EPTEdit: on an unrelated note, there’s a meme snapshot floating around Facebook showing that Malia Obama donated 270 bucks to Bernie’s campaign. True or not, that’s good memery
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2152
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
Edit: on an unrelated note, there’s a meme snapshot floating around Facebook showing that Malia Obama donated 270 bucks to Bernie’s campaign. True or not, that’s good memery | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On February 28 2020 02:43 Gorsameth wrote: I think its a reasonably safe thing to say that if the DNC were to get behind anyone other then the person with the most 'normal' delegates after the primary they would be committing suicide. Which is also why I see it as a completely unrealistic scenario that isn't going to happen. The NYTimes just published a piece where they interviewed 90some super delegates, with the overwhelming majority saying they will go for anyone except for Sanders (even someone not currently in the race) at a contested convention. I'm not 100% sure itll happen (as you say, it would be disastrous), but I'm not entirely confident in the DNC being that smart either. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
Relatedly, I have a feeling that, despite his stating to the contrary, Obama will step in if the DNC actually looks poised to use super delegates to shift the balance at the last moment, but that’s just a hunch. | ||
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semantics
10040 Posts
On February 28 2020 03:53 Stratos_speAr wrote: The NYTimes just published a piece where they interviewed 90some super delegates, with the overwhelming majority saying they will go for anyone except for Sanders (even someone not currently in the race) at a contested convention. I'm not 100% sure itll happen (as you say, it would be disastrous), but I'm not entirely confident in the DNC being that smart either. Only reason we have national primaries for presidents is because of out if step the establishment DNC was in 1968. History repeats itself? | ||
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Sermokala
United States13745 Posts
The revolution wil not be televised, It will be live streamed. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On February 28 2020 02:23 Mohdoo wrote: Since we are hearing open talk about superdelegates, I've been closely examining my views on voting. In 2016, I took a firmly math'ish approach where no matter what, I owe it to the people who fought for democracy before I was born to vote. If I don't get my ideal candidate, that is fine, I should always vote for the lesser of two evils because many people had no such choice 300 years ago. 2016 was a weird year, since global populism was only beginning to go into full swing, social media became a big issue, Russian interference and many other things. It was a shit show. There was a lot of thumb on the scale from the DNC towards Bernie, but I still felt like the party deserved a second chance to learn from their mistakes. None of it was illegal, but a great deal with it disagreed with my views on political ethics. Something doesn't need to be illegal to be wrong. I decided the DNC behaved wrongly during 2016 but they showed a willingness to change. Kind of. Now that we are in 2020, it is perhaps worse than last time. The CBS debate is the nail in the coffin. If Bernie gets more non-super delegates over the course of the election, but is not made the nominee, I will not be voting for the democratic nominee in 2020. Easy for me to say, living in Oregon, but I think it is important to recognize what a shift this is from my 2016 stance. I am COMPLETELY unwilling to back a party that uses super delegates to override the majority. While I am not trying to make myself up to be some important person, a few of my friends seem to be coming to the same conclusions. It is really interesting to see. Despite being the anti-Trump party, its just not enough. I need to want to support what I am supporting. I've been flexible and recognizing that 2016 was weird, but we understand this stuff now in 2020. If Bernie doesn't have the most delegates, I will get behind whoever does. But I don't recognize super delegates as a legitimate form of democracy. I'm not going to pretend some political party deciding on a set of rules is some divine, all-powerful code. If he gets the most, and isn't the nominee, I'm out. I don’t think the plurality-but-no-majority scenarios are all as clear-cut as you seem to. Imagine, for instance, an outcome like this (purely hypothetical): Biden: 35% Bernie: 30% Warren: 18% Bloomberg: 8% Steyer: 7% Other candidates: 2% Warren and Steyer have endorsed Bernie, Bloomberg and other candidates have endorsed Biden. You could say that Biden has a clear plurality, and should be the nominee. On the other hand, reallocate the other votes to who their candidate endorsed, and Bernie wins 55-45. I’d probably look at that and say Biden’s plurality is big enough he’s probably the voters’ choice. But on the other hand, same scenario but Biden and Bernie are 33% and 32%? Easily should be Bernie. Don’t get me wrong, if the voters’ intention is clear and the DNC goes against it (say, Bernie has 49% over Biden’s 35%, and they take Biden), that’s fucked up. But I also think “whoever has a plurality should take it” is a bad rule too. | ||
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Sent.
