete is still 3rd and still dead in the water as his donors would understand with no black votes coming ever and Bernie eating most of the white votes further donations amounted to wasted money and helping Bernie, but Warren is still in this race. She is just behind Pete and doesn’t have a black problem. She could easily inherit his donors.

Warren would be a live underdog at 4th. She would have scored delegates in every state and would have the momentum of her debate performance carrying her into Super Tuesday, rather than the failure to score delegates in Nevada and South Carolina due to the “Fringe Candidate” rule.

If you read my last article, you have seen the math and know that the DNC nomination is now ridiculously and irresponsibly stacked for black candidates. (as a mixed race American I am embarrassed for the party. Do you really want Reverend Warnock losing every 4 years for the next 20 years?)

The days of a white woman winning the nomination may very well be gone for several years.

This rule needs to be fixed. I know you don’t want to do it for the candidates I like, so do it for the candidates you like.

but wait... there’s more.

If throwing out the will of voters and giving most of us significantly less powerful votes wasn’t egregious enough from a party that calls themselves the Democrats and claims to be a force championing democracy, the DNC also gives additional delegates to party insiders to use as they see fit.

That infuriates me. Hillary Clinton’s opinion, a lady who spat the bit as the OVERWHELMING OVERALL frontrunner in 2 presidential campaigns PERSONALLY gets a vote as powerful as 9200 Democrats in determining who will be the Democratic candidate?

Random insiders in the party do as well? That is entirely unacceptable.

It is even more so when you realize people like Mrs. Clinton hold sway over those insiders and effectively control piles of delegates.

Now they have curbed SOME of the obscenity of this system over the last few years.

Now it is ONLY if the race is undecided at a certain point these insiders can push their delegates one way for the candidate the party insiders favor.

In other words we voters can narrow it down to two candidates, but if it is close the party insiders will chose who we get.

THIS is democracy?

THAT is bullshit.

The DNC needs to get out of the fucking way and let the public vote for the candidates they want to actually support on election day.

My two cents on how to fix the system.

Be advocates of Democracy, DNC.

Don’t allow party insiders to have any role beyond their election day vote in selecting the candidate. I don’t care if a candidate you hate in Bernie Sanders wins by a single vote over an insider you worship in Hillary Clinton.

Let the chips fall where they fall.

I don’t care if it is a 3 way race and no one hits “the threshold” to capture 50+%. No convention brokered deals....Whoever has the most votes wins.

THAT IS DEMOCRACY.

Get rid of the transaction of converting votes to delegates.

I understand you have built a system of primaries running up to the election and you NEED some kind of counter to keep score that is more intuitive and FAR,FAR,FAR less leading than just the to date percentage of the vote.

Convert votes into “projected delegate votes.”

(“Delegates” are parallels to the electoral voters. They are not Democratic. It you want to send a contingent of delegate insiders to the national convention to read their state vote totals at the campaign, that can be the reward for your delegates. )

Converting votes to “projected delegate votes” would be OK as long as the each actual vote cast is valued equally, regardless of the state of origin.

If my candidate gets 5% of the vote in the first state, he should be listed as projected to have 5% of that state’s electoral votes.

That still gives you the basic ability to project a general threshold of victory.

The cast votes in the next state should be worth just as much as the individual votes in the first state.

So if my candidate captures 2.7% in the second state for a total number of captured votes at that point near 4% overall, he should have a projected 4% of the two state combined total of delegate votes.

Likewise if he goes on to win 17% of the vote total in the 3rd state bringing him up to 8% of the three state total, he should project to capture 8% of the three state combined total number of delegate votes.

This will present to the public as "Business as usual”, but this allows valuable elasticity in a system that has never been elastic.

If there is a candidate that Texans love and they turn out in huge numbers to vote for that candidate, the state would have more influence than usual. That would be a real carrot to get Democratic leaning residents registered in red states.

It gives states like Texas a chance to help push their democratic vision forward and make it far more likely that donations will be flowing out of the state. It gives the party the option to turn more states into Georgia-like swing states.

It’s just good policy. And for once, shouldn’t the DNC at least try to have good policy?

0 notes

polss · 1 year

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DNC crumbles under Biden pressure to end Alabaster Filter; Predictably does it in most egregious, wrong headed fashion.

I am going to deal with issues of race here. I am 50% white and 50% black, so I am going to right up against that third rail.

On December 2nd, the DNC presented a plan in response to Joe Biden’s letter calling for the end of the DNC’s Alabaster Filter --- starting the election in abnormally white states of Iowa and New Hampshire to erode the perceived viability of minority candidates.

Good Concept, horrific execution

At face value, their changes seem slightly arbitrary and tied to fanciful thought .... AND based on home cooking to thwart any primary challenges to the Democrat currently in power... Basically, what you would tend to expect from Democrats embedded in power.

The DNC rules panel proposal calls for the 2024 presidential calendar to open with South Carolina’s primary on February 3 (SC awarded 54 delegates in 2020), Nevada (36 delegates) and New Hampshire’s (34 delegates) contests on February 6, Georgia’s primary (105 delegates) on February 13 and Michigan’s (125 delegates) on February 27.

Nevada had been third in order and South Carolina fourth. Georgia and Michigan were later in the process.

Early voting status gives some states a feeling of pride and ownership of the choice of candidate and really energizes voters within the state.

Clearly this is a massive rebuke of Iowa who had previously gone first and engaged in a caucus system in which a small minority of residents practiced arcane nonsense to generate a “winner”. Not Democracy at all.

Iowa has also been firmly voting GOP for quite a while now. The DNC finally acknowledged there was no sense in rewarding that and letting them arbitrarily award a fairly toothy stack of 41 delegates to the “whitest” candidate in the field, lol!

One can also see the hand of the DNC trying to reward Georgia voters and make Georgia a consistently more blue state as well as trying to pull Michigan back from it’s recent flirtation with the GOP.

Michigan, Georgia, and South Carolina all have very large African American Democratic voting populations.

Will this even occur?

It seems apparent that some of these changes may not be possible due to legal challenges and/or Republican pushback.

Primary dates are set at the state level. South Carolina allows separate GOP and DEM primaries on whatever date they chose. Nevada passed a law in 2021 dumping their caucus for a primary and setting their date for February 6th, 2024, so that should be fine...Georgia’s Secretary of state is republican and he is charged with having the same date for both GOP and DEM primaries.

Both New Hampshire and Iowa have state laws that specify their order. While it is abundantly clear that neither state legislature should have EVER had the power to dictate it’s sequence to the national party, it is there on the books. New Hampshire’s clearly states they should be the first Primary on the schedule, suggesting they may move up.

There is no information on how the Democrats will address pushback.

Or if they see the problems their changes to prop up Biden 2024 inadvertently creates.

FROM “ALABASTER FILTER” TO “BLACK FILTER”

One could argue that the DNC has overcorrected and now they may be creating a Black Filter (#DNCBLACKFILTER) where the odds are stacked in favor of black candidates (or grandfathered in white candidates like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden) over other white, minority, or Hispanic candidates --- just as much as the previous system was stacked for white candidates.

More DNC home cooking...

Why is this relevant to look at?

Polling on election day 2022 showed that Democratic voters tended to be in favor of Joe Biden being primary challenged or not running in 2024. And this is not new.

August 2022

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3618861-56-percent-of-democrats-say-biden-shouldnt-run-for-reelection-in-2024-poll/

September 2022

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/23/politics/joe-biden-poll-reelection-2024/index.html

December 2022

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/09/majority-of-americans-dont-want-biden-or-trump-to-run-again-in-2024-cnbc-survey-shows.html

https://nypost.com/2022/12/14/just-30-of-voters-say-biden-should-run-for-reelection-poll/

The nut of all these polls is that for quite some time now the majority of Democratic voters (~56-58%) and Independent voters (66%) have thought Biden should not run again. Even with a historically abnormally good midterm for the Democrats, that sentiment has not changed.

There is a heck of a lot of smoke that regardless of how the call for changes with the DNC schedule was packaged for release to the public, this has a lot more to do with guaranteeing a Biden nomination than about addressing inherent racism built into the system.

If you look at how these contests stack up, it seems like this is designed to quickly steamroll any 2024 challengers ahead of Super Tuesday.

Black Democrats are generally more favorable of Biden than other Dems and voters. Biden would be the prohibitive favorite to win Michigan, Georgia, and South Carolina by wide margins. New Hampshire is a regular blue state and as Biden is the president, he is likely to run away with that one too. Only Nevada would really be at risk to a challenger. Biden could easily have 300 delegates+ (like over 80% of the available delegates) entering Super Tuesday.

This looks a lot more like a power grab and a rubber stamp than a correction of a long standing problem.

And there is more.

THE WARNOCK PROBLEM

The trouble is an unelectable black candidate (not a viable black candidate) would probably be in a similar position.

I am not talking about a Barack Obama. I mean a black candidate with real baggage who some black voters have deluded themselves thinking is a real presidential candidate that a non-black voter will support.

Raphael Warnock, lets say.

I’ve heard his name laughably mentioned as a Presidential candidate because people look at how much money he has raised and that alone. That is crack addled thinking.

Warnock HAPPENS to be in a state that is roughly 49/49 with 2 percent voting libertarian that requires a 50% majority to win so both of his elections have had runoffs. Both of his elections have turned out to be “control of the senate” elections that had people from all over the country donating money to him because of what his vote represents, not who he is. THAT is what has allowed him to pull in huge money.

I say laughably, because this is a guy who with a TON of money could only beat a poorly spoken black pro-life Republican who was publically outed for paying for an abortion and trying to push the same woman into a second abortion, running for a white, racist, republican pro life constituency Georgia, by 1%.

He’s that BAD of a candidate.

This is a GLARING problem with the system as proposed.

Warnock would win Michigan, Georgia, and South Carolina because there are more black Dems in those states than white Dems and black Dems will generally support a known black candidate.

He isn’t going to win Nevada or New Hampshire, but count the delegates....he is going to enter Super Tuesday as the presumptive candidate with probably at least a 100 delegate lead on the next candidate...and will get curb stomped in the general election because he is wildly unacceptable to white and moderate voters..

YOU NEED MORE THAN NEVADA TO KEEP THE DNC ON THE RIGHT PATH

Look, Nevada is nicely mixed with a variety of racial groups, but that hardly seems to cut it as far as opening the doors of Democratic power to all races. One can only scratch their head and wonder why a state or territory with a majority Hispanic population was not placed early to also give Democrats a chance to excite Hispanic voters and not push the results in a specific racial direction?

