Bernie is winning the nomination race and here's whyFollow

If they made him head of the department of the interior, I bet we would have a water crisis very shortly afterwards.

I don't think that's their concern. I believe their primary concern is their lack of influence in a Trump administration, which concessions would partially ameliorate.

You really need to stop truncating my statements mid sentence. It's not even a good lie when you do that.



That, and super delegates.



They have everything to do with it. Absent those more or less locked in votes, Clinton would be in an even tougher race. But even with that advantage, she can't sit on her heels here because if she does lose that lead with the pledged delegates, the super delegates might feel they have to switch. Which would be a disaster. Heck. If it's even close, it could be a problem for her.



Sure. Unless. If. Maybe. That's the point here. Clinton has to continue to fight to win the nomination because if she doesn't, then those conditions may not stay the way they are now. This is something she fully expected to be done with by now, having such a great lead that she could coast to the nomination. But that hasn't happened.



It's impossible as long as Clinton continues to spend money and campaign in each state. That's the point I keep making, and you keep ignoring. She was counting on everyone else having dropped out by now, and the only effort required was to make sure the paperwork was filed to put her name on the ballot in the remaining states and rake in the free uncontested delegates. Instead, she's spending a huge amount of time and money keeping Sanders at bay.

By not releasing them, they are required to vote for him in the first round of voting (and maybe the second? Can't remember when they get auto-released, and that may even vary by state delegation). If he frees them up, and there's a chance even some of them may break for Trump, he's lost the ability to prevent that, and depending on how close Trump is, could result in what would be for him a wost case scenario. It's a smart move to wait and see what the final delegate total comes out to before making the decision. It gives him some leverage as well. Let's say Cruz is close enough to win in the first round *if* he can add Rubio's delegates to his own. If Rubio talks to his delegates and they agree to vote for Cruz, he might release them then. Or he might not. He could hold that choice over Cruz for a VP slot if he wants. Or not. He could hold them out, force a situation where no one gets a majority, and then hope that the delegates, once freed up, will decide that they don't want to support a parachuted candidate, but don't like either Trump or Cruz, and will thus pick between the only two other folks in the race with delegates. And between him and Kasich (doesn't Carson technically have a few too?), he might just come out on top.


I've also learned a bit more about the delegate selection process (the actual people, not who they are pledged to). In most cases, they're members of the state party, meeting some criteria (varies by state, but presumably some voting history stuff and whatnot), and be selected by some sort of party delegate committee (and there's often even votes for this, although we normal people don't vote in these). Point being that the actual delegates are most likely going to favor a more established mainstream candidate than an outsider. So while Trump may be able to parlay his pluralities in many states into a majority of delegates, that's his sole route to the nomination. If he fails to win with pledged delegates, the odds are very high that most of those delegates, once freed from the pledge will not vote for him. It's hard to say if they'll support Cruz. Many will. Some may not. Kind of the fun of the convention, I suppose.


I guess the point I'm making is that these aren't actually far fetched possibilities, and by keeping the delegates, Rubio can claim to be a candidate who actually participated in all the debates, and brought delegates to the convention, and out of the more mainstream folks that meet that criteria, he's the best choice, yadda, yadda, yadda... Again, it rests on the delegates themselves not wanting either Trump or Cruz. Which is totally not out of the realm of possibility. And, despite lots of talk about this, I don't think the GOP would go so far as to parachute in someone who didn't participate in the process (You'd really get screaming from that). So yeah, that does put Rubio back in the running. Heck. This scenario is the sole reason Kasich is still in the race. Apparently, the only person running who doesn't understand how the delegate voting process works is Donald Trump. I honestly don't think he's even thought past trying to win a majority. And to be fair, I don't think he has a chance if he doesn't get that majority.

Doesn't Rubio have like 171 delegates? More than Kasich last I checked, despite having bowed out weeks ago.



I'm not sure how the convention rules work, but there may be some value to having any number of pledged delegates going in. Even if it's just a PR thing "I have delegates, so I'm more viable than ...".



Maybe he could use them to get a cushy Secretary of State position, and use that to gain much needed foreign policy experience. I can't see any way that could possibly backfire!

Having one percent of the total delegates is saying that you're more viable than Mittens the Cat, and that'd be a lie since if Mittens were anywhere near the ballot it'd have far more than one percent of the vote. Don't blame me, I voted for Mittens.

