By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Here is another post full of “hot takes” on yesterday’s primary results. For the Republicans, I’m doing to look at the demise of Rubio (such a shame), and then at the remaining three candidates (Trump, Cruz, and Kasich) and the prospect of a brokered convention. For the Democrats, Florida and North Carolina being Clinton blowouts, I’m going to look only at the results in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri, which might have been expected to be yield Michigan-style results for Sanders, but did not, though Illinois and Missouri were far, far closer than should be the case when the incumbent is virtually loved and the favorite is a stellar campaigner.
Little Marco
After losing his home state to Trump by twenty points, Little Marco dropped out. Nothing in his campaign became him like the leaving it; he gave a heartfelt speech (interrupted by a Trump heckler). What had not, it seems, been reported on is the dysfunction in the Rubio campaign, of which Politico gives a vivid retrospective:
Rubio’s strategy was always an inside straight—overly reliant on a candidate’s ability to dominate free national media in order to outperform, outwit and eventually outlast a wide field of rivals. It was sketched out by an inner circle of advisers who believed they could eschew the very fundamentals of presidential campaigning because they had a candidate who transcended.
That’s exactly what happened in 2016; it just turned out Rubio wasn’t the one transcending.
So while other campaigns touted “shock and awe” fundraising networks and precise, psychographic analytics and voter targeting operations, Rubio’s tight-knit group of mostly 40-something bros believed wholeheartedly that they didn’t need a specific early-state win. They didn’t need a particular political base. They didn’t need to talk process. They didn’t need a ground game. They didn’t need to be the immediate front-runner.
All they needed was Marco.
The campaign spared no expense in setting up events to be television-friendly. There were invariably press risers, tidy backdrops and television lighting to portray Rubio, quite literally, in the best imaginable light.
But one of the things [campaign manager Terry Sullivan] seemed least interested in was field offices. The campaign would force volunteers and supporters to pay for their own yard signs, posters and bumper stickers.
No!
Rubio seemed to agree. In August, he was due to open his Iowa state headquarters the morning after flipping pork chops at the state fair, but he bailed at the last minute. The reason: heading back to Florida for his children’s start of school. The grand opening would be delayed for 10 days, and it would occur without Rubio. He wouldn’t announce a state director to run operations in the crucial caucuses for another month.
Pardon the length of the quote, but my goodness! The schadenfreude![1] What’s interesting is that Rubio’s demise also signals the demise of the Republican “reboot” that was supposed to happen after Romney’s loss to Obama in 2012:
Since Mitt Romney’s devastating loss in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican National Committee and leading voices at think tanks, editorial boards and Capitol Hill symposiums have charted a path back to the White House based on inclusive rhetoric and a focus on middle-class issues.
Nobody embodied that vision better than Rubio, a charismatic standard-bearer for conservative orthodoxy who readily embraced the proposals of the right’s elite thinkers. The senator from Florida spoke urgently and eloquently about raising stagnant wages and eradicating poverty. He had an immigrant’s tale to match the rhetoric. And on foreign affairs, he was a passionate defender of the GOP’s hawkish tilt.
“The right’s elite thinkers.” Sad! Let’s move on.
Mr. Trump Goes To Cleveland
Here are the Republican results in tabular form from the Wall Street Journal:
As you can see, Trump almost swept the board; Kasich won Ohio, and Cruz won enough not to have to drop out. The issue is whether Trump reach the magic number of 1237 delegates, or whether the convention will be “contested” and end up brokered in a “smoke-filled room” full of Republican establishment types. (To be fair, Lincoln came into the 1860 convention trailing, and left, the nominee.) Note that the only establishment Republican left in the race is Kasich (rhymes with “basic”), the weakest. Vanity Fair:
If the threat level of Trump is the first thing to consider—and it remains difficult to estimate, with much of the press devoted to a pre-set narrative—the second thing to think through is what happens if Republicans take Douthat’s advice to come together at the convention this summer to deprive Trump of the nomination.
It’s not necessarily a recipe for war. If Trump were to slip into second or third place for the last couple of months of the race, winning only 1,000 of the 1,237 delegates required, then a contested convention would probably feel legitimate, as would a non-Trump outcome. On the other hand, if he finished up with the required number of delegates, or close to it, an anti-Trump heist would mean mayhem. Technically, all sorts of maneuvers exist to deprive Trump of the nomination, and wonks can read the amazing Sasha Issenberg piece that lays them out. Politically, though, a brazen anti-Trump heist would be close to impossible.
(Newsweek has a good outline of the convention process.) In this connection, it’s worth noting that Kasich, after gloriously winning his own state, hired staff with contested convention skills. The Columbus Dispatch:
The Kasich team already is laying the groundwork to win a strenuously contested convention when Republicans gather about 15 miles from the site of his victory celebration. Tuesday night they announced the hiring of a quartet of nationally known operatives, including two who worked on opposite sides in the last contested GOP convention in 1976.
“The rules committee will be all powerful,” said Kasich’s top campaign strategist, John Weaver. That’s a 112-member panel chosen later this year by each state delegation that can decide, for example, how many ballots delegates must remained pledged to to support “their” candidate — if any.
Kasich will bid for the top spot even though he might remain behind both Trump and Cruz in the delegate count.
“This (a brokered convention) happened eight times before in American history, and six times the people who had the most delegates didn’t win their party’s nomination,” Weaver said.
“The grassroots delegates, activists, party leaders will make a decision about who the nominee is.”
Meanwhile, Trump says “We’d have riots.” And Paul Ryan just opened the door to being a compromise nominee by refusing to make a Sherman statement. Pass the popcorn.
Clinton vs. Sanders
Here are the Democratic results in tabular form from the Wall Street Journal. These are not winner-take-all-states; delegates are allocated proportionally. So winning a state is a nice-to-have; winning delegates is have-to-have.
First, I’ll look briefly at the campaign results in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri, in that order. I’ll use local sources, and you’ll note that Illinois and Missouri are a lot less triumphalist than the national press. You’ll also see that each race was different! Then, I’ll present county maps for each of these three states. Next, I’ll look at the exit polls. Finally, I’ll look at where the Sanders campaign goes from here.
A summary of the results in Ohio, from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Hillary Clinton dominates Bernie Sanders in Ohio from Lake Erie to the Ohio River (map)
The 56 percent of the vote she picked up bettered her performance eight years ago, when she defeated Barack Obama in Ohio, 54 percent to 45 percent.
Clinton’s strongest showings were in three of the larger counties in the state. She picked up 64 percent of the vote in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), 60 percent in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and 59 percent in Montgomery County (Dayton).
Sanders ran strongest in Athens County, home to Ohio University. Sanders won 61 percent of the vote there.
Sanders also did well in four smaller northwest Ohio counties, including Wood County, home to Bowling Green State University. Sanders won 54 percent of the Wood County vote.
And from the Cleveland Patch:
Polls showed Sanders, hoping to ride a wave of discontent over the loss of manufacturing jobs that once gave Ohio one of the strongest economies in the nation, was narrowing in on Hillary Clinton’s lead as voting began Tuesday. Forecasts predicted a margin of less than 20% between Clinton and Sanders in the state.
In the end, Clinton won by 13 points, which isn’t 20. But still.
Illinois, from the Chicago Tribune:
Clinton ekes out win over Sanders in Illinois
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton pulled out a narrow win Tuesday night as she held off a late surge by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to secure a hard-fought victory in the state where she grew up.
Sanders’ quick close on Clinton in Illinois mirrored his surprise come-from-behind victory in Michigan.
A Chicago Tribune poll conducted March 2-6 showed Clinton with a sizable lead, 67 percent to Sanders’ 25 percent. But in the final days leading up to Tuesday, national polls showed the race tightening, and exit polls for major cable news and TV networks showed late-deciding voters in Illinois breaking for Sanders over Clinton.
So in Illinois, Clinton blew another lead. And from the Springfield Daily Herald:
Clinton squeaks past Sanders
Park Ridge native Hillary Clinton’s campaign was dealt a bit of a psychological blow Tuesday as her projected victory over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders came down to the wire in her home state.
Despite Clinton’s strong campaign organization, deep pockets and wide array of party leaders among her supporters, a growing sense of frustration with the party establishment helped Sanders pick up votes.
Clinton took early leads in suburban Cook and Lake counties. Sanders, meanwhile, had a strong showing in DuPage, Kane, McHenry and Will counties. He also exceeded expectations in Chicago, where he worked in recent days to erode Clinton’s stronghold of black voters’ support by tying her to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Finally, let’s look at Missouri. From the St. Charles Patch:
UPDATE: Hillary Clinton With Razor-Thin Victory Over Bernie Sanders In Missouri Primary
With all precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders by less than one-half of 1 percent, or 1,531 votes, the office reported. A recount is possible.
In the latest state poll, conducted by Fort Hayes State University, Clinton was in a statistical dead heat with her Democratic rival Sanders, who pulled off a stunning victory in Michigan last week.
So if the polls are to be believed, in Ohio Sanders had a modest surge, in Illinois he had a major surge, and in Missouri the race was tied. In Ohio, Sanders lost the state badly. In Missouri and Illinois, he almost pulled off the upset. Why?
For one answer to that question, let’s look at the county maps. (One of the nice things about this election is that there’s a lot of data, neatly presented. That doesn’t compensate for the shrinking quantity of local coverage, though.) Here they are:
And I did say “let’s look,” because I simply don’t know these states well enough. What I am hoping, readers, is that some of you will know Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri well enough to make some educated guesses about why some counties voted for Sanders, and some for Clinton.
