The 2016 US Election (Part II)

[The Romulan Republic]

Not a problem in my mind. Fuck everybody who won't devote a Tuesday evening to voting. Fuck them right in the ear. They don't deserve a voice in the electoral process, speaking as someone who normally works at that time. Caucuses eliminate everybody who isn't actually serious about it, which I consider a net positive even if it's kind of a pain in the ass. Mail-in primaries favor the 1%.

Mail in primaries give the most people the most opportunity to vote.

Has it occurred to you that not everyone can take several hours of a particular day and dedicate it to voting? People have jobs, and family crises and bad weather and children who need to be babysat and all sorts of other things.

You're just trying to piss me off with that, at this point.

Not at all. I get that you find it annoying, but honestly, its such an ingrained habit (not sure why, to be honest, as my spelling is decent in most other respects, typos/keyboard glitches notwithstanding), that unless I'm consciously thinking about it I'll probably do it without realizing it.

[Gandalf]

Guys, I'm pretty sure RS is making the fun.

[The Romulan Republic]

CNN instantly called it for Drumpf when the polls closed.

But holy shit- their estimate for the Democrats, based on exit polls, was 52/48 in Clinton's favour. Way closer than I'd have thought. Close enough that I wonder if the election issues with New York will put the legitimacy of the winner seriously in doubt, presuming it stays that close.

[Omega18]

But holy shit- their estimate for the Democrats, based on exit polls, was 52/48 in Clinton's favour. Way closer than I'd have thought. Close enough that I wonder if the election issues with New York will put the legitimacy of the winner seriously in doubt, presuming it stays that close.

While its admittedly still early, it does not look like it with Hillary currently up 61.1% to 38.4% over Sanders with a certain amount of the votes from all 5 boroughs of New York City. (Sanders certainly should do better upstate, but the current trend suggests the exit polls made it look closer than its actually going to be.)

[The Romulan Republic]

So with a tiny fraction of the vote in, and by the sound of it from Clinton's areas instead of Bernie's, you think its safe to predict a strong win for Clinton?

All this means is that the gap will likely narrow before its over.

[Omega18]

So with a tiny fraction of the vote in, and by the sound of it from Clinton's areas instead of Bernie's, you think its safe to predict a strong win for Clinton?

At this point its about 33% or more in some cases of the votes in all the 5 boroughs, so unless Politico is wrong about the figures of percent of votes in, I do in fact feel rather confident, especially since other sources confirmed some of the whiter areas of NYC came in first. Barring Sanders winning by stunning numbers upstate its clearly going to be a fairly significant win by Clinton with the main question being the margin and how the exit poll blew it that badly.

[The Romulan Republic]

25% in according to CNN when last I checked.

Still a little over 60% for Clinton.

I suppose it depends on which precincts are reporting.

I do find the implied assumption that non-white=more favourable to Sanders offensive. It treats non-white voters as a homogenous block that leans to Clinton, when this is objectively not true.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ugg. I've got CNN on for election results, and I can hear the fascist screeching away at his victory speech from the next room.

[Omega18]

I do find the implied assumption that non-white=more favourable to Sanders offensive. It treats non-white voters as a homogenous block that leans to Clinton, when this is objectively not true.

Complaining about it being used statistically, especially when applied to African-American heavy areas is really absurd. You even have Hillary winning big among African-Americans confirmed by the exit polling which appears to have substantially still underestimated Hillary's performance in the primary. (I'm not saying individuals are guaranteed to vote a certain way, I'm doing a realistic analysis of very clear statistical trends.)

If you took the argument to the logical extreme, you could complain about people suggesting a heavily African-American area likely to be more favorable for Democrats in the general election when looking at a voting map. At some point the argument is practically the equivalent of complaining about how someone notes its more likely to rain significantly in a rain forest rather than a desert. (Noting clearly identifiable valid trends in voting patterns is not racism.)

CNN has officially called it for Hillary.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, for one thing, you didn't specify African Americans. You just left it at white/non-white. And non-white ethnicities do not uniformly favour Clinton. Not even close.

Secondly, the black vote is not uniform either, and I've heard that their has been a shift toward Bernie lately among some young African American men.

And I frankly find it racist the way non-white voters have been treated as a homogenous pro-Clinton block in this election.

[The Romulan Republic]

And called for Clinton. Fuckity fuck you, New York.

Just over 60% for Clinton with 49% in. Narrowing, but too damn slowly.

Still, let's see what the final margin is. I'll be bloody shocked if Clinton pulls off a 20% win.