Poland9104 Posts
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On February 28 2020 06:48 Sent. wrote: Didn't Warren choose Clinton over Sanders in 2016? Can you be sure she won't endorse Biden this year? What if he'd offer her vice presidency? No idea, it was a hypothetical | ||
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RenSC2
United States1041 Posts
In my ideal world, I would love to see a process where the candidate with the least delegates would be removed, given an opportunity to endorse someone, and then his delegates would be forced to pick another candidate or void their vote. Go through that process until one candidate achieves 50%+1. That’s the winner and I’d accept the result. In our non-ideal world, I would accept coalitions of candidates coming together to overtake the front runner. So if Bernie is at 35%, Biden 25%, Buttigieg 20%, Klobuchar 5%, those last three should be able to form a coalition as a combined ticket and get the nod over Sanders despite Sanders having a 10% lead over any one of them individually. Winning with 40% or less of the vote and nobody willing to join your coalition seems really poor and a recipe to lose the general election. I would not like that. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21364 Posts
On February 28 2020 08:14 RenSC2 wrote: Do you think the people that voted Bernie in that scenario might feel a certain way about getting snubbed like that? And that a certain % of them might decide not to vote, thereby handing an 'easy' win over to the Republicans and 4 more years of Trump?My feeling on a contested convention is that I do not want super delegates to decide the race. I would have a hard time accepting the results if super delegates swooped in and didn’t support the front runner. In my ideal world, I would love to see a process where the candidate with the least delegates would be removed, given an opportunity to endorse someone, and then his delegates would be forced to pick another candidate or void their vote. Go through that process until one candidate achieves 50%+1. That’s the winner and I’d accept the result. In our non-ideal world, I would accept coalitions of candidates coming together to overtake the front runner. So if Bernie is at 35%, Biden 25%, Buttigieg 20%, Klobuchar 5%, those last three should be able to form a coalition as a combined ticket and get the nod over Sanders despite Sanders having a 10% lead over any one of them individually. Winning with 40% or less of the vote and nobody willing to join your coalition seems really poor and a recipe to lose the general election. I would not like that. Its one thing to lose a Primary contest, its quite another to finish in front of everyone and see someone else runs off with it. | ||
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ShoCkeyy
7815 Posts
On February 28 2020 08:28 Gorsameth wrote: Do you think the people that voted Bernie in that scenario might feel a certain way about getting snubbed like that? And that a certain % of them might decide not to vote, thereby handing an 'easy' win over to the Republicans and 4 more years of Trump? Its one thing to lose a Primary contest, its quite another to finish in front of everyone and see someone else runs off with it. That's what happened in 2016. Bernie got snubbed, and they voted for Trump instead of not voting. Now we're here. | ||
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RenSC2
United States1041 Posts
On February 28 2020 08:28 Gorsameth wrote: Do you think the people that voted Bernie in that scenario might feel a certain way about getting snubbed like that? And that a certain % of them might decide not to vote, thereby handing an 'easy' win over to the Republicans and 4 more years of Trump? Its one thing to lose a Primary contest, its quite another to finish in front of everyone and see someone else runs off with it. And the majority that doesn’t want the guy with 35% and no allies? Are they all going to play happily along and vote for that guy? No, of course not. Either way, there’s going to be some angry people who won’t vote or will vote for the opposition in the general. I’d like the winner to be the person who can form the biggest coalition preferably through an organized fair process like I described. Unfortunately it’ll probably happen more through back room deals and the scariest of all: superdelegates. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35091 Posts
On February 28 2020 08:35 ShoCkeyy wrote: That's what happened in 2016. Bernie got snubbed, and they voted for Trump instead of not voting. Now we're here. That happens in every primary. As a side note, a smaller % of Bernie voters voted for Trump in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for McCain in 2008. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22712 Posts