For a second answer to this question, we can look to the exit polls (I used CNN’s). Most of the data is as we would expect: Sanders wins (most) youth, Clinton wins (most) blacks, and so on. However, when we look at income, here’s what we see:
For Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio:
Constrast New Hampshire and Michigan:
Do you see the difference? In New Hampshire and Michigan, Sanders is winning the bottom of the income scale. But in Illinois and Ohio, the pattern is reversed, and in Missouri it’s weakened; Sanders skews to the top of the income scale. Obviously, if I were Sanders, I’d find that concerning; a working class advocate not winning votes in the working class? Bad!
I’m not sure why this pattern would be happening, but I can guess that Clinton’s message of lowered expectations is taking hold. As Gaius Publius recently wrote at NC:
Why do neo-liberal Democrats, like the Clinton campaign, not want you to have big ideas, like single-payer health care? Because having big ideas is resistance to the bipartisan consensus that runs the country, and they want to stave off that resistance.
But that’s a negative goal, and there’s more. They not only have to stave off your resistance. They have to manage your acceptance of their managed decline in the nation’s wealth and good fortune.
Again: The goal of the neo-liberal consensus is to manage the decline, and manage your acceptance of it.
We can’t have single payer! (Even though Canada does.) We can’t have tuition-free college! (Even though Germany does.) If Clinton has somehow managed to turn her incrementalism into a perceived defense of working class interests, that’s just not good news for the Sanders campaign.
Finally, where does the Sanders campaign go from here. Well, as Gaius Publius has urged, the Ides of March are half-time. The second half remains to be played:
Because of the way the Democratic Party voting calendar is structured this year, Clinton’s largest lead will occur on March 15. After that, most of Sanders’ strongest states will vote.
What this means is simple:
- Hillary Clinton will grow her lead until the March 15 states have voted.
- Bernie Sanders will erase that lead — partly or completely — after March 15.
- How much of Clinton’s lead he will erase depends on your not buying what the media is selling — that the contest is over.
- In most scenarios where Sanders wins, he doesn’t retake the lead until June 7, when five states including California cast their ballots.
Politico gives one scenario for how the second half might play out:
Despite their heavy spending in states that voted Tuesday, Sanders aides were privately projecting for days that their realistically their best shot was in Missouri. While they were hoping for a few surprises, they were prepared for a difficult night and looking ahead to Arizona—where the Vermont senator campaigned Tuesday night without mentioning his big state losses—and upcoming caucuses in Idaho, Utah, Alaska and Washington.
But Sanders campaign aides say they’ll be able to keep Clinton from reaching the 2,383 delegate magic number she’d need to clinch the nomination at the convention and, by being close enough, convince the superdelegates to switch, as some did when they changed from Clinton to Barack Obama in 2008.
My personal view, wholly unbacked by any evidence other than bitter experience, is that Clinton and the Democratic Establishment affirmatively do not want Sanders or Sanders voters. As neoliberas, they hate even a whiff of socialism, because markets, and more importantly they hate his small donor model, because it would lay waste to their personal networks in the political class, and deprive them of the pleasure of servicing squillionaires and suits. They want Trump as a nominee, at which point they will tack to the center, seek moderate Republican support, and throw the left under the bus. “We’re the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day,” as Susie Madrak said to Axelrove in 2010, and that’s still true today. That’s all the more reason for Sanders to keep on, to make that dynamic crystal clear.
In addition, there are policy-based reasons for Sanders to stay in the race. The New Republic:
As long as Sanders is in the race, though, Clinton can’t take her left flank for granted and shift rightward in anticipation of the general election; doing so would risk embarrassing losses to Sanders. And the more delegates Sanders has, the bigger voice he will have in crafting the party’s platform at this summer’s Democratic convention. But there’s another reason for Sanders to stay in the campaign: Trump. Even if Sanders doesn’t win the nomination, he can still use his campaign platform to influence how the Democrats respond to Trump.
Trump’s likely nomination gives Sanders a strong incentive to continue in the race— not only to pull Clinton to the left on economic issues, but to argue that her pursuit of well-to-do Republicans is a mistake. This strategy would essentially cede the white working class to Trump, which is risky not only in immediate electoral terms but fraught with danger for the country. If Democrats don’t make a pitch to win back the white working class, they will become ever more alienated and susceptible to the next Trump-style demagogue who comes around. Sanders-style economic populism offers a chance to peel away these voters from Trump, dooming any chance he has of defeating Clinton in November.
My personal view here is that the idea that the Democratic establishment will ever attempt to appeal to the “bitter”/”cling to” types that they threw under the bus in 2008 is highly unlikely; being Democrats, they don’t express their hatred of the working class as viscerally as the National Review, but it’s simply foolish to think it’s not there.
Finally, we have “Events, dear boy, events!” The international financial system, not to mention the real economy, seems awfully fragile. You know not the day or the hour, but a second crash would sweep away all incumbents. And of course, there are any number of scandals that might take Clinton down, especially since Clinton has refused to release half of the email on her privatized server, and is being FOIAed for it. There are 236 days ’til the election. That’s a long time in politics.
Conclusion
My question has always been: What does victory look like? The conventional answer is being nominated for President.[2] But I think a standalone organization, like OFA could and should have been, is the far greater prize. The Sanders campaign has the platform. It has the organizers. It has the funding model. It has the mailing list. It has a big pile of money. Is there any particular reason for Sanders to fold, at all?
NOTES
[1] I did note, when I used my Magic Markers on Rubio’s announcement speech, that “Rubio started to repeat himself. A verb, a noun, ‘American exceptionalism.'” But I could hardly have predicted how true that would be in the New Hampshire debate, or that Christie would call him on it, or that American exceptionalism would be the topic of Rubio’s robot-like repetition.
[2] It’s possible that Sanders could run as an independent.
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There’s also the problem that a great many Americans are too stupid to understand what’s happening to them and why–and the national corporate media isn’t going to tell them.
“Nothing in his campaign became him like the leaving it.” Is this a paraphrase of a Jane Austen quip? Something akin to her “The visit was perfect in that it was too brief.”
Macbeth.
All is but Toyes: Renowne and Grace is dead,
The Wine of Life is drawne, and the meere Lees
Is left this Vault, to brag of.
Lambert, such an apt quotation there could not have been. Even recognized it myself from lit studies.
or the less ambiguous:
“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out….”
~Lorelei James
Or one of my all time favorites, “Here’s your hat… What’s your hurry?”
logged and noted on that one..
Then there is always: “How can I miss you if you won’t go away.”
“I’d like to help you out; which way did you come in?”
If Hellary is the D nominee, a great plan B would be for Bernie to
run as an Independent! He has the support, he has the money,
and the more people see of Hellary, the more they will loathe her.
And Trump can work for us, making sure everyone knows about Clinton’s nasty baggage.
Plan B!
While we are quoting the classics, looks like in Illinois Bernie needed just a handful of twenty-somethings to put the Instagram down and try to have a future for themselves, just 1600 souls temporarily not completely apathetic and self-absorbed and obsessed and the narrative would have been completely different. “For want of a nail, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the rider was lost, for want of a rider the battle was lost…” etc. Ben Franklin
What was the youth turnout, 20%? Sad.
Well, I’m not sure. Got a link?
Could be the instagram, or it could be struggling with three jobs, school, and a ton of debt. Yes?
Antimillenialism is the flip side of antiboomerism.
Antimillenialitic antimillenialites are no better than antiboomeritic antiboomerites.
“You can’t beat a category error with a category error.” How I wish that were true!
Oh ffs. If you would have looked at this link over the weekend and Monday you’d have seen these kids (reddit users) making upwards of 100,000 GOTV calls. They need Bernie more than any other generation.
My very strong impression is that quite a few twenty- and thirty-somethings have put the Instagram down and voted for and worked for Mr. Sanders. It is older people and minorities who have failed to support him, in favor of a visibly plutocratic, psychopathic war criminal who happens to have good organizational connections and to be reassuringly conservative, which is apparently what they like.
I am in my sixties as are most of my friends. We have all supported Bernie via donation. Yes, younger people are an important and very visible part of his campaign – which is great.
But at times I get the feeling that the MSM writes off Bernie as only appealing to the young. Just as they used to write off Democrats for only appealing to African Americans.
It seems like quite a few people are practicing targetted-generation scapegoating one way or another.
If Bernie had the spine to run as an independent, I would have been more inclined to support him. He has allegiance to the Democratic Party. Rather, I think you’ll have to deal with the lesser evil thing this time around. Except this time the lesser evil is Trump.
Personally, I hate the lesser evil thing, so I just vote Green. Would vote Libertarian if the Greens didn’t exist. Would stay home if neither existed.
I think he did want to but was convinced otherwise.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-2016-inside-213692#ixzz4396I7u8R
That’s my nightmare. Bernie as a third party candidate is the surest way to get Trump elected.
Lesser-Eviling is the more effective evil – since it puts the left to sleeeeep.
Dude, better Trump than Hillary!
Everyone seems to be forgetting the email guillotine over Hillary’s head. My opinion is that she loses no matter the verdict/indictment/slap on the wrist. Perhaps not in the primaries, but most definitely in the General if she gets a pass. Trump would have a field day and the debates would devolve into Hillary curling into a defensive posture, unable to attack.
Bernie won’t be another Nader. It has been well published that he won’t run as an Indy to spoil Team Pepsi from their coronation.
He drank from the poisoned well of the DNC to run as a Dem. Chris Hedges covered this a few weeks ago- he’s done in April.