[Gaidin]

I do find the implied assumption that non-white=more favourable to Sanders offensive. It treats non-white voters as a homogenous block that leans to Clinton, when this is objectively not true.

I do find his assumption that the deep south doesn't matter offensive. Fair is fair.

[Omega18]

Well, for one thing, you didn't specify African Americans. You just left it at white/non-white. And non-white ethnicities do not uniformly favour Clinton. Not even close.

While not uniformly, they rather consistently statistically favor her more than whites do in the state in question with all the available voting data so far.

Secondly, the black vote is not uniform either, and I've heard that their has been a shift toward Bernie lately among some young African American men.

While not uniform, it has been consistent with Hillary apparently winning the African-American vote by larger margins than some other recent states in New York. The idea me or someone else remotely creditable is claiming its a uniform or homogeneous is clearly an absurd stawman which is not what is under discussion. The point is a strong statistical trend allows you to say than if Hillary is performing a certain way in certain white areas, nearby black areas are likely to have her performing better unless

And I frankly find it racist the way non-white voters have been treated as a homogenous pro-Clinton block in this election.

And I find your behavior on this topic on this forum highly obnoxious at this point with you consistently falsely claiming I'm treating African-Americans as homogeneous when I'm merely making remotely reasonable projections based on overwhelmingly clear statistical trends backed by polling. What I'm saying is an unusually high proportion of African-Americans have voted for Hillary in this election cycle rather consistently over Bernie, although clearly plenty of individuals do otherwise.

While you may not like it, clearly identifiable groups and their voting patterns are a key elements of political prediction, especially when analyzing voting results coming in before the rest of those in a particular state or the like do. It was not racist but remotely common sense to predict that Hillary was almost certain to do better in the Bronx for example than just about any other part of the state, and this was to a great degree due to its high population of African-Americans.

At some point an extreme version of your philosophy would complain its racist for anyone to ever note than statistically African-Americans are likely to be poorer than most other racial groups in the US since after all some African-Americans are rich and they are not all in the same economic group. (In other words it practically looks like a Republican treatment of the racial issue at that point.)

Frankly it certainly feels like you're trying to silence inconvenient voices about Sander's general performance among minorities and especially African-Americans with your protestations of racism. (This doesn't mean Sanders can't win among any groups of racial minorities in any states, but his performance in most cases has been consistently poor with a fair amount of evidence that he has still done better among Caucasians for the state in question even in those cases.)

[The Romulan Republic]

Let me be blunt: your suggestion that I'm "...trying to silence inconvenient voices about Sander's general performance among minorities and especially African-Americans..." is insulting and dishonest.

It is also false that Sanders has done generally badly among minorities, at least if the Alaska, Hawaii, and Michigan Arab/Muslim results are anything to go by.

He tends to do badly among African Americans as a whole, yes. Other minority groups... not so much from what I've seen. Even the Latino vote isn't as lopsided as the black vote.

I do find the implied assumption that non-white=more favourable to Sanders offensive. It treats non-white voters as a homogenous block that leans to Clinton, when this is objectively not true.

I do find his assumption that the deep south doesn't matter offensive. Fair is fair.

When has Sanders ever said the deep south doesn't matter?

[Gaidin]

I do find the implied assumption that non-white=more favourable to Sanders offensive. It treats non-white voters as a homogenous block that leans to Clinton, when this is objectively not true.

I do find his assumption that the deep south doesn't matter offensive. Fair is fair.

When has Sanders ever said the deep south doesn't matter?

Why Bernie Sanders will rue his ‘deep South’ dismissal of black voters

Have fun justifying this one dude.

Right there, at the end of the Brooklyn debate, it happened. A whole slice of the United States, home to the bedrock foundation of the Democratic Party, was written off by a candidate for its nomination. But that wasn’t the first time Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or someone from his campaign has done this. It is an insult that stings more than the campaign seems to realize.

The argument from the Sanders camp is that Hillary Clinton won in conservative “deep South” states that Democrats will never win in November. To Sanders supporters, this makes a lot of sense in explaining why their progressive candidate was pushed aside by a more conservative electorate. To the African American voters who fueled the double-digit ballot beat-down Sanders suffered in those states, it is baldly dismissive. And totally in keeping with the candidate’s tone-deafness with this voting bloc, best exemplified by his campaigning with Cornel West, who famously said President Obama was “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” Obama’s approval rating with blacks sits now at 89 percent.