The idea should be that you give little markets and minority populations a chance to filter your pool of candidates.

Is South Carolina going to pronounce a black candidate worthy of carrying the Democratic banner as they did in 2008 with Obama or are they going to say, “No, these black candidates suck” and vote for a white candidate like Joe Biden as they did in 2020.

That is what your early states should do. That should be their role in this process. To perform the role South Carolina performed for the country in the last election. “Who was the best candidate for primarily black South Carolina? Was it a black candidate or would they go with a white candidate or candidate of another race with ties to the community?” Clearly NONE of the field of black candidates polled well enough in South Carolina to hang on. SC effectively both offered a pathway for a black candidate to become a front runner while also vetting whether there was a black candidate in the race who was viable.

You have states that are similarly filled with hispanic or asian voters who can provide a similar vetting process for your candidates or a similar launchpad.

The goal should be to use these primaries to build a more healthy coalition between voters of all races.

The DNC should allow merit based minority candidates to have a springboard into being a frontrunner. They should give an Asian candidate like Andrew Yang a chance to make a bid for widespread approval from all races in later states by potentially running a strong race in a couple states with Asians in it like Nevada early on in the process.... if those voters feel he is a strong candidate.

It should allow an AOC to campaign in a couple early states with a lot of Hispanic voters and be judged by them to see if she is deemed a candidate who could potentially carry a ticket.

And by the same token a state like New Hampshire should be able to make the case “this is the best candidate for white democratic voters” regardless of that candidate’s race.

(But I do agree screw GOP state Iowa with their caucus participants choosing “the least toxic” Dem. Everything should be about who you support, not who you can tolerate.)

THE SYSTEM, WHATEVER IT ENDS UP BEING, IS GOING TO BE LIKE A TRAIN ON RAILS DOWN A SPECIFIC PATH

The trouble is the path has historically been about choosing a white candidate prior to Super Tuesday.

It should be geared to allow a skilled politician of any race to stay in the race and build a national reputation for Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday should then narrow the field to two or three candidates.

I think the changes need to acknowledge a large chunk of voters tend to vote with candidates they can identify with (and often are racially similar to the voter) and that the whole system, if we are honest, is designed to narrow the field to maybe 5 candidates still being “technically” alive on Super Tuesday but with 1-2 way ahead and only those leading candidates having the money to advertise on Super Tuesday.

5-6 states shouldn’t decide what 2 candidates the rest of the country gets.

The pre-Super Tuesday primaries should be about building 3-5 brands that prove to be versatile and last into real Super Tuesday contenders. Super Tuesday will then cut the number to two or three that will play out over the course of the year in the rest of the races as the DNC would prefer to see happen.

It makes sense for the Dems to make the system designed to elevate their brands (making their candidates move valuable known brands in future races) rather than to tear them down.

SO WHAT CONTESTS SHOULD BE AHEAD OF SUPER TUESDAY?

Well, let’s start with Puerto Rico. It is right sized... Why is Puerto Rico with its 51 delegates not in the mix? Large Hispanic Population.... a group the Democratic party struggles to attract....Like with Georgia and Michigan, there is a strong reason for the Dems to push that primary up the list.

Likewise Hawaii with it’s large Asian population would make a lot of sense very, very early in the process partnered with Nevada. There are simply not a lot of states with large Asian populations that are small enough that they don’t overwhelm the system (looking at you California!). Hawaii only generates 24 delegates. You could bundle them with other Island contests.

One can argue that as it is, pushing Georgia and Michigan, a combined 230 delegates after a few small states is no different from throwing California with it’s staggering 415 delegates in before super Tuesday...and California has better attributes with for that role with strong black, white, Hispanic, and Asian Democratic populations....if you wanted to see a minority candidate emerge based on merit prior to super Tuesday, that would seem to be a better solution than adding Georgia and Michigan.

(But I think it makes a lot of sense to keep the big states back at Super Tuesday or later.)

My point is if you are going to push large delegate count Michigan and Georgia forward, you need to have more early primaries watering down their influence.

OK, You want to hear specifics...?

My two cents... If I were part of the rules board, I would totally go along with dumping Iowa as they aren’t ever going to vote Dem in the general election and Caucuses in general are a blight on Democracy.

But...If I were on the rules board, I would feverishly argue for the following as my pre-super Tuesday schedule.

Feb 3 South Carolina (54 delegates )

Feb 6 Nevada, New Hampshire (if it doesn’t move up to the 3rd, which may frankly be optimal) , & Vermont (36+24+16)

Feb 13 Hawaii, American Samoa, Democrats abroad, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the US virgin Islands (24 + 6 + 13 + 7 +5 +7)

Feb 17 Puerto Rico (51) District of Columbia (20)

Feb 20 Virginia (99) Colorado (67)

Feb 24 Michigan (125) New Mexico (34)

Feb 27 Georgia (105) Washington (89)

Why so many races in rapid progression? Well because in the proposed setup there are no races between Georgia on the 13th and Michigan on the 27th.

I don’t want Georgia’s results --- which are going to be either a white male or a black winner to stay on the public’s minds for two weeks... any more than I want Hawaii’s which are probably going to be Asian candidate or a female.

When the latest results sit for that long, they drive the narrative much, much more than they should. An election done in this manner should be a marathon, not 95% of the voting populace being discouraged by the actions a single state took.

I don’t want early states unfairly pushing the narrative more than they should. I don’t want an early state to have a staggering amount of influence over a state that votes after Super Tuesday.

Every state has a certain racial mix. History has proven every state is going to be sympathetic to a candidate of their race. Think of it as a willingness to hear a pitch. If the pitch speaks to them, they probably earn those voters. If the candidate seems non-Presidential, the voters move on to other races. This mix gives pathways to White, Black, Asian, Female, and Independent leaning candidates.

I also do a lot of “balancing” so Georgia and Michigan are not rubber stamps for an unworthy black candidate to unfairly capture the race. (Again, I am not talking about a skilled black candidate like President Obama who could speak compellingly to all races, I am talking about the Reverend Warnocks of the party who are not going to win a national campaign.)

I think it makes sense to structure the race so candidates CAN chose to focus on one state instead of another. I know that might rankle some, but really isn’t that a better scenario than forcing candidates who might have a legit shot at winning the nomination (cough Joe Biden) into wasting money campaigning fruitlessly in a state like Iowa and then letting the results be the status quo for up to two weeks, playing head games with voters in future states?

Give a pathway so skilled politicians can work their way into Super Tuesday conversations by showing they know how to utilize their resources. Don’t blow the wheels off their campaign by making them spend a ton of time in a state where the voters are not receptive to their message.

I also chose states that diminish the power the DNC elite have to shrink the candidate pool. Washington for example is on my list. California was too big, but Washington is just the right size as the second biggest state on the Pacific coast.

The Pacific Coast should absolutely be involved in the “vetting” round, just as the East Coast is with New Hampshire now. Washington is very indy minded as evidenced by their strong support for Bernie even when Joe Biden had all the momentum in 2022.

Let’s play it out

Let’s say Joe Biden gets sick and decides not to run in 2024. The Dems look at Kamala Harris and quickly realize she is still the same candidate who turned an 18% share of the democratic race and all the money you could want into a 3% share in less than a month. For who she is today, she is unelectable. Kind of the Dan Quayle of Democratic VPs.

A host of potentially electable and equally unelectable candidates enter the race. Mayor Pete, Reverend Warnock, Tulsi Gabbard, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Beto O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Kloubachar, and one of the interchangeable Castro Brothers of Texas.

Under the current setup, Warnock probably wins decisively in SC, MI, and GA. Warren and Kloubachar pretty much split the vote in New Hampshire. Polis probably wins Nevada over a very split field.

Warnock might capture 200 of the 284 delegates in those three states and be absolutely shut out in the rest of the states, but your next leading candidate might be Warren with maybe 50 delegates....

That is a recipe for an unenthused Democratic electorate and a shit sandwich on election day.

Now look at it with a bigger runway to Super Tuesday.

Feb 3 - SC - Warnock wins SC (39), Warren second (15).

Feb 6 - NH - Warren builds off SC and wins NH Strongly (18), Kloubachar (6).

VT- Warren wins more independent minded VT by a lesser margin, but the voters largely opt out of the field selecting instead the two candidates who are not there to award delegates.... Gabbard and O’Rourke. Warren (8), Gabbard (5), O’Rourke (3)

NV - Tulsi Gabbard, having run previously, knew she wasn’t going to win SC or NH, so she doubled down on NV ignoring the other two and with promising Hawaii looming, wins the state handily over Beto who had the same strategy. Mayor Pete and Governor Polis who competed in New Hampshire as well would find they split the vote. Gabbard (24), Beto (9), Polis (2) Mayor Pete (1)

Feb 10 - HI & Islands - Gabbard wins Hawaii and most of the island vote handily. Warren also plays off momentum to finish second. Polis again shows. Gabbard (32) Warren (15), Polis (2)

DA - Warren takes the “democrats abroad” vote with Gabbard in second. Warren (8) Gabbard (5).

(I know... This is not the kind of results you would expect because we are used to a candidate like Gabbard being denied media time and being actively taken down by the DNC as their followings are largely indy and GOP voters instead of allowed to rise based on her merit. Either a Gabbard or an Andrew Yang could pull off these results in this structure where they are not being ostracized by the DNC for rudely expanding the party.)

Tally: At this point its Gabbard 66, Warren 64, Warnock 39, Beto 12, Kloubachar 6, Polis 4, Mayor Pete 1.

Narrative: It has been 10 days since Warnock has won anything and Gabbard and Warren are looking presidential. A good African American candidate would have added to their SC win, but Warnock would not be able to and it would end up eating away at his support in future states. Warnock is politically smart enough to realize he has little primary support in states with no black population so he would likely be campaigning in the next market with a sizeable black population ---- DC.)

Feb 13 - With options with different characteristics, candidates would chose the more likely profitable race.

