Oh No, The New Awesome Primary Thread

Aaron Hernandez, Rae Carruth, Adam Johnson?Unfortunately, this is pretty easy... I bet we could name a few active players who challenge Pete Rose.

When is it rational to do that? It is certainly possible that a bunch of people might be right about something, but how do you know when that situation arises?

Was California close? I did not see any polls suggesting that Bernie had a chance in California, and he ended up losing by double digits. And even a win in California would not have given Bernie much of a chance. It is probably the case that the announcement cost Bernies some support, but maybe those kind of things happen when you are 3 million votes short of what your opponent has managed.Beyond that, is there really something nefarious about discussing the vote count once Hillary had the required number of delegates? Apparently the overwhelming majority all of the super delegates are on public record as to which candidate they support? That is indeed unfortunate. I'll go with the center-right verses the loose cannon xeno.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

So what? The reality is that the super delegates do count. It is also the case that the current voting preferences for the overwhelming majority of those super delegates are public knowledge.I understand that Bernie does not like that situation, but my question remains, why should the current standing of the candidates, including all pledged delegates not be reported? Or conversely, why is reporting that reality considered nefarious.Or viewed yet another way, if Bernie is opposed to super delegates, why does it make sense to include that count in the number of required delegates that must be received? Deduct one half of the total super delegates from the total required. Has Hilary not exceeded that count? Either candidate can unify the party by conceding to the other side. To this point, Bernie's public support among those who participate in primaries lags behind that of Hilary. What you are suggesting is that the DNC should intervene despite that result.

Right, but at least some of the news articles indicated checking the overwhelming majority of super-delegates (something like 80%) right before announcing that Hilary was over the top. There was nothing nefarious about the news reporting those facts. Who is paying attention to that stuff? Should we be paying attention?At this point, the race is over. Bernie has zero chance of winning. His poor showing outside of California pretty much eliminated him. Bernie had no chance even if he had a close split in California. So you are postulating a level of error that will significantly cut into that 3 million plus vote lead? Or are we talking about something reasonable well considered as marginal?The primary race is over. Bernie himself will probably tell you the same thing in a few days.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

On some issues, yes. Overall? That's not clear. What democrats have to worry most about is enthusiasm for the party and some turn of current events that could make more liberal politics fall out of favor. Are those portions of Sanders followers that won't support Hilary as she is currently situated a larger number than the independents who are more centrist? I could not say. Are large numbers of democrats going to stay at home or vote for Trump? Who knows at this point.

Single handedly through the works of others eh? Surely that is an oxymoron.

Yikes. Thanks for a disturbing afternoon thought. Guess I'd best skip that nap I had planned. I might end up in a dream that I'd welcome having Freddy Krueger interrupt. You did not know it because you don't generally know what church/synagogue/mosque any of the Trumps attend? Now if Ivanka was a former member of the Nation of Islam, perhaps that would be a face palm moment. I assume that this sentiment also applies to non-billionaires as well billionaires. If you can figure out a way to do this constitutionally, I'd like to hear how that might work. What I find more problematic than the money the candidates spend is the money spent by anonymous non-candidate sources on behalf of their candidates. That money generally dwarfs the amounts the candidates have access to. Yet I see no constitutional way to outlaw such spending.

The right wing base (like the left wing base) is too small to rely on for winning anything nationally. Republicans and Democrats must have their base, but generally that base is reliable if they show up. So what campaigns have become about is making sure the base shows up, and attracting as much of the center as possible.If Hillary loses, my guess is that her loss would come from a failure to get enough of those voters that Trump will never reach, to actually show up at the polls in November. I am not worried about any other scenario other than a third party candidate that fails to do anything other than strip a few percentage points away from Hillary so that she either loses, or fails to win by a large enough margin to prevent the legislature from simply picking a winner despite the popular vote.Right now, I would suggest that the election is Hilary's to win or lose. Moving to the left has risks with regards to folks in the middle, but moving right risks having folks stay home. I expect that Hillary will get plenty of competent advice about how to navigate.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Right, and there are a large number of votes in the middle that can vote Republican if a candidate moves to the left. Yes, some of them don't vote regularly, particularly in non-presidential elections, but just how large a group is that. And how many of those folks won't go to the polls just out of fear of a Trump planet. If you really know the answer to those questions, then you can make a conclusion about whether Hillary would be better served by moving to the left.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Probably not anything new to report on Trump as a blustering buffoon again, but the latest CNN headline has Trump attacking his former rivals for not supporting Trump's candidacy.