And I genuinely like the guy- he’s the best candidate in the entire field.
Let’s assume — or posit — that in, say, a World Series there is an actual home-field advantage.
What the DNC has done, in collaboration with the HRC camp, is load the first 4 games into Hillary’s home field (the South). They and the MSM are now saying the Series is over and HRC the victor.
How crazy, how blatantly unfair is that?
The wild card in the entire election is James Comey, head of the FBI. What he and his team choose to do re the email server scandal could decide the outcome.
I imagine that James Comey knows better than most that the only way that the deep state scam continues unhindered given their option is a Clinton Presidency. I am deeply skeptical that he would do anything to rock that particular boat.
Homeland Security was a wingnut employment program. The FBI is packed with Republicans. Who knows what agents will do en masse?
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Clinton supports their every wet dream wrt foreign policy. She is a one woman full employment program for wingnuttia that should last for the rest of the century, judging by the long tails of the disasters she invariably pushes for. Even the Kagan that does not work for her has now endorsed her!
If they have any sense at all they prolly have their own superpac supporting her by now.
much better to let the email thing continue and then impeach her, and her VEEP (on some pretext) and insert Paul Ryan as pres.
Well, obviously an indictment *would* decide the outcome, because the voters would have to be insane to back a hobbled horse. As it is, I think people aren’t rationally thinking about Clinton’s chances in the general, and what they would mean if she’s elected. Sure, people assume there’s a general-election advantage for the darling of the establishment who’s been running for President for 16 years, but say she wins? What happens?
I’ll tell you what happens: on Day One of the HRC Presidency, the House (which will still be Republican) will appoint a Special Investigator. They’ll start with the emails, but they’ll go well beyond that, into everything she has ever done, and it won’t play as purely political, because they’ll argue that the FBI under Obama was not treating her impartially. This will be enough to squander the momentum of the first hundred days, and they’ll probably milk it out long enough to make a major issue of it in the 2018 midterms, where the Dems are defending 20-something Senate seats (depending on Bernie’s future and how you count Angus King) against the Repub’s 8-9. There is a very real possibility that the Senate will flip.
Once they feel they have enough dirt (whether or not they can get the Senate seats, but absolutely if they manage it) the House will vote to impeach.
Indictment aside, Hillary will have no momentum. The GOP obstructed Obama even when he gave away the store and took both houses of Congress an destroyed state and local democratic parties in the process. Hillary will get nothing out of the House and will effectively destroy the chance to take the Senate.
Are you sure? Seems to me that plenty of legislation got passed even as the media touted obstructionism on a semi-annual basis.
e.g., UPS is using one of those must not shut-down the government amendments from last December to try to cut pension monies for their workers. How many people who follow the news before Christmas even knew about that little tidbit?
In general, how many people can keep track of last minute legislation? Or heck, Alec generated legislation that gets proposed and passed before the opposition has a chance to garner a response (Scott Walker I’m looking at you).
Obstructionism is all hand-wringing. Those awful Republicans. The Democrats can’t stop them. They have no power. No disclipline. No… Will the government be shut-down… how will it affect Social Security / Medicare / the military, etc., etc., etc.
Best. Show. Ever. Most people pay no attention to the misdirection because they can’t. Too many moving pieces. Too many unknown alliances. Too many…
Think of how much more Clinton II and the legislature could do while under the seal of impeachment than Clinton I even dreamed about. Throw in the gender whistles like the Obama race whistles and I’d say if one wanted to push through massive changes to the social contract/compact, one might have created the perfect environment.
Works just as well with a tweaks to the Trump party. Trump is a bit more of a wild-card in that he might have some grudges / scores to be settled that land us in some unexpected places. Otherwise he’s a businessman. He’ll put on a grand show but the elites know that in the end they can negotiate with him for what they want.
So ya thought ya might like to go to the show
To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow
I got me some bad news for you, sunshine
Pink isn’t well, he stayed back at the hotel
And they sent us along as a surrogate band
We’re gonna find out where you fans really stand
Dang. Excellent commentary.
No matter who occupies 1600 Penn Ave, it’s still going to be a cluster on The Hill.
My thoughts also. In fact it is my hope that if she wins, she will be too busy fighting the threat of impeachment to pursue multiple regime change operations and gin up a nuclear war.
If past is prologue than she will be looking for regime changes and military actions in order to avoid the impeachment. Wag the Dog ring a bell…
Thing is that it is not just about press coverage anymore. A whole lot of Republicans and their minions are fully owned employees of the MIC. And more military action keeps their masters happy. Keeping those people happy will be one of the tactics to avoid being the first woman President impeached and thrown out.
(And people think I support Sanders because I believe in unicorns and hope for sparkly ponies…)
If President Hillary Killton “fights the good fight” (regime change and/or threat of big war) then impeachment will appear unpatriotic. Watch the tail wag the dog.
Kagan, Nuland-Kagan, and many of the PNAC alumni stay-behinds will make sure that all that stuff keeps on keepin’ on.
Indictment, my ass.
If they didnt indict Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and the rest of the thugs on Wall Street, quit holding your breath.
Really? Why would the House do that? Every House Democrat would support Clinton. Every House Republican who takes orders from the Overclass would oppose a Special Prosecutor because the Overclass would remind the House Republicans how much money a President Hillary is worth to the Overclass. Only the ideologically pure and unafraid Tea Partiers would support a Special Prosecutor.
If Hillary gets elected, the experiment will be run. And my prediction will be proven right or wrong.
While waiting on the FBI, paying special attention to news on Fridays, we can amuse ourselves with this: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/
While waiting for Comey, we can amuse ourselves with https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/
ty ty ty
Rubio’s problem was that he reeked of a lack of authenticity. In a year when having any ties to the establishment equaled death, he should have separated himself from the likes of Bush and Kasich by at least posing as a rebel on some front.
Any other election cycle, his brand of youthful optimism married with the thin gruel of neo-con foreign policy might have worked. But not this one, fortunately.
Re: “…And Paul Ryan just opened the door to being a compromise nominee by refusing to make a Sherman statement. Pass the popcorn.”
His latest interview with Politico is about as close to a “Sherman statement” as one could expect from a politician:
“Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview there is “no situation” in which he will accept the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this year, his firmest rejection of the fanciful notion that he’d be drafted during a contested GOP convention.
“I’ve been really clear about this,” Ryan (R-Wis.) told POLITICO Wednesday. “If you want to be president, you should run for president. We should select our nominee from among the people who are running for president. Clear and simple. So no, I am not going to be the president. I am not going to be the nominee.”
Ryan added, “I am not going to become the president through Cleveland.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/paul-ryan-not-president-gop-nominee-220869#ixzz435RoKmm8
Sanders has promised he would not run as an Independent. One thing about him (i think) is that he has integrity and if he said he wouldn’t run as an Indie, i believe he won’t. He may quasi-endorse her, w/o asking his supporters to do the same like, “vote your conscience’ or something. He’s fully aware that many of his supporters will not vote for Hillary Clinton.
What I believe he should do is just as you write at the end: form a standalone organization.
He won’t because there wouldn’t be any point in doing so. I am not even sure running as an independent would even be feasible. An independent Sanders run really would be a waste of time and money. Resources better sent elsewhere.
If Bernie thinks even the slightest sliver of his policy positions would make in onto the Hilary agenda after the election then he is sorely mistaken
…her very campaign logo is her, moving to the right!
I agree.
I think you are probably correct regarding the feasibility. It’s not easy getting on the ballot in all 50 states as an independent and if he were to try now he’d have the establishment of both parties trying to block him at every turn.
The time to run as an independent would have been when he announced his candidacy, however then he would have been shut out of the debates and gotten even less publicity than he has now.
If ballot access were easier I think he’d likely win as an independent at this point due to the negative ratings of both frontrunners but it wasn’t really possible to do a primary run as a Dem and then switch to independent.
If the aim was to bring attention to the issues and try to get a movement going I believe he made the right choice by running as a Dem and he still could win this thing.
The time I’d like to see him switch to an independent is the day after he’s inaugurated ;)
You misunderstand Sanders. Sanders has caucused with the Dems for many years and is a Dem in all but name. He regards Republicans of the Trump variety as the anti-Christ and will never do anything–such as an independent run–that would help them win. He has also said explicitly to Chris Hedges that he’s not going to play the spoiler role and be vilified like Nader. If that’s not enough he has also promised on national tv that he will support the Dem nominee and not run as an independent.
Uh no he’s not a Dem in all but name. He’s actually made it quite clear he ran as a Democrat for pragmatic reasons. That being said, he has said that he will not be a spoiler. I think people should take him at his word.
You are misunderstanding Bernie. Senate Democrats give Bernie plum committee positions and never run serious candidates against him during election. In return, Bernie has given them fealty, as evidenced by the kid-glove handing of Clinton and the Democratic Party during the campaign. That’s a pretty tight relationship they have there.
I think it’s you that misunderstands. He’s got his committee positions because he’s been in Congress for a long time and is effective as a legislator. He’s known as the “Amendment King,” and knows that part of being in a body of people means you need to understand how and when to compromise. He’s not a three year old who is going to hold his breath or stupidly insist that nothing can get done until Congress has a filibuster proof 67 member independent Congress(unlike the moronic Democrats who pretty much seem to insist they need a Congressional majority of 100 to get anything accomplished.)
He couldn’t get a single committee assignment without caucusing with the Democrats. That alone makes him a Democrat in all but name.
