Sanders saved by supers?

Politics & Elections
81

In a vacuum, momentum would certainly seem to be with Sanders. At least, that’s what Bernie supporters want everyone to believe. But that argument is disingenuous in the extreme, for reasons, once again, already detailed previously in the thread. They figure that claiming momentum will give them an advantage in future primaries. However, the plain and simple fact is that we just went through a stretch which favored Bernie anyway, and we’re now entering the final leg which clearly favors Hillary.

Sanders-ade. It’s got momentum.

82

Michigan is typically blue, and yet it has had a history of electing Republican governors, including the current one. It’s red enough for a democrat to spend time and money visiting the state.

Wisconsin is in serious danger of going red. It has everything to do with Scott Walker’s voter ID law and the fact that Wisconsin came down to a few percentage points in the last election.

83

One of the things Sanders supporters have been completely ignoring though is that in states like that, one of the important factors is going to be voter enthusiasm among Democrats, particularly among their core constituencies.

I know Sanders supporters want to believe their guy is “the better one for people of color” but so far Sanders has yet to demonstrate that he has any measurable level of enthusiasm or support amongst African-Americans or Latinos and his outreach efforts have often been really tone deaf(picking as surrogates Killer Mike, Cornell West, Spike Lee, Rosario Dawson).

Against a candidate Trump you might see huge turnouts among African-Americans and Latinos, but against a candidate Cruz(which is looking far more likely) such incentives may not be there and we’ve little reason to believe they’ll suddenly become so enthusiastic for him.

Similarly, Sanders seems to have a really hard time convincing the working class that he’s their guy.

84

I think Barack Obama might quibble with you. He was hardly the darling of the establishment in 2008 so unless your qualification for an “insurgency campaign” is “being led by a white guy” he’s got Bernie beat.

85

asahi, about “momentum”:

–In 2008, if you remember, Obama built up a lead in delegates fairly early on. By March 11, after Mississippi voted, he led Clinton by 106 pledged delegates, not counting supers. (Numbers from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2008.)*

After March 11? Well, Clinton won 44 more delegates than he did the rest of the way. She beat him in PA, beat him in Indiana, whomped him in Kentucky and West Virginia and Puerto Rico. She cut his lead nearly in half. She clearly had the “momentum.”

And yet, nobody cared. Superdelegates didn’t flock to support her. If anything, they kept on moving toward Obama. In the end, they rejected the candidate who was on the move and making up that deficit at a steady clip–in favor of the candidate who clearly lacked momentum, who hadn’t won a true swing state since Virginia on February 12, whose delegate lead was dwindling rapidly. They rejected “momentum” altogether, and how did that work out?

Pretty well, I’d say: 365 electoral votes ain’t nothing to sneeze at.

As for “momentum” this year…well, if you look at just the last nine primaries, going back to the day after the voting in Illinois, Florida, etc., Sanders *does *have momentum. He’s won eight of these nine contests and narrowed the gap from about 300 pledged delegates to about 200, about half of the change due to his huge win in Washington State.

Of course, you have to cherry-pick to do that–if you go back just a week and include the March 15 primaries, which came *after *he had that upset in Michigan, he’s gained a total of…three delegates on Clinton.

And these nine contests have been very favorable to Sanders in a couple of obvious ways: there have been a bunch of caucuses (and he does very well in caucuses), and nearly all the states have small Latino and very small African American populations (and he does very well in states with small Latino and very small African American populations). It’s not as though he’s suddenly winning Mississippi and South Carolina by ten points.

So, he’s making up ground, if you draw your lines exactly right and ignore the fact that the demographics and style-of-contest in most of the last few states have been right up his alley. Fine. That’s great. So did Clinton, eight years ago, and she was much closer to Obama when she started to momentum-ize than Sanders was to her. What did that “momentum” get Clinton? Nothing.

Why would we expect it to be any different for Sanders?
*The results from Michigan and Florida were a little unclear, as you might remember, so these numbers might have been listed differently at the time. Doesn’t change the basic premise.

86

Ah, yes, the election of 2008. Sanders supporters don’t like talking about it because it shows that an insurgent candidate against the Clinton Political Machine can win and do so by just getting more votes/delegates instead of whining about unfair super delegates, early voting, “Virginia shouldn’t count because we didn’t really try” and all that. Republicans don’t like talking about it because they really want to push the idea that Clinton is “weak” for letting the primary play out to June… just like it did in 2008 before Obama’s crushing victory in the general election.

87

Look I appreciate that you are playing a hypothetical and FWIW while I doubt that Clinton will get the 59%+ of the pledged delegates that would equal a win without a single superdelegate, I do actually expect that she will win NY, PA, and CA, likely by reasonable margins. But this is a what-if, and I will play.

I do not believe that any significant number of Sanders supporters (and uh yeah,a bit of hyperbole in your description of them) would view not being giving the nomination by superdelegates getting Sanders over a pledged delegate and more sizable popular vote as him having actually “won.”

Which is not to say that I do not believe that attempting to make that case would not cause some harm. It would be divisive. Some nonzero additional number would end up staying home. Some already will and I suspect that number grow as the campaign goes on.

Maybe some healing would still be possible afterwards. Maybe Sanders would try to help in the process. Maybe not.

In any case I doubt we will be dealing with the hypothetical. But maybe we can talk more on 4/20?

88

You’re evaluating race only. The reality is that Obama never tried to run as an anti-establishment crusader. To the contrary, he tried to convince people that he was a relatively ‘safe’ progressive. That’s one reason why superdelegates had no problem switching sides once Barack started winning elections. That’s also why Democrats superdelegates have not flocked to Sanders, and they won’t unless it becomes clear that Clinton’s campaign is seriously wounded going into the November election. We’re not at that stage now, but we could get there.

89

Oranges and apples. Just like now, Clinton entered the race the huge favorite, and it was her race to lose. She lost it. And she lost it to a guy who, despite the challenge of having to overcome his ethnicity, did so and entered the convention with more contests won and a delegate lead. Also, the kind of momentum I’m referring to isn’t winning a few races in the final week. Sanders’ momentum, if it holds, would be months-long momentum. And if he wins out in PA and California, then that’s a serious string of success he will have put together. I don’t think you see the dynamics. But you will if what I suspect could happen actually does happen. I do predict Sanders will end up winning a majority of contests. But it’s the specific states that, and the point margin that will really determine how strong the insurgency.

90

I’m a Sanders supporter who campaigned for Obama. There is no comparison.

Obama wasn’t an outsider, and he wasn’t an unknown. He got a lot of buzz as a keynote speaker at the Dem convention. Hardball’s Chris Matthews commented at the time that he “got a tingle up his leg”, and “he knew he was looking at the First AA President”. He used veteran Dem insiders to put his campaign together, and with his activist experience he set up a remarkable grassroots organization and data collection team.

Sanders had none of those advantages (much less the personal charisma and temperament of PBO), and yet what he has achieved is remarkable. He’s garnered 71% of the under 30 vote - a higher percentage than PBO. He’s raised more money than HRC and Ted Cruz in the last 2 months with small donors. He’s proven that an admitted leftist - a democratic socialist outsider - can run for a national election with popular support and