Why was Clinton “supposed to” lose Michigan? Nate Silver had given her a 99% chance of winning it and he said their demographic modelling still made it look like a close one if anything. They are describing it on 538 as one of if not the biggest upsets in Primary history.
Something to note about the current polls prior to yesterday: the narrative about who’s winning will affect future votes. If the narrative goes back to “Bernie is behind Clinton, but gaining support, things are trending in his direction, he pulled off a suprise upset”, that may inspire more people to vote for him. Now, that’s generally more of a “will I actually bother to go vote” issue rather than “who would I support in a poll” issue, but nonetheless the media’s over-valuing of state wins will change the narratives in a way that will probably give Sanders some sort of boost.
No–the guys actually interviewed in the article I read were people who had worked for Jerry Brown in 92 (a protest candidate who took a lot of delegates and refused to back Clinton–he was able to get a speech from the floor via his delegates but not a nice prime time speaking slot), Jesse Jackson in '88 who had a lot of delegates and insisted on a good speaking spot (which he received), Ted Kennedy in '80. I think all of those guys came in 2nd, Jesse Jackson had a ton of delegates as well. Jackson angled for Vice President but Dukakis refused.
The post Sanders would want, if he wanted any post within a Clinton Administration, would be Treasury Secretary. And of course, Clinton would never give him that post, because she and Sanders are diametrically opposed on the issue of Wall Street. That’s the real problem with getting Sanders into the Clinton Administration in any post: they have real and opposing differences on basic economic issues.
The same goes for Sanders’ and Clinton’s supporters. As the One Percent continues to gobble up all the new wealth created by American productivity, leaving more and more Americans poorer, Sanders’ supporters are going to grow, and Clinton’s are going to shrink. The party may even experience a seismic shift that will destroy it. The Democratic base is angry like the Republican base is angry, but unlike the Tea Party, they aren’t dog-stupid. Gonna be interesting times for the Dem power elite in the next decade or two.
No, I get it. You view the auto bailout as primarily helping workers, so you oppose it. You view the bank bailout as primarily helping the super rich financial class, so you support it.
Here’s the problem with your view: If we accept that we had to do it as an emergency measure, why aren’t we taking steps now, now that things are stable, to break up the big companies, punish those who took actions to wreck the world economy, and heavily watch over these corporations?
Your “they were too big to fail, it was an emergency, we didn’t have time to correct the problem then, we just have to bail them out to keep the world economy going” attitude should’ve been followed up by “and when things are stable again, then we can look at fixing the problem” - except, like everyone knew - nothing has been done. If anything, they’re even bigger, more consolidated, more powerful, less regulated, and completely unpunished. And the next time dangerous banking practices put them in peril again, we’re going to hear “it’s an emergency! we have to make the hard decision to bail them out yet again”
Because almost all Democratic senators are in Wall Street’s back pocket, and Sanders isn’t.
There’s two things at play:
- Polls. FiveThirtyEight makes its projections off of aggregate polling (for polls-only) or aggregate polling plus endorsements (for polls-plus), they don’t factor in demographics in these. It’s strictly based on their formula for weighting polls (which is based on the quality of the polls, measured by how recent they were, how many voters were polled, and FiveThirtyEight’s rating of the historical accuracy of the pollster in question.) If the actual polls are wrong by a lot (and they were in Michigan) then 538’s projections will be wrong. 538 does no polling of their own, so they can only base their projections off of aggregate polling of others. For some elections (a lot of the caucuses for example) FiveThirtyEight makes no formal prediction because they declare the number of polls and quality to be insufficient to make a prediction.
- FiveThirtyEight’s demographic analysis of how many delegates Clinton or Sanders “needs” from respective states to win the nomination, based on demographic weighting. This is just a scorecard of “how well a candidate is doing.” 538 doesn’t base its election predictions off of this. I.e., they aren’t intended to be predictive.
She needs Sanders a LOT more than Sanders needs her. But I don’t know if Hillary understands that. The only goal I see from her is being the first female president of the United States and continuing the Clinton hegemony. She’ll probably fight hard on women’s issues and for minority rights, but that’s about it.
I’m not getting into a conservative/liberal argument with you or a free market/socialist argument. It’s not a productive or interesting use of my time, and I’ve had such arguments many times.
But I supported the bank bailouts for the reason I said–systemic economic collapse would’ve occurred without them. Without the bank liquidity it’s not just large companies that suffer, it’s everyone. People trying to get mortgages, people who need to put emergency expenses on credit cards. I opposed the auto bailouts because I believe the bankruptcy process would’ve appropriately handled it. I do not believe the auto industry would’ve gone away without them, the companies would’ve gone through bankruptcy–which would’ve required better treatment of bondholders than the government bailout gave them, and would’ve given UAW essentially no stake in the companies at all. It also would’ve allowed the auto makers to cancel all their collective bargaining agreements.