I think this is probably right, that he’s ultimately a lesser evilest, like heck Chomsky even, and that’s why he made the promises he did. That while he may not like Hillary he really does regard her as the lesser evil to Any possible Republican (can’t say I disagree with him on the Trump variety, but someone like Kasish or Hillary who can even tell the difference).
Probably a silly question but would a Sanders’ independent candidacy take more votes from Hillary or the Donald in the general election?
If Sanders doesn’t take the primary – he will have no real voice in the convention. This is an all or nothing race, and there will be no negotiation.
We already saw how this will play out with the last convention. Sanders and his supporters will be able to say what ever they want in the Free speech zones ringed with razor wire. Every one else has to worry about killing Clinton’s royal ring just right or get thrown to the dogs themselves.
The convention is about aligning loyalties and fetidities to the new power structure and moneyed classes, all of which takes place behind closed doors. This is also where Clinton gets to pledge her real platform to money, reminding them that what she says to the rabble doesn’t mean any thing. Issues aren’t even really discussed, accept what ever the rabble want to yammer on about on the floor.
The real question remains the super delegates. Sander’s only real hope of victory was to win the pledged delegates in a big way. Well, that ship has sailed. He can still take a majority of delegates but a much smaller one than planed, probably no where near enough to scare the super delegates into switching sides. The possibility of a peasant revolt looks less threatening.
Perhaps now is the time to start talking about plan B.
Um, “killing” should have been “kissing.” Stupid auto-correct.
“Plan B” … sounds ominous, brother.
What are we gonna do, try to catch her in bed with a live girl or a dead boy?
Or incite a rogue grand jury to indict her?
In any event, Hillary is becoming a clear and present danger.
Well Sanders was going to need a Plan B regardless of weather he wins or not – if he wants his revolution.
Lambert offered OFA (Organize for America) Obama’s organization as an example. He’s got the right idea, but this is a very bad example to follow. OFA was put in place to squash grass-roots activism. I believe its main goal was to steel the energy from DFA and neuter it as a rival organizer.
That is not to say DFA didn’t have its own problems. Its main goal is simply to get Democrats elected into office. It seemed reasonable at the time. But it didn’t take long to see that it lacked the ability to properly vet its candidates and proved ineffective in shaping policy. It lacks any independence from the Democratic organization as a whole, manning that its policies are frequently dictated to it from the DNC as a condition for access.
Occupy Wall Street did far better, mostly because it was deliberately independent of the Democratic Party. It also engaged in a clear campaign of civil disobedience which got it the attention it needs to advance its agenda. But OWS found new problems. Its leadership structure was too open, allowing rival and parasitic interests to move in and take over. As an organization, it simply could not make decisions – even those needed to solve immediate problems. And counter intuitively, it became very hostile to initiative and creativity.
At the end of the day, when you sum up all these lessens, what Sanders really needs to do is create a third party. I suspect this is even the case – should he win the Democratic nomination.
“He can still take a majority of delegates but a much smaller one than planed, probably no where near enough to scare the super delegates into switching sides. The possibility of a peasant revolt looks less threatening.”
Actually, if he takes a majority of delegates, even by one delegate, and still loses to the corporate machine, there will be a revolt, a fissure, and Hillary will lose the general election. Superdelegates know this and will not risk such a catastrophe.
You are making the assumption that the Democrats actually care about the outcome of the election. Sure they want to “win” – in much the same way Packers fan want to see the Packers win the season. You get a big party at the end. If the Packers lose, the party is not as fun, but it’s still a party and they still pop the Champaign corks.
Make no mistake, the establishment Democrats are actually okay with Trump winning the election. The Democratic Party is all about influence pedaling, raising money and money changing hands. “Losing” simply means doing that peddling in the privet sphere as lobbyists. The revolving door keeps turning.
We did NOT pop champagne corks when the Packers were eliminated this year. Of course, we didn’t pop champagne corks when we won the Super Bowl. You must have us mixed up with Cowboys’ fans. :)
Why wouldn’t they? They would simply blame a Clinton loss under that scenario on the Sanders voters, and work to purge them all from the Democratic Party.
Yes, party platforms are just press releases that no one takes seriously. Clinton could allow Sanders to put anything he wanted in there, and it would be forgotten the next day.
You’re correct, if he’s not the nominee he has no leverage. Best thing he could do is throw away his carefully vetted convention speech and rip her a new one off the cuff, live, on TV.
He needs at least a convincing majority. If it’s at all close, I would expect the supers to side with Clinton. What happened with Obama is inconsequential, so far as the supers are concerned, because O was as bought as Hillary in that contest, so it didn’t take much prodding to switch. Not so with Bernie. Their hands will have to be forced.
My major fear is that after a Sanders loss at the convention his “movement” will evaporate with his candidacy, and all the momentum will be lost and all the organizing go for naught. If we never come up with other ideas besides electing some particular politician, we are well and truly f-d.
If Bernie’s people were smart, imho, they’d start helping people in Flint, Detroit, Baltimore, etc. to create grassroots solutions to their problems. Maybe it’s just the Eagle Scout in my, but I think leading by example is the best way to get people on your side.
There definitely should be some movement independent of the Democratic Party to fix problems. It’s fairly apparent they intend to undermine activists instead of embrace them. Activists can and should understand that at this point between the DNC withholding voter files in primaries and superdelegates putting their fingers on the scale.
If activists don’t get it at this point they are the “f’in morons” that Rahm accused them of being.
The activists left. What is left is the cultists, but they don’t do anything other than drink kool-aid and protect leaders. The Democratic Party would be extinct without Sanders. What would Hillary be doing without Sanders right now? Being smug and running to the right of Reagan. Team Blue enthusiasm would collapse. Even in 2012, Obama had to promise his reelection would make everything easier as demographics would ensure Team Blue wins. That promise was broken.
I disagree. There has been some discussion for at least two cycles on whether or not to reform the Democratic Party or to try and create some other mechanism to effect change. While I have not agreed with those that were for party reform within the primary system, I’m not going to insult them by calling them cultists. I do think at this point though they should completely be able to understand that the Democratic Party has an agenda and it isn’t necessarily the same as theirs.
When even a real true movement like Occupy could not sustain enough momentum to really change things afterward (I’m not saying they don’t do some good, and might not in the real long run be one of the forces that changes things, but it won’t be fast), a movement that never was a movement, like the Sanders campaign, barely stands any chance. I think what should be done like Black Agenda Report has suggested (although not with regards to this) is to try to get phone numbers and talk to people at Bernie rallies about a plan B (never mind if they do or don’t vote for Hillary, the point is to come up with a REAL plan B not quibble about the lousy election choices that are left if Sander’s loses).
I’d also suggest that Bernie devote his money and organization [people] to helping “down ticket” candidates. E.g., Russ Feingold, Joe Sestak.
Take a good look at who’s running for Senate & House, particularly races where a “good” [i.e., “real”] Democrat is challenging an incumbent Republican. A plus would be candidates who can stand up to Clinton and the DLC creeps. You know the DNC is not going to open the purse for such folks.
If he were really seditious, he could urge folks to go to the polls to vote in these down ticket races, but say it’s okay to leave the top slot blank.
Let’s wait to see if Feingold endorses Clinton before the Wisconsin primary on 4/5. Then we can debate how much help Sanders should give him. Our current ostensibly very liberal senator, Tammy Baldwin – who in an apparently previous iteration made a huge show of introducing single payer legislation every session – is already in the bag for HRC.
Feingold voted well many times when he was in the Senate but he has shown himself not to be one to help build a movement to oppose the right. He has, for example, been completely AWOL in the fight against Scott Walker.
^^^ Free speech zones ringed with razor wire. Every one else has to worry about killing Clinton’s royal ring just right or get thrown to the dogs themselves. ^^^
this
So long, Urboi. And good riddance.
Lambert, you have outdone yourself.
Agree strongly that events going forward increasingly favor Sanders.
Having recently started ‘Dark Money’, by Jane Mayer, what Sanders – and all of us – are up against is soulless, amoral, and remorseless.
Which makes me believe that, all things considered, we actually have a decent set of data:
Rubio turfed out as a GW Bush wannabe
Trump voters calling bs on being screwed
Kasich hanging on like a junkyard dog to its last bone and not caving to Cruz
Hillary barely hanging on by her fingernails, while the FBI toils silently in the background
Bernie continues to raise $$ in a way that makes him accountable to citizens, with tons of opportunity ahead of him
Glass is definitely half full
+1
Under-40 voters get it.
Future of the party is Democratic Socialism.
This Oligarchy is frantically pulling every lever to ensure 4 more years of grifting before the dam breaks. They know if Sanders wins this year it’s demographic mayhem for 2 election cycles before the new census in 2020. If it takes until 2020 to get an actual non-establishment candidate in, they can still lock in a gerrymandered Congress and stall — or at least stall longer — for another decade.
Sanders will not run as an independent, the fact that he endorsed and campaigned for Democratic presidential candidates against Ralph Nader should tell us what he thinks of this option. Also, he wants to keep his position on the budget committee where he has real power. What will happen is that millions of Sanders supporters will desert to the Green Party, but the Green Party is not in a position to take advantage of this opportunity. They still do not understand what a functioning political party is.
That’s why I gave OFA as an example. I’m not no sure that the millions of Sanders supporters would even be able to find the Green Party.
I don’t understand why the Green Party hasn’t been capitalizing on some of the problems and running locally.
I get that nationally they are struggling with the means to run campaigns but it seems to me that if they were serious about competing they’d make better efforts locally.
because the Green Party does not know what a political party is. That is why they are not targeting districts where their candidates poll above 10%, why they are not targeting districts where Obama did well but there is no Dem congressional candidate, that is why they do not have the Green Party version of Act Blue, that is why they are a fringe party rather than one that actually wins elections.