[‘Excuse me!’ Bernie Sanders doesn’t know how to talk about black people]

The many references go as far back as the day after the March 1 Super Tuesday primaries when Sanders’s wife, Jane, said on MSNBC, “[M]ost of the states are historically red states and are not likely to carry the day in the general election. Most of the states that Bernie has won are mostly blue states or battleground states.”

On March 28, senior strategist Tad Devine made this remarkable comment about Hillary Clinton’s primary victories. “Her grasp now on the nomination is almost entirely on the basis of victories where Bernie Sanders did not compete.” He went on to say, “Where we compete with Clinton, where this competition is real, we have a very good chance of beating her in every place that we compete with her.” And then there was this from Devine: “Essentially, 97 percent of her delegate lead today comes from those eight states where we did not compete.”

Those states were Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia and Arkansas. Here are the stats from those states:

Texas

32-percentage-point win with 80 percent of the black vote, which was 19 percent of the total vote.

Alabama

58-percentage-point win with 91 percent of the black vote, which was 54 percent of the total vote.

Virginia

30-percentage-point win with 84 percent of the black vote, which was 26 percent of the total vote.

Louisiana

48-percentage-point win. I couldn’t find the racial breakdown anywhere. (If you have it, send it and I’ll update.)

Tennessee

34-percentage-point win with 89 percent of the black vote, which was 32 percent of the total vote.

Missouri

0.2-percentage-point win with 67 percent of the black vote, which was 21 percent of the total vote.

Georgia

43-percentage-point win with 85 percent of the black vote, which was 51 percent of the total vote.

Arkansas

36-percentage-point win with 90 percent of the black vote, which was 27 percent of the total vote.

For good measure, let’s throw in South Carolina. The Palmetto State is high up on the Democratic primary calendar because the party voted before the 2008 election to give a bigger voice in the nominating process to Latinos (Nevada) and African Americans (South Carolina) after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.

[Hardly a mystery why Clinton is clinging to Obama]

Clinton won the Feb. 27 South Carolina primary by 48 percentage points with 86 percent of the black vote, which was 61 percent of the total vote. According to the 2010 Census, African Americans are 27.9 percent of South Carolina’s population. That’s why I went slack-jawed when I heard actor and Sanders supporter Tim Robbins castigate the media by saying this at a rally on April 4 in Wisconsin.

After the Southern primaries, you had called the election. And who’s fooling who? Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam. No Democrat is going to win South Carolina in the general election. Why do these victories have so much significance?

And then at the Brooklyn debate, when asked whether he would take his nomination fight to the convention, Sanders said he would win the nomination. Then he said this:

Look, let me acknowledge what is absolutely true. Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the deep South. No question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country. That’s the fact. But you know what? We’re out of the deep South now. And we’re moving up.

The best synopsis of Sanders’s problem with the region was best summed up by the Atlantic’s Vann R. Newkirk II in a piece last week. “Sanders’s problem isn’t that the South is too conservative,” he writes, “but that the region is too black.” The primary voter data detailed above make that plain.

Sanders “got murdered there” for the same reason that Clinton’s victories in South Carolina and the “deep South” have so much significance. The voters in those states, in that region, are the most loyal Democratic voters. Winning their votes demonstrates broader appeal in the party and an ability to hold the coalition Obama cobbled together to win the White House. An inability to win over African American voters, who remain firmly in his corner, calls into question the ability to be victorious on Election Day.

[Why black voters remain in Hillary Clinton’s corner]

As Newkirk points out, “Fifty-eight percent of all black people and 41 percent of all people of color in the country live in the South.” He adds, “The South in many ways already reflects what the Democratic Party ostensibly seeks to be and represent moving forward.”

That’s what’s so appalling about the constant down-talking of the “deep South.” It has been said so often that African Americans who live there (and elsewhere) can be forgiven for feeling dismissed by a man who said they’d come around once they got to know him. If Sanders, who polls show would fare better against the GOP nominee, succeeds in becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, he will rue the day he took this tack.

[Omega18]

It is also false that Sanders has done generally badly among minorities, at least if the Alaska, Hawaii, and Michigan Arab/Muslim results are anything to go by.

There is allot of evidence than in Hawaii not that many minorities voted compared how many you would expect based on the composition of the state's demographics, and there is a question about what groups Sanders did strongly with in Alaska. (In neither case do we have any exit polling to show the exact results with the primaries in question still clearly being the exceptions rather than part of a trend. Native Hawaiians in particular are a group that isn't going to be very relevant in other states.) You might be right about the Arab Muslims in Michigan, but this is a rather small group percentage wise compared to the country as a whole and again an exception. Nothing you just wrote refutes the view Sanders does generally badly among minorities at least compared to Caucasians in the state in question.

