What I don’t get is why anyone is giving a crap whether Sanders “concedes defeat” or Clinton “claims victory”. This isn’t winner take all - none of the Dem primaries are. They are more or less splitting the win regardless.
I think you’re engaging in the fallacy “I like A, I do not like B, therefore B does not like A”. What evidence do you have that the young don’t appreciate what soldiers do, or that they should in the first place? Is it that your younger Facebook friends aren’t sharing and liking all the countless troop-ass-kissing posts they come across?
The “winner” sends the implicit message to the rest of the country: “I am more likely to win in November than my opponents.” You don’t think there aren’t Republicans in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada who are now thinking, “I was going to vote for (for example) Carson or Bush, but they’re pretty much out and Cruz won Iowa, so he must be legitimate”?
In 2008, there was some controversy in Nevada; IIRC, Clinton got the most votes in the Democratic caucuses there, but the way they were spread out, Obama actually got more delegates, and both sides claimed victory, which they felt was especially important going into Super Tuesday.
(I am a Sanders supporter, “young” is relative.)
I just wanted to say that I like our military; I don’t like them dying in pointless wars.
They’ve officially announced Clinton as the winner in Iowa. With the smallest margin ever, I believe.
From the standpoint of the Republicans, Iowa was a huge win. Some of the wind was taken out of Trump’s sails, Marco Rubio finished in a near-tie with Trump, and the rest of the field became a bunch of also-rans. That clarifies the race, gets rid of the giant collection of poseurs who never had a chance at the nomination, and changes the narrative away from Trump towards the top three.
Furthermore, Jeb Bush was a horrible standard-bearer for the establishment. His campaign has been burning through all of the big money with zero to show for it. I suspect a lot of that is now going to switch to Rubio, and unless another wild night happens in New Hampshire the Republican race is going to be focused on those three.
I don’t think Trump can hold his own in a three way debate with Cruz and Rubio. He was much better in a group of ten where he could hide his lack of knowledge behind the odd funny statement.
Honestly, I think Rubio may be positioned to win the nomination. He’s going to be strong in the southeast, and with establishment support will do well elsewhere.
Also, Cruz’s bible thumping is going to hurt him. He needed to do it to win Iowa, but that’s not going to win him any friends in the more moderate, less evangelical states. If he turns into Huckabee - half politician, half firebrand preacher - he’s going to have the kind of results Huckabee had.
On the Democratic side… If I were a Democrat, I’d be panicking. Hillary is a damaged candidate with scandal swirling around her, health issues, and an unlikeable public demeanour. She’s so weak she couldn’t put away a 74 year old balcony muppet. Plus, the Democrats face the possibility that if she wins she could still be indicted, throwing the nomination to the convention.
And if Bernie wins, well… Expect election night to deliver McGovern-Dukakis-Mondale levels of Democratic voter turnout. The millenials in college may have shifted hard to the left, but the rest of the country is still center-right, and a crazy-looking, podium pounding socialist is not an ideal candidate. A Sanders nomination will result in the middle moving towards the Republicans if someone like Rubio is nominated. The Democrats need to hope for a Trump win.
At this point, a brokered convention might be the best thing that could happen to the Democrats. Then someone fresh can rise up and re-invigorate the party, and run in the general before the Republican oppo-machine manages to dig up and publicize too much dirt.
Wow, that is some powerful spin. Feel free to rest a few minutes until you’re less dizzy.
Last night was a success for Democrats. It’s just about optimal, really. Clinton avoided losing, which means in actuality, the campaign is over. She won. Sanders couldn’t win in the state that 538 modeled as third best for him. However, in perception, it’s a race! It was a tie in Iowa! Sanders is going to win NH! The media will continue to focus on the Democratic race, and by extension, on Democratic ideas and on Clinton. She avoids the appearance of a ‘coronation.’ The candidates will have further debates, which always contrast favorably to Republican debates. As a Democrat, I’m ecstatic at how things are going.
If you were a Democrat you wouldn’t think any of that. You’d have known for months that the first two primaries were going to be tough for her, you’d think the scandals are bullshit and know indictment is a ridiculous Republican fantasy.
Somehow I don’t think a brokered convention would remotely invigorate the party. They’ll probably prefer getting the person they voted for.
This isn’t about the delegates from Iowa. Iowa is just the opening act and it sets the mood for the audience. Loss and victory here is relative to expectations and the way it sets the expectations for the next event.
Nice analysis, except you’re wrong about the country being center right. The country has actually shifted center left. Either Hillary and Bernie should be able to beat any of the Republican Clown Car candidates simply because their policies are more in line with what the American people want.
Clinton won more delegates, but there is no such thing as an official winner in Iowa, only a divvying up of the delegates.
