The 2016 US Election (Part I)

[The Romulan Republic]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... vade-stage

Minor disclaimer: The article seems to contradict itself slightly on the size of the protest, saying several people but only referring to two elsewhere.

Related: Black lives don't matter, apparently, to Republican candidates for president | Steven W Thrasher

The Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was shoved aside by several Black Lives Matter activists and eventually had to leave an event in Seattle without giving his speech.

Sanders was just starting to address several thousand people gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone. Organizers could not persuade the two to wait and agreed to give them a few minutes.

As Sanders stepped back the women spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown and called for four minutes of silence.

When the crowd asked the activists to allow Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd “white supremacist liberals”, according to event participants.

After waiting about 20 minutes Sanders himself was pushed away when he tried to take the microphone back. Instead he waved goodbye, left the stage with a raised fist salute and waded into the crowd. He shook hands and posed for photos with supporters for about 15 minutes and then left.

The rally at Westlake Park had been organized as a birthday celebration for social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Related: American, socialist and proud: meet Bernie Sanders's supporters

Sanders speaks at the University of Washington campus.
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Sanders speaks at the University of Washington campus. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/AP
Sanders spoke later on Saturday night to a packed crowd at the University of Washington campus about his commitment to criminal justice reform as well as addressing income equality.

“No president will fight harder to end institutional racism and reform criminal justice system,” he told the cheering crowd at Hec Edmundson pavilion. “Too many lives have been destroyed by war on drugs, by incarceration; we need to educate people. We need to put people to work.”

Related: Bernie Sanders: structural racism needs to end for economic justice to succeed | Sabrina Hersi Issa

Sanders later issued a statement on his website expressing his disappointment about the interruption.

It’s not the first time that Black Lives Matter activists disrupt the Vermont senator’s event. At a town hall for Democratic presidential candidates in Phoenix in July, protesters affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement took over the stage and disrupted an interview with Sanders and the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

Okay, is their some racist issue with Sanders I don't know about that has caused Black Lives Matter protesters to repeatedly interfere with his events, or is he simply a convenient/high-profile/white target? Because it seems to me that their are a lot of people who deserve this sort of disruption more (although admittedly a Sanders event is probably one of the safer ones to interfere with, as a Republican event would be more likely to have actual white supremacists, possibly with concealed weapons).

[Raw Shark]

Okay, is their some racist issue with Sanders I don't know about that has caused Black Lives Matter protesters to repeatedly interfere with his events, or is he simply a convenient/high-profile/white target? Because it seems to me that their are a lot of people who deserve this sort of disruption more (although admittedly a Sanders event is probably one of the safer ones to interfere with, as a Republican event would be more likely to have actual white supremacists, possibly with concealed weapons).

Sanders is the most pro-black candidate in the entire race, with the possible exception of Carson. One of his major causes has always been the inequality in the justice system, particularly toward African-Americans, and with regard to the shift toward a police state / so-called War on Drugs. This was just a self-defeating attention-grab by a couple of shortsighted assholes who may or may not dislike Jews.

[PKRudeBoy]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... vade-stage

Minor disclaimer: The article seems to contradict itself slightly on the size of the protest, saying several people but only referring to two elsewhere.

Related: Black lives don't matter, apparently, to Republican candidates for president | Steven W Thrasher

The Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was shoved aside by several Black Lives Matter activists and eventually had to leave an event in Seattle without giving his speech.

Sanders was just starting to address several thousand people gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone. Organizers could not persuade the two to wait and agreed to give them a few minutes.

As Sanders stepped back the women spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown and called for four minutes of silence.

When the crowd asked the activists to allow Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd “white supremacist liberals”, according to event participants.

After waiting about 20 minutes Sanders himself was pushed away when he tried to take the microphone back. Instead he waved goodbye, left the stage with a raised fist salute and waded into the crowd. He shook hands and posed for photos with supporters for about 15 minutes and then left.

The rally at Westlake Park had been organized as a birthday celebration for social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Related: American, socialist and proud: meet Bernie Sanders's supporters

Sanders speaks at the University of Washington campus.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Sanders speaks at the University of Washington campus. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/AP
Sanders spoke later on Saturday night to a packed crowd at the University of Washington campus about his commitment to criminal justice reform as well as addressing income equality.

“No president will fight harder to end institutional racism and reform criminal justice system,” he told the cheering crowd at Hec Edmundson pavilion. “Too many lives have been destroyed by war on drugs, by incarceration; we need to educate people. We need to put people to work.”