As amusing as that may be, the reality is that if no candidate gets a majority of pledged delegates by convention day, and if the delegates at the convention decide they don't like either Trump or Cruz, and can't get a majority to support either candidate in later voting rounds, that means they've got to start looking at other people. And in that scenario, the difference between "random party member we like" and "candidate who ran in the race, participated in all the debates, and won some delegates", becomes pretty significant. You'd always look to other candidates in the race with lower delegate counts next, only looking to people who didn't even run as a very last resort. Which means Rubio or Kasich.

And in the context of the later votes, the numbers of delegates "won" during the primary doesn't really matter. They're all equally candidates who failed to get the required pledged delegate count by convention day. Period. How much they fell short matters only in terms of PR. At the end of the day, the delegate's job is to find a candidate they can get a majority to support. Any candidate. That may not at all be the person who one the most pledged delegates, especially when that candidate built his campaign around a strategy to gain greater relative pledged delegates than his actual voter support in the party.

Cruz would actually have a much stronger beef with the party if they also fail to nominate him IMO. Honestly, and as much as I'm totally not a Cruz fan by any means, I suspect that in the case of a contested primary, Cruz will most likely win it, for that very reason. As much as he's disliked by the party establishment, he is at least viewed by most Republicans as an actual conservative. His biggest negative is that he's seen as a bit (quite a bit!) too conservative, and fails to compromise when it's needed. Trump, on the other hand, is likely to compromise on the things important to conservatives, while standing firm on those we don't care as much about. You just don't know what the heck he'd do. And if his media fumbling is any indication, he doesn't know what he'd do either.



Watergate doesn't bother me. Does your conscience bother you?

Yes. Because it's a definition of "sewn up". I'm not sure what's confusing to you here. Would you agree that once a candidate has enough delegates to win the nomination, that they have the nomination "sewn up", and thus should be included in any list of possible ways in which a candidate can be said to have "sewn up" the nomination? Yes, right?

You're making the mistake of assuming that just because I list something as a possible condition that would indicate a given result, that I must be arguing that said condition is true. That's simply not the case.



Um... I'm not even sure what you were trying to say here. Just a ton of projection and exaggeration on your part. It honestly looks like you're doing everything you can to spin the conversation away from the core point> Clinton is under performing expectations. By quite a bit. You can tap dance around that all day long, create imaginary exaggerations that I'm supposed to have said and must meet, and toss out derogatory comments in my direction, but it's not going to magically change the fact that, yes, Clinton was expected to be doing far better at this point in the year than she is.

That's all I'm saying. And it's absolutely true.



Yeah, well. It's a valid comment. You're really not fooling anyone here. Outside of a few nutty Dem cheerleaders, many of whom are professionally employed to spin such things, no one's seriously claiming that Clinton is doing anywhere near as well as predicted. So I've kinda got to wonder what your excuse is here. It's not like you earn money on making this claim. And I'm not sure how or why you'd be so personally connected to the need for Clinton to be perceived as doing as expected (and well). So I guess I just don't get it. It's not like I'm jumping around insisting that the GOP primary process is going wonderfully or anything. Not sure why it's so hard to merely acknowledge that Clinton has not done as well as expected, and has a tougher road ahead of her than thought.

Cause... you know, it's true. And it's not even that much of a concession. It's not like I'm demanding that you admit that Clinton has zero chance of winning the general election here. I'm just trying to get you to accept that she's not doing as well as expected. Doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. But it appears to be a huge deal to you.

Which you have so far "proved" by making a fool of yourself comparing it to the GOP contest (and then hastily Googling some info about the primaries when it was shown that you were dumb to do so), saying "super delegates" over and over despite them really not being relevant to the math against Sanders and then insisting over and over again that it really must be true. Because... well, because it REALLY must be true! You said "absolutely" and everything!

You keep saying this but it's meaningless. I suppose I'm not "fooling" anyone because people probably aren't "fooled" by basic facts like Clinton is mathematically certain to be the nominee (short of some catastrophic event) and has been for weeks or that the primary contest isn't really meaningful for a general where we know most Democrats will support her based on polling and prior experience. Or being "fooled" by realizing that the last nomination contest went until June and... hey, that guy (must have been a weak candidate to have it dragged out until June) went on to be president for eight years with over 50% of the popular vote each term.

