American Politics

[SasaS]

Why is Biden doing so badly all of a sudden? Is ti because of Pete?

[TheHowieLama]

1 hour ago, sir roger said:

Does Tulsi's 3% polling mean she gets onto the next debate ?

No

[sir roger]

57 minutes ago, SasaS said:

Why is Biden doing so badly all of a sudden? Is ti because of Pete?

Think it is a bit of that ( and the Klobuchar surge ) , a bit because he has been lacklustre in debate / interviews and to be fair neither Iowa or New Hampshire were the 'type' of state that suited him.

[sir roger]

1 minute ago, TheHowieLama said:

No

Even if she promised to wear a bikini ?

[SasaS]

With that thighs?

[sir roger]

I reckon I could cope 

[SasaS]

There was some recent photo in a trouser suit which made me doubt her vegan credentials.

[Anubis]

38 minutes ago, SasaS said:

There was some recent photo in a trouser suit which made me doubt her vegan credentials.

Why? Was it made of hamburgers?

[SasaS]

No. She was covered head to toe in prosciutto.

[moof]

2-0 for sanders is a decent start. The states become more diverse as they move westwards, should only be a positive for him - the next two being Nevada and South Carolina. Will be interesting to see if Biden can claw back any ground. His campaign has been lacklustre to put it kindly, and he must be starting to run out of cash.

 

The Klob-surge was nice but can anybody honestly pretend they can see her or mayo Pete, or for that matter Biden or Warren having the remotest chance at defeating the Donald?

 

The biggest threat at this point is Bloomberg and his self dealing billion dollar dump. Can’t think of a bigger indictment of the system than if he gets anywhere near the nomination

[TheHowieLama]

We are fucked. And not just in the presidential election either.

Sanders can't even get a majority of Dems excited now - trying to win Senate seats on the ticket of a "socialist" is suicide.

[SasaS]

And then there were ten.

 

Who will pick up Yang voters?

[TheHowieLama]

52 minutes ago, moof said:

2-0 for sanders is a decent start.

It is especially noteworthy in that some other fella got more delegates on the back of two "losses."

[moof]

10 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

It is especially noteworthy in that some other fella got more delegates on the back of two "losses."

Yes, “democracy” has some funny quirks 

[cloggypop]

12 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

He was a big Minor Threat and Fugazi guy Beto.  

https://coriky.bandcamp.com/album/coriky?fbclid=IwAR1uViive7-nUxXx-UhDnJkySvPMDFYTqrqX0avt6ANgws0wtsNQQy6MkQI

[TheHowieLama]

The Iowa Democratic Party, in letters sent Wednesday to the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, agreed to begin a partial recanvass that both campaigns asked for earlier this week.

The decision comes more than a week since the Iowa caucuses, marred by faulty technology and arcane rules, descended into chaos. It took the party days to release the full count of votes and multiple campaigns highlighted errors in those counts after they were released.

 

What a clusterfuck.

[TheHowieLama]

The head of Iowa Dem party resigns -- still no final tally.

[Red Phoenix]

 

[Red Phoenix]

From The Atlantic :

 

Quote

Judging by media coverage and the comments of party luminaries, you might think Democrats are bitterly polarized over Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid. Last month, Hillary Clinton declared that “nobody likes” the Vermont senator. Last week, James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said he was “scared to death” of the Sanders campaign, which he likened to “a cult.” Since the beginning of the year, news organization after news organization has speculated that Sanders’s success may set off a Democratic “civil war.”   

 

But polls of Democratic voters show nothing of the sort. Among ordinary Democrats, Sanders is strikingly popular, even with voters who favor his rivals. He sparks less opposition—in some cases far less—than his major competitors. On paper, he appears well positioned to unify the party should he win its presidential nomination.