Related: Bernie Sanders: structural racism needs to end for economic justice to succeed | Sabrina Hersi Issa

Sanders later issued a statement on his website expressing his disappointment about the interruption.

It’s not the first time that Black Lives Matter activists disrupt the Vermont senator’s event. At a town hall for Democratic presidential candidates in Phoenix in July, protesters affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement took over the stage and disrupted an interview with Sanders and the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

Okay, is their some racist issue with Sanders I don't know about that has caused Black Lives Matter protesters to repeatedly interfere with his events, or is he simply a convenient/high-profile/white target? Because it seems to me that their are a lot of people who deserve this sort of disruption more (although admittedly a Sanders event is probably one of the safer ones to interfere with, as a Republican event would be more likely to have actual white supremacists, possibly with concealed weapons).

My guess would be he's the highest profile person that won't just have them hauled away by security/cops. Dude was at the March on Washington.

[Borgholio]

Rick Perry is out of money. He is no longer paying his staff.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-d ... p=cur&_r=0

[SpottedKitty]

Rick Perry is out of money. He is no longer paying his staff.

Doesn't this come under the "occupational hazard" category for anyone working for any R candidate? I remember hearing about this happening before, during the last couple of elections. Or maybe it's just that we're actually hearing about it more often...?

[Borgholio]

Well it did happen before for McCain, but he rebounded and got more funding...eventually winning the nomination. But he had a lot more than the measly $1 million that Perry raked in.

[Covenant]

I understand the motivations of the disruptive protesters. This gets them a lot of attention and forces the hand of candidates to make some kind of action, so from an activist first point of view it is entirely rational to disrupt even a supportive politician, especially if it makes their support more pronounced or clarified. The criticism of "go after the Republicans" is mostly emotional in nature: we have to admit, logically, that going after the hardened right is pointless. The mushy middle (of the economic left) is the biggest handicap in pushing for radical change... even if there's hardly anything radical about effective functional egalitarianism. So, even if some of the name-calling made allies less allied, the overall cost to benefit of disrupting rallies (especially when you are likely to get the mic and maybe even to get some lazy moderates to pick a side) makes complete sense.

The politeness or agreeability of the tactic is irrelevant, really, if the goal is make an effective protest and get the most idealistic chunk of the voting left (of which Sanders is roughly the favorite) to more seriously consider your left agenda. People could say the same thing of Bernie--"get out of the way so Hillary can sweep it with full left-of-right support base!" but that is, as a lot of people would say, hogwash.

In any case, it's kickstarted a very complex political dialogue that will be interesting to watch develop. I do hope it susses out pockets of intellectual laziness within the left camps and makes them strengthen the alliance between social and economic leftism, ideally under the banner of quasi socialism that Bernie hoists. Populism has spurred helpful change in the past.

[Elheru Aran]

Or.... on the other hand... it gets you called 'rude', 'narcissistic', and 'arrogant', because you basically crashed Sanders' party, took over his pulpit to blast your message, and act as though you're doing nothing wrong afterwards, just sticking it to the Man again. It's a bit of a shitty move, especially considering that Sanders has a pretty reasonable history regarding civil rights (he was part of the March on Washington and has a 97% approval rating from the NAACP). Does it get attention? Sure... but there's no guarantee about whether it will be positive attention or not.

[Covenant]

That's all true, but it's not "on the other hand" because it's not really mutually exclusive. They can be both rude, arrogant, self-important AND effective at the same time. If you go and hijack the events of people who are your big opponents, like the Republicans, you're bound to be seen as rude and arrogant anyway: what you're seen as or what attention you get is subjective anyway.

It's not even that much of a shit move, really. This is only the softball primary season, and while Bernie is fighting an uphill battle, it would be hard to pick a better time to have some real left v left soul searching in the middle of an election year. With morons like Trump on the right there's no real risk that anyone center or left is going to think the Republicans are striving to put forward a legitimate racial justice plank. It is essentially a freebie year for the Democrats, as far as racial politics go, though they have dragged their feet on actually coming out vocally in favor of strong, forward reaching specific reforms... until now.

So they're dickbags but that's part of what being a protester is, and more importantly it's basically "no harm, no foul" time for the Democrats anyway. I think most people who are mad are worried, as we're kinda told to be, that such an attack on Sanders could weaken him and make him look like a secondary candidate to Hillary. "Hurting an ally" by going after Bernie. But that's not really true anyway, as this really didn't hurt him, and wouldn't have unless he had failed to articulate a position or lashed out. Which would have been his own mistake.

All it really ended up doing was making the debate focus on Bernie's extensive civil rights record and highlighting the several new racial justice planks on the democratic side.