So, yeah, I guess I'm not "fooling" anyone because that's not really the word you use when describing actual facts supported by evidence. Now, I suppose when your entire argument is "Because you know it's absolutely true" then that seems a little weird to you.

It's funny because we're all watching the GOP implode spectacularly in a cycle where they should have had the advantage based on the plain cyclical nature of politics and there's this strong desire (human nature, really) to find an equivalent or balance for it on the other side. "Sure, we're slogging through a primary almost certain to end in a contested convention and a large number of voters likely feeling that they were cheated and we'll most likely lose the election but... uh... Clinton should have won in March with a million delegates! Everyone knows it! Weak! Man, you guys must be ashamed!" There is no equivalent on the Democratic side for what's happening to the Republican party. All signs are pointing to Madam President in 2017 and the GOP doesn't even have a clue who their nominee might wind up being, much less able to prepare a real fall campaign. I guess saying "Weak! So weak! Who are you fooling you know she's so weak!" is therapeutic though so I guess I can understand that.

Well, and this is the kinda frustrating part, my argument is that she's weak. One part of the support for my argument is that she's under performing the predictions (there are others, but right now we're examining that one). I could totally accept someone countering with an argument about whether that under performance means she's weak (and there's a ton of valid arguments one could make there), but instead I'm running into someone insisting that she isn't actually under performing at all. And when I did just as you suggest, and linked to an article predicting what would happen (in that case based on the results of the Iowa caucus) and compared the actual results to the predicted ones, Joph ignored that, jumped on an extraneous comment I made about what could constitute having "sewn up" the nomination, and ran off in that direction instead.

Which strikes me as him trying anything he can to spin the conversation, not just away from the argument I'm making, but away from even acknowledging a basic fact. He even acknowledged that I was using an "or" condition, yet ignored the second "or" case in his counter. So either he's just that bad at basic logic, or he's spinning things. Which, again, leads me to the question about who he's trying to fool.

I get that I may be a bit of an exception here, but I actually do like to start off first with a set of givens that we can all agree on and *then* build an argument about what those mean based on those givens. Maybe it's a bit unrealistic to expect that sort of process to work in an online environment where "your mom" is a preferred response to anything you don't like, but I'm a hopeless optimist in the power of reason. While lots of people posting and reading here may initially think it's fun to jump on the unpopular opinion, using any means necessary to silence it, I also have to believe that on at least some level, they must know that this doesn't make the unpopular opinion untrue, or actually validate their own opinion (or, perhaps with even more introspection, justify to themselves why they even hold that opinion, other than it being "popular"). It only shows that a majority can always make themselves appear to be more "right" than a minority, by sheer numbers, if nothing else. Which, I suppose, is a great lesson in life, but the lesson should be that we strive to avoid such things, not join in on them.

Yeah, I've actually mentioned a bunch of factors in the last several days negating the "she's weak!" nonsense but you've decided that I never really did or none of them count.

Hey, remember the other day when I pointed out how your entire schtick was pretending that you made these great logical arguments and no one else could respond -- because you always just ignored any responses and pretended that no one actually gave a counter? Yeah... that.

But her not performing to some prediction is not proof, nor is it a given. It was a prediction, which, in layman's terms, is a wild ass guess.

Edited, Apr 6th 2016 9:54pm by stupidmonkey

Looks at stuff written between Nov 2015 and early Feb 2016, I couldn't find anyone going on record to say Clinton would win by early March. Several of the people I mentioned above said that she was the strong favorite to win the nomination but none were giving a timeline or predicting a sweeping victory within the first two months.

I suspect that Gbaji, so much as he gets his news from anywhere, has read various blogs and columns predicated on the idea that she would sail through without actually offering evidence for this framework. For instance, from US News & World Report:It's not surprising that Roff (a right-leaning columnist) frames his column that way; it adds drama and a sense of discord to the writing. What it doesn't do is act as evidence that this framework is accurate.

Ironically, the same outlet said in 2015 that Clinton would be weakened by NOT having a lengthy and contested process and, if she was "coronated" then she'd be a lazy and unsure candidate for it. I guess you can't win either way when someone's more interested in creating a narrative than anything else.