suspiciously Did Diebold make the coins? Wake up, sheeple!
On a less serious note, here’s hoping that this signals a return to sanity, and real candidates like Clinton and Rubio and Cruz move up and the rest fade.
Regards,
Shodan
Caucus leaders are supposed to check voter registrations, I think. Obviously last night’s turnout overwhelmed a lot of places.
Also, for chicanery to work it would take massive organization of a huge amount of people spread across the state to have a significant impact on the delegate count, at least on the Democratic side. As you noted, it didn’t matter how many people turned out - the caucus you were at had 18 delegates to apportion, whether six people showed up or six hundred.
On the Republican side they actually cast ballots, so that’s somewhat different. I can only speculate they did a better job of checking registrations.
Cruz is only realer than Sanders because his competition in the surreal category is so much fiercer.
[quote=“TriPolar, post:154, topic:744897”]
MSNBC reports that Hillary won three tie-breaker coin tosses to win three of her delegates. Bernie would be up by two right now if those tosses went the other way.
I always knew America’s voting system was screwed up.
Come Nov Hillary gets the Presidency, having won the Primaries by two delegates due to coin tosses. :rolleyes:
See, I would have thought that, too, but the talking heads last night said the candidate consistently running second in NH so far (behind Trump) has been Cruz. Cruz doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would do well in NH, but he’s apparently polling okay so far.
The media narrative is very interesting. Look at the raw numbers: we knew going in the Democratic race was tightening, and polling very close. A statistical tie wasn’t an outrageous result, yet the spin is “Sanders surges; Hillary collapsing?” Similarly, on the GOP side you had 75% of the voters basically split their votes between Cruz, Trump and Rubio, and that’s a yuuuge win for Cruz and humiliation for Trump.
I know it’s all about expectations, but it will be interesting to see how much “momentum” is being created by how the media portrays the outcomes.
Hillary still has a huge advantage nationwide, with Sanders looking at a daunting challenge to get many delegates after NH. Similarly, Cruz seems to fit in the Huckabee/Santorum religious fanatic category that Iowa GOP evangelicals love, but cause the rest of the nation to give a huge shrug.
(Maybe shudder would be a better reaction to Cruz. A Trump presidency scares me somewhat, but President Cruz would be horrifying.)
Sanders’ biggest obstacle has always been in getting people to believe that he was a viable candidate. What he did last night proved that. It doesn’t mean that he has the election in the bag, and he’s still got a long road ahead of him: Even at best, he still has maybe a 1 in 3 chance. But he took the first steps on that long road, and did what he needed to do.
It should also be remembered that originally, his goal wasn’t even winning, but just shifting the conversation. And by that metric, he’s doing great. The only reason he looks to be underperforming now is that he was so overperforming that his goals shifted higher.
Once we’ve cleared out the detrius (Huckabee and O’Malley are gone, IIRC, and I expect Santorum and Fiona to depart shortly), the next real Republican decision point will be 1 March, Super Tuesday, 12 states at stake including Texas, Oklahoma, and most of the “Solid South”, which is the base for Republican votes in the General Election. I expect Bush to remain in the race at least until then, but if he doesn’t have something to show for it by March 2nd, he might not make it to Florida (which would be a big boost for Rubio).
Wouldn’t be surprised this week to see Kasich, Bush and Christie step up attacks on Rubio to try and blunt any momentum he may carry from Iowa; now he (Rubio) needs to meet ‘expections’ or be considered a 'disappointment".
To quote Jerry Reed from Smokey and the Bandit: “Hold onto your ass, Fred.”
I remember people saying that, particularly people assuming a Clinton cakewalk but I am not sure it “should be remembered” like it’s some basic fact. Can you give me a cite?
I realize Rubio got a bigger % in Iowa than expected but I’m not yet convinced this is going to propel him to the nomination. He is in 5th place in New Hampshire, 3rd in Nevada and South Carolina. His campaign can spin all he wants but 3rd place just means you are the second loser. Trump may finally tumble in the next few contests but it looks to me like the momentum will shift to Cruz if that happens.