So why all the talk of civil war? Because Sanders is far more divisive among Democratic elites—who prize institutional loyalty and ideological moderation—than Democratic voters. The danger is that by projecting their own anxieties onto rank-and-file Democrats, party insiders are exaggerating the risk of a schism if Sanders wins the nomination, and overlooking the greater risk that the party could fracture if they engineer his defeat.  

Strange as it sounds, Sanders may be the least polarizing candidate in the presidential field, at least according to surveys of ordinary Democrats. A Monmouth University poll last week found not only that Sanders’s favorability rating among Democrats nationally—71 percent—was higher than his five top rivals’, but also that his unfavorability rating—19 percent—was tied for second lowest. Sanders’s net favorability rating was six points higher than Elizabeth Warren’s, 16 points higher than Joe Biden’s, 18 points higher than Pete Buttigieg’s, 23 points higher than Amy Klobuchar’s, and a whopping 40 points higher than that of Michael Bloomberg, whom more than a third of Democratic voters viewed unfavorably. (By contrast, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn—whom Sanders’s critics often cite as a cautionary tale—enjoyed the support of only 56 percent of his own party members in the months leading up to December’s British election.)

A Quinnipiac poll earlier this month found similarly favorable results for Sanders. Among Democrats nationally, only Warren enjoyed higher net favorability ratings; on that measure, Sanders outpaced Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg. (The pollsters didn’t ask about Klobuchar.) And according to a recent USA Today/IPSOS survey, Sanders is the candidate who Democrats say best shares their values.

 

Regular Democrats Just Aren’t Worried About Bernie

 

[SasaS]

15 hours ago, Red Phoenix said:

From The Atlantic :

 

 

It may be that Sanders is best poised to unite Democrats because most of his supporters fiercely reject anybody else, whilst supporters of other candidates are mostly not particularly hostile to other candidates, including Sanders.

 

[Red Phoenix]

7 hours ago, SasaS said:

most of his supporters fiercely reject anybody else

 

Not surprised looking at the rest of them. I liked Warren originally but after the problems she's had with Sanders and seeing some of her other comments during the campaign I wouldn't like to see her as president. No other candidate is going to fight for medicare for all like he is doing either, or is even bothered about it. That and some other areas probably explain why no other candidate is worth it for his supporters.

[Red Phoenix]

Sanders is taking on (his own words) : wall street, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, fossil fuel industry, military industrial complex, prison industrial complex, democratic establishment.

 

No other candidate says this. Maybe because in one of more of those areas they'd rather leave them untouched, or tinker around with them a bit but not make any change that big. But supporters of Sanders believe that he'll genuinely take them all on, and that's maybe why for them there's no other good enough alternative.

[Jose Jones]

1 minute ago, Red Phoenix said:

Sanders is taking on (his own words) : wall street, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, fossil fuel industry, military industrial complex, prison industrial complex, democratic establishment.

 

No other candidate says this. Maybe because in one of more of those areas they'd rather leave them untouched, or tinker around with them a bit but not make any change that big. But supporters of Sanders believe that he'll genuinely take them all on, and that's maybe why for them there's no other good enough alternative.

The problem is of course, that if he does become elected, there's very little chance that the rest of the establishment would go along with him.  The senate or house could be Republican controlled, states can block things and the full power of the corporate lobby sector in whichever particular field he's interested in taking on will be unleashed in the media and courts.

If supporters think Bernie is going to change things, they may end up very disappointed in him when only little changes are made.

[TheHowieLama]

40 minutes ago, Red Phoenix said:

Sanders is taking on (his own words) : wall street, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, fossil fuel industry, military industrial complex, prison industrial complex, democratic establishment.

 

No other candidate says this. Maybe because in one of more of those areas they'd rather leave them untouched, or tinker around with them a bit but not make any change that big. But supporters of Sanders believe that he'll genuinely take them all on, and that's maybe why for them there's no other good enough alternative.

He has said that the entire time he has been in office. Check his record on delivery.

[moof]

What, he hasn’t been able to defeat all those lads by himself? Fuckin loser