So would you support reducing the power of those big banks to have the ability to wreck the world economy next time they get themselves into trouble so that we aren’t forced into making the terrible choice of bailing them out or collapsing the world economy next time?
Sanders also is incompetent in matters relating to fiscal policy and thus could not function as Treasury Secretary.
But you didn’t explain why you think Clinton was “supposed” to lose Michigan.
Sure, in intelligent ways. It’s worth noting tons of new regulations and capital requirements apply to banks now, they are far less likely to get into the trouble they’ve gotten into in the past. I’d also favor reimposing Glass-Steagall requirements that prohibited the sort of structural conflicts of interest endemic in large investment banks after the 1999 repeal that persist to today.
But I don’t actually blame the big banks for the financial crisis. They were part of it, but they weren’t the engine of it. The engine for the financial crisis was government policy. Companies respond in predictable ways, much like a rat will predictably run toward cheese you put out for it in a lab experiment.
The United States government established Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae and they are largely responsible for irresponsible behavior in the mortgage market. Ginnia Mae fully insures with the full faith and credit of the United States its Agency MBS, Fannie Mae does not, but it had an “implicit” guarantee as a “government sponsored enterprise.” This implicit guarantee was treated as explicit (and in fact, it was explicit.) Fannie Mae is the entity that actually securitized mortgages into MBS. Without these government intrusions in the economy the MBS market as we know it, the credit default swaps associated with it (which in itself was probably the single biggest death dealer because the true number of MBS collapses was low, most people–myself included who held onto their MBS throughout the crisis ultimately made money, but the credit default obligations lead to a lot of destruction of corporate wealth) simply would not be possible. The existence of the Maes is entirely due to New Deal era policies designed to promote homeownership, which every President has embraced fully. I’m against government encouraged homeownership (and also against the mortgage interest tax deduction, something that costs $400bn/year.)
I’m fine with a society in which only around 20% of people own homes and the rest rent. But most Americans are not–and our government reflects that, and is thus to blame for the crisis in the mortgage industry, not the companies that behaved as they were incentivized by government to behave.
I was referring to the demographic scorecard–in a “50/50 national race” she was supposed to lose Michigan to “be on track” to win the nomination. Bernie was supposed to win. I’m thinking you’re putting more weight into the word “supposed” than I am intending. The FiveThirtyEight scorecard is just a benchmark, showing us “is Clinton doing well in states where demographics say she is? Is Bernie?” Based on the benchmark Clinton didn’t need to win Michigan.
yeah, I know, conservative economics all the way, because the crash of 2007 was a result of Big Socialism at play. You got no cred with me there, I’m afraid.
That’s fine. I don’t value street cred from people who think an guy with no finance experience or any mainstream views on trade policy or fiscal policy should be Treasury Secretary.
What’s concerning about Sanders is he formulates himself as European socialist or social democrat–while ignoring he’s actually a 1970s version of one of those. The European left economic model has reformed greatly since the time Sanders adopted their views, so he’s actually out of touch with modern reforms and realities in Europe as well, and is trying to promote those views here after they were proven to need tweaking to work in Europe.
Well whaddya know, I agree. Put Glass-Steagall back. Because MaCain-Feingold has done nothing to help with the credit default swop problem. We could easily have another banking crisis in the next few years.
Yes and no. Fannie Mae did create the conditions that led to the crash, by allowing banks and realtors to pass the risk associated with home lending to Fannie Mae’s investors. So the realtors had no risk because the home loans went through the banks, the banks had no risk because they sold the homes to Fannie Mae, and Fannie Mae past on the risks to the investors who bought their mortgage-backed securities. But that wasn’t the only problem, there was also the rise of ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) where the rates are initially low but increase as the mortgage ages on the assumption that the homeowner’s income will increase as they age.
As we all well know now, in many cases, that was just a lie. Wages have been flat for decades. That’s why the ARMs crashed, and that combined with the very risky loans real estate agents were writing because they weren’t at all risky for the realtors, meant that the mortgage backed securities Fannie Mae was creating were filled with bad loans that would not be repaid. But it was the credit default SWOPS that made the crash something that threatened systemic economic collapse, because it allowed ANYONE to gamble on those securities, not just the chain of stakeholders that started with the homeowners. Basically, the credit default SWOPS were chips that could be used in what was essentially casino gambling by the investment banks. Except that in the event the banks lost their wagers, it would be the US government and the taxpayers that would be on the hook.
Which is exactly what happened. Oh, and did I mention that McCann Feingold does nothing to stop the credit default SWOP market?
I’m not, because what’s going to happen eventually, because it’s happening now, is that the bulk of the American people will be forever frozen out of profiting in the American economy. Can you spell America, The Third World Banana Republic?
Got it! People in Michigan thought they were voting for *Barry *Sanders. 
Only if you count the superdelegates, which are not a sure thing.
I would think they would also have been put off by Hillary’s previous support for fracking, which some equate with the poisoning of the water in Flint.