He tends to do badly among African Americans as a whole, yes. Other minority groups... not so much from what I've seen. Even the Latino vote isn't as lopsided as the black vote.

While not as lopsided he still has not done so well with the group with there being evidence even in Colorado he didn't actually do that great with Latinos and it was Caucasians behind his big win there. The statistical reality is that Latinos and African-Americans are clearly the two most important racial minorities in the Democratic Primaries, including in New York which includes allot of Puerto Ricans among other groups with the distinction being they are all US citizens who can register to vote immediately even if recent migrants to the mainland.

[Gandalf]

On the GOP side, fivethirtyeight have Trump winning between 88 to 93 of the state's 95 delegates.

[The Romulan Republic]

Gaidin, it is fact that those southern states are heavily Right wing states that are unlikely to mean anything for the Democrats in the general election. It is also true, as I recall, that Sanders didn't compete much their (though probably because he knew he wasn't competitive). Pointing that out is not the same as saying the Deep South doesn't matter.

Also, while attacking Sanders for his association with Cornell West, the article leaves out that West is himself a black man, which casts a rather different light on his comments.

Finally, let's be honest about what this article is insinuating, without quite saying it- that by trying to put the best possible spin on the situation in the South (which any campaign could be expected to do), Sanders and his campaign are racist against African Americans. I find this deeply offensive.

There's probably more I could say in response to this article, but that's a start, anyway.

I will acknowledge I find Tad Devine's claims rather questionable at times. I've never thought very highly of him, and wish he was less prominent in Sanders' campaign.

[Lord MJ]

As much I find sympathy with the idea that we shouldn't focus on southern black voters because they don't matter in the general election.

On the other hand since the deep south are deep red states, the Democratic primaries are the only real chance southern blacks have a chance to influence presidential politics. They basically have no other say in the process besides these primaries.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm not saying they don't matter. I'm saying they're not the be all and end all of the primaries, and pointing that out is not racist.

[Gaidin]

Gaidin, it is fact that those southern states are heavily Right wing states that are unlikely to mean anything for the Democrats in the general election. It is also true, as I recall, that Sanders didn't compete much their (though probably because he knew he wasn't competitive). Pointing that out is not the same as saying the Deep South doesn't matter.

Also, while attacking Sanders for his association with Cornell West, the article leaves out that West is himself a black man, which casts a rather different light on his comments.

Finally, let's be honest about what this article is insinuating, without quite saying it- that by trying to put the best possible spin on the situation in the South (which any campaign could be expected to do), Sanders and his campaign are racist against African Americans. I find this deeply offensive.

You're literally naming the reason why the primary is the only vote that matters for them. And then you're justifying why Bernie's statements as to why it doesn't. I couldn't find a more racist statement from a person that marched in Civil Rights.

Bra. Fucking. Vo.

[The Romulan Republic]

I did not say their vote doesn't matter. I said the opposite, actually.

I did say that it isn't the be all and end all of the primary.

Are you suggesting that because its the only real influence they get, we should defer to the Southern black vote over everything else in the primary?

Also, let's clarify something:

Are you calling Sanders a racist?

Or are you calling me a racist?

[Soontir C'boath]

It should be noted that New York City has a sizable black population and he certainly didn't carry in the Bronx and Manhattan... Granted, he didn't do well at all in NYC, but those two were the worst for him.

I am going to presume that while there are many voters who would have voted for Bernie, they just couldn't because of NY's voting laws. Partially, I would blame the Sanders' campaign for not getting existing Sanders' supporters to switch their affiliation to Democrat back in October and a get out the vote campaign before the March new registrant deadline. At the same time, six months out to change affiliation certainly hurts for voters who only recently decided to vote for him so it's a double whammy. Along with that, the debate in NY was just four days ago and that may have influence people to come to the polls, but could not register since the deadline was back in March..

All I will hope for now is that Hillary does not win New York by 60%+ especially when it seems Sanders will stay in the race.

On my personal end, my congressional district 14 has Clinton carrying it by 7k votes with 87% reporting in giving her 57% which should mean Sanders should get 3 of the 7 delegates.

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course Sanders will stay in the race. He's made that very clear already.

Nothing changes tonight, except that Sanders' long odds got a little longer.

[Gaidin]

I did not say their vote doesn't matter. I said the opposite, actually.