Agreed. It drives me crazy they don’t push for local office, state legislatures, etc. I think, sadly, it’s just we as Progressives are comfortable w/ failure, too many of us accept it before the fight even begins, then we make a symbolic stand on our moral righteousness rather than risk winning and fail to
It seems to me that moral righteousness is to reject Obama, to not deny that he has been weak, and risking winning also means again rejecting Obama.
Damn the Southern States torpedoes.
But we didn’t even do that.
What the Green Party even IS is highly variable locally. GPOP (the Philadelphia Greens) has a broad smattering of various single-issue activists forming a loose coalition with a very strong influence of crunchy birkenstockers. Many of the people are very knowledgeable and active on their respective issues, but for the bulk of them the Green Party is a secondary and sometimes a tertiary commitment compared to their main thing. “Partybuilding” only goes about so well when its not even the top priority of the core activists.
The Green Party could use many of Bernie’s organizers and campaign managers.
Dessert to the Green Party? I think that voting for Trump is more likely. Ignoring the MSM clips of Trumps speeches, he does devote more rhetoric to unfair trade and other economic issues. He has said he will support Social Security and Medicare. All in all, his economic policies are more progressive than Clinton’s. Also, a very general visual inspection of the county election results published by the WaPo shows a rough correlation between counties won by Trump and counties won by Sanders. If someone has the raw data, a little correlation analysis on this point might be revelatory.
And it would be fun to see a real race war within the states, wouldn’t it?
BLM against Trumps skinheads.
Really fine synopsis, and I am disappointed but Clinton will be the Democratic nominee and I do not care about what the Republicans do from here.
Lake County Illinois report: For some reason, Lake County seems to be a microcosm of the state as a whole, so I think you can extrapolate from this information.
1. Bernie was tied with Hillary until early voting and absentee ballots were counted, then Hillary pulled ahead by a couple of thousand votes.
2. Bernie won the Latino voters; Hillary won the older black voters.
3. Bernie won—and won substantially—with “middle class” voters. This makes me question how income level questions are phrased: family income or individual income?
4. Hillary won the wealthy precincts (primarily along the lakeshore) and those areas loaded with Illinois Dem Party apparatchiks.
5. Repub turnout was lower than Dem turnout by 11%.
6. Repubs split 32% each for Kasich and Cruz. The remainder went to Trump.
7. The precincts that favored Hillary tended to favor Kasich/Cruz on the Repub side.
8. Voter turnout was disappointingly low: only 44% of registered voters showed up even though the weather was pleasant all day.
9. Very few communities had ballot initiatives this time.
I think the income charts are mostly masking different demographics, namely race and age. In a lot of places the base of the Democratic (sic) Party is little old black ladies. As a Michigander, I attribute the Ohio results to stupidity.
If Sanders wants to win this he needs to actually start pulling the trigger. So much ammo still in their crates.
Press reports indicated that a lot of Dems voted in the Republican primary to support favorite son Kassich and/ or against Trump. How much did this switching cost Sanders in Ohio?
Those Dems may have been HillyBots and wouldn’t have voted for Bernie anyway.
So true. She has used race and divisiveness to crush him. He needs to start going after her. The electorate needs to see who is paying the bills. What irks me is when he says she got 250 K for a speech to GS. Why can’t he go for the drama and say 650K for three short talks? She would. And why does he leave out the madatory private jet and the accomodations and expenses.
I watched three debates. I view congress as corrupt, craven and criminal. Sanders comes across as someone who really thinks his political friends are moral individuals, just a little misguided and victims of the system …. he criticizes the system, but not his friends. If he is truly friends with Clinton as he states, and believes she’s suitable to be President*, he is a fake. At this point, I will vote for him, but if he insists on his pathetic nice schtick and protect the d stance going forward, I won’t. I don’t support the d branch of the money party and I won’t vote for someone who does.
*I view Clinton’s foundation donations as nothing but laundering bribes and her actions regarding Libya war crimes.
Bernie still needs to work with his fellow politicians to advance his agenda. He has to play nice, within the rules, or he becomes Ted Cruz.
Working class advocate not winning votes in the working class?
What is the working class? White working class? Black working class? Hispanic working class? Working class women? Who predominated? What and why were there loyalties?
Do typical white working class men identify with America’s militarism? Buy into American imperialism in the guise of faux patriotism? Support a tough commander-in-chief and the troops? Did they imagine a pacifist, demilitarized social democracy under Bernie?
Are there still “I’ve got mine, Jack!” members of the working class who still view health insurance and college tuition as privileges, not rights, preferring to know that others (black and brown people) don’t have them.
How many would rather deny a hard truth than face it?
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
“What is the working class”?
People who work for wages.
To be fair, it should exclude people who make incredibly high wages.
A-List actors work for wages dont they? I dont think they count as working class.
But by and large, yes.
I’ll venture a guess on the point of the working class advocate not winning working class votes.
The working class has been shouldering the cost of austerity for so long now that the notion of another tax shuts down any investigation of what might be gained. Single Payer is a good example. Ask a working class person what 3% of their income is (they don’t have to say it out loud) and ask if that amount is a better deal than they’re getting with their crapified insurance plan. I’ve had this conversation with people who admitted Bernies’ plan would save them money yet they remained skeptical. I don’t know what to attribute this to, other than a total loss of trust. It’s as if everything is like the promise of 20 MBPS internet speed–you’ll pay for 40 MBPS and are lucky to get 5. When this happens, does the average working person have any recourse? Not likely.
The working class has taxation without representation and the benefits of said taxation are no longer accruing to them. The corporations have representation without taxation and amass and hoard the benefits of society. Bernie is wise to stay on message with repect to Wall Street, but the lies and betrayals run so deep that more must be said to gain back trust.
Meanwhile, an umbrella movement to unite the left is crucial. The divide and conquer strategy is working. The two parties are irrevocably broken. As long as the Greens, Socialists, Anarchists, Black Lives Matter, SquaDD2016…remain islands unto themselves, none will have the numbers needed to stem the backward tide that’ll drown us all. How many united would it take to overthrow the whole sh*tshow once and for all?
You are not far off. It’s not really a lack of trust – but a lack of opportunity to build the sort of relationship one needs to build that sort of trust. This is a complex issue that doesn’t lend itself well to 30 second ads. It gets even more complicated when you have voices like the gang of four working to undermine it. Dismantling the attacks is even more complex and takes even more time.
Sanders needs months to build the trust that he needs for voters to take this sort of risk. But the nature of the campaign only gives him days.
What the revolution needs to do is build long term relationships in order to have the sort of deep and detailed dialog needed for that kind of support.
You make a good point about opportunities to build relationships to build trust. Having one or more elected officials actually deliver on their promises would be a good start. It’s a chicken and egg conundrum. Which comes first, the trust or the relationship?
solidarity in there somewhere; supposed to be; in theory.
I think there’s solidarity there, it may not necessarily be based on ‘reform’. Reform is the word politicians use to avoid substantive change. It can be terrifying, but also cathartic and even beneficial to abandon what doesn’t work.
As neoliberas, they hate even a whiff of socialism, because markets, … Lambert
What markets?! We have what is essentially a government-subsidized/enabled/enforced usury cartel and it’s like pulling impacted wisdom teeth to get even (especially?) Progressives to face that fact.
That’s not how it is sold by the media.
We’re all supposed to be grateful to our lieges who provide us with jobs out of the goodness of their hearts(instead of out of the desire to profit from the demand of consumers.)
Just like Trump is presently selling this idea that he has no choice but to produce things overseas. There isn’t any conversation on how he has PROFITED from exploiting workers, there’s just talk about over here we should be competing(it why we can’t have higher wages or sick days o anything that actually benefits workers.)
First, you are told the fruits in the commons are no longer to be shared.
But you are welcome to avoid starvation by having ‘a place’ in the manor.
“Come, join us.”
“Plenty of upward mobility, especially with your starting place being so low, sorry, so much room above you.”
“We guarantee there is plenty of work for you…”
Born & raised in Illinois, I’ve never seen a map like the one above.
Lake and Cook Counties have very little in common except geography/urbanization. Cairo (pronounced Karo, like the syrup) way down at the tip is heavily AA and dirt poor. But the northwest quadrant has nothing in common with far southern Illinois. Finally, western IL along the Mississippi, particularly the burbs of St. Louis is notoriously corrupt. Perhaps some connection to the local Dem party, otherwise I got nuttin’.
In Illinois the filing deadline for independent candidates is 6/27. The starting date for filing is 90 days prior to the deadline. The signature requirement for Presidential candidates is:
ESTABLISHED PARTY CANDIDATES Not less than 3,000 nor more than 5,000 primary electors of his/her party (10 ILCS 5/7-11)
INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES 1% of the number of voters who voted at the next preceding statewide general election, or 25,000, whichever is less (10 ILCS5/10-3)
NEW PARTY CANDIDATES 1% of the number of voters who voted at the next precedingstatewide general election, or 25,000, whichever is less (10 ILCS 5/10-2)
An “established” party is one that got more than 5% of the votes in the previous election – a reason to vote third party rather than abstain.
LINK (PDF)
Requirements and filing dates vary by state.
The breakdown in Ohio on income is not surprising at all. The lower ends of the income scale aren’t pictures of white working class/youngs the same way they are in New Hampshire or Vermont. Lower income, in Cincinnati, might as well be a code word for ‘black’.