Puerto Rico - After his strong showing in Nevada, Beto would go all in after Puerto Rico. His rival, random Castro brother, would go all in as well, likely trying to run a negative campaign against Beto. The timeframe would not allow that strategy to succeed. Puerto Ricans would gravitate to the Spanish speaking, optimistic O'Rourke. The comely Gabbard would ride in on her momentum and impress the residents with her charm, beauty, and presidential stature. (You can dislike me acknowledging it, but those characteristics do sway a large chunk of male voters.) Those voters that Castro turned off Beto would largely go to Gabbard. Beto 42, Gabbard 7, Castro 2

DC - The much more dynamic Warren would descend on DC on a wave of momentum and erase much of Warnock’s softening support. Her deeper local ties would carry the day. Polis would capture a token bit of the gay vote. Warren 10, Warnock 7, Polis 3

Tally: Warren 74, Gabbard 73, Beto 54, Warnock 46, Polis 7, Kloubachar 6, Castro 2, Mayor Pete 1.

Narrative: At this point, Governor Polis has proved himself to be “a better Mayor Pete”. The money is drying up for Kloubachar, Castro, and Mayor Pete. They all drop out. Beto has proven that he can win a race and can capture the Hispanic voter. Gabbard and Warren are surging, Warnock is floundering, and Beto...is interesting.

Feb 17 - With a choice between two distinct regions, the front runners again chose to narrow focus and chose one state.

Virginia - Fresh off her win in DC, Warren slides her operation into neighboring Virginia. She continues to eat into Warnock’s support, but she is surprised to see a candidate eating into her support --- O’Rourke pulling double duty with a fresh influx of money carrying his message of optimism exclusively in TV ads in the DC market. He wins a little more than he should just over sexism. (Again, something that happens.) Polis finishes fourth. Warren 48, Warnock 25, O’Rourke 18, Polis 6, Gabbard 2

Colorado governor Polis wins his state, but the margin over the red hot candidates Gabbard and O’Rourke makes it a pyric victory. Gabbard knows she doesn’t have a lot of allies in DC so she goes hard after Colorado. O’Rourke need to prove he can win white votes so he also goes hard after Colorado. Polis 21, Gabbard 18, O’Rourke 15, Warnock 6, Warren 6

Tally: Warren 128, Gabbard 93, Beto 87, Warnock 77, Polis 34,

Narrative: It is becoming increasingly clear that Warnock has nothing beyond the black vote and he is rapidly losing that. Polis likely drops out knowing that he is already too far behind to pull the money for a valid Super Tuesday push.

February 24th - Tulsi realizes she can’t spend another cycle conceding the bigger prize to Warren. She pushes her chips all on Michigan. Her longstanding reputation among Fox News watchers serves her well in the state. She is able to paint Warren as “out of touch” and “overly liberal” and Warnock as “ineffective” and she captures a big victory capturing the majority of both white and black voters in the state. In a testy showdown between the front runners, Warnock is lost in the crowd and O’Rourke’s optimistic media push pays some dividends. Gabbard (55), Warren (35), Warnock (20), O’Rourke (15).

O’Rourke alone choses to personally campaign in New Mexico with Polis running out of money. As an EL Paso based candidate, he is a very familar brand in southern New Mexico and along the Texas border. He wins big selling the message that he care about “the forgotten Americans”. O’Rourke (27), Warren (4), Gabbard (3)

Tally: Warren 167, Gabbard 151, Beto 130, Warnock 97

Narrative: Warnock is dead in the water. He seems to be angling for a VP spot, but doesn’t seem to merit it over the other three. Most think it is a two candidate race, but Beto is widely viewed by campaign analysts as “clearly finding his feet”.

February 27: Georgia. On his home turf Warnock is finally able to scrape out a win, but it becomes very obvious that Warnock is less popular than the DNC brand in general and all four candidates prove capable of charming a southern voter. O’Rourke is once more the beneficiary of anti-female voting. Warnock 42, O’Rourke 25, Warren 20, Gabbard 19.

Washington. Indy minded Washington responds to Gabbard’s vision of a radically different, less militant America and Beto’s vision of a warmer country. Warren still does OK, but generally only with the older crowd. Warnock choses to only campaign in Georgia. Gabbard 35, Beto 30, Warren 22, Warnock 2

Tally: Warren 209, Gabbard 205, Beto 185, Warnock 141

Narrative: No one is running away with this race. Every potential DEM voter is engaged. No one feels swindled. Debates will continue and be very compelling long past Super Tuesday. It seems fairly likely one of the two women (the white insider or the Asian outsider) will win and they will have a choice between a candidate with the support of the rest of the female voting block, one with black support, or one with Hispanic and male support.

And that is just one way it could work out. If you have candidates that appeal widely beyond their racial origins like President Obama, one or two fewer candidates may be in the running on Super Tuesday.

Doesn’t that seem like a much healthier position for the DNC every election cycle than letting the Warnocks of the planet simply inherit the earth because they happen to be black?

0 notes

polss · 1 year

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Biden calls out the DNC Alabaster filter.

I am quite pleased with President Joe today. Check out this letter to the DNC that he dropped to all of America, explaining the alabaster filter of the DNC and condemning it.

#DNCALABASTERFILTER

0 notes

polss · 4 years

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Political Swizzlestick: is it time for mayor Pete, Tulsi, Amy, and maybe even Elizabeth and Tom to get out of the race?

I heard that Mike Bloomberg made the point that unless candidates who are splitting the conservative vote get out of the race, they're going to enable Bernie running away with this race.

That obviously didn't go over well, but he's absolutely right.

My guy, Andrew yang, had a very disappointing night in New Hampshire where he drew 2.5%. The negative momentum he was going to carry from New Hampshire was going to hobble him in Nevada which was probably his best state out of the first three primaries. If he had drawn like 9% in New Hampshire he might have drawn 20% in Nevada. At two and a half percent, that dragged in perception was likely to drag him down to about 13%.

The rules of the DNC generally don't give you any delegates unless you're exceeding 15%. Andrew Yang knew it was unlikely that he would get any delegates in Nevada, his best state and without success in the first four states , he would not have success on super Tuesday.

So he parked his ego at the door and he got out of the way.

We are at a point where a lot of these candidates need to consider ending their campaigns. Maybe their donors need to come to them and tell them "it's time for you to end your campaign."

I am not a Bernie hater. If he wins the nomination he has my vote.

But it's pretty clear that the only reason he's running away with this race is because no one else can get any traction because six people are trying to share 70% of the Democratic vote.

There are legitimate concerns about Bernie. His economic policies with the exception of Medicare for all don't seem sensible to me as a business owner.

And medicare-for-all as much as I think it would be a tremendous boon for society, delivering actual Functional Health Care that covers everything at probably a third of the cost of what we're paying today, looks like a poison pill politically, when a good chunk of the country is desperately clinging to shity health insurance from their work and frankly has been brainwashed by the insurance companies to be irrationally fearful of a government-run healthcare program.

I don't know that Bernie can't beat Trump, but I do understand the concern that maybe his Pro socialist and at times pro-communist rhetoric may be too objectionable and will cost us enough of the moderate vote to swing the election. (To be clear Bernie is a "Democratic Socialist". If you're not intimately familiar with that term you should really look it up . That's not far off honestly from what the US is. The problem is Bernie has waxed poetically about programs in true socialist countries and in communist countries. That's just a really f****** tough sale to a lot of Americans.)

If Bernie beats a consolidated field, then Bernie will have absolutely earned the right to be the candidate and moderate voters like myself will feel a lot more comfortable with the viability of Bernie as the nominee. Bernie will just be stronger for that.

But right now the only reason we don't have a more consolidated field is because people cannot park their long-shot presidential ambitions for the betterment of the country.

Again I'm not saying that Bernie is bad for the country. I am saying that the entire Democratic ticket looks better if Bernie defeats 2 strong contenders, or if a contender emerges who defeats Bernie.

It isn't good if 60-65%....the vast majority of democratic voters... want "someone other than Bernie" but because people at the bottom of the race refuse to give up their slim hopes, no one emerges to represent the other 60-70%.

So who should get out? Man that is so tough for me to say from the perspective of a guy who followed a candidate who everyone said should get out, but not so hard if I ignore that. I hope that fans of these candidates understand that I'm saying this from a perspective of what would be ideal for us in beating Trump.

Well let's talk about who should stay in first. I think most liberals have a bit of a bone to pick with Bloomberg, but it doesn't change the fact that he's a very electable candidate who is like catnip to moderates and conservatives and he is the only Democrat with major momentum and a ton of money. If you listen to your Republican friends , they all really like Bloomberg. It is very possible he could pull some Trump voters who are quietly tired of the drama.

Likewise I think Joe Biden should stay in for now. More than anyone else, all of these people trying to split the moderate vote are injuring Biden's primary hopes. He represents the "safe" second choice for a heck of a lot of people. If some of those people go away, I think you would see Biden and Bloomberg split those votes.

. Now understand I'm not talking merit here. Biden certainly hasn't earned anything in Iowa or New Hampshire. Biden is again a candidate who in a head-to-head matchup with Donald Trump one could see Biden winning. He is popular in the Rust Belt which is what the Democrats need to win to beat Trump.

Biden has drawn his line in South Carolina and frankly in an election usually someone has a state where they do well and then they turn into momentum. South Carolina could be it for him. Biden basically has to do well in South Carolina. I think he also has to do somewhat well in Nevada to make a win in South Carolina possible. If he wins South Carolina, he's likely to be in the race on super Tuesday.

If he loses South Carolina, he should probably just drop out at that point and clear the field for someone else, probably bloomberg, maybe somebody else.

At that point Joe Biden becomes a 10% guy. That's not relevant in the DNC rules.

Now we are to the guys who I am on the fence about.

Elizabeth Warren has horrible political instincts. She should have used her financial acumen to credibly run as a moderate but instead she thought she would steal liberal voters from Bernie Sanders. That's just ignorant. Sanders voters are all about Sanders and nothing else.

Instead what she got is the loyalty of the small but noisy liberal cross-section of Hillary voters. She has been painted as such a liberal candidate at this point that moderates won't consider her and she had a moment of wavering on some of her issues that killed her previous momentum and has the people who weren't firmly in her camp unwilling to commit to her.

I think she is politically done. There is an argument that staying in may prevents a chunk of her support from going to Bernie, but I don't buy that. I would describe her voters as militantly anti Bernie first and political second. In that regard if she got out of the race it would help all of the remaining candidates.

There is an argument for her to get out of the race after Nevada.

That seems unlikely however as she actually made some good money this week so she has the finances to go a little longer.