And, yeah, I get that a lot of the establishment money and apparatus may start to coalesce around Rubio, but I’m not convinced that has the power it used to. It certainly hasn’t done Bush much good.
They pointed out that Rubio won in the same parts of Iowa that Romney did.
Adding to that I do think that the establishment telling Iowans and others to dump Cruz had the opposite effect on many, I do wonder if they used reverse psychology.
Establishment Republicans: “Hey, we are not happy with the top choices, but we should support Trump over Cruz”.
Unconventional Rank and file: “Trump is supported by the establishment? Well, then eat Cruz you RINOs!”
MSNBC shows 701 state delegates for Clinton, 697 for Sanders, and 8 for O’Malley.
There’s just one problem with those numbers: according to the Iowa Democratic Party website, O’Malley didn’t get 15% of the delegates at any county convention (in fact, there was only one county where he got more than 5%), and the 15% viability rule applies at that level. If his county delegates switch to Sanders, then he could end up winning the most delegates from Iowa.
Also remember that 33 of Iowa’s 44 national delegates are determined at Congressional District level; each county is assigned to one of Iowa’s four districts. The state convention delegates from each district go through the caucus procedure to detrermine who gets that district’s delegates.
[quote=“Gedd, post:184, topic:744897”]
First of all, the tiebreakers were for county delegates, not national ones.
Second, watch Bernie get most of the “pledged” delegates, only for Hillary to get the nomination thanks to the overwhelming support she has from the “superdelegates.” Hold on…it turns out that three of the superdelegates - Obama, Biden, and former President Clinton - “mistakenly” voted for Sanders (“that ballot was confusing”), and Bernie wins by one delegate.
Semi-seriously, if that happens (Bernie has the most pledged delegates but Hillary wins the nomination), I fully expect Bernie’s supporters to demand that he run as a third-party candidate. I wonder how hard it is to get someone’s name on the November ballot in a state if the person doesn’t enter himself, but a group of people submit petitions “on his behalf.”
No, she would say, “Get up on the treadmill for a good run, Bill, while we discuss it.”
Here’s CNN.com with five takeaways from Iowa: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/02/politics/iowa-caucuses-2016-takeaways/index.html
Nonsense. Every whispered, unsubstantiated smear I’ve heard about Rubio had to do with his numerous girlfriends and illegitimate children.
Sanders did well in Iowa because the young voters put them in there. That’s why. They want free college, free healthcare. Those proposals sound great. Where can you find the money to get that passed into the House and the Senate remains the big question. These young voters also have a distaste of the U.S. military, because they grew up under the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, a post-9/11 world, Middle Eastern tension. They felt it was a conflicted, costly, wrong adventure. Some of it was.
Yes, the Iraq War, in my opinion was a mistake. A grave one. However, they do not appreciate what the soldiers had to deal with in those conditions.
However, Sanders will win New Hampshire, Vermont, maybe Oregon, etc. The big question however, is if he is up to being commander in chief of America’s forces. That, my friends, remains to be seen.
It seems Hillary won six consecutive coin flips to narrowly win in Iowa. If I was a Super Bowl coach, I’d let her call the flip on Sunday.
There are two states that impact the Democratic nomination that Sanders has a chance in and they just happen to be the first two. After that, it’s going to be all Hillary. This fight is over despite the media’s insistence on selling a horse race.
You’re speaking in vague generalizations. I think we’ve pointed out to you in other threads that many young voters do, in fact, support our military. I’d say they dislike the leaders of the, but your base assumptions are all speculation unless you can produce cites.
Do you have any evidence for this? It may be true, but you’re stating it as fact rather than hypothesis.
What evidence do you have that Sanders’ supporters, or Sanders himself, have a “distaste of the U.S. military”?
*of the military
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