Yeah, the Democratic debates contrast so favorably that they agreed to as few as possible and put them on at times when the fewest people would be watching. The last Republican debate (without Trump) got 12.5 million viewers. On the Democratic side…
Democratic Debate gets Lowest Ratings of the Year.
That debate got 7.5 million viewers. So far, the Republicans are attracting far more attention - even without Trump. That’s not a good sign for where the excitement is in this race.
The problem with a close race between Hillary and Bernie is that the candidates are going to have to start playing hardball with each other. That’s going to legitimize a lot of issues that Hillary would rather categorize as just being part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
If Bernie starts talking about E-mails, his followers are going to start criticizing Hillary over them, and the media will be forced to report more on it. If Bernie goes after Hillary’s crony capitalist tendencies, her family’s huge speaking-fee income from Wall Street, and the close ties between Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation, it’s going to damage Hillary with the base.
Hillary will go after Bernie’s age and his radical past. She’ll play the experience card and try to paint him as being unqualified for office. And she’d be right - nothing in Bernie’s past suggests that he’s executive material, and he IS 74 years old. There’s a legitimate question there about his health and stamina. Reagan took a lot of shots over his age, and he was six years younger than Bernie would be on election day.
This is all dirty laundry the Democrats would prefer to ignore or assign to Republican perfidy. The last thing they need is a Republican ad showing Bernie Sanders attacking Clinton for gross negligence with classified national security information.
You may be right about that. There are seismic shifts going on in the world right now. Hell, Alberta elected a socialist government, and we are considered to be slightly to the right of Texas in our political outlook. Mind you, that was a fluke and our new government is now polling just slightly higher than herpes, but it was still a wildly unexpected event.
I’m not making any predictions this year. If I had made predictions six months ago I would have laughed at the notion that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would be leading their respective parties. But here we are.
The DNC went out of its way to try to schedule debates when no one would watch them: opposite playoff games, on weekends, etc. It was a bad call, and fortunately it seems the campaigns are agreeing to undo some of that mistake.
Sanders’s campaign is predicated on being issue-focused. He won’t start talking about the emails. He will continue to go after Clinton for being too close to Wall Street, and it’s already hurt her with the base. It doesn’t matter. They’re still going to turn out for her in November.
It’s interesting and all to see how the Democratic primary appears to a right-wing Canadian, but trust me: it appears very different to Democrats in the States.
Bernie is not going to harp on the emails. He famously said we’re sick of hearing about them, and we are. The only people that give a flying fuck about the emails are Republicans, just as the only ones who think Benghazi is a liability are those that never considered voting for her in the first place.
Bernie has gone as far negative as he wants to about Wall Street. There is nothing he can say about her that any Republican hasn’t already said.
Hillary isn’t going negative on Sanders. She doesn’t need to. After NH, they’re all home games for her. Sanders’ age may be a factor for some, and even though he’s older than Reagan was, he has yet to show any signs of senility that so characterized Reagan’s last term.
Of course they will go after each other. That’s how it’s always worked. You’re saying a coronation without any kind of nomination battle would have been best?
But Sanders won’t bring up the emails, it would be a bad idea to go back on being sick of the damn emails.
It’s not Bernie’s style, but he should be reading the list of Wall St. donors that Hillary has, and the list of people that have given her and Bill money over the years. If Bernie has a chance it’s based on his grass roots economic justice appeal, he has to reveal Hillary as the bagman* for the establishment.
*Does ‘baglady’ work in that context?
I’ve always found it odd how bag man and bag lady mean completely different things.
See, this is why it’s useful to have an ‘outsider’ here. You guys live in a bit of a bubble, I think. The other day I talked to a friend who was a Democratic supporter, and he was totally shocked when I told him the FBI was investigating. He had assured me that it was all just a Republican witch-hunt and no one was taking it seriously. He refused to believe me when I told him there was an ongoing FBI investigation.
An example here is that you believe that Sanders won’t go after Hillary’s E-mails - when he already has:
Sanders: Clinton emails ‘very serious issue’
That’s called an ‘opening shot’. You leave the issue out there, you say it’s serious, but you magnanimously claim you are above the fray. Then later, if he still needs an issue against her it will become ‘time to talk about it.’ Standard politics.
There have also been suggestions from his camp that his original comment about people being tired of hearing about the ‘Damned E-mails’ was cut off by loud applause, and he was originally intending to continue on and say that it was an example of why she shouldn’t be President, or something. That’s probably not true, but it sure sounded to me like they were setting the groundwork for him to be able to go after Clinton on the E-mails without being tagged a hypocrite or an opportunist.
I am a Canadian living in Houston, Sam, though not in a bubble. Your first post in this thread looked as much as a bubble viewpoint as any I’ve seen. The idea that a nomination battle is such bad news when that is simply the way it is supposed to happen is dreamy dream thinking.