There could surprisingly be a narrow window of opportunity for her to emerge if the field cleared before super Tuesday if she does well in Nevada and South Carolina. I don't expect her to do well in South Carolina at minimum and probably in either state.

Tom Steyer is a guy who I like a lot but he has the longest of shots to make it. He has at times looked very presidential and at times look like a schizophrenic mess spewing out warren-like PC nonsense and mayor Pete like BS attacks. He is horribly awkward when he's attacking.

But he's very good when he's just being himself.

He's got a slight window of opportunity to emerge but he's got to clean up his act if he should earn a slight second wind.

But as I was saying just as a neither here nor there aside, I do like the guy. He is worth 1.6 billion, but has spent a ton of that on a campaign to get Donald Trump impeached, which absolutely should have happened to protect this country. He's spent about two hundred thousand in this campaign already. It's not unrealistic to say that Steyer may have spent 1/4 of his total net worth on principle to fight Trump. Steyer is rich but he isn't Bloomberg rich. I find that quite admirable.

I think Steyer has a chance to do fairly well in Nevada. Like all the other candidates he's polling between about 10 and 18% in Nevada.

If he can manage to stay above 15% all across the state and pull some delegates, steyer might have a little bit of momentum moving forward. If he managed that well , he could become an alternative to frustrating front-runners sleepwalking Joe Biden and perhaps morally questionable Mike Bloomberg.

Steyer has the money to compete deep into this election, the question is if he can make a mark in Nevada and build off that in South Carolina prior to Super Tuesday.

If Steyer cannot pull delegates in Nevada, then he's got no shot of pulling them in South Carolina and he should absolutely get out of their race immediately.

Mayor Pete and Amy are both candidates who could end up with 8% or 18% in Nevada. I think Amy is the longer shot. If Amy can't pull delegates in Nevada, she immediately needs to get out of the race.

I know this may come off sounding hateful or dismissive with her success in the first two states but it's not meant to be. Amy and Mayor Pete were both successful in two states that were 90% White. The rest of America is not like that.

Amy and mayor Pete both have problems in their resumes that make it unlikely that they will ever get support of the black vote. In addition Bernie Sanders dominates the Democratic field with support among Hispanic voters. Amy and mayor Pete are both below 18% with Hispanic voters.

One of the few good things about a state-by-state process like we have is that it gives later states the ability to correct mistakes by earlier States. Yes, I called Iowa and New Hampshire naming mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar the second and third best choices in this election "mistakes". You two states who claim to pick the best presidential candidates can't send the rest of the country two candidates who have zero appeal to any minorities. It's time to get out the eraser.

Democrats in Nevada are only 58% White. This is why all of the candidates who appeal to White candidates are in that 8 to 18% range. There simply aren't enough white voters to go around and things get even more brutal in South Carolina for the candidates that only appeal to White voters. South Carolina Democrats are only 35% White.

If Amy can't pull any delegates in Nevada (ie. break 15% to more likely 18% in nevada), she will enter South Carolina with negative momentum. As Joe Biden is discovering people don't like to vote for candidates who don't have momentum.

She is in that scenario unlikely to break 15% in South Carolina which means she will enter super Tuesday with two horrific losses in a row.

Amy is not a well known enough name and not well-financed enough to endure that and reverse all of that negative momentum in the face of a Bloomberg media onslaught. Staying in would just be an ego thing.

If she doesn't pull a delegate in Nevada, it'll be time for her to get out of the race rather than damaging a "more viable" (at least in terms of support with Democrats of all ethnic origins) candidate like Joe Biden.

Mayor Pete looks to have slightly better odds than Amy of pulling a delegate in Nevada. I think the exact same calculations figure in for mayor Pete.

I have zero confidence in mayor Pete's ability to beat Donald Trump. Mayor Pete cannot even win a Statewide election. That's damning.

On the positive side, he has proven that white aAmerica will vote for a gay candidate in a presidential race , so that's a big victory in itself.

He has zero support among black voters and minimal support among Hispanic voters because they don't see anything that he's done that's vaguely in their interest. And if female voters realize that he has targeted Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi gabbard, and Amy Klobuchar for kind of aggressive garbage attacks Pete may find that female voters tune him out as well. The people who consider Pete acceptable seems to be narrowing, not expanding. That is not a good trend.

On the positive side he still has a little bit of money left theoretically to compete on super Tuesday but that's where the positives end.

While Pete could pull a delegate out of Nevada , he is almost certain to get curb-stomped in South Carolina and will enter super Tuesday with very little momentum. (Again only 35% of South Carolina's Democratic voters are white. Those voters are going to favor Bloomberg,Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders first. It is difficult to imagine Pete breaking 10% in South Carolina.)

California and Texas are a lot more like Nevada demographicly then iowa or New Hampshire. Pete's subtle winks at the Trump crowd which served him so well in Iowa is not going to play in the bluest of blue states, California. I live in Texas and I can tell you that conservatives who might consider voting Democrat are much more enthralled by Bloomberg. And honestly I don't know how well a gay candidate would do in Texas, let alone one who is kind of a dick.

That will leave Pete with The narrative of claiming victory in Iowa which he may not have won, finishing second in New Hampshire, finishing second or more likely third in Nevada, and then whatever 5th or worse in South Carolina without ever showing the ability to expand his Coalition of Voters. That's not a strong position entering super Tuesday.

Pete is in a difficult situation. He's a guy who didn't expect to be where he is and he feels that he needs to work as hard as he can for the people who've invested the money in him to allow him to compete. He desperately wants to be president and this may be the closest he'll ever be. He's not going to walk away from this happily. But for the good of the party, his donors should probably tell him that it's done.

There is zero evidence supporting the idea that he can build a coalition to defeat Trump. They invested in him because they thought he was going to displace Joe Biden as the favorite candidate for moderate voters. Pete support is too racially limited to allow that, and Bloomberg is emerging as the "not Joe Biden" candidate for moderate voters. Additionally Bloomberg is telling rich moderates not to invest money in any of the candidates, because "Bloomberg's got this".

If Pete is non electable, what is the point?

Further his donors are the wealthy moderate Democrats. The last thing they want is Bernie to win the nomination. Pete is making that happen. If Pete is in the race on super Tuesday, it probably means that Biden and Bloomberg will end up with about 5% less each. That just helps Bernie.

Tulsi gabbard has absolutely been screwed by the DNC. She needs to sue them too. One of the biggest shames of this race is the fact that nobody got to see Tulsi with unbiased eyes. While she's far from a perfect candidate, I truly felt like she was a candidate who drew passion out of people and could have emerged if the DNC and the media weren't actively f****** her every 5 minutes. She is a candidate with a compelling message that people generally liked.

But it's time. Either now or at latest super Tuesday. At this point not getting out would make Tulsi appear delusional and hurts her brand long-term, just as Hillary did in 2008.

Get out of the race and strongly endorse your followers supporting the eventual Democratic candidate because getting rid of Donald Trump is the most important thing..... even as you condemn the DNC. That just makes you look like a bigger person.

Tulsi is not going to pull any delegates in nevada and she's not going to pull any delegates in any of the future states either because she doesn't have the benefit of any momentum. It's time to get out and write a tell-all book that waves the flag furiously and sets you up for the next election.

Am I saying that I would be fine if after super Tuesday the field was Bloomberg, Bernie, Tom, and Elizabeth? Yeah, even though my first two choices would be out of the race, I'd be okay with that. At that point Amy, mayor Pete, and finally Joe Biden would be proven flops.

Maybe Bloomberg runs away with the race. Maybe Elizabeth Warren surprises everyone and starts getting a lot more financial and a lot less PC cop. Maybe Tom finds a message that his money makes him a very effective choice to Bloomberg. (I'm not going to say those last two are likely.) And maybe Bernie runs away with the nomination. But that's where we are today anyway. This way it's just cleaner and better for the eventual nominee.

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polss · 4 years

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Political Swizzlestick: The ethical problem the Bloomberg candidacy presents for Dems.

I wanted to blow off the prospect of Micheal Bloomberg being the democratic nominee when he announced his candidacy. “Feh!” I arrogantly scoffed, “You think America’s going to rush to vote for another New Yorker?! Ha! Typical New York Media overrating their local candidate’s chances. You still have to connect with the rust belt voter.”

But time has smacked sense into me.

Bloomberg was at 19% nationally with Dems, sight unseen.

Nobody outside of New York knew a damn thing about him, but 19% of America had seen enough commercials to say, “That guy I’ve never seen before....he’s my guy!”

That is crazy.

But that’s kind of where we are in America. Do the majority of Trump Supporters know all of the things he has done? Can they tell you his position on any number of issues? No... But they know he drives Democrats crazy. The moderate segment of their support had been somewhat underwhelmed by the Obama-Biden management of the economy, so if it drives Dems crazy, he must be taking the country in the right direction that businesses want to go...right?

“He’s a businessman and the unemployment rate is at record lows.” is what they’d say if pressed. We have always measured the health of the economy by the unemployment rate so we have to do so now.

They are just as ignorant to the vast majority of their guy’s views as we are of our candidates.

In a world where no one cares about details, why couldn’t Bloomberg win?

If the race is two shady New York businessmen against each other and one is worth maybe a billion by now and the other is worth $64 Billion, is Donald trump going to be able to lord his economic knowledge over Bloomberg? No. Bloomberg will treat him like a peon. If Bloomberg says, “You aren’t a businessman, you are a con man. I am surprised you haven’t throttled the economy yet. Step aside an let someone who actually understands how to succeed in business run this country.” it resonates with moderates everywhere.

You could legitimately see Trump supporters jump ship. Every trump fan I know likes Bloomberg and thinks “that’s the guy the Dems should run.” He fits their idea of what they want as a president. Is it difficult to see 1-4% of them jumping ship to escape the Trump sideshow? Not at all.

Donald trump lost more money than any other American over a 20 year period. Bloomberg is without a doubt a successful businessman. Donald Trump looks very much like a failure in business compared to him over a 3 month or so lead up to the election.

I am late to the game. A lot of people on the Democratic side have pointed at this very thing and proclaimed Bloomberg the Dems best hope. I am inclined to agree now after looking at the financial picture and how easily voters can be swayed by a simple advertising campaign.

Bloomberg takes away all of trump’s best arguments. Business expertise? Not even close.