I think this is the kind of "get up and do something" activism that people advocate. Even if the activists in question here looked like asshats, and may have questionable personal politics, I can't see how this was so bad. I think it was mean-spirited (the #BowDownBernie hashtag was just tone deaf) but the people hardest hit by this were the cranky progressive crowd who should, honestly, have behaved themselves better. It's annoying to have people mess with the flow of things, but if you're supporting a dark-horse socialist candidate who is advocating radical agendas I really think you should have a greater tolerance for political disruption.

[jwl]

Annoying protesters are annoying. Oh well.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, the protests don't appear to have harmed Sanders' prospects.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-bernie ... hampshire/

Bernie Sanders has leapfrogged Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, according to a poll released Wednesday by Franklin Pierce University and the Boston Herald.

Of the 442 likely voters surveyed, 44 percent said their first choice is Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who's waging an insurgent bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Thirty-seven percent chose Clinton, the former secretary of state who's considered a strong frontrunner for her party's nod.


Play VIDEO
Bernie Sanders: "I'd like to see the DNC have more debates"
The results mark the first time Sanders has led a public poll of an early primary or caucus state since he launched his bid in April.

Some caveats: support for the candidates is relatively soft at this early stage in the race, with 60 percent of respondents saying they could change their mind before the primary is held.

Additionally, Clinton still has the highest favorability ratings of any Democratic candidate in the poll, at 80 percent. Sanders is not far behind at 76 percent. In the end, 65 percent of respondents predicted Clinton would win the nomination, while only 11 percent said Sanders would emerge the victor.

The results, compiled between August 7-10, have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percent.

Sanders' bid has lit enthusiasm among some sectors of the Democratic base, attracting thousands of people to rallies and yielding millions of dollars in online donations. The longtime senator has made income inequality a defining theme of his bid, railing against Wall Street and corporate America for living in excess while average Americans struggle to keep up.

Sanders' chief strategist, Tad Devine, told CBS News last month that the campaign is "very pleased" with their showing thus far, but it's "really just the beginning."

"In order for this to succeed, we're going to have to make it much bigger. Now the test is can we put together a ground organization in early states and get ballot access everywhere," he said.


Play VIDEO
Black Lives Matter protesters disrupt Bernie Sanders rally
Not everyone is convinced Team Sanders can make that happen. Clinton still has a lot of assets on her side, including more money, a more robust organization, and more endorsements from elected officials. There are also signs Sanders may have trouble wooing core Democratic constituencies like black and latino voters.

Clinton also still holds a big lead nationally: In a CBS News poll released earlier this month, 58 percent of Democrats nationwide threw their support behind Clinton, while only 17 percent backed Sanders.

Still, the poll on Wednesday suggests Sanders is making headway among New Hampshire voters, who will hold the first primary of the 2016 cycle on February 9 next year.

Devine suggested a victory in an early state like New Hampshire will be a crucial part of Sanders' strategy to seize the nomination. "When there's a surprising victory in an early state by a longshot opponent, the tables can turn very quickly," he said.

Not a small lead, either. 7 percent.

[Covenant]

I think it's too early for someone to suffer from something like this. If it was a pitched fight between Bernie and Hillary, with one able to capitalize on any weakness of the other, then this might be bad. But it's too early, and it's just a fight among liberals about ostensibly liberal issues while the only other faction of note busies themselves with excluding those core demographics (blacks and latinos) harder than they ever have. It would also not be a disaster if Hillary won, especially if she won because Bernie wussed out on racial justice. He did not, so I suspect he'll get a slow bump as BLM spreads word that their efforts worked on Sanders. If Hillary gets closer to the nomination they'll want to press her to do the same or better, like a Kingmaker.

So really, as long as the black and latino voters are energized and feel like they're being listened to, they should get out and vote. That's the important thing. There's no risk of them voting Republican this year. They keep saying they're in a state of emergency: those aren't people who sit at home apathetically. They may be willing to throw Social Security reform under the bus to prove a point, but when they fear their lives are at risk, and people like Trump say they want to give the police more power, there's going to be votes.

Nominations are basically a totally different thing. People don't think Bernie is as likely to get the nomination, in part because of money, but the race issues thing is a misread. I sincerely doubt that anyone who actually looked over his civil rights record would give him criticism that they would not also give Hillary as well. It would be hard to find a candidate with a safer racial equality background than Sen. Sanders, really, so I think him having a "hard time wooing" the minority voters is a bit of a misreading. He's got branding and name recognition problems, things the Clintons do not, but there's no logic to him having a harder time than Hillary.