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Donald Trump on Wednesday said his former Republican primary rivals who have refused to support him in November should be barred from running for public office again.

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"They signed a pledge saying they will abide, saying they will back the candidate of the party," Trump said during a campaign appearance in Bangor, Maine, adding, "They broke their word. In my opinion, they should never be allowed to run for public office again because what they did is disgraceful."

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Of course, just three months ago, Trump reneged on his own promise to support the candidate who won the primary. In fact so did Cruz and at least one other candidate. Kinda silly to have made those statements a few months ago, and then to take the position Trump now takes.GOP candidates back off pledge to support nominee | CNN Politics

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"No, I don't anymore," Trump said, when asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper if he continued "to pledge to support whoever the Republican nominee is?"

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I'd call him the Wing Nut's wing nut. But apparently at least one person thinks that Pence is not hateful enough... Warning, for some reason, the linked page seems to consume lots of CPU on my computer. You may not want to follow the link.Ann Coulter: ‘Pence Is the Combo-Platter of Disaster’

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Withholding comment until it’s official, but if claims about Pence as VP are correct, boy was I right about this being Trump’s first mistake, [Ann] Coulter wrote amid a series of tweets on Thursday.

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First he allowed himself to be portrayed as a right-wing homophobic nut and then just days later he sold out to the left-wing activists, anyway, Coulter said in reference to an Indiana law protecting businesses that refused to serve gay customers for religious reasons. Pence signed the measure into law but then asked the Legislature to water it down after widespread outrage.

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Probably true. But at least the Democrats have been shown a path for change and there are progressives in the party beyond Sanders (who is obviously not the future for the party).I don't know what the Republicans are going to do about their future. Move further right? Be content with winning gerrymandered state races?

Gore came within a thousand or so votes of winning, and it is completely possible absent some tomfoolery that he was due enough votes to win. This against a president that easily won his second election even after getting us into a war in Iraq.Gore was viable.

I will be voting based on a single issue this year and that is the issue of who gets to make appointments to the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal bench. There is no question for me of which presidential candidate I want to see making those appointments, or which senators I will support in the elections to come. Almost certainly, the next president will be picking at least two, and most probably three Justices.As an example:The NC voter ID law specifically targeted democratic voters by removing polling places for college students and African Americans, not allowing state issued college student ids to be used for voting while accepting gun permits and reducing early voting days. The legislature actually used racial democratic data to identify which poling places to close and which measures to adopt. The federal district court judge saw nothing wrong with any of that. Fortunately, the judges on the Fourth Circuit judges had no problem looking at the trees and finding a forest. The Fifth Circuit similarly found identical problems in Texas.The federal courts in this area also deal with racially gerrymandered districts which have result in state legislatures that are heavily republican despite the fact that the state is nearly evenly split during national contests.If you are at all interested in having Citzens United overturned, or ensuring that Roe V. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges remain the law of the land, you cannot allow Trump and his 'party of Lincoln' to be the folks who selects and confirm judges for the Supreme Court, the federal circuit courts, or even the federal district courts. In my opinion, the issue of Justice/judge selection alone is too important to ignore. In my opinion, we cannot trust even Libertarians to do the right thing is this area. I'm sorry that we don't have Bernie to rely on, but there is no way at this point, that I'd vote for anyone other than Clinton. Exactly. Republicans are about the personal freedoms that existed in the 1950s and to hell with any of those new fangled, liberal freedoms gained in the 1960s, 1970s; and especially not anything we recognized in this century.