Trump uses his lack of morality to dig at the political correctness that Dems foolishly cling too. There is every reason to believe that Bloomberg is so rich that morality largely no longer applies to him. Any mistake or lack in judgement can be erased with a check. Donald Trump is not going to be able to use his lack of morality as a weapon against Bloomberg. And frankly since Dems would have voted for this guy, that is a tacit acknowledgement that morality doesn’t matter to the Dems either.

Want to smear Bloomberg with an ad campaign? Bloomberg can run 10 commercials with Trump’s voice talking about grabbing women by the pussy and showing all the women who tried to sue Trump in the 2016 election for every one trump can run. Literally every 15 minutes you could hear Donald trump talking on TV about grabbing women by the pussy. You think that wouldn’t have a cumulative effect?

Really all you have to do is move 1-2% from the trump column to the anti-trump column in say 6 states and that is the election.

“But the Bernie Bros will revolt!” What if Bloomberg make Bernie VP? Does Bloomberg care who is his VP? At all? Bernie is an old warhorse who has been selling his rhetoric to no one in particular for 40+ years. You think he would turn down being a heartbeat from the presidency? Bloomberg is an old dude too. If Bernie has a legitimate seat with power like the VP job, you won’t lose any Bernie fans. They have seen Bernie get screwed out entirely by the DNC. This would be an acceptable loss for them. “We may have lost the battle, but we won the war”.

Bernie Bros aren’t running against Trump....not yet anyway.... they are running against the DNC.

Bloomberg is worth $64 Billion. He spent $200 Million LAST MONTH. That is 1/320th of his wealth. That spending is almost double what Bernie (the Democratic front runner) has had in his entire account this election.

Let’s say you were fairly well to do and between 40 and 80. How much of your money would you be willing to spend to cross “get elected president” off your bucket list? How much would you spend if you were in your late 70′s? 30% of your wealth? 40% of your wealth? More?

If Bloomberg spent 30% of his wealth that would be $19.2 Billion dollars.

Hillary spent $585 Million in 2016. Donald Trump spent $350M and has roughly $240 Million donated so far for 2020.

Let’s say Trump end up with $600M. Bloomberg would in his $19.2 Billion have 32 times the amount of money.

So lets say Donald Trump runs a TV ad of Bloomberg not wanting to release former employees from non-disclosure agreements. Bloomberg could run 32 TV ads with the clip of Donald trump weirdly fondling his daughter as she sits on his lap and Trump talking about how if he wasn’t her dad he’d be all over that.

Think we couldn’t get there?

Don’t count on it.

If you watched the last debate you saw the democrat’s Donald Trump on stage. A win at all cost guy.

Now I have long bemoaned that the democratic party is run by a lot of folks who proudly display their participation ribbons.

The GOP tells the Dems, “You can’t do that! It is a betrayal of our country!” then the next time there is a GOP president he does exactly that and the Dems say, “Gorsh, you got us again, lol!”

It drives me nuts and is even worse by the fact that the GOP has a guy in Trump who could give a shit about any of the social norms and is playing a win at all costs game, damn the constitution!

But do we truly want to run a “win at all cost” guy? Are we willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious disdain Bloomberg has for the common man’s opinion to get trump out?

Are Dems and left leaning voters willing to embrace a guy who doesn’t even want to say how many non-disclosure agreements he has had to payoff to buy ex-employee’s silence? And let me assure you, if they were all off color jokes as he claimed, Bloomberg would have just released them all and taken the momentary polling hit. You could argue that a business has non-disclosure agreements to protect business information but Bloomberg himself admitted his non-disclosure agreements were to protect his bad behavior.

For him to insist no one would be released suggests there is what would be a career ending story for someone whose budget for this election wasn’t potentially larger than the combined budgets of the last 30 presidential elections.

This guy is so out of touch he doesn’t even understand what people want him to apologize for about his policy of targeting the African American community in New York City for shake downs of their kids.

If you watched the debate you saw a guy who was not all that dissimilar to trump who wants to be president. That is clearly goal 1. I think there is a lot of evidence that unlike trump, Bloomberg isn’t running to profit off the presidency and legitimately wants to do right by America. I think he legitimately does want to put an end to all of the Trump nonsense, but he still seems like a guy we would deem morally unfit in any election prior to the slimeball derby of 2016.

I am not advocate for purity tests, but this isn’t a purity test. If we were looking for angels we wouldn’t have let him in the door. Frankly we wouldn't have let any of these people in. Which is why I'm glad that we don't have purity tests.

My question is are we truly at a point where we can accept running a lesser demon against another lesser demon just because we think he would likely be favored to win and willing to do whatever it took to win?

Are we willing to elect a guy who we really have no idea what he is going to do in office just to get rid of Trump? He could easily be just as disdainful of the constitution.....We don’t know and the early returns are we don’t care.

Are we willing to turn a total blind eye and be just as hypocritical as the Republican voters we have vilified for the last 3 years?

Are we willing to potentially forever destroy any argument by either side that ethics matter in a president? Are we willing to say that no American voters at all care about fair play and moral behavior?

Or are we willing to stand on principles and risk defeat with a more morally acceptable candidate like Bernie, Tom, Elizabeth, or Joe who might be at best 50/50 propositions against Trump?

I'll make it personal. Am I willing to betray all the women out there who have ever been shit on by, feilded unwelcome propositions from , or been ridiculed by their bosses at work for better odds that we'll get Trump out of office? I am half Jamaican. Am I willing to betray solidarity with the greater african American community which finds this man unacceptable, for better odds?

Am I willing to sell my soul for 4 years for better odds? Am I willing to look in the mirror and loathe the face looking back for 4 years just for better odds?

Melania says "Be Better". I want to be but after 3 years of this shit, the apple that snake is holding looks so...so... good.

I don’t have the answer. All I’ve got are the questions.

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polss · 4 years

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Political Swizzlestick: Bloomberg launches hostile takeover of DNC nomination process

I was an Andrew Yang supporter. Yang dropped out of the race and went to work for CNN as an analyst. I like to keep up with Yang because well ... I think he's a nice guy and very smart guy.

I was watching him last night and he was talking about the amount of money that's going to be required to advertise in all of the states that are going to be part of super Tuesday. California and Texas are part of that. It's going to be super duper expensive to advertise in those States and the only people who really seem to have the money to do it are front runner Bernie Sanders who has the most robust group of supporters, (presumably Billionaire Tom Steyer, who yang didn’t mention), and Billionaire former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg who has more money than God. (Actually not more money than God just more money than 125 million Americans combined.)

Yang continued. He noted that all of the other campaigns simply don't have the money to advertise properly for super Tuesday.

Further he revealed that Mike Bloomberg is paying political advisers 200% of the going market. Bloomberg is hiring every political adviser he can get a hold of. If someone has a strong finish in South Carolina or does well on super Tuesday, they're going to want to increase the size of their management staff, but all of those people are going to be working for Bloomberg.

I slept on this idea. I'm a smart guy... but I'm not a quick guy. I woke up this morning and realized that viewed another way Bloomberg is cornering the market on political advisers and in that way he is doing a hostile takeover of the Democratic nomination.

I thought this was something that followers of every campaign should be aware of. If you want your guy or gal to succeed, you need to be giving them money right now, because the political talent that they're going to need to succeed down the road is getting swallowed up.

And it may frankly be time to start looking at some of the front runners with warts, because your long shot candidate seems likely to get squeezed out of the race in the next month. I'm going to write about the candidates' chances with this in mind next but I wanted to share this first.

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polss · 4 years

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Elizabeth Warren maims 4, kills 1 in bloody Nevada Democratic debate.

Popcorn consumption was up about 2000% across the country last night as the Democrats had their Nevada debate.

Candidates knew they were against the wall. Bernie (and really the whole field) could see former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had just polled in at 2nd place nationwide, becoming the candidate to beat without ever being seen by most of America.

Joe “Rip Van” Biden, a strong favorite among African American voters seemed to have just recently been informed that if Bernie wins Nevada going away and Bloomberg’s ads continue to chip away at Biden’s support, that Biden’s firewall in South Carolina (where roughly 65% of expected DNC voters are black) could crumble away, putting super Tuesday and all other polling days at risk. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled away the mighty cobwebs that had held him back in New Hampshire and was poised to give it an honest go.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Amy Kloubachar, the Darlings of the DNC’s Alabaster Filter, seemed shocked to discover that people of other colors exist. With legacy issues with people of color in their careers dimming their chances, they agreed to a knife fight in the parking lot with the winner taking exclusive control of the rest of Nevada’s white male DNC voters...after Joe, Michael, and Bernie got theirs... The sad reality that South Carolina’s DNC voters are only 35% white, and that the runs of Darlings of the first two races would likely be over by Super Tuesday due to a sudden and total lack of momentum. The thought hung over their heads like a death shroud.

Elizabeth Warren, the forgotten Oklahoma grandmother in the DNC Presidential race who shakes with emotion like someone on meth, was absolutely brutal to the other candidates last night. (Don’t take offense Warrenites. The description is accurate, but it doesn’t change my love of a good Warren take down...) Fiercely popular with white female voters and people who love bloodshed, Warren was on point tonight.

I don’t know that she gained more than a percent or two because if you cannot control your adrenaline and constantly appear you are on the verge of jumping over the podium, it is difficult to gain the advantage of appearing “presidential”, but its a fixable flaw and at the end of the day, she absolutely mauled the field. Any gains were absolutely earned.

Finally there was Micheal Bloomberg, an incredibly lifelike cartoon of white male entitlement in NYC, who clearly strolled in with no preparations whatsoever for the debate.

It was practically the plot of a major motion picture.... Probably a comedy.

We’ll start with Warren’s destruction of Bloomberg, a feat so awesome to behold it generated the following meme, less than an hour after the debate.

Warren stammered and stumbled through her questions but managed to drop major bombs on every candidate she targeted.

In rapid-fire sequence she caught Bloomberg acknowledging that he really has no idea what he should be feeling sorry about implementing the policy as mayor of NYC that had the police essentially shaking down black kids and ignoring white ones.

Bloomberg struggled to figure out what it was the American people wanted him to say, buying time with a snippy assed comment to the moderators about giving him his full allotment of time, but that train went nowhere. He really has no idea what he should be apologizing for.

Warren added a second knock down when she pinned Bloomberg down in a corner and got him to admit to having to buy the silence of several (presumably) female ex-employees with non-disclosure agreements.

