Why was Hillary staying in the race 8 years ago? Is there some double standard or was it just another example of her poor judgement?
Bernie is doing what a leader does, and not through the cult of personality. It is his integrity and message that draws people. He has stuck to his values through his political career, not crafting them to suit the mood of the day, he’s running on the same basis he started his political career with. And he has a message based on basic fairness that isn’t compromised by ambition and saddled with unknown obligations. Why is Hillary a special case? Can’t she go the distance like other candidates have to? Or do you just want to follow the Republican model and have everyone fall in line behind her? Why is the great leader who will prevail against the evil Trump and bring us to prosperity afraid of an old communist from the hippie cow pasture state?
She moderated her attacks on Obama well before the convention, and she was never as wedge-driven to begin with. Her followers were not remotely as extremist and as prone to being pugnacious, disruptive, intolerant, and ready believers in absurd conspiracy theories. She also never fashioned herself as her followers’ only hope.
So, yeah it’s pretty different.
But for the record, I think she should indeed have suspended her campaign much earlier than she did.
Hillary Clinton absolutely should have gotten out of the race 8 years ago long before she did. She had reached the point sometime by the end of March, when she was about 100 pledged delegates behind and it was clear that she had no shot at catching up, what with proportional representation and a steady drift of “neutral” superdelegates moving toward the Obama column. I for one was quite deeply frustrated at her unwillingness to get out of the race. I even wrote a nice concession speech for her to use and forwarded it to her campaign. Unfortunately they did not see fit to use it, then or ever. --It should be pointed out that by that point in the campaign she was far closer to Obama in both pledged and supers than Sanders has been to Clinton in quite some time. But yes, it was poor judgment on her part, just as it is on Sanders’s part now.
Wow, your characterization of Senator Sanders is…very, very different from what I have seen throughout this campaign, especially lately. Maybe I’ll just leave it at that.
Every time Bernie loses a primary, the campaign’s take is that it’s because ‘it was stolen from us’ or ‘we never had the chance to win in the first place.’ Every time he wins one, it’s ‘the good guys won again!’ So 3 million more voters for Hillary than for Bernie is fraud?
Spare me about how much ‘integrity’ Bernie and his campaign have.
As of today, of pledged delegates, Hillary leads 1,768 to Bernie’s 1,494. A 274 delegate margin. This does not include the total 564 super delegates that can align with whomever they wish. So far the majority of these (525) are supporting Hillary.
There are 930 delegates remaining in upcoming primaries, California being the largest with 546 available followed by NJ with 142 delegates. If Bernie can win 602 of the upcoming delegates, he would be tied with Hillary for pledged delegates with 2,096 each. California is a make or break state for Bernie. Hillary leads in the polls there by about 9%. The primary is less than 3 weeks away.
Most pundits believe if Hillary doesn’t lead the pledged delegate count by a substantial margin, the super delegates may become “up in the air”.
I don’t think any sane person believes that Bernie will win close to 90% of California and New Jersey. Superdelegates are not likely to go to a candidate who waits for the boos when he says, “Democratic Party.”
From here, looks like the Bernie folks already thought they were getting shafted before they even arrived. But the various effective committees were carefully balanced. Keeping in mind that Clinton won by about five points, how much fairer could they have been?
The Bernie delegates were misinformed, and were mistrusting of correction. Thus, comparatively minor procedural matters that should have been dusted off in about ten minutes dragged on needlessly. For a long time. Tempers frayed. Fried. Flayed. (I’m also given to understand that nobody planned on feeding this mob, but alcohol service was nearby and convenient. Bad plan.)
Anyway, everybody calm down. The upside here, such as it is, is people giving a rat’s. For a country largely governed by the Apathy Party for, loathe, these many years, that’s good news. And there’s almost six months to adjust to the choice of Hillary or Shouty McFacist. Bernie’s people will vote against Trump, and most of them would still do it if Bernie told them not to! Which he won’t.
(Anybody got numbers? How many Cruz supporters won’t vote for Trump compared to how many Bernie’s People won’t vote for Hillary?)
So everybody calm down. Think of a nice Minnesota lake, placid, calm, with the iridescent rainbow sheen of fracking chemicals and dead fish…whoa. Maybe just picture a lake, like on a Hallmark card. Yeah.