On February 28 2020 09:14 Gahlo wrote: That happens in every primary. As a side note, a smaller % of Bernie voters voted for Trump in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for McCain in 2008. Doesn't matter how many times people are told this they keep repeating the myth that Bernie supporters weren't more willing to support Hillary than her supporters or what is typical among anyone's supporters. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5775 Posts
On February 28 2020 08:14 RenSC2 wrote: My feeling on a contested convention is that I do not want super delegates to decide the race. I would have a hard time accepting the results if super delegates swooped in and didn’t support the front runner. In my ideal world, I would love to see a process where the candidate with the least delegates would be removed, given an opportunity to endorse someone, and then his delegates would be forced to pick another candidate or void their vote. Go through that process until one candidate achieves 50%+1. That’s the winner and I’d accept the result. In our non-ideal world, I would accept coalitions of candidates coming together to overtake the front runner. So if Bernie is at 35%, Biden 25%, Buttigieg 20%, Klobuchar 5%, those last three should be able to form a coalition as a combined ticket and get the nod over Sanders despite Sanders having a 10% lead over any one of them individually. Winning with 40% or less of the vote and nobody willing to join your coalition seems really poor and a recipe to lose the general election. I would not like that. An idea social choice mechanism would have the choice made between two options would be independent of other available choices (aka, a voting method that leads to Bernie winning over Biden would never lead to Biden winning over Bernie if other candidates are added to the mix). The fact that plurality vote violates this has been known at least since the 18th century. Actually, it's probably been known since before, but Condorcet was the first to commit it to paper as far as I know, and also was the first to propose a solution, though funnily enough also pointed out it can go awry. Later Arrow proved that any social choice system can go awry, so we're stuck between the simplicity of a plurality vote, more reliable (but not perfect, and also difficult to implement) ranked voting systems and ad-hoc middle ground solutions (two stages in Brazillian elections, or, like suggested here, each losing candidate chooses where his delegates will go). I think the most important thing at least for the current primaries is that whatever the rules of the game are, people stick with them whether fair or not (in this case, choosing the plurality winner), because it brings legitimacy to the process. In a way, potentially having the ability to change the results with superdelegates is a huge problem for the DNC if it turns out that the plurality winner and the "coalition winner" are not the same person (like in the scenario you're describing). If the superdelegates choose the "coalition winner", the supporters plurality winner will leave pissed because it's as if the rules have been changed halfway through the game, and if the superdelegates choose the plurality winner, then the rest will be pissed off that the DNC didn't do anything to change the winner to someone a majority of voters would have actually preferred. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On February 28 2020 08:44 RenSC2 wrote: And the majority that doesn’t want the guy with 35% and no allies? Are they all going to play happily along and vote for that guy? No, of course not. Either way, there’s going to be some angry people who won’t vote or will vote for the opposition in the general. I’d like the winner to be the person who can form the biggest coalition preferably through an organized fair process like I described. Unfortunately it’ll probably happen more through back room deals and the scariest of all: superdelegates. This assumes that the non-Sanders voters don't like Sanders and wouldn't support him in a 2nd round of voting if their candidate was eliminated from contention. This is the core of the problem with the setup as-is. There are many voters that have a 2nd (or even 3rd) choice that isn't taken into account at all in the scenario of a contested convention. The other problem is that the dynamic of out-of-touch political elites trying to resist the will of the people is so apparent at this point that if Sanders comes into the convention with any kind of meaningful lead and yet isn't the eventual nominee, the Democratic party is going to lose and lose hard. Bernie's supporters are far more passionate and overall very politically different from the rest of the candidates' supporters. They've bought into the anti-establishment and anti-capitalist sentiment that pervades the younger voting generations and are overall just fucking pissed at the prior generation of politics for feeding them a bunch of bullshit. You don't piss off these people with precisely what they hate about politics already and just expect them to fall in line. I guarantee that if that happens, Democrats will get crushed in the general and we'll be back to the "But how could this happen?!" crap from 2016 all over again. Shit, even I'm starting to buy into GH's "burn it all down" rhetoric to an extent. I wouldn't blame Bernie supporters one bit if they completely torpedoed Dem's in the general in this hypothetical scenario. