A lot of people were hoping that Trump would win the nomination in 2016 because he was so “unelectable” that the Democratic candidate was sure to win in the general election. I think we’ve all seen the flaw in that strategy by now.
In the big scheme of things we’re all better off when both parties nominate the best candidates they have to offer. God help us all if that person is Haley, but if it comes down to her or Trump I’d rather see her on the ticket even if that means Biden has to work harder to prove he’s the better choice.
I agree. As odious as Haley is, she wouldn’t be the existential threat to American Democracy that Trump and his coterie of sycophants and psychopaths would be. However, she’d be another George W. Bush, who, until Trump, was the worst President in the post-WWII era.
So much news and “winning” attributed to so few people.
Roughly:
56K for Trump
110K Republican Caucus Turn Out.
700K Registered Republicans in Iowa, about 15% turnout.
2M Registered voters in Iowa.
Less than 3% of Registered Voters voted for Trump in the caucus.
Only about 8% of Registered Republican Voters voted for Trump in the caucus.
Wikipedia says the 2020 general election had 75% turnout and the 2016 had 72% turnout. That’s a whole bunch of “it’s too cold and a pain to caucus”. What would the polling margin of error even be for this self selected group committed enough to show up.
Wiki says the 2020 GOP caucus only had 32K turn out, but it was Trump, Weld, and Walsh so that hardly counts as real. In 2016 there was 186K turn out. With less candidates, Trump did manage to get more raw votes, 45K in 2016 and 56K now.
Still creating media stories about the entire election based on the Iowa caucus feels rather disingenuous based on the numbers. If only the media would step up instead of reporting this as if this race sets the tone for the entire election.
There’s more kids in my children’s school system than voted in the caucus. Although, I suppose if I asked them all for a vote, I would be lucky to get back that many responses.
She’s mostly just different dangerous. She would gladly destroy all kinds of policy and create a hell scape much like Trump. Assuming she stands for anything beyond “what will get her a vote”. Perhaps without being quite as overtly outrageous as Trump.
She doesn’t have a death cult comprised of millions of Americans who would literally overthrow the United States government in her name, though. She supports bad policy, absolutely. But our nation has survived politicians who supported bad policy before.
I get the point, but it still is a blow out for Trump… but it should show us that the whole system of elections is shot through with anti-democratic problems in the US, from top to bottom.
Nah. Every single voter who ever wants to vote again, who values democracy, or who opposes fascism should vote for Biden and every Democrat. Swing state, safe state, doesn’t matter. Vote blue all the way down the ticket everywhere. Because Trump and his ilk are a parasite upon our country and need to be opposed everywhere
Trump and his supporters need to be shown they are not welcome here and the US is not a fascist state.
Not to mention the caucus system really only caters to the hardest of the hardcore and attracts a certain kind of voter. It’s only considered a big deal because it’s “first” and networks seem to be desperate for fresh content.
Though I think that is actually easier. Here’s why: with any non-T**** opponent, you can talk policy and results in the real world. They will try to match and fail, because the GOP has abandoned reality. You can’t debate or even compare those things with T**** because he just refuses to even recognize reality.
My analogy is this: Biden vs any of the other GOP candidates is a footrace. Yes, they will try to cheat, but they will still try to meet him on the track and he will win because he’s trained for it and they haven’t. We’re talking Usain Bolt vs my Aunt Mildred. But T**** doesn’t meet opponents on the track. He just says, “We were always playing Hot Wiener Dog Chess, not running the 100 meters, you loser!” And no one even knows the rules to Hot Weiner Dog Chess, anyway.
Here’s another funny thing about the caucus. They just wrote their candidates name on a slip of paper and put it in a bag or popcorn bucket passed around.
Marge thinks this is how the actual election should be handled to prevent cheating.
Marge said this.
The Iowa caucus process is amazing.
Paper ballots, no machines.
The entire process is transparent and done in several hours.
The only thing I would change would be to close the primary to stop people from switching parties and voting to sway results.
Preach! And to achieve that, each of us needs to do at least one thing besides vote: help register people, give to campaigns, canvas, write postcards, make calls, talk to friends, drive people to the polls, and even run for office – whatever you feel you can do. Democracy is not a spectator sport!
I’m sure the Dem establishment will get right on those tasks. It’s not like they think big-money donors are more important than what 70% of Americans say they want. /s
[I’m sure that Bernie understands this too. Good on him for trying once again.]
To be fair, I’d argue we should do both. I think that there is a real threat to democracy and part of stopping that threat is progressive reforms that many people agree with… Biden needs to run both on the threat to democracy and pushing for progressive reform, and more importantly, we need more down ballot people running on progressive reforms.
That, by the way, is why Bernie Sanders did very well in caucuses, but lost to Clinton and to Biden in states with primary elections. He had a relatively small, but very hardcore, base of supporters who were also Extremely Online and, being vocal, made it seem like he had huge grassroots support.