[Ahriman238]

I know it will never, can never happen. But I'd love to see Trump, Paul and Bernie in a debate. I feel like this would be the capstone on an election of spectacle.

[jwl]

How does the democrat leadership contest work? Does it work on an electoral collage like the US presidential election? Because if not, why do individual states matter?

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm not very familiar with how the primaries work, but New Hampshire is important because its the first state to vote in the primary, so a victory their can strengthen a campaign in subsequent primaries. The last article I quoted in this thread discussed this.

Edit: In other words, a victory in New Hampshire moves the perception of Bernie Sanders from "longshot/inevitable loser" to "credible candidate".

[Raw Shark]

Also important to note is that New Hampshire is right next to Vermont and is probably the most similar state to it in the country (though many things distinguish them), so they know Sanders and he probably has a good shot there. I hope he takes New Hampshire, he gets a lot of bandwagon voters, and it's officially on.

[Elheru Aran]

I wonder if a Clinton/Sanders ticket is possible or likely? It's an interesting thought...

[Raw Shark]

If Sanders can't win, I'd rather see him push Clinton to the left, particularly on health care and Citizens United, than take VP, if it's a choice between the two.

[TimothyC]

The Five Plausible GOP Candidates

After their first presidential debates, it is time for Republicans to get serious. Donald Trump won’t be their nominee. Neither will Ben Carson. Nor will any of the men in the 5 p.m. undercard event last week. Despite Carly Fiorina’s strong performance, it is hard to believe that the GOP would turn to someone who was fired as Hewlett-Packard ’s CEO in 2005 after a tenure charitably described as controversial, and whose only run for elective office resulted in a landslide loss in 2010 to Sen. Barbara Boxer in California.

There are only five candidates with a plausible path to the Republican nomination: two sitting senators ( Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz), two sitting governors ( Scott Walker and John Kasich), and a former governor ( Jeb Bush). They represent a choice among very different persons, but also—and more fundamentally—between competing strategies for the future of the Republican Party.

First, the candidates as individuals. Ted Cruz is running as the tea party’s Mr. Conservative—aggressively antigovernment except for national defense, with an explicit appeal to Christian social conservatives. John Kasich is this generation’s compassionate conservative, who cites his faith as justification for expanding Medicaid and extending “unconditional love” to gays and lesbians. Scott Walker is the fighting conservative who fires supporters’ hopes that he will stick it to the liberals in Washington, as he did to public-sector unions in Wisconsin.

Although Jeb Bush may have been quite conservative by the standards of the 1990s, today he is the voice of the moderate conservative establishment, most comfortable talking about economic growth and opportunity, and about education and immigration as the means to them. And Marco Rubio is running as the future of conservatism—a perfect match of message and messenger.

On the personal front, Mr. Kasich comes across as warm, passionate, almost hectic. Mr. Rubio too is warm—genial, welcoming, a clear and fluent speaker with more self-control than the Ohio governor. Mr. Walker is competent but doesn’t seem as forceful as his record, or quite large enough for the higher office he seeks. Mr. Bush is workmanlike, well-versed in the issues but without the ability to present his positions concisely. Mr. Cruz knows what he wants to say, so much so that he often sounds rehearsed, with an ever-present edge of barely suppressed anger.

When it comes to preparation and experience, Republicans will have to choose between candidates who have substantial executive experience and those who don’t. The party may well hesitate to nominate an eloquent senator still in his first term—Messrs. Cruz and Rubio fit that description. At a time when Americans are wringing their hands about Washington’s dysfunction, candidates who are able to say “I can get it done” and back up their claims with hard evidence will enjoy an advantage over those who can’t.

This brings us to the strategic choice Republicans face—whether to focus on broadening the party’s appeal or doing a better job of mobilizing its base.

In 2012 Mitt Romney garnered only 47% of the popular vote, even though he received 59% of the white vote—56% of whites with a college degree and 61% of those without one. The problem for Republicans is that the white share of the electorate is falling about two percentage points every four years.

The white-working-class share is falling even faster—about three points each quadrennial cycle. In 1988 whites made up 85% of the electorate. By 2012, whites were down to 72%, and their share will be even lower—about 70%—in 2016. In 1988 whites without a college degree accounted for 54% of the electorate; in 2012 the percentage had dropped to 36%; the projection for 2016 is 33%. With each election, it becomes harder for Republicans to parlay a base-mobilization strategy into national victory.

