I don’t know if that’s an argument that will necessarily work for Trump in the general. Previous to now one of the elites Hillary was cozy with was Donald Trump. I’m sure its an argument he’ll make, in some borderline gibberish way. But its not a comfortable or smart move for him. I don’t know that Hillary is adept enough to flip it around on him in a way that reflects well on her. But I don’t think it necessarily makes any gains for Trump. The guy is leading the pack for the GOP by reliably winning only 1/3 of Republicans. A fair number of people can be expected to simply fall in line behind the guy for partisan reasons, but I expect he’ll be hard pressed to expand his voter base beyond that rabid 1/3 and party line voters. So far it seems like the vast majority of left leaning Americans/Democrats, independents, and a noticeable chunk of Republicans are all vehemently opposed to his existence.
Whats suspicious about it? The primaries are controlled and scheduled by state governments (caucuses merely scheduled), roughly break down this way every year, and in all likely hood had their precise schedule set in stone long before the current candidates were in play.
See also the last rounds schedules:
And the concept of Super Tuesday. An idea that was in part instituted to block together a large number of Southern States early in the primary schedule.
It surely wasn’t so heavily tilted towards southern states early on last time around. Maybe I’m being overly suspicious, but I find it hard to shake the idea that DWS and the DNC have tried to help their preferred candidate win early.
Super Tuesday last time was much, much bigger, and included many non-Southern states.
(although it seems that maybe 2008 was the exception - NB this is only the third election cycle I’ve been through here…)
I’m just glad that Sanders is going to go all the way to the convention anyway.
Couldn’t some of the skew be Republicans voting for Sanders because they want the GOP nominee to run against Sanders and not Clinton? (Or, as was discussed by a Scalzi blog commenter, perhaps some HRC fans voted in the GOP primary because they “knew” HRC had it in the bag.)
I don’t think there’s a mechanism in pre-election polls to ask voters if they’re going to vote in the opposition’s primary; they’ll always ask what their party affiliation is and who in their party they would vote for.
I dunno…I wouldn’t write off his appeal among folks who would otherwise vote for Bernie. A lot of those folks in Michigan might turn around and be Trump supporters before they’re Hillary supporters. And if Trump’s rhetoric gets 2/3rds of republicans to show up, and Hillary loses the half of the Dems because she looks like a tool of the party rather than someone who shares the agenda of the people…Trump wins.
It’s not the most likely scenario, but it’s much more iffy than I feel safe with.
The turnout on both sides was yuuge, I doubt many people were voting in the other party’s primaries. Sanders outperformed the polls by 10-25%, that’s 100,000 - 250,000 voters.
It varies year to year, I’d suggest you look into it. I couldn’t find a useful chart of all the primary dates for more than a single year, so I just went with 08. And your definitely being overly suspicious. For anything untoward to be going on, most of our actual state governments would have had to collude with only one of two parties (and in many cases not the party that has significant control/influence in that state). To favor a single candidate out of many. And they would have likely had to do this before any of those candidates were involved. Its conspiracy thinking. I’m seeing a lot of that this year, and its definitely not helping anyone.
That does concern me. They’re both working the same anti-establishment racket, have their base in the same demographic (though with apparently opposing politics), and in surprisingly similar places. And I’ve heard some disturbingly pro-Trump crap out of die hard Berners. But I don’t seriously think anyone is losing half their own party. Both Hillary and Bernie are polling well above that in terms of support in their own party. Trump isn’t but it’d be relatively unprecedented to see that sort of shift. Particularly with the way things are so partisan right now. Something major would have to happen or change between June and November for something like that to happen. When we talk about party voters abandoning a given candidate we’re largely talking about small percentage points.
Sounds like there’s definitely been an effort to give the south more of a voice this time.
Like I said, I’m just glad that Sanders is determined to go all the way to the convention regardless.
I still think all the states should vote at the same time. I don’t think any region should have more of a say than any other. We all have the same president and the general election is held on the same day everywhere, we should all get the same chance to say who we’d like as a candidate.
Maybe I’m just a bitter PNWerner. FTA:
Nonetheless, other regions are eyeing the Southern model. Washington state Secretary of State Kim Wyman failed last year to persuade several neighboring states to coordinate their primaries but plans another push in the next cycle.
“We could have a Pac-12,” she joked, referring to a Pacific Coast-oriented college athletic conference. “Or at least get some of the Western states to go on the same day, so candidates might actually come and visit us and campaign.”
Even if he wont get the election he is giving a strong enough showing that the party platform will have to move left to keep voters from sitting on their hands. Mind you as much as I like Bernie, I would vote for a rabid weasel if that is what the Dem’s nominated over voting for either Trump or Cruz.
Yeah it’s good. Whichever candidate makes it out will be in much more solid shape for the general, and anything that legitimately pushed the DNC leftwards is likely to be good for the country as a whole. But I do worry that the tone of the DNC side campaign at the moment will hurt the eventual nominee come general election time. For that reason I think its probably paradoxically helpful that it seems to be garnishing so much less attention that the GOP clusterfuck.
Yes that’s largely been the point of the thing since 1988. States drop in, states drop out. Other regions become involved, or have their own goals. Some times there’s a less concerted effort from the South. Sometimes fewer or more states are involved. But at the core is a regular attempt by a block of Southern states to increase their influence and extract promises from candidates (and not just for President) by all voting on the same day. It increases the overall prominence of that particular vote, the media attention it garners, and its influence over the nomination process. If there’s anything sinister there its in particular states attempting to increase their influence over the federal government by manipulating the nomination process. Not a years long conspiracy to hurt Bernie Sanders.
Which is why your otherwise right. The nomination process is fucked. But the primaries and caucuses are in large part regulated, sometimes government administered, events conducted by private organizations. Any where we’ve gone and embedded political parties in government process is messy as hell. And caucuses in particular are just about the messiest, least democratic, and most fucked aspect of the whole thing (which is why most states abandoned them). If the public is going to get a voice in picking nominees for the parties. We should vote the primaries on the same day, it should be controlled exactly like the general election. Boards of elections, rules, over site etc.
That Hedgehog looks like he might be a Muslim/born in Canada. I’m penciling in Marmot:
Bernie is talking in similar terms. Hillary will need to talk about these things if she hopes to win in November, to give the people who need hope a better hope than the Orange Man. When she talks about these things, though, nobody trusts her. That’s not an insurmountable gap, but it’s a gap Trump will exploit for all its worth.
