Sanders declares victory in Iowa caucus as final results trail in

boing
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Although things get weird. Remember that Trump won the nomination based on the fact that the blue states fielded delegates proportional to their population, not to the party size in those states. He had to appeal to a rather small voter minority there to swing a large number of delegates.

I don’t know whether there’s a corresponding strategy of a Democratic nominee selling to the Democratic minority in, say, the Deep South or the deep-red flyover country.

That situation can wind up dysfunctional for both parties - choosing candidates that, at least initially, a majority of the party opposes. And it’s one reason that I register as a Republican in NY - my primary vote counts relatively more, and I can cast it for whoever appears the least insane. For a Presidential race it doesn’t matter - New York’s primary is too late, so the outcome is usually decided by that point. But ‘down ballot’ is important too!

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Yeah but there’s little indication that they had much control of the process. Remember that Trump didn’t do particularly well in the early offing, even with a disproportionate share of delegates in certain races.

He basically didn’t pull more than 30% of votes until the field significantly narrowed. Puttering along with just enough delegates to stay in until other candidates knocked each other out the race.

We tend to put a lot of focus on the fact that Trump won the nomination, and the election. And where. But not necessarily on how. A significant reason he made it far enough into the primary to eventually start building support was a very big, very messy field. Major GOP factions were splitting their vote between unstable candidates, winners were low to no margin.

Had there been fewer candidates, with more definitive leads. Trump wouldn’t have been getting delegates at all in early contests. And to a certain extent he was just on hand, having neither underperformed or over performed when most people dropped.

So I think it was less “target these specific places to build a lead” than “target the only plausible places to stay in it”. They were effective and that was smart, but it wasn’t the masterful, sweeping path to the nomination we sometimes say it is.

Yes and no. For nomination purposes there are deep red states with lots of delegates, and many states (particularly caucus states) over represent rural districts when they do the proportional delegate thing.

That’s a big part of how Sanders performed as he did in 2016, a disproportionate amount of his wins and delegates came out of rural counties, caucus states, and red states.

This has been less of a feasible strategy in Democratic contests than GOP one. The Democrats traditionally had more winner take all primaries, and sent a larger portion of delegates to the winner. Specifically to avoid these sort of split results.

Sanders made a big nasty stink about how delegates were distributed, and I think there are no winner take all contests this year. And several states, including Iowa made changes to apportionment to spread delegates around the field more evenly.

That might have just bit him in the ass. I haven’t checked (cause ultimately its not all that important), but under the 2016 rules he might have gotten a definitive victory based on his share of the votes. And Buttigieg did as well as he did in Iowa by doing exactly this, focusing on a large number of smaller districts with disproportionate share of the state convention delegates.

Basically Bernie did the Hillary this go round, and mayor Pete did the Bernie. With a system intended to be friendlier to Bernies.

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They also had the ‘superdelegate’ system largely so that the party leadership could override a possibly perverse result from a tightly-contested multiway race. But we know how well that has been received.

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There are still super delegates. There are fewer of them but still enough to potentially prevent a Trump. And they’ve been agressive about changing who is a superdelegate. So its a lot more diverse group, less stocked with big money donors and 90 year old incumbents.

Part of why I’m not too worried about the changes. Superficially, especially after Iowa, things look a lot more like the GOP 2016 primary. Big field, no clear favorites, at least a few crazy assholes. Delegate breakdowns that allow for messier results.

But the system as it is still isn’t as bizarre and uncontrolled as the GOP approach. It’s causing some issues but there should be some benefits too. Especially in how the changes on Super Delegates will probably realign them with the public and make them carry less media weight.

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When asked why he was declaring victory despite the neck-and-neck delegate count, he told reporters “because I got 6,000 more votes.”

This statement by Sanders depresses me. It shows that he obviously can’t become president. He simply makes too much sense.

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Well, I would have agreed with you a week ago, but I was thinking about this the last couple of days and my thinking has changed. Buttgieg was always going to do well in Iowa, but his huge lead over Biden and Klobuchar, and the low Iowa turnout (which I suspect is mainly of moderate-conservatives), spells real trouble for the moderate wing of the party. Even if Buttigieg’s strength falls quite a lot over the next couple of primaries, which we all think is likely, it makes the race on that end a real race. Whether or not Bloomberg becomes a factor, I think that split will keep any one moderate candidate from being dominant. Meanwhile, the Sanders-Warren split that people were talking about isn’t happening. In other circumstances we might have thought that Warren could have been an alternative for Biden supporters as he faltered, but again Buttigieg has buttigieged in there as well.

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Good, since THEY LOST in '16, and cannot be trusted to even try.

If Mayo Pete is your eggshell-white knight, you deserve to lose.

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Not my white knight. Calm down.

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I will likely agree with you in a couple weeks. There’s very little in Iowa to base predictions on, so I’m trying not to do so.

But it wouldn’t surprise me is Biden continued to drag. His under performance is the big clear thing in the Iowa results. It’s the elephant in the room. His reaction indicates he’s not convinced it won’t happen again.

If the moderates line up behind Buttigieg, i just don’t think he has the goods. I don’t think the apparatus is there.

I don’t think you can say that yet. Sanders performed exactly as he was polling, IIRC warren performed a little better than she was polling. It’s just that everything around that and there’s a lot more reason to believe Warren could out perform in NH than Iowa at this point. Warren seems to have considerably more appeal in those states where Sanders has traditionally lags, and she’s got a lot more legs in all that “second choice” polling.

