One of the reasons the DNC has superdelegates, besides insider crap is anyone with less than 59% of the delegate/vote is considered a weak candidate, they may be numerically ahead but they are not riding a groundswell of support to the oval office. The DNC wanted the ability to pick the stronger candidate in the case of a close / dead heat primary. This is exactly whats going on. Hillary is a weak candidate. She literally might be the only democrat that can not beat trump. Bernie beats trump in all polls by good margin, Hillary is a dead heat within the margin of error. And she is not somone who is likely to unite the party. Her primary campaign is âI am not Trumpâ While true its hardly a stellar history of good works to campaign on.
Sheâs not going to be indicted. I donât see it happening. As much as I think she did make a rather large whoopsie with that decision, I donât see the FBI and the DOJ (which has ultimate say in whether or not a criminal complaint gets filed, or whether this ever sees a Grand Jury. The FBI does not charge people) thinking that this warrants a substantial expenditure of resources to go after her. Sheâs not a whistle-blower, she has the clout and the resources to make the government hesitant to pursue her.
Donât get me wrong, Iâm in the tank for Bernie, but Hillary just isnât going down on this, except in the land public opinion.
Thank you for speaking for âpeople.â
Arenât announced superdelegate votes basically political endorsements?
Anyway, I still donât see why weâre arguing. My point is that this is, sadly, probably too little, too late, to have much of an impact on Bernie winning the nomination. You seem to agree that itâs too little â that it wouldnât have changed anyoneâs mind â and anything that doesnât result in a crushing victory for Bernie in California is, pretty much by definition, too late.
If our differing perceptions on the value of superdelegate votes in bringing out voters has led you to believe that I think that elites should have more say than ordinary voters, thatâs not what I believe at all. If Bernie loses the popular vote, I donât think he should get the nomination based on superdelegates. But I do, rightly or wrongly, believe that this kind of endorsement could have helped swing the race earlier in the campaign, and I donât think that shows any disrespect to the role of the average voter in selecting the nominee.
If the superdelegates had broken, say, 60:40 for Clinton instead, the narrative would have been very different from the start. Her victory was fait accompli from day one according to the press. Without that, who knows what would have happened?
[quote=ânimelennar, post:23, topic:79070â]
Anyway, I still donât see why weâre arguing. My point is that this is, sadly, probably too little, too late, to have much of an impact on Bernie winning the nomination. You seem to agree that itâs too little â that it wouldnât have changed anyoneâs mind â and anything that doesnât result in a crushing victory for Bernie in California is, pretty much by definition, too late.
[/quote]I just donât buy the idea that Clinton won because people voted based on who the superdelegates were supporting.
That was the moment when she started running in the general election. She clearly believes sheâll have the requisite number of delegates after NJ votes.
Exactly. If a candidate gets less than 59% of the vote, that candidate is considered âweakâ and can be replaced with a âweakerâ candidate.
I agreed with Sanders when he said it. My opinion has always been either the emails will turn out to be a thing or they wonât. The audit that came out last week (two weeks ago?) gave tons of details about how the server was set up, by whom and why. So I agree with @Kimmo that they should either indict Clinton or announce that they will not be doing so before the convention.
Well, according to the press, from day one, there wasnât actually anyone else running. Itâs not really the superdelegates that skewed the result (they may have helped a little). At the point when Sanders had 6 of the top 7 rallies in terms of attendance (some republican had 6th place) you basically couldnât even find a story about him. It made me think of that time when Russell Brand held a rally in London with 50k people at it and the papers didnât report it the next day. If Brand had never gone political the papers would have reported him signing autographs for two dozen fans.
Look, if you want to intellectualize the foreign policy portion of this campaign, let me suggest relying on Walter Russell Meadâs typologies. On foreign policy, this election is about Clinton uniting the Hamiltonians and Wilsonians, the Jacksonians finding their savior in Trump, and the Jeffersonians pulling their hair out in despair. But Iâm not even sure thatâs completely accurate. As Iâve said for a while now, trying to use Trump as a crowbar to open up a larger debate on foreign policy wonât work, because he is the worst messenger ever.
Clinton gave a good foreign policy speech. Just donât think about it too much, because her core argument is âIâm an adult and therefore not Donald Trump.â
The thing about Trumpâs isolationism is that a war over âhonorâ is still a war.
Fair enough. In my opinion, the media created a narrative that it wasnât possible for Bernie to be elected, which hurt him, and Clintonâs lead in the superdelegates was a large part of that narrative, but I have absolutely no proof for that assertion.
Oh, Oh! Pick me! Pick me! Iâll prove it to @GideonTJones! Itâs commonly known as the âBandwagon effectâ and it is a very well documented and researched aspect of human behavior, especially in voting:
Bandwagon effect - Wikipedia
Another societal behavior than can have a large effect on elections is information cascade, which is an aspect of human herd behavior.