Should the campaign ignore the stacked deck? The rules haven’t been followed scrupulously, and more than that the rules have been exposed to be basically unfair. Bernie is winning delegates who will have a say in the party rules at the convention but I suppose you don’t want that either. Has Hillary criticized the DNC and her friend Wendy Sergeant Schultz for mismanaging the primary process? Hillary isn’t a victim here, she’s sending her surrogates out to whine for her again. If she doesn’t like what Bernie is doing then she should stand up and say so herself.
There’s a few things wrong with your post. Some minor. Some Major.
Clinton leads Sanders 1771 to 1499 (+272). There are 781 pledged delegates at stake in the remaining contests. Bernie needs to win them at least 527 to 254 to win the majority of the pledged delegates. This requires him to win the remaining contests by a population weighted average of more than 34 points.
TriPolar? Did she get more votes than he did? My understanding of progressive principle is that when the other guy gets more votes than the guy I like, I lose. Am I wrong about that?
I don’t know what you mean by progressive principle here. There are rules to the Democratic primary process, and according to those rules Hillary has not yet won. She can either win enough delegates or have the super delegates maintain their support for her and win, or the delegates could choose Bernie. I doubt they will. But he has every right, and a responsibility to those who have supported him so far to try to gain as many delegates as he can.
Since everybody says Hillary has already won why is she still campaigning in primaries? She doesn’t need to win any more delegates if she won, right?
Yes, the process is deeply, deeply unfair, because it allowed Clinton to win more votes and more delegates than her opponent.
Yes, the process is deeply, deeply flawed, because it allowed people to vote who were more likely to choose Clinton than her opponent.
It’s really too bad we couldn’t have had a fair, unflawed system, one that would have restricted voting to caucuses in small states with very few African Americans or Hispanics.
Now THAT would have been fair. And unflawed. And aboveboard. And full of integrityTM, too!
She’s campaigning for November now. She’s targeting Trump now, not Sanders - he’s gone negative on her, but not vice versa.
She’s also reminding voters to come out and vote, not let Sanders win by default and thereby cause her any more problems.
And she hasn’t yet gone over the top by all possible counts, although it is certain in real-world terms that she will, and that Sanders cannot and won’t. It’s part of her inherent caution in a world where there really are a lot of people out to get her.
Sanders has been on record as saying that Southern states, because they are “the most conservative part of the country,” “distort reality” where the primaries are concerned. The Southern states, he is saying, don’t count, or shouldn’t count. Did you miss these comments?
Tad Devine, his campaign strategist, has said that Sanders didn’t bother to contest many of the Southern states, so Clinton’s "grasp on the nomination is almost entirely on the basis of victories in states where Bernie Sanders did not compete.” The Southern states, he is saying, shouldn’t count. Did you miss this remark?
The Progressive Democrats of America sent out a mailing that said, “Hillary won the Confederacy.” The meaning of that is pretty clear. Did you miss this?
Look, it took me about three minutes to find these quotes. There are plenty of others. Sanders, his staff, and his supporters have spent much time trying to argue that states where he has done poorly don’t count. I doubt very much that this is because those Southern states are “too conservative”–he hasn’t said the same about the even more conservative states in the Rockies and Great Plains where Sanders has done well. I doubt very much that it’s because he “hasn’t competed” in these states; he’s spent much more time in some, not all, Southern states than he wishes to admit right now. I think there’s a clear racial element in this; I can assure you that I am not the only observer who thinks this. Regardless, it is very clear that Sanders is trying extremely hard to redefine the primary season to include only those states (and by extension, the people in these states) where he has done well.
So, who is saying this? The candidate himself. That’s who.
As for part 2: I don’t believe I have said that Clinton “has won.” Is this question addressed to someone else? She is almost certainly going to win. She’s 12 games up in the standings with 13 to play. But it’s not completely over, and she needs to, and should, continue campaigning till she’s up by 8 with 7 to play (or whatever the numbers may be).
There are irregularities in every election, the vast majority of which eventually boil down to human error. Imputing it to some kind of conspiracy is just another way to rationalize the fact that they lost primaries. It could never be that, you know, the majority of voters preferred her to him. He (and many Bernie supporters) would never admit that.
Which party rules? The ones that say Bernie must win the nomination regardless of the fact that he is far behind in popular vote AND delegates? Good luck with that.
I’m sorry if you can’t see how the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz have legitimate concerns when the Nevada party chairman is getting death threats. Apparently you don’t see a problem with that.
Duh…Hillary doesn’t want to alienate Bernie supporters any more than they already are. Hello?