Kinda feels like Biden collapsing is a precondition for a Warren/Sanders fight. But we’ll see. Like I said so far this thing is kinda a pass.

Primaries are weird. You won’t really see if there are really splits going on till people start assembling delegates. And things can change very quickly, especially with a crowded field.

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“Your” was synecdoche, where one Pete-thusiast stands in for all.

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I don’t think he does either, but I think he has enough to keep the vote split.

Sanders performed exactly as he was polling, IIRC warren performed a little better than she was polling.

Her campaigns strategy has been built around doing fairly well in Iowa. The fact that she polled badly before and matched that poll is not a positive for her. I hope she hangs on for various reasons, but I can’t see it happening short of something unexpected soon.

Iowa doesn’t have many delegates, and it is of course not representative of the country, but I think there are indirect lessons one can take from the caucus well beyond the literal importance.

That’s fine, as long as you don’t suggest I’m among them. I don’t think he’s as bad as some keep screaming, and he’ll make a fine Indiana senator or governor, but he’s never been on my list of preferred choices.

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Biden: I’m not going anywhere! Subject line from actual campaign email.
Voters: Correct. You are going nowhere.

*Bloomberg waves hello!*

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If there’s not room for two candidates in that camp, there’s not room for three.

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Bernie doen’t make the same mistakes as the DNC.

I don’t want to jinks things so I’m not making any celebrations but I sure hope this is the beginning of a trend

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Well, except the fact that by American standards, we call him a socialist. A socialist tying with mainstream Dem candidates in a rural region of the country is huge, and a sign that the “the times they are a-changin” whether the old guard likes it or not.

I think this is the most exciting election of my lifetime. If Bernie won, that would be amazing! But there is more behind this either way, and that is where my hope lies, regardless of outcomes. It’s been neoliberalism, neoliberalism, and more neoliberalism since the '70s. Establishment Democrats have alienated a lot of people with their tired “we support corporate interest at all costs, but once in a while we will throw you a bone with some social justice related cultural issues and talk shit about the unwashed masses. Lesser of two evils, amiright?”

I’ve had it with listening to middle-aged white / cis people who benefit from the capitalist system suddenly get into contemporary social justice stuff the second they see it has political or commercial utility for them and throwing it in my face, as a younger person (I’m not even that young, but my generation isn’t allowed to ever be considered “grown up.”) These assholes are all-too-happy to get into the whole “what’s wrong with men today?” schtick if they think they can make a fast buck.

Politicians like Bernie and AOC are the only people who can reel in the wandering “mediocre male” because we know the routine and its condescending, idiotic, and disingenuous. Hell, even a huge portion of #metoo was about Hollywood assholes, which a lot of guys don’t even like Hollywood. Nobody wants to get lumped in with the people they totally hate. It’s more like “yeah, no shit. We told you they are rich asshole psychopaths” but somehow nobody stops and says “boy rich powerful men are assholes” and somehow class gets erased nearly immediately.

Neoliberals implicitly have a social class problem, and that’s why they are all about hiding this at all costs and constantly directing the topic to forms of identity politics that also de-emphasize social class.

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Bernie already did that in 2016, essentially tying Clinton in Iowa.

I think this is the most exciting election of my lifetime.

Second scariest of mine; we genuinely thought that Goldwater would start a nuclear war.

Sanders is no further to the left than, say, Bobby (or even Teddy) Kennedy was. Bill Clinton and the other New Democrats pulled the party way off-track in a reaction to Reaganism, and the rest of the party put up with it for the sake of the win. This year represents the beginning of a simple realignment back to what the party looked like before that aberration. Many Democrats my age have been looking forward to this for 30 years.

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If there’s one thing that a certain type of affluent and educated white American over age 55 has become adept at over the last 40 years, it’s pretending that they’ve always been progressive (“lemme tell you kids about the '60s”) while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of neoliberalism and American imperialism.

Now that young people have enough demographic clout to challenge their demands that we defer to their supposed “wisdom” and “pragmatism” and to their authority, they’re scrambling once again to pretend that they were progressives all along. This time, with the end of the post-war economic anomaly being undeniable and the effects of the carefree fossil fuel lifestyle manifesting, they’re fooling no-one.

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You said so yourself, although arguably Bernie Sanders should know better :confused:

Regardless, this is good for him and not bad. Personally, I was hoping the Iowa Caucus would be shown to be as irrelevant as it really is, and the political class would stop trying to rally us unwashed masses around the idiot box to show us how white people in Iowa would vote nearly a year before the election. But that’s just me.

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are both grandfathers, but only one of them is Grandpa.

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I’m not running for anything; gave up on that in the 70s.

Regardless, this is good for him and not bad.

Absolutely agree; it puts him in the catbird seat. Not because he “won”, but because it illustrates that (a) his lack of appeal in the conservative heartland is nonsense, (b) his lead over the main contender for his niche (Warren) was not illusory, and (c) Biden and Klobuchar’s poor performance means that the center-right of the party is failing to mobilize in a state where they should have done better.

Yep, when I joined the SDS 50 years ago I was playing the long game, in deep cover.

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If, perchance, you’re trying to say that you recognise yourself in that general description of a certain type*, I’ll just quote my previous comment:

[* to be clear, I know plenty of people over 55 who’ve been consistent in their progressivism over the past 50 years.]

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