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You know that I’ve been saying over and over that to the extent that the Democratic nomination process is ‘rigged’, the rigging has been a huge advantage to Bernie Sanders. As I’ve noted, that’s mainly because of caucuses. It drives me crazy, candidly, when Sanders claims on the stump that where voter turnout has been highest, he’s done best. That’s not remotely true. Indeed, where it’s been lowest, he’s done best. Almost entirely because of caucuses, which are really the most effective voter suppression method in politics today.
And now here’s a good visualization of this fact.
TPM Reader MS is losing patience and taking a dark view of Sanders’ resistance to shifting gears in the primary race …
Sanders’ behavior has two sources:
1. He is not a Democrat and he has no interest in the party’s or its likely nominee’s ultimate best interest or even in the party’s survival. He doesn’t want the party to win — he wants to win the party. And may even believe, as some of his surrogates have implied, that a Trump win will be better for that ambition, in the sense of leading to a Sanders-style, or led, “revolution.”
TPM Reader SF says I’m discounting the many informal but still real ways in which the game really has been ‘rigged’ against Sanders. My response would be that these are simply another way of saying Clinton is well-known, connected, popular with Democrats, etc. Of course she that means she goes in with an advantage. This is why change is change. Even by the most sympathetic interpretation, the status quo always has inherent advantages. All that said, here’s SF …
campaign to turn to Super Delegates. At the same time, I think you consistently ignore a couple of very powerful dynamics here. I know you’re not in love with Hilary, I’ve read your site daily since you started and I know you have deep reservations about Hilary, so I’m not coming from a place of saying you’re in the tank for her. But I do think you ignore some huge factors. One is the degree to which all those super delegates picking Hilary early on and thereby making her the front runner in the media, polls, etc. served as a self fulfilling prophecy. As you well know people want to vote for a winner. The Super Delegates allowed Hilary to jump out to a huge early lead which in turn supported numerous media outlets calling the Sanders campaign “insurgent,” “long shot,” etc. So to a degree all of these Super Delegates lining up for Hilary created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Last week, the Sanders campaign announced that it was laying off almost half its staff. In addition to the reality of the situation, the nature of the announcement struck me as a somewhat subtle but intentional signal about the campaign’s future. But now Sen. Sanders is confidently announcing that the Democrats will have a contested convention.
Now, ‘contested convention’ doesn’t have any real technical meaning. But it certainly seems like Sanders is saying there will be no move to building party unity in advance of the convention (put that off to August, apparently) and his campaign will force genuine votes on the floor of the convention while pressing Super Delegates to back him.
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Jon Huntsman says it’s time for Republicans to all get on the Trump Train.
Trump says “we can’t continue to allow China to rape our country.”
Literal or metaphor, in Trumpland someone is always getting raped. And it’s usually us. Especially if you’re white.
Much of what Donald Trump says is bluster and demagoguery designed to win over a Republican primary audience. He often contradicts himself. And who knows what he would really do if he were elected president – I wouldn’t want to take the chance to find out. But there is sometimes a hint, or sometimes even the presence of, an arguable position in what he saying. And it’s important to understand this because it means that in some cases, Trump’s voters and the voters for Democrats share certain reasonable positions that have generally been taboo among Republicans.
That was the case with the underlying theme of restraint in his foreign policy speech last week and is also the case with the interview that Fortune did with him about his economic views.
This afternoon I was reading one of Newt Gingrich’s mass emails (I know), in which he argues the case for Donald Trump’s recent foreign policy speech. Trump is neither a “dove” nor a “hawk”, Gingrich explains, but an “owl” who wants vast American military superiority but with a hard-nosed emphasis on diplomacy rather than intervention, which – wait for it! – is what Newt has been arguing for all along. Whatever, that’s standard Gingrich. But in arguing that Trumpist foreign policy is actually a species of Realism and a new emphasis on ‘putting America first’, Gingrich is part of a line of argument which a number non-ridiculous people are now pushing.