If you look at the racial demographics, the regular trend of ‘young + white, particularly if male = Sanders’ and ‘older/darker = Clinton’ still held up. If a bit weaker.
More concerning, both Trump and Kasich outscored either Dem in raw vote totals. The Dems combined were what, a third of the Republican turnout in Ohio?
There are Dems and Independents who probably took a Republican ballot in Ohio to stop Trump and they did, for that state anyway. Yes, yes, you can say it’s better to vote for someone than against someone, but if they are conservative Dems who don’t think the difference on that side is as important then … yea it’s a state that can broker the Rep convention and people do know it.
Born & raised near Youngstown, like right on the divide between urban and rural, with some suburban neighbors.
I have to counter you on the race of lower income Ohioans — almost everyone I grew up with were white and working class, no college. (That said, Youngstown itself is heavily black and poor, while the suburbs are lily white). I’ve also spent time around Dayton, Bucyrus, Newton Falls (about an hour S of Youngstown), all have pleeennty low income white people. Cleveland has a fair share too, although I think you’d be a lot more right about race there, it seems surprisingly segregated.
I know it’s different around Columbus, don’t know about Cinci.
But I am SHOCKED the NE voted so much for HRC. NAFTA destroyed the economy there — well, what hadn’t already been destroyed in the 70s by jobs moving to China or the southern, un-unionized states.
I’m glad you pointed out the fragility of the markets/economy, here. That was the single biggest hole in 538’s reckoning of the race that I could see, and it is still applicable. Deutchebank takes a dirt nap over in Europe and it is a whole new ball game.
There is still a lot of time for the process to work itself out, and, insofar as I can see, no one has done anything substantive to prevent a relapse of our last collapse.
Ohio voter here.
I live in a small north central county who went Hillary and Kasich. We had less than a 50 percent turnout in my county. Bernie lost by less than 15 votes. Kasich beat Trump by about 1200 (~10,000 voters on the GOP side and 4100 on the democrat side).
In Ohio we can choose the party when we go to the polls. One of our city councilmen who was going around to all the polls (volunteering to help poll workers) said in an article in today’s paper many were switching parties from D to R. I suspect this was the “anti-Trump” voters who probably picked Kasich to insure Trump lost. Our local rag known as the local newspaper (only one, but some do get the Toledo Blade as well) is staunch establishment GOP leaning.
We are farm country and very conservative. Our local Tea Party are Glenn Beck worshipers to give a taste for what it’s like here. The word socialism sets them off like a missile. They did what they were told IMO. It probably cost Bernie the county. Using the interactive map in the NYT I suspect the surrounding counties did the same thing. Close, but no cigar, if you were rooting for Bernie.
That’s a risky game – how did they know the anti-Trump voters would come from the Sanders camp, and not Hillary’s?
Imagine if would-be Hillary voters went over and voted against Trump…that would be knocking off two birds with one stone, but it seems that was not how it turned out.
To add to your city councilman’s statements, one of my friends who is a Democrat said via a Facebook post that Ohio Democrats helped Kasich beat Trump. Unfortunately, I think any Democrats who did this switch were likely to lean toward Clinton or not care who the Democrat’s nominee is.
My parents tried to do the same thing in Texas (to try to block Cruz and Trump), and they are in the “Clinton is inevitable, Sanders will never make it” camp.
More Ohio thoughts …
Some of the light blue Sanders counties on the Ohio map are in rural or semi-rural area with colleges. Eg: Athens county SE of Columbus has Ohio University & not much else. Brown county S of Toledo has Bowling Green State. Portage county E of Akron has Kent State. The two counties NE of Columbus are Knox with Kenyon College & Ashland with Ashland University. Most of those counties went for Sanders by a very small percentage, so the students could be the small difference that gave him the local win. Athens county, however, gave Sanders over 60% of the vote, the highest county percentage anywhere in the state.
I live in Holmes county, bordering the E edge of Knox & Ashland counties. It’s a rural, mostly farming area with some light manufacturing, is overwhelmingly Republican, & has lots of Amish. Clinton won the Democratic primary by 3 votes here … but hereabouts you’re a little odd if you’re a Democrat of any stripe.
My daughter was was thinking of doing the party switching thing & voting for Kasich as a Trump-blocker. Though she preferred Sanders, she felt she could tolerate a president Clinton a lot more than a president Trump. Have no idea how typical such thoughts were in Ohio generally. As it turned out, she’s traveling & missed the deadline to get an absentee ballot so she didn’t vote at all.
Athens is traditionally the most left-leaning county in the state. Even back in 1972, Athens and Mahoning (Youngstown) were the only counties to go foe McGovern.
The D voter switching over, just to get Trump out, seems pretty strange to me. While I get that most media outlets (news, blogs, and talk shows) have gone full anti-Trump, to switch would imply that you believe BOTH of the following:
1) Trump very well could defeat a Dem opponent in the general.
2) Crazytown Trump proposals/actions will make it through the “checks and balance” system… That is controlled by establishment D&R players.
I just don’t see 2) happening. Which would mean that Pres. Trump only “wins” by playing close to a Kasich, Cruz, Romney.
So maybe 1) is the concern? Do they think that Trumpies wont vote for a Cruz/Kasich just as easily? At least with a Trump Candidate you have the possibility of some R voters switching over to match the losses a HRC candidate will cause.
How about Sandernistas taking over Howard Dean’s old DFA? They’re still around. They ran Congressional candidates somewhat successfully in 2006.
And do fun stuff that brings people together — shows, kickball tournaments or whatever these kids do today.
Don’t get me started — DFA wouldn’t have even come out for Bernie if it was up to the people who run it (despite being based in Burlington); they actually let their members vote on who they would endorse instead, and it was overwhelmingly Bernie, so they had to
I know it’s over
And it never really began
But in my heart it was so real
I know it’s over – The Smiths
The battles for The House and the Senate are still on.
For those who are against Trump, progressive or even establishment D or R representatives can mean a potential balance or gridlocking of the situation a bit.
Though, I think it’s way past time we look at how dominant the Executive branch has become (especially in the military area), relative to the other two. Hard for me to see Trump and MMT as a good combination
In moderation. It takes hours to get out…. copying the oscars etc. it would be appropriate to have best political meltdowns for the elections. Not candidates, but supporters. 2008 was good with Clinton’s failure, but 2016 has it’s candidates… Daou (overwrought angst award), Watson (unhinged lying) and Billmon (could someone get him a flashlight, he thinks Hitler is under his bed). snort.
“it takes hours to get out.”
The site policy promises 24/7 turnaround. If you want near-real time moderation, the PayPal button is to your right.
Report from Columbus, Ohio:
Most of Bernie’s wins came in counties that lean left because the Democratic electorate is attached to large public universities (Kent, Ohio U. and Bowling Green) and counties that are generally Republican but where the democratic electorate is attached to private colleges (Ashland, Kenyon, Findlay). Bernie’s most interesting win came in Greene County, east of Dayton, which has a fairly large state university (Wright State) and a leftie enclave (Yellow Springs), but is mainly known for its very large military base (Wright-Patterson AFB).
All of the major population centers, which of course are the key Democratic strongholds in the state, have large black populations. In Franklin County in particular, voting was heavy as the local primary featured a fight for control of the party apparatus between the political machine of former mayor Michael Coleman and an insurgent group led by the County Sheriff and recently-defeated mayoral candidate. As you might expect, the Coleman faction is firmly in bed with Clinton and the rest of the DLC types.
On a more general level, one of the major factors working against Bernie was Sherrod Brown’s early endorsement of Hillary. A most unfortunate move by a politician I generally respect, but Sherrod definitely has a pragmatic streak about him, which is likely necessary for survival in Ohio politics. This was also true of Howard Metzenbaum, Ohio’s last liberal Senator.
I thought that this was kind of funny:
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/273273-clinton-sanders-camps-say-they-can-unify
“The sheepdog keeps biting me!” They really come off as awfully thin skinned.
Awfully thin-skinned…awfully arrogant, and awfully entitled. This part especially rankled:
This year, Clinton will need to win back young people and the blue-collar bloc from Sanders. “In the 2008 race, there was a very fundamental difference with women and older voters,” the former aide said. “It’s much harder to bring around those people than it is the far left and young people.”
More hippie-punching. All the more reason I’ll never vote for her.
Yeah, that line about how easy it is to bring around the “far left and young people” struck me as well. Who, exactly, is it that they think has left the Party? Why do they think they have lost so much ground in t he states and lost their majorities in Congress?
I’m waiting for the begging to begin.
Don’t have time for a longer response/reaction, but just have to thank you, Lambert, for the detailed information in this post; it makes me realize how hungry I am for substance! I am climbing out of the funk last night’s contests put me into…
I think the Clinton counties in Illinois are where the Democratic Machine works and where there are a lot of black voters. See that one blue county in Eastern IL? That’s where Danville is, which is where hundreds of poor black people were shipped too as Chicago was closing it’s projects down.
The state voted essentially as I expected it to. The Machine would push Hillary, the rest of the state would be strong for Trump, Kasich, and Sanders (in the popular vote this was Kasich’s second best state after OH yesterday, but not good enough for him to get any delegates it looks like).
I don’t think Ohio is too surprising. Sanders won Michigan on the back of independent voters, in Ohio they have a very popular Governor who is getting the Ind votes. But hey, ignore the fact Bernie is attracting independent votes, Hillary is more electable idiots.
(I accidentally posted this as a reply before. hopefully that’s deleted and this is in the right spot now)
“The Sanders campaign has the platform. It has the organizers. It has the funding model. It has the mailing list. It has a big pile of money. Is there any particular reason for Sanders to fold, at all?”, asks L Strether.