She recorded a third when Bloomberg walked into her glove. She asked Bloomberg how many non-disclosure agreements were out there and the audience was treated to seeing the gears grinding and smoke billowing out of Bloomberg’s head as he clearly was trying to ascertain if there was a correct numeric answer. “72 sounds...a bit much...? maybe...25? Maybe 10?” The silence was deafening.

Then for good measure she knocked his ass out by asking him if he would release the ex-employees from their non-disclosure statements.

Bloomberg looked entirely undone as he stammered a bit and said he would not.

At that point the only thing missing was a Mortal Kombat “K.O.!” sound effect.

It was Tyson-esque --- no ear biting----I’m talking early Mike Tyson...Just a savage, bloody beat down. Probably 5 minutes into the debate, Warren had absolutely destroyed Bloomberg, reducing him to simply “The Democratic Trump”.

Now Bloomberg Dems who have spent years screaming “Hypocrite!” at anyone in a MAGA hat for Republicans supporting Trump after decades of championing and INSISTING on ethical behavior, now have to decide if they want to continue to support Bloomberg and endure rightfully being called the same.

Smiling Joe Biden then stepped in and echoing the late great Chris Farley basically told Bloomberg, “Hey, you remember when Elizabeth asked you about all those confidentiality agreements that women are paid to sign when rich guys like you are dicks to them at work? You remember how you said you wouldn’t release any of them from their confidentiality agreements?”

“....That was great, wasn’t it?”

And it only got better.

Mayor Pete who is constantly aware of the political calculus clearly figured out that “there is only room for one long shot white candidate in this race.” much like he figured out a few debates ago that there was only room for one former military patriot in the race when he attacked Tulsi Gabbard with a bunch of bullshit out of the blue. He went after Amy Kloubachar and attacked her on an issue that Kloubachar was clearly unready to address. Kloubachar was clearly driven off her game and showed actual anguish and stress. It was a fight or flight moment for Amy and Pete was not letting her flee. She launched a counterattack that scored some damage, but not as much damage as Pete inflicted.

Kloubachar had a tough night. She was also busted by the moderators. She had apparently gone on Telemundo or something and had totally forgot the name of the president of Mexico and appeared for all the world like she was ignorant of all dealings between the US and Mexico. It was apparently a meltdown, The super tightly wound and always prepared Kloubachar was clearly uncomfortable talking about it. It also rattled her.

She and Bloomberg looked as far from presidential as a candidate could possibly be tonight at their worst moments. Kloubachar could only painfully stumble through getting the name of the president of Mexico out as her defense. And it was even painful to watch her say that name.

Warren, as she had repeatedly done in other debates, came to Kloubachar’s rescue much to the plucky mistress of midwestern colloquialisms’ relief. Warren said everyone forgets names. It happens. Then she spiraled and threw her big right fist at Kloubachar saying that ....one should still be able to talk politics. Kloubachar was amusingly caught on camera swallowing her tongue in surprise to Warren’s expertly executed sneak attack.

Things weren’t much better for Kloubachar’s rival Mayor Pete. Pete clearly hopes to be in the running but really is trying to position himself for the VP job. In this regard he is not coming hard after the front runners. Tonight, he seemed positively predatory in his take down of Kloubachar. Pete has been playing the calculus and launching BS fueled surprise attacks rival candidates at the bottom of the race, but it seems likely that female voters are catching on that aside from a 15 second sneak attack on Andrew Yang, Pete is only actively attacking all the female candidates. He’s gone after Tulsi, Warren, and repeatedly after Kloubachar with mostly empty BS filled arguments. Black voters don’t like him, Mexican voters are fairly ambivalent towards him. If female voters also don’t like him, how is he expecting to win?

I think Pete proved that people will consider a gay candidate, but there is growing polling evidence that outside of his home turf, Dems won’t support a dick.

Sleepy Joe had gone almost the entire debate knocking softball questions from the moderators out of the park. Any time Pete, Amy, and Bloomberg tried to launch an offensive the moderators called on someone else. He was able to boast about his qualifications, get noticed anytime he asked, and overall, look presidential.

He had in five minutes become the last hope of the ant-Bernie crowd at MSNBC and was sitting pretty. But that wasn’t stopping Warren last night. She managed to penetrate the moderators’ defense and remind America that Joe Biden once made a friendly gesture to his longtime Senate colleague Mitch McConnell, stating that he couldn’t wait for McConnell to be re-elected so they could continue to work together. McConnell would go on to win that election and then actively obstruct every policy of Barack Obama for six years.

“Punch in the head for you too, Joe!”

Bernie was actually the forgotten man in this debate. He did his solid Bernie thing. He boiled a little. He yelled about random stuff like a crazy old dude. He even mounted the best defense of his healthcare plan I have ever heard, framing it in ridicule that America is so financially destitute than the US cannot afford socialized medicine while every country in Europe can. His point was rough, but he is on the way to building a winning argument there.

Bernie dodged most damage but did trade some blows with Bloomberg. Bloomberg argued that Bernie’s rhetoric would drive voters to trump. Bernie challenged Bloomberg with the question of whether anyone one should be a Billionaire, Bloomberg rejected that, but was clearly staggered when Bernie told Bloomberg that the former mayor was a rich as the poorest 125 Million Americans COMBINED. Clearly that was not a thought Bloomberg had ever considered and to some degree you could see his conviction in his answer slipping.

Bloomberg called Bernie a communist and Bernie said Bloomberg wasn’t a democrat. Nothing to see....Glancing blows we have all heard before.

Bloomberg did have one indisputably strong moment. He asked if any of the other candidates ever owned a business. He was greeted with silence. His point was made.

Biden probably won the most gains at the polls in the debate, but Warren was clearly the star of the night.

Believe it or not, I am not a Warren supporter, but I do have the utmost respect for her fire and when someone RIGHTEOUSLY kicks ass they deserve to be celebrated. Warren’s attacks have often been of the BS variety in this race --- just as empty as Mayor Pete’s --- but tonight they were valid and on point and had every one of her targets presenting that “Oh Shit.” face.

You only get those from on point attacks....And I love a politician wearing an “Oh Shit” face.

As a voter subjected to hours of insincere bullshit by these people, I found last night to be immensely therapeutic.

She might not be a favorite to win, but tonight I think she earned support in Nevada and made the case that she could be a very, VERY effective VP candidate.

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polss · 4 years

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The hidden reason why Andrew Yang may have dropped out of the race “early”

I’m going to confess something right from the start. I am an Andrew Yang supporter. I love the idea everyone in the country starting off at the poverty level rather than facing starvation and the loss of their home and no Medical Services if they lose their job. America possesses 29% of the world’s wealth. The idea that we can’t afford starting everyone off at twelve thousand a year is asinine.

But that said, I was one of the few Yang supporters who were totally on board with Andrew yang suspending his campaign after pulling in two and a half percent of the vote in New Hampshire.

Yang has been done in by the DNC white filter, a bit of institutionalized racism that we discuss every 4 years. The DNC starts their race with two states that are abnormally White. Iowa is 90% white and New Hampshire is 94% white. Voters tend to skew along racial lines. White voters tend to vote for white candidates. Black voters tend to vote for black candidates. Mexican voters tend to vote for Mexican candidates and I would speculate that Asian voters would tend to vote for Asian candidates.

In the grand scheme of things it all kind of washes out some degree.

Where it doesn’t wash out is in the early stages of choosing the candidate for your party. This is why every 4 years this is talked about and the DNC never does anything about it.

If you know that there’s a problem that distorts along racial lines and you never address it it is institutionalized racism.

It doesn’t mean that Iowa and New Hampshire voters are racist, but it does mean that Minority candidates are going to do worse up there in General.

Disagree? Do you really think that folksy girl next door Amy Klobuchar and mayor Pete Buttigieg with his notoriously bad polling numbers around minorities would have been killing it if the election started in Nevada a state with 8% Asian voters and South Carolina a state with almost 40% African American voters?

I think there’s a very good chance that Andrew Yang would have finished second or third in Nevada and might have done pretty well in South Carolina. I also think that one of the African-American candidates probably would have also done very well in South Carolina, but having South Carolina go fourth usually effectively eliminates any sort of black candidate before African-American voters have a chance to vote for them prior to Super Tuesday, leaving the state for candidates like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

But that’s neither here nor there.

It is what it is.

The DNC’s Alabaster filter filtered out all of the minority candidates before we reached our third state just as it is intended to do.

Why I was okay with Yang dropping out at that point

I felt like if Andrew Yang had been able to pull about 9 to 11% of the almost all white voting population in New Hampshire he would have shown to be a semi viable candidate and would have displayed actual momentum entering Nevada.

I could imagine a similar percentage of white voters voting for him in Nevada even though the pool would be smaller because of momentum.

As the first Asian-American to run for president I would expect him to do it excessively well among the Asian American population in Nevada. Now assuming that they would vote in higher numbers due to excitement, I think you could have seen an additional 8 to 12% added to his New Hampshire numbers. He could have been at about 20% in Nevada if he had done okay in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire voters say, “Iowa voters pick corn, New Hampshire voters pick presidents”.

That New Hampshire voter is right thay I think they take an excessively sober look at the candidates because they feel are true responsibility to give a candidate that mainstream America will vote for. I can respect that, but it doesn’t help when a candidate is proposing what most of society thinks are fairly radical changes.

New Hampshire delivered two and a half percent for Andrew Yang. If you add on his likely gains in Nevada, with it’s more favorable racial demographics, Andrew Yang was looking at probably less than 15% in Nevada.

Nevada is another caucus State in which each individual subsection of Nevada you have to have at least 15% of the vote to be pronounced as viable and have a shock to win delegates Statewide. Andrew Yang was looking at the very likely possibility of not getting delegates in any of the three states, falling out of the debates because he was not pulling at high enough numbers, and limping into South Carolina, an “unspoken for” state that yang thought he might do fairly well it if he could have a decent showing in Nevada.

The poor showing in New Hampshire was also drying up his fundraising as people were taking those results with a “look and see” attitude about future investment. It has threatened to make his still quite difficult task in Nevada and South Carolina even harder. So I understood the logic behind Andrew Yang dropping out of the race after New Hampshire.

This is the alabaster filter killing a DNC minority candidate’s support before the election gets underway.

But I think there was a part of this logic that I missed...