I did say that it isn't the be all and end all of the primary.

Are you suggesting that because its the only real influence they get, we should defer to the Southern black vote over everything else in the primary?

Also, let's clarify something:

Are you calling Sanders a racist?

Or are you calling me a racist?

The vote is proportional. You are calling yourself racist. And Sanders dismissed the Deep South.

Bernie Sanders had an odd, and for me, unsettling comment at the Democratic debate in Brooklyn on Thursday night.

When CNN’s Dana Bash asked if he planned to take his nomination fight to the Democratic convention if Hillary Clinton does not clinch the nomination with pledged delegates alone, Sanders responded:

“Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South. No question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country. That’s the fact. But you know what? We’re out of the Deep South now. And we’re moving up.”

He went on to tout having won seven of the last eight caucuses and primaries. (In fact, of those seven, all except Wisconsin were caucuses, which are undemocratic in their own right.)

This wasn’t the first time in recent days that Sanders said something about voters in the Deep South that landed on my ear as belittling and dismissive.

When asked by Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show whether he thought the primary system was rigged, Sanders responded: “Well, one can argue — people say, Why does Iowa go first? Why does New Hampshire go first? — but I think that having so many Southern states go first kind of distorts reality as well.”

And before that, when This Week host George Stephanopoulos pointed out to Sanders that Clinton was getting more votes than him, Sanders shot back: “Well, she’s getting more votes. A lot of that came from the South.”

This regional ridicule is a bad play for Sanders.

First, it’s not clear which states Sanders is including in the “Deep South,” a phrase whose meaning is hard to pin down. As a son of the “Deep South” myself, I will assume the list often used: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

But Sanders has not only lost the “Deep South”; with the exception of Oklahoma, he’s lost the South as a whole.

It also must be pointed out that there is a racial dimension to Sanders’ dismissal, however inadvertent it is.

In general, the Southern states that Sanders says “distort reality” have some of the highest percentages of African-Americans in the country. The recent states he’s won, and on which he bases his claim of momentum, have some of the lowest percentages of African-Americans in the country. In each of the Deep South states for which there was exit poll data, black voters were the majority of Democratic primary voters. (There were no exit polls in Louisiana. The only state that had exit polls of the seven Sanders recently won was Wisconsin, where black voters represented 10 percent of primary voters in the state.)

Furthermore, as Nate Silver put it Friday, “Clinton has won or is favored to win almost every state where the turnout demographics strongly resemble those of Democrats as a whole.”

Now as for Sanders’s claim that the Deep South is the most conservative part of the country, one could argue that many of the other Southern states, as well as many of the states recently won by Sanders, are conservative in their own right.

It is true that blacks in general can be just as conservative as Republicans on some moral issues. But blacks tend to be quite liberal on the question of the size and role of the government. For instance, a 2012 Pew Research Center report found that “78 percent of blacks support government guarantees of food and shelter, compared with 52 percent of whites.” That position should have meshed well with Sanders’s expansive ideas.

As for the seven states Sanders won, four haven’t voted for the Democratic candidate in a general election since they went for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. (add: Goldwater rebellion)

The only Southern state that has had that long of a drought for Democrats is Oklahoma — yes, the one southern state that Sanders won.

Furthermore, in 2012 The New York Times listed three of those southern states Clinton won — Florida, Virginia and North Carolina — as swing states, and only one of the recent states Sanders has won — Wisconsin.

Sanders simply has to own the fact that he didn’t sell his message well in the South, and those voters never warmed to his vision or his ability to execute it.

But he still needs to embrace and excite those voters should he become the nominee. He would need them for his much-ballyhooed political revolution. They will have to show up and flip Senate and House seats as well as governorships and control of statehouses.

One thing that the Affordable Care Act taught us is just how obstinate and obstructionist state officials can be and how their opposition to federal policies can hamper the full implementation of any law.

For instance, it wasn’t until Louisiana voters replaced the Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, with the Democrat John Bel Edwards that the state finally expanded Medicaid and thereby expanded health coverage to hundreds of thousand of people in the state.

That’s how revolutions work: From the ground up, in unlikely places and against the odds. A revolution is not evidenced by your success in territory you already control, but in territory that you don’t.

Sanders must abandon this “Deep South” talking point immediately. He’s better than this, and he should know better.

Take it as you will. It is, after all, an opinion piece. But, you know. You need control of things to do things. So what do I know. And he's not funding elections. So I wonder why I'm not supporting him no matter what his policies are.