Information cascade - Wikipedia
All of this can best be summarized by the influence of conformity on humans, specifically on a large societal, herd, or group scale.
The influence of conformity in groups
The application of conformity is key for understanding group influence in political behavior. Decision making within a group is largely influenced by conformity. It is theorized to occur based on two motives; normative social influence and informational social influence (Asch, 1955).[26] Chance of conformity is influenced by several factors; an increase in group size but only to a certain degree at which it plateaus, and degree of unanimity and commitment to the group. Therefore, the degree of popularity of a political group can be influenced by its existing size and the believed unanimity and commitment by the public of the already existing members. The degree by which the group conforms as a whole can also be influenced by the degree of individuation of its members. Political psychology - Wikipedia
8 years ago, Clinton also had most of the superdelegates pledge to her. Yet, Obama was able to win the popular vote and the superdelegates followed. Sanderâs real problem is that he canât win the popular vote. The superdelegates are a distraction.
Itâs kind of odd. Iâve been watching all this from safely in Canada and the news just behaved very strangely with regard to Bernie Sanders. It was so different from how the news media here behaves even toward the Green Party (who currently have exactly one seat and will probably not be forming the government any time soon). Thereâs honesty about chances, but few people declare anything for certain until the votes are in.
American news channels declared Hillary the winner extremely early on, almost before the superdelegates were pledged. They all but refused to cover Sanders as even a possible candidate. Every early victory he had was followed by a commentator declaring something along the lines of, âThis doesnât matter at all, Clintonâs the only viable candidate for the general election.â That kind of thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyone who was on the fence but had even the slightest tendency to vote strategically would bail on Sanders, hearing that rhetoric repeated all through February and March.
Even stranger, this was even as the news gave Trump every bit of publicity he wanted right from the start. What were they trying to accomplish?
What really grinds my gears about the whole process is this. Because of how the primaries are all staggered and so closely followed by the media, even the appearance of losing early momentum can sink an otherwise excellent candidate who simply didnât have the name recognition or took time to spin up their campaign.
If all the primaries were held simultaneously with the convention sometime in June or July (as many other countries do), the results would be much more fair. Youâd have to have a ranked ballot, so that people not at the convention could still be counted in second and third votes, but it wouldnât require much else other than a somewhat different approach to the campaign trail. Hell, you could even still have superdelegates. Several of the Canadian political parties did until fairly recently. And even in states that donât do primaries, you could still just have the local caucus meet and make their choices known remotely (or attend the convention themselves if they have the resources).
Have to protect their investments, you see. They all donated to her campaign over that of Sanders.
Though I found even Canadian news media was a little weird on Sanders. I remember a comparison to Trump or two (outsiders, you see), and some comments about him being "radicalâ when he is basically advocating for the most mainstream of mainstream Canadian policies.
Sure, but isnât that radical when compared to most mainstream American policies? (To put it another way: in American, Hillary Clinton is considered a liberal. What would she be in Canada or any other civilized country?)
Bernie has a good history of working with both sides of the aisle. And with the GOP looking pretty rough-shod right now I think many will gladly work with him to at least gain favor within constituents. Bernie isnât considered a run-of-the-mill DemocratâŚ
[quote=âActionAbe, post:22, topic:79070â]
I donât see the FBI and the DOJ (which has ultimate say in whether or not a criminal complaint gets filed, or whether this ever sees a Grand Jury. The FBI does not charge people) thinking that this warrants a substantial expenditure of resources to go after her.
[/quote]Not to mention that A)only about a hundred of the messages on the server were actually sent by her, none of which contained information that was classified at the time, and B)No other information found on the server was classified higher than âConfidentialâ at the time, and C)much of the information was also circulating around other State Department computers, which were not considered secure(for that purpose, at least), and D)part of the proposed charge requires intent to remove and retain, but thereâs no evidence Clinton was aware of the contents of the messages(which, again, were not classified at the time), no evidence that she should have, and the argument that the server constitutes intent to remove and retain is extremely ropey and completely untested at best.
Bit hard to indict someone(or at least, a governmental public figure) when - to the best of anyoneâs knowledge, and according to the known evidence and established precedent - they havenât actually committed a crime.
Basically every expert on that area of the law has also said that itâs enormously unlikely sheâll be indicted. Ex-DOJ officials who handled that type of case think itâs unlikely. Prior cases involving mishandling of federal records indicate itâs unlikely.
Chances are slim, to say the very least.
Something about this article seemed so pathetic to me.
I seem to recall that there were several high profile corruption cases where the plea agreement was contingent upon resigning from office. This strikes me as rather dangerous.