#DNCALABASTERFILTER

More to come

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polss · 4 years

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The DNC’s Alabaster Filter screws them, Joe Biden, and Andrew Yang.

to come.

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polss · 4 years

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Political Swizzlestick: Tulsi Gabbard argues for election reform

It is funny. I was writing about election reform when I got this email from Tulsi Gabbard listing out steps that the DNC should take to fix the electoral system for voters who want to vote Democrat.

But she also has an ad out there demanding the resignation of Tom Perez, the public face of the DNC. While I admire her team’s constant embrace of jiu jitsu, In this instance turning someone who seems to be actively pushing down on the scales against them into a reason for people to vote for her, I’m going to deal more with the email part.

I’m going to share the points from the email here because conceptually I agree with almost all of it, and as somebody who likes cleverly run campaigns, I want to give Tulsi and her folks credit for running this. It is timely and resonates with a significant chunk of potential democratic voters.

I also am sharing it because I want to discuss it in terms of both practicality and long-term necessity.

“Join me in calling on the DNC to institute reforms — open primaries in every state, paper ballots, same-day registration, and more — that make Every Vote Count…

We need to fix and secure our elections

I’m asking you to join me today in working to put We, the People back in the driver’s seat of our democracy, and to join me in calling on the DNC to institute reforms that make Every Vote Count. These reforms include: Open Primaries

Transitioning to open primaries in every state, away from our broken and egregiously expensive caucus system, and getting rid of the influence of superdelegates

Same-day Registration

Allowing same-day registration so every person gets to vote, regardless of how they choose to affiliate that election cycle

Paper Ballots

Instituting a paper ballot system (or voter-verified paper backup) to keep our elections secure and free of foreign influence

Ranked-choice Voting

Introducing ranked choice voting at the national level, making sure no vote is ever wasted

Automatic Voter Registration

Ensuring automatic voter registration for every person who turns 18 because there should be very few barriers to participating in democracy

Make Election Day a Federal Holiday

We should reduce all barriers to performing one of our greatest civic duties”

Let me just start by admiring the fact that Tulsi and her people are so “no bullshit” about things that they don’t even follow the rules of grammar.

“Periods at the end of sentences?!?! I am a no-nonsense, ass-kicking Soldier. Who needs that crap?”

I applaud you, Tulsi. That is freedom! Wave that flag!

(Sadly my high school English teacher sometimes reads my stuff and I would feel like a total ass if I didn’t try my best to get the punctuation right. She spent so much time working on me, that I can’t disrespect her in that way. I’ve got too much love for that lady.)

Let’s get down to our breakdown of Tulsi’s points.

Open primaries instead of caucuses Eliminating superdelegates No mention of Any changes to the delegate system?

Caucuses are an incredible klusterfuk. A caucus takes place in an extremely narrow window of time So you are effectively limiting the number of people who can participate. This is the basic concept of a lot of things Republicans to prevent people from voting. It already fails Democratic principles and you haven’t even got into the most egregious part.

Take a look at what information we do have on the Iowa caucus. In terms of people coming in and saying X candidate is our first choice, Bernie won the state going away. But due to caucus rules forcing supporters of other candidates that the rules deem having “unviable” levels of support being forced against their wills to choose their second choice, Mayor Pete may end up winning Iowa.

Joe Biden Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar all got significant numbers of votes in Iowa, but next to none of them are going to get any delegates for all that hard work and money. This is the most egregious element of a caucus. It forces people to effectively vote against the candidate that they like.

In my previous article I talked about the problem with having delegates at all. Going to a Nationwide primary system where the candidate who got the most votes won the nomination represents democracy far far better then any system that has delegates, So I’m kind of disappointed that Tulsi stops at that point...but I get it.

The reason the delegates our Inn place is that it allows people who volunteer for the Democratic party to have the feeling that they have some power. It is strictly throwing a bone to the workers. But it isn’t democratic.

Same day registration

I questioned this from Tulsi in some ways. It is fair territory in political ads from one perspective in much the same way as it’s fine for political ads to say, “we need term limits. Or we need to end corruption.”

In terms of high Concepts and things that we should strive for few people disagree with that.

But it’s kind of b******* as well. Those kinds of statements are like me saying. “Yeah, I’m all for oxygen.”

Yes, we all need oxygen to breathe. And all of us in general are for having enough oxygen around.

But when you start taking a closer look at things. How quickly could something like this ever be implemented? Is this viable? Is it viable in some states and not others? Can the DNC make these types of decisions on their own?

I live in the state of Texas. As is the case in most republican-dominated States, We have a GOP Secretary of State who is all about controlling the ability to register voters.

I can remember a time 5-10 years ago When I could register to vote online in the state of Texas. Now the rules are you have to send in a paper registration like 30 days before. Has there been a electromagnetic pulse that has wiped out computers in Texas where I can’t spend 60 seconds immediately adding my data to the registered voter database? No, but our continuous stream of GOP secretary of States have realized the GOP odds of staying in power increase with restrictions added to the registration process.

I don’t think this is something that you can force red states to do for this election.

Now I do think it would be very very smart for a candidate to encourage every blue state to immediately pass a bill making same-day registration possible by time the early voting starts for the presidential election.

It would help the chances of defeating Donald Trump and it would create immense pressure on the red states to comply. It would be good policy today and tomorrow.

But that’s not what Tulsi and her people are saying here. They are playing at more like standard politicians. And saying, “I’m in favor of oxygen. Vote for me if you are too.”

That is an opportunity missed by Tulsi and her people in my opinion.

Paper ballots

This is a similar kind of argument. I love the idea of a voting paper trail. I worked for Verizon for 10 years and for internet service providers for about another 10 years prior to that. Doing things electronically without a paper trail is asking for corruption.

But Tulsi And her folks are again kind of playing lip service in a standard political game.

We are less than a month away from Super Tuesday where a ton of states are going to be voting. You can’t just say, “let’s do paper”. And have it roll out that quickly.

I love it conceptually, but given that reality. I have to take it as another. “Vote for oxygen, It’s important.”

Ranked-choice voting at the national level

I love ranked-choice voting at the national level. You may ask how can I like ranked-choice, voting and hate caucuses? Very easily In this regard because we’re talking about ranked-choice voting at the national level. IE in presidential votes.

In ranked-choice voting you are still casting a vote. You have the control whether or not you want to list 2nd or 3rd place candidates to move your votes behind.

It gives you an immense amount of control . You can vote for your pie-in-the-sky presidential candidate who you love and still list your preferred bland but safe second-choice candidate.

I love this as policy. I think it would be fairly easy to roll out in blue States and again would be something that Red State GOP would feel a little bit of pressure from to comply.

But again Tulsi’s people being very fuzzy here. People love ranked-choice voting conceptually But when you start applying it to specific types of races, there are certain instances where it seems non- ideal.

By generically throwing out ranked-choice vote and then shoehorning in “at the national level” , they’re attempting to have their cake and eat it too.

“ Vote for awesome oxygen! (but only because we breathe it.)”

Automatic voter registration

I don’t want to be a broken record here, but this is more of the same damn thing. You could vote to pass it and every blue leaning Democratic State and in several purple States And it would create pressure on red States to comply and would help the effort to vote out Donald Trump but this isn’t going to get implemented prior in most of our primary voting days.

It is another high-concept proposal. As long as you don’t get into the minutiae high-concept appeals appeal to a whole bunch of folks.

Make election day a federal holiday

This is a platform of Andrew Yang. I’m not going to bag on Tulsi about this because Tulsi and Yang seem to really like each other. One gets the feeling that if Yang wins the nomination, Tulsi would be the favourite to be his VP. And if Tulsi wins the nomination, Yang would be on her short list.

Tulsi runs on her own points and to borrow a minor Point like this from Andrew Yang is pretty insignificant. It is not like mayor Pete where Yang followers have famously created a video of Pete stealing point after point after point from Andrew Yang.

This is again a very high concept appeal. You would have to get Mitch McConnell To allow the GOP Senate to vote for this prior to the election. Such a move would almost certainly help the Democrats, so there is no way McConnell will ever approve it.

So this is basically a high-concept appeal to voters sensibilities and nothing more until McConnell is no longer the voice of the dominant party in the Senate.

Overall, I would give Tulsi and her people a solid B to B+ for their work on this. There were points where they could have gone farther and really showed showed their candidate to be a thoughtful candidate, but they did enough to earn the support of “the common man” voter here.

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polss · 4 years

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Political Swizzlestick: Seema Nanda and Tom Perez - DNC Heads - need to rid the DNC of its bullshit....Or get fired when the Dems lose to Trump.

As anyone who followed the train wreck that was the Iowa caucus knows, Tom Perez is the head of the DNC.

Let me throw another name out for you. Seema Nanda is his boss, the CEO of the DNC.

And they are both on their way to helping Donald Trump get reelected.

How can I say such a hateful and unfair thing?

Because it's neither hateful nor unfair.

It's truthful.

In the 2016 election, the GOP and the DNC gave us two candidates that we hated more than any other candidates in the history of US elections that we've tracked. So we had an election where everyone in the liberal-leaning states voted their asses off against Donald Trump and everyone else in America voted their asses off against Hillary Clinton (and to a lesser degree against President Obama's economic policies, which most of us will admit we didn't particularly like.)

It's now four years later. People in the liberal states who hated Donald Trump have four years of evidence showing that their hatred was justified.

People in the conservative States and in the Swing states have seen Donald Trump address probably 80 to 90% of his campaign promises, far far far more than any previous Republican president. Republicans are on board , even most of the 2016 "never Trump" Republicans have realized that it's four years later and their skin has not been melted off by a nuclear disaster. They are on team Trump now.

So, what does that mean for the 2020 election?

Well It means that again The Electoral College will decide the winner and victory will be dependent upon which candidate wins the Rust Belt states (as well as North Carolina and Virginia).

Trump won those rustbelt States in 2016. While the DNC can probably count on Michigan moving back into the DNC column, There is no guarantee on the rest of the Rust Belt.

Now Trump will have a few more votes as moderate Republicans realize they can tolerate Trump or just fall under the sway of Trumps continuous 4 year long disinformation campaign.

It's no given that the Democrats can win.

In the face of that, people who want to vote against Trump who aren't Democrats and don't believe in the ethics of the DNC, have just seen what appears to be an attempt by a candidate to steal the Iowa election.