The advantage of this strategy is that it requires no shifts of positions that risk intraparty strife. Not so for the alternative of broadening their appeal. Republicans who think that a different tone without substantive changes can do the job are fooling themselves, just as status quo Democrats did in 1988. Mr. Romney got only 27% of the Hispanic vote, 25% of Asian votes and 38% of young adults.

As the Republican National Committee’s postmortem report on 2012 argued, winning the White House without endorsing comprehensive immigration reform and adopting a more-welcoming stance toward gays and lesbians would be difficult at best.

That could happen. John Kasich has endorsed a path to legal status for persons who entered the U.S. illegally. So has Jeb Bush. Scott Walker went further as recently as two years ago, advocating a path to citizenship, before reversing himself and opting for a hard-line anti-immigration stance. Marco Rubio pushed for comprehensive immigration reform but then hit a conservative stone wall and backed off.

From a Democratic standpoint, a moderate-conservative Republican ticket representing the two largest swing states would be cause for concern. In fact, Bush-Kasich would be scary, and Kasich-Rubio even more so.

[jwl]

I'm not very familiar with how the primaries work, but New Hampshire is important because its the first state to vote in the primary, so a victory their can strengthen a campaign in subsequent primaries. The last article I quoted in this thread discussed this.

Edit: In other words, a victory in New Hampshire moves the perception of Bernie Sanders from "longshot/inevitable loser" to "credible candidate".

If that's the case, wouldn't the aim in New Hampshire be mainly not to come last rather than to come first? I wouldn't expect the second or even third place candidates to get their vote dented from people who didn't like the first place ones (also I personally would put more stock on weighted option polls asking people across the US than a win in a single state).

[Mr Bean]

For winning the election I also peg Rubio-Kasich as the dream team with either one of them as a potential President with the other as Vice President.

Senators and Governors traditionally make good Presidential hopefuls so having one of each is a mark in their favor. A realist Republican like Kasich will win many more independent and right leaning democratic votes than any Bush or Huckabee ever could hope to dream for. Rubio brings his youth, experience and to be blunt race into the mix along with being a good but not great public speaker and if he's the VP gives you a natural bridge position for who the Republicans run in eight years or four (Depending on if Kasich wins or not).

[Elheru Aran]

The downside of Kasich is he's just not as visible a figure as the others, hasn't been making much noise in the past year or so. Cruz, Rubio, Paul et al though have been fairly reliable media darlings, Jebby has the name, and Trump is Trump. Scott Walker has some promise... but there's a few things his opponents could use to cut him off at the knee such as slashing 250 million from the University System of Wisconsin and then assigning the money to build a basketball stadium (wasting money, doesn't value education, blah blah). About all Kasich can float his reputation on is having balanced the budget back when he was Senator and-- hell, I have to look the guy up. That says something (though perhaps only that I don't keep up with the broader political field in the US as well as I should).

[Dalton]

How does the democrat leadership contest work? Does it work on an electoral collage like the US presidential election? Because if not, why do individual states matter?

It's complicated and it varies from state to state. Here's a quick rundown of how things work.

Some states have Primaries. These are contests in which the entire state can vote. Depending on the state, the Primary may be open (any registered voter can cast a ballot for anyone) or closed (only those registered for that party's primary can vote for that party's candidate).

Some states have Caucuses. These are not elections so much as gatherings of people who together decide on candidates.

In each state the candidates vie for Delegates. These are people who vote for them at the National Conventions that happen in the late summer before the Election. In some states, the system is Winner Takes All: the person who receives the most votes gets all of the delegates. Others are proportional: the total pool of delegates is divided up amongst the candidates according to the percentage of votes they receive.

Early states like Iowa and New Hampshire tend to be considered bellwethers as to the viability of a candidate. You'll often see a number of them drop out after these two (one's a caucus, the other is a primary). After all 50 states (and many terrtiories eg Puerto Rico and Guam) have had a primary or a caucus, the formal selection process occurs at the Convention. Most of the time it's merely a formality and an opportunity to fire up the base. The delegates from each state cast their ballots and the candidate who receives a majority of the delegates becomes the Candidate. Oftentimes the selection of the VP candidate is announced here as well.

That's pretty much it, except that Democrats have what's called a Superdelegate; these are people who aren't pledged to vote for any one candidate. They were pretty important in 2008, as I recall. In the end Clinton moved to end the delegate roll call early and select Obama by a vote of acclaim.

[Dalton]

In other news, Perry is fucked. Broke, low numbers, kid's table debate and under indictment.

[Gandalf]

I guess the new glasses didn't work.

That's kind of a shame. He was fun to watch.