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 28 2020 09:27 GreenHorizons wrote: Doesn't matter how many times people are told this they keep repeating the myth that Bernie supporters weren't more willing to support Hillary than her supporters or what is typical among anyone's supporters. To be honest, though, I suspect that this time around the Bernie supporters may not be so accommodating in the case of a stolen nomination. There was a lot of goodwill in 2016, even after the DNC leaks, that simply isn't going to be there in a situation where the DNC is widely considered to be both corrupt and incompetent. The only candidates who, at this point, have a path to the nomination are Biden and Sanders. Biden is going to be very vulnerable to the "Crooked Joe" approach, especially if they can add to the pile that his co-conspirators stole the nomination from Bernie. I suspect that, in a situation where Biden is basically a Hillary clone against a now sitting president Trump, the path to winning in the general will be a very difficult one. Hard to see Sanders die-hards lining up in droves to support an encore of a losing proposition. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22712 Posts
On February 28 2020 13:41 LegalLord wrote: To be honest, though, I suspect that this time around the Bernie supporters may not be so accommodating in the case of a stolen nomination. There was a lot of goodwill in 2016, even after the DNC leaks, that simply isn't going to be there in a situation where the DNC is widely considered to be both corrupt and incompetent. The only candidates who, at this point, have a path to the nomination are Biden and Sanders. Biden is going to be very vulnerable to the "Crooked Joe" approach, especially if they can add to the pile that his co-conspirators stole the nomination from Bernie. I suspect that, in a situation where Biden is basically a Hillary clone against a now sitting president Trump, the path to winning in the general will be a very difficult one. Hard to see Sanders die-hards lining up in droves to support an encore of a losing proposition. The irony is that the people that are trying to blame Trump on stubborn Bernie supporters (despite the facts) are really just trying to make space to justify their latent hypocrisy. If beating Trump was really more important to these centrists than stopping Bernie they'd all already be saying it is time to unite around the nominee, if not, definitely after super Tuesday. The truth is a lot of centrists prefer an ostensible negative peace under a fascist regime that is reasonably favorable to people like them, than liberation of oppressed people by way of radical mass action. I guess more to your point though, yeah, and as stratos indicated, Bernie supporters would be right to not fall in line. EDIT: I'd put it as high as the 20% of people that think Bernie is too conservative (because even if the nomination was stolen from him he'd probably back the nominee). | ||
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ShambhalaWar
United States930 Posts
On February 27 2020 22:50 Mohdoo wrote: Yeah if Corona virus was an STD, pence would be thinking "well then what a great opportunity" If corona virus was Mike Pence's repressed/unexpressed homosexual desires, I would 100% trust him with that job of containing. | ||
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Lmui
Canada6208 Posts
Well this seems to have been a hell of a fuckup. (1) U.S. workers were sent to the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak without proper training or protective gear; (2) those same employees were not tested for the Coronavirus; (3) many of those employees returned to the U.S. on a commercial flight; (4) after raising concerns about the wisdom of 1-3, she was allegedly reassigned and faced termination for speaking up through the chain-of-command. Repatriated Americans and then exposed locals to the quarantined folks, which is how it escaped quarantine. Edit:: And in true china fashion, the whistleblower, despite decades of experience in her field and multiple department awards, and top performer rating, was "reassigned" | ||
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