"Whoa! Whoa there!" you might say. "There is no evidence that Pete Buttigieg's people were cheating In Iowa and hope to cheat again in Nevada in that caucus!"

Well, then, why did embattled DNC had Tom Perez call for a manual recount of Iowa's results?

That action makes my point. He did it because there was the PERCEPTION of fraud that threatened to drive away non-reliable Democratic voters like myself.

Tom Perez is the replaceable COG of the DNC . He gets that. Calling for a recount Is something he can do. If Trump wins re-election, Perez will be gone.

Nanda should be gone too but Perez is in the position that would certainly take the fall.

Really in that instance anyone with over 20 years of experience working in the DNC in management should be removed.

Why can I say such an unfair thing?

Because there is a culture of corruption in the Hillary and Bill era DNC operatives. That corruption needs to be scrubbed out. And at that point it would make a lot of sense to simply cut out the infected tissue, if the leadership cannot self-correct.

Every action that the DNC leadership has taken over the years is designed to protect their ability to push down on the scales for one candidate over another that the public has chosen.

When I cast my vote In a primary for a Democratic candidate, the DNC does not count my vote as one part of however many total votes are cast.

That's a fuzzy statement. Let me explain this another way.

I'm going to throw some numbers out there to keep the math easy.

If I am one of 10,000 people who vote for a candidate in a state where 100,000 votes are cast. My candidate has gotten only 10% of the vote. AT BEST, my candidate will get 10% of however many delegates the DNC has assigned to the state. I could be in a state with a population of say 3 million people that tends to vote Democrat in the general election.

My neighboring state also has 3 million people in it, but may always vote Republican in the general election. Given that the GOP dominates that state, Democratic turnout is always low because they have no ability to affect government. They have 50,000 people who turn out and vote in the Democratic primary. The candidate I hate gets 10,000 of those votes in that state (20%).

With fewer people supporting that candidate, that candidate is likely to get more delegates.... possibly twice as many.

That is an unfair system.

And it gets even more unfair. The DNC weights the system to cheat for the leading vote getters.

Many/Most/all? state democratic primaries and caucuses have rules about “viability” of candidates. Google your state’s primary or caucus and read the rules. Basically if your candidate earns less that 15% in a certain region of the state, they are considered unviable in that region and barring a change are mostly inelegible to secure actual delegates using the votes placed in that region. It’s like those votes were never counted.

If it is a caucus state (an entirely deeper level of clusterfuck) you and your fellow participants are actually told you need to vote for another candidate or not have a voice at all.

The candidates who are viable in various regions and them alone split the actual state delegates. How fucked is that?

Applying the viability rules to our example, it is entirely likely that despite 10,000 people voting for my candidate in my state of 100,000, there is statistically a great chance that our preferred candidate didn’t clear 15% in ANY of the state’s various regions. For all of our efforts, our candidate is likely to walk away from the state with zero delegates.

We probably should have stayed home and played nintendo instead.

That not piss you off yet? Wait until you look at the neighboring state. In that state the candidate we hate pulled 20% of that state’s total 50,000 votes. Their candidate actually won the state with 6 other candidates splitting the rest of the vote. That candidate won 100% of their “pledged” delegates.

So while each state has say 25 pledged delegates, my candidate who earned twice as many actual votes gets 0 delegates and the candidate I hate gets all 25 of my neighboring state’s delegates.

That is fucked up logic.

So why don't we just count the existing votes? If between two states with 3 million people, 150,000 votes are cast and the candidate that I like gets 10,000 of those votes and the candidate that I don't like gets 10,000, both of those candidates would get the same number of delegates. And both me and my neighbor in the next state over would have the same ability to choose our candidate.

"But we have to do this to protect small states!"

Do we really? If someone who lives in Iowa has the same ability as I do living in Texas to cast a single vote with exactly the same value, how exactly are they being hurt?

Is it worth more to the DNC to give say, Iowa a state where 90% Of the population is white, a much greater ability to affect the nomination, then it is to have unrepresented voters in a large red state with blue State demographics (Texas) feel like they finally have the ability to exercise a political voice and a reason to get registered to vote?

I think if you look clearly at that picture, the former gives you the ability to ensure that your candidate is a lily-white candidate who fully agrees with the values of the DNC core.

The latter gives you the ability to force the GOP to change their tactics. No more obstructionist government. No more underhanded dealings. No more talking in racist dog whistles.

The former has been what the previous leadership of the DNC has valued. The latter I would argue is what the DNC leadership from here on out should value.

In the latter instance, if the GOP wants to win future elections at minimum, they have to treat either Black or Mexican voter with respect --- like they're valuable humans too. Default current operating practices of the GOP would have to change. And our society would benefit from it.

So the question becomes do you want control of the nomination process? Or do you want to win?

The argument for delegates is the same argument for the Electoral College. "The US was designed to be a republic." That statement is regularly made to defend the status quo.

When it is made in that context what that is actually saying is that the US was designed where people vote for convention delegates or electoral voters who are "smarter or make more capable than them" to cast an actual vote that mean something on their behalf.

That is, not surprisingly, a republican argument.

But if you told Americans back in the Revolutionary War who thought they were fighting against taxation without representation that that's what they were fighting for, trading the British House of Lords making decisions for them for rich Americans making decisions for them, the Civil War might have come a lot quicker.

Americans were promised democracy. This is why they supported the new US government. This is why those who are willing to vote for the Democrats expect democracy to be delivered.

It boils their guts every four years when they read about how the DNC has “super-delegates”, party insiders whose opinions are on their own worth several delegates.

I am pissed when I think that my vote and likely several thousand of my Texan neighbors' votes are required to get one single DNC delegate , but superdelegate Hillary Clinton's opinion, directly and indirectly, is probably worth more delegates than some states!

Hillary has blown two freaking presidential elections ---- two opportunities for the dems to run the show....and yet here I am beholden to her sensibilities.

That is not democracy. That is corruption.

The DNC only won in 1992 because Ross Perot split the Republican vote. Without that, Bill Clinton would have been curb-stomped.

Barack Obama won in 2008 because he was running against a second Great Depression. George Bush was totally unable to address the problem with the standard Republican tactic of trickle down economics and John McCain ran on continuing Bush's economic policies.

Obama's people did run a brilliant campaign in 2008 but let's not overrate winning when you're running against a second Great Depression.

You have to go back to 1976 to see the last time some random Joe Schmoe Democrat cleanly won their way INTO the white house.

So let's not overrate our chances or give the Clintons, the Obamas, or some hoity-toity career DNC operative, the ability to select "winning candidates" against the will of the voting public.

And the superdelegates are just one objectionable piece. The pool of delegates alloted to a state is usually divided into pledged and unpledged delegates. The unpledged delegates are just like super delegates --- totally unbeholden to the voters.

And, the DNC makes it even worse. My vote and everyone who sees the candidates like I do's votes don't give us a single delegate "chip".

No, we get a “pledged delegate” chucklehead who doesn't really even have to vote the way we voted. This is slimy. It's underhanded. It's disgusting. ....And it's the DNC today.

"But the GOP does the same thing" you might argue.

The GOP believes America is a republic. They have a built-in argument for their corruption that their voters accept.

The DNC believes America was founded on democracy. Democratic is part of the name. So why not be democratic?

Since 2016 a huge chunk of the democratic voting base has argued to get rid of the Electoral College and embrace a direct popular vote because it's more democratic.

Maybe you can't do that in the actual election, but you sure as heck can do that in the selection process.

I have this advice for Seema Nanda and her employee Tom Perez. Be different from all of the other people who have had the positions that you're currently in.

Discover ethics.

Be Democratic.

Spend your political capital changing the rules to make the party successful. Instead of pushing down for one candidate against another and pissing off all of us “non-reliable” DNC voters that you need to win the Rust Belt and the other swing States in order to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, push down on the scales to help the DNC against the GOP.

Meet with all of the presidential candidates and get the majority of them to sign off on shit canning delegates.

The candidate with the most votes will be the nominee at the convention.

With the possible exception of Mayor Pete, I think every other candidate will gladly concede to those terms in order to remove the perception of corruption that has dogged the party in this election.

Count every citizen vote in the primary season. Give us totally transparent running vote totals after each race, and then celebrate the totals at the DNC convention.

Give me exactly the same voting power as someone in Iowa, New Hampshire, New York City, California or anywhere else in the country and you'll increase Democratic registration countrywide, turning a lot more States purple and blue.

You, Seema Nanda and Tom Perez, will get to be seen as the white hats of the DNC. You'll be seen as once-in-a-lifetime leaders --- the reformers who permanently dragged the party out of corruption.

These are controversial changes, No Doubt, but they are changes that increase the party's chances of defeating Donald Trump.

Your reputations will get the benefit of the doubt when the DNC defeats Donald Trump.

And if the DNC loses to Donald Trump....you're in exactly the same boat you'd be in if you do nothing.

Tom Perez can call for recounts, but Seema Nanda is going to be required to change the culture of the DNC.

There was a guy you might remember by the name of Barack Obama who talked about being on the right side of History. You two are currently on the wrong side of History.

Don't think that you can't get rid of this 20th century corruption that is inherent to the party rules, because someone in your positions eventually will.

If you don't do it, your replacements will or your replacement's replacement will. It's just inevitable.

The Democrats are losing too many presidential elections for things not to change.

Or you can stay the course and be unemployed in a year.... another disgraced scandal-ridden failure in those positions, reduced to writing books because your political careers in the DNC are over. The choice is yours.

final note

I thought about not writing this piece because it might hurt turnout. People might read this and think, “why even vote in the primaries?” But then I thought, “that is actually a great reason to publish this. If people don’t vote in the primaries that puts the screws to Perez and Nanda.”

People have to register to vote in the primaries. People not registering in time costs the party votes in the general election. They want strong turnout in the primaries because it shows you are registered. I want them to sweat bullets. (Please register to vote now even if you chose not to vote in the primary because your candidate will fall short of your state’s viability thresholds.)

And then there is the Bernie factor. Bernie is running away with this race to the chagrin of the DNC leadership. Bernie voters are loving this. They are going to vote. His turnout is guaranteed. The only way Bernie could lose is if the DNC has strong turnouts for an alternate candidate. They need turnout.

And if Bernie is the nominee he also would benefit from the most possible registered democratic voters ahead of the general election.

Everyone gets what they want if you do the right thing, so why not maximize turnout?

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