My answer is no, not in the least bit. Win, lose or draw, he has said he is taking this to the convention floor, and even if Hillary hits the nomination numbers before the convention, she still has to run against a formidable national electorate in no mood for mealy mouthed BS. Sanders is a lifelong left wing grass roots organizer from civil disobedience to being a Socialist Party candidate from the local level, onto the House and now the Senate. He is NOT a quitter, but has blood flowing in his veins to campaign, time after time. His legacy from the beginning of his presidential run obviously included raising the issues and moving the discourse towards the left, with the added benefit of now being accepted nationally to an extent no one foresaw. His widely broadcast message has a national and international platform due to the skillful presidential campaign. The components of this skillful election machine can augment the general election in November to the advantage of the DNC.
Hillary right now has the advantage and the best that I can do is wait and see. The remaining 300 or so super-delegates that have not come out for Hillary are also waiting and seeing if Sanders has caught lightning in bottle, much like Obama. If he does, she will have to slog on, if they came out for her today, she could end this nomination process almost 3 months before the republican blood bath in Cleveland. Rested and able to attack the republicans as a whole and the remaining candidates in particular would be good for the party as much as her. But, the party as of today is NOT falling in line to put her almost over the top by putting a choke hold on Sanders hopes of getting these super-delegates that are patiently waiting in the wings. So, this indicates doubters in the party regarding Hillary’s viability and the cautiousness they approach this electoral year and its volatile, angry voting public. Nothing is a given, the old political calculus is useless. This is a period of discontinuity, very difficult to gauge, much less predict.
It is also indicative of those democrats, who are not Ivy League or their equivalents, and have to no hopes for big time neo-liberal paydays for them or their constituents. Enough democrats, as in the Progressive Caucus, which over laps with Black and Hispanic Caucus membership can get more out of the party as whole, as the democrats are being pushed up against a wall by the wildly radical reactionary republicans who are driving republicans out of their own party into retirement or cowing them with threats of primary internal opposition, ending their political careers. The guns to the heads of moderate republicans who are branded RINOs will be fully turned to the heads of all of the democrats to drive them from power on the national level once their party domination is more or less complete.
The DLC democrats can not fight this war by themselves, but must ally themselves with democrats who are not buying most or any of the neo-liberal economic agenda on trade, wages, cutting taxes and the general free ride for corporate America. If corporate America can’t and won’t make jobs, the federal government will do so, gaining the utmost loyalty of the people whose paychecks and benefits come from the Keynesian style non-military spending on infrastructure, higher education, and sustainable energy technology displacing fossil fuels once and for all. Bernie Sanders is raising a reserve army of politically disaffected and the young who are being roused to fight and work for their future, a future that could be strangled in the bath tub of reactionary republican attacks on federal and state government capacity to serve the public and further the plutocratic interests of capitalism.
Sanders can at least leave an institutional legacy of political will and determination to grab hold of the offices of power that comprise the state and improve them and expand them and watch over them so they will be guarded from the hollowing out by attacks from the austerity chasing right wing fiscal conservatives from both major parties.
Hillary has the advantage but, for all the gnashing of teeth and despair from last night, she increased her delegate lead by only about 100. Every delegate gained by Hillary puts Bernie further behind but her advantage—in terms of her strongest states—is now behind her, yesterday being the Ides of March and all that. Obviously, the Sanders campaign and Bernie supporters would want have wanted a better result but, as you’ve said, Sanders will be taking this contest to the convention—so the question is how much can he gain in the meantime. He is not folding and will not fold, at least for the usual reason of running out of funding.
Gr8 stuff…bernie keeps doing his ropeadope and hillbill keeps acting as if her actions as a republican at the 1968 convention and watergate after that are not remembered by the creepistani…
Is this the end of the whig and free soil parties ??
Do they devolve back to open warfare of the smoke filled room days…
Should el donaldo be worried about a modern suite 8f krew??
The bay of pigs fiasco took eichmann off the front pages…
will one dim sun shoot a missle and hit a mountain in canada to get his own reality show on hulu ?
The two leading candidates are hated by the inner republican acelastani…
gridlock will happen if the kochs and soros dont sit down and figure out how to feel the bern…
We are living in interesting times…
So Ohio voted for the spouse of the main who championed NAFTA and the governor who voted for it while he was in Congress AND at the same time these same voters said that “the economy” was the primary concern after millions of good-paying jobs left the Buckeye State?
No wonder the Dems hate their base. They are idiots.
+1
Trump can rebrand the Republicans as The Orange Party..
Trump can be the second Person of Color elected POTUS after the last Black POTUS..
Kerry’s Secret War Plan for Syria
Funny you should quote Susie Madrak since she supports Hilary Clinton and has been frequently critical of Bernie Sanders on Twitter. I don’t think she’s with Crooks and Liars any more.
Well, calling out Axelrove as she did was still a badass thing to do.
I rather like the idea of a party platform meaning much more than a person/candidate. That it be a binding document to elected party representatives. In fact I think party members should spend much more time penning, debating and voting on a party platform/policy/issues than candidates/individuals. But to pretend it has meaning now, or that Sanders people would not be wasting their time on that document is veal pen like. Not that I think you are or would willingly be a veal herder. Be careful what you ask of activists. Besides that last time I read the d party platform it was all about Obama, not much else. Sort of like picking the shreds of multiple discarded bad drafts of campaign speeches out of a trash can and pasting them back into something unintelligible. Best scrap it all, party included, and start over.
As for the D primary I don’t know what I dislike more in a state, winner take all or caucus. MO being the most egregious example last night. And at a glance it looked like Clinton won more Illinois delegates than number of votes justified?
Sanders and most of his peeps should have known you don’t join a Mafia (Dems) to reform it, much less make it honest.
Sanders badly under performed his poll numbers in Florida and Ohio, he performed about as expected in Missouri and Illinois and he outperformed his poll numbers by about ten points in North Carolina. This is according to my reading of the Real Clear Politics averaged poll numbers. As a native but former North Carolinian I was impressed with Sanders 13.8% loss margin in NC based on opinions from family members living in the state, new Republican voter suppression laws, and Clinton’s absolute stomping of Sanders in neighboring South Carolina and Virginia where she beat him by almost 50 and 30 points respectively.
I saw exit poll data that showed Sanders lost the black vote in NC by a 4:1 margin. As in the rest of the south I think that absolutely killed him in North Carolina and quite likely cost him the state. A quick glance at the North Carolina county map reveals a monolithic sea of Clinton counties and four distinct islands of Sanders support. The first three counties boasting meager Sanders victories are the stand-alone counties of Orange, New Hanover and Dare. Orange County is the home to liberal arts and lefty UNC Chapel Hill, New Hanover is the home of UNC Wilmington and a booming beach town over-populated with recent out of state immigrants. Dare County to my knowledge is only unusual in that is one of the few extremely white counties in the eastern part of the State. Really white; 94% white vs. 3% black in a state that averages 71% white vs. 22% black statewide. The third area of Sanders strength was a large cluster of 14 very white, rural, demographically homogeneous counties along the western Appalachian corridor of the state. In addition to being predominantly white, these Appalachians are mostly descended from Scottish hill-county clan people. Anti-establishment is in their blood. Sanders largest margin victory in a single county was in 90% white, 6% black Buncombe County, Buncombe County was smack in the middle of Sanders Appalachian pocket of support, but heavy Sanders support in Buncombe county makes perfect sense because Buncombe County contains the North Carolina outlier city of Asheville. Asheville is the southern version of Burlington Vermont. I’ve said that about the two towns for years actually. Overalled hillbilly bluegrass banjo pickers mingle comfortably with heavily tattooed vegan lesbian couples in this left-leaning town of beards, moonshine and microbrews. Sanders won by thirty points here.
Sanders diminishing loss margins in southern states are a testament to him making inroads in the southern black community, but unfortunately he’s out of time and states. Sanders is a niche regional Cola from Vermont who has no name recognition in the south and Clinton is Coke-a-Cola. With more time to introduce himself I think he could have been accepted and probably the preferred candidate of black southerners, but Sanders needed more than the meager eight months he gave himself to campaign and much more media attention to be taken seriously by this very conservative, suspicious demographic. It’s a damn shame. I think more time campaigning in the south really could have made a difference for him.
Interesting tidbit- my area- SW Virginia(on the lip of TN, NC, and WV) went for Sanders. I suspect it was Northern Virginia that carried Clinton. Not a big shocker considering her good buddy Terry is in the governor’s office.
Geographically and demographically it sounds like your neck of the woods resembles the Appalachian Sanders counties of NC. The wealthy DC burbs of N. Virginia are all crawling with slime ball politicos and lobbyists from DC. No wonder overpaid DC types would prefer an establishment Pol to keep their gravy train rolling. I find the wealth of DC’s outer burbs unseemly considering it’s all confiscated or rent extracted from more productive parts of the country.
Also a question not asked but perhaps should be for the sports fans… Are female republicans switching/ voting for Hillary in the primary?
Born & raised near Youngstown, Ohio, like right on the divide between urban and rural, with some suburban neighbors.
Historically, we’re Democratic because unions, but I was wholly un-surprised to see these counties went Trump over Kasich. Economically, we’ve been on constant decline since the mid 1970s, so there’s a lot of disaffection and apathy about politics. One of the only politicians people in the area like is former Dem rep Traficant, who went to jail for corruption. But he brought home the pork, back when that was possible, so he ran from jail for re-election and did pretty well considering. (He also has famously bizarre hair)
Because free trade was so disastrous for the area, I was really expecting that history to translate into a Bernie win, but maybe the apathy won out, I don’t know.
Turnout overall was down from expectations, something like ten to fourteen percentage points below 2008, and Bernie says he wins when turnout is up, so. Another problem for Bernie is that young people, especially those w/ any education, tend to leave, as I have.
The proportion of Republican voters shocked people. “Mahoning County has 14,663 registered Republicans, but on Tuesday 34,503 voters voted on the Republican side out of 70,927 total voters. On the Democrat[ic] side, there are 40,958 registered Democrats but there were only 36,060 people who voted Democrat[ic] on Tuesday.” (src)
—
What really scares me about Ohio — yeah, Kasich won, but Trump had about 50,000 more votes than Hillary, in this, one of two key swing states in the country … How many of those Kasich voters go Trump in the general, how many Hillary? (Altho hey, I’m still pulling for Bernie. Still donating, plan to phone bank. Why give up over a 250 delegate gap, when there are about 2,000 delegates left?)
Clinton won Mahoning County, where Youngstown is, 21,000 vs 14,000 votes. In Trumbull, it was closer, 18,000 vs 15,000 approximately — much smaller contingent of African Americans in Trumbull. (Bernie actually had very nearly as many votes as Trump did in Trumbull county, my home, so that made me feel a lil better.)
Why would Bernie not win in Youngstown, when almost no voters in the country could need him more? My guesses: Trump enthusiasm; worry about Trump so people gravitate twd “safe choice”, Hillary; low information re: Bernie & low Democratic turnout — or maybe just cynicism.
Probably cynicism.
I have seen reports of crossover voting in Mahoning on the twitter; I didn’t include it in the post because I couldn’t nail down the numbers in time.
“What really scares me about Ohio — yeah, Kasich won, but Trump had about 50,000 more votes than Hillary, in this, one of two key swing states in the country … How many of those Kasich voters go Trump in the general, how many Hillary?”
Great observation, but I am more perplexed and worried than I am scared. I am still unconvinced that Trump is the greater evil when compared to Hillary. Hell, Ted Cruz scares the bezjezers out of me, but Trump not as much. Trump is ideologically agnostic and politically heterodox, but yeah, I worry that he could turn out to be a Mussolini or Hitler. Nothing much I can do about it at the moment so I am trying to not worry. Like you, Sanders is my guy. He’s got my money and my support right up until the convention and then after that, if he can’t get his name on the ticket I will throw my vote away on Jill Stein or whatever lefty party has the best shot at some federal election dollars in 2020. I am firmly in the ‘never Hillary camp’. I would cast a vote for the Anti-Christ first.
I agree completely.
Let Trump win. Hillary puts the left to sleep (Again. Look at 8 years of Obama), Trump would wake it up (maybe)
Tonight I was dragged through the coals by my old English teacher and another friend for saying I’d never vote for HC. I explained all the reasons why(thank you, NC!), then they shot back with “well, it’s your right…” and that a vote/write in for Bernie or anyone else is a vote for the GOP-as if I was some kind of idiot or spoiled child. I even explained the lesser of two evils, and that she is actually the bigger evil and why, and that I refuse to play the blue good/red bad game any longer. Unreal. So tired of this. These were highly educated people, too. Very disappointing.
Highly educated perhaps but still poorly informed. “Highly educated” is often just another way of saying “extremely indoctrinated”.
Hurlary and her consort Billzebub appeal to that crowd.
“It’s just that evil eye that’s got you in its sway” — Jagger/Richards
In my view the bigger evil is having a Democratic party that has ratcheted ever rightward in the past 30 years, secure in knowledge that people like your old English teacher and your friend will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee because the GOP nominee is always “more evil.” (And the Supreme Court is always “at stake.”) How exactly has that strategy worked out?
Nixon in a pantsuit.
Hell of a progressive party we got here.
That is exactly the point I attempted to make to them but it fell on deaf(or in denial) ears.
I too feel Trump is preferable to Cruz who is a dangerous fanatic with a messiah complex and could justify blowing up the world.
Could not ever stomac voting for Hillary. She makes my skin crawl.
Is anyone reading Billmon1 twitter feed? He’s concerned about the effect on democracy of the R process of selecting a nominee. Uh…. crap on a cracker, how is selecting nominees through private clubs run by oligarchs ever democracy? Jeesh.
Springtime for Trump!
A Gay romp with Ivanka and Donald at Jekyll Island!
(Boy would I love to see the late Dick Shawn do Trump.)
CHORUS:
America was having trouble
What a sad, sad story
Needed a new leader to restore
It’s former glory.
Where, oh, where was he?
Where could that man be?
We looked around and then we found
The man for you and me
LEAD TENOR:
And now it’s
Springtime for Donald and Amerika
Mainstreet is happy and gay!
We’re marching to a faster pace
Lookout here comes the Master Race!
Etc. Etc.
Trump as Zero Mostel wouldnt take too much work .. Would be well cast as Max actually, he’s a natural!
In how many of the States’ Democratic races up for grabs last night were Trump supporters ( or other Repubs and Independents) allowed to cast a ballot? Could the kerfuffle about what happened in Chicago have translated in any of these States into a Sanders loss/Clinton win because cross-over voters for Sanders by Reps and Indies that really can’t tolerate Clinton suddenly evaporated?
Whatever, what remains most probable is the US gets a President who actively conspired to take down Libya as per her own e-mail – in order to further the interests of France/NATO/US, which eyed Libya’s gold, oil and water as resources to be ‘liberated’ from control of the Libyan people. And with the rest of the globe re-trenching like mad to stay afloat, we get to watch the most powerful woman on earth beat the living crap out of all the global ‘losers’. Yuck.
I forgot to include the key metric: Sanders contributions. If they hold up, he keeps going, no question.
Already chipped in today. I’m sure I won’t be the only one.
Another Illinoisan here.
The explanation offered by other Illinois voters (re: counties controlled by the Dem machine, esp. Cook) seems possible, though I was a little surprised at results given the unpopularity of Chicago’s mayor. Other counties which went for Clinton will each have had their own demographics/racial mix/political background, except perhaps for the 8-10 counties along the Mississippi River – the numbers were very close in many of these, and if Sanders had had another week, he might well have taken them as well.
Peoria County, which went for Clinton and Cruz, is strongly Republican (18th – IL, Bob Michel-Ray LaHood-Aaron Schock (!) – Darin LaHood – hasn’t had a Dem congressman in about 80 years). The fact that Sanders got only 1000 fewer votes than Clinton, when considered in light of the county’s strongly conservative political profile, is pretty remarkable.
While disappointing at the Presidential primary result level, there was good news out of Illinois: Tammy Duckworth (IL-8th) won the Dem Senate primary. The DNC seems to see this seat, currently held by Republican Mark Kirk, as contestable.
Here’s one possible factor I see in the Sanders turnout in Illinois and Ohio.
1) The anti-Trump hysteria peaked in the last few days leading up to Tuesday.
2) Organizations like Moveon (and many more) decided to focus on the evil of the Trump rather than on the Democratic contest.
3) I suspect that the fluffier of the Sanders-leaning independents were more susceptible than the Clintonites (primarily registered Ds) to the idea of asking for a Republican ballot to stop yet another next Hitler.
It looked to me, off the top of my head, as if the gap between turnout in the R and D primaries was even larger than the wide gap that’s been common all year.
I’m late to the party, but I think the result in Illinois is certainly explicable. Sanders lost the state by 5M votes; in Chicago he lost by 7M votes. So Chicago gave the state to Clinton. The strong grip of the Dem party machine in the city, together with the older African American vote going to the candidate that had been campaigning there much longer on local issues, and perhaps the lower youth turnout, is what I suspect swung it. In Michigan, the margin in Detroit was much smaller — Sanders won the rest of the state, especially the rural areas, and I think the same pattern showed in Illinois.
The elephant in the room: why is no one mentioning possible election tampering? It’s not a party thing, it’s a local/opportunity-driven thing. For example, Cuyahoga County has a shocking track record in that regard. Ditto for various FL counties. Mail-in votes are notoriously deficient in chain of custody in ballots. Potential fraud vectors are numerous, and include software, hardware, firmware, changes to voter register, and too many “social engineering” tactics to mention (e.g., Clinton caucus leader telling Sanders voters they could leave, and then having fewer Sanders voters when the final count is done; or FL voters showing up to vote being told it was “only an open registration for the Republican primary” and D ballots were hidden from view; Iowa caucus results being phoned in that differed from videos/photos taken of the actual local results; administrative decisions regarding distribution of voting machines, or closing/opening of polling places; or other kinds of dirty tricks).
New Hampshire (!) still uses the same dodgy machines, kept in custody of the same dodgy company–using technology that is easily hackable, as demonstrated and discussed on http://www.blackboxvoting.org And that is just one example.
Because the whole topic of election fraud has for some reason dropped off the radar, there is little or no awareness of the kinds of vigilance that are needed, particularly at the primary/caucus stage. There are things citizens of any political persuasion can do to improve the situation, and avoid at least some misdeeds–but they need to educate themselves and plan accordingly.
It feels like it is not PC to bring up this topic nowadays–but the fact is that little or nothing has changed regarding the vulnerabilities, issues tend to be local (thus not reported nationally) and so it is being ignored.
Careful tampering of a small portion of ballots/votes in carefully selected locations can do the job–a few votes here, a few votes there, having a celebrity show up at a polling place and close it down for a few hours, etc. . .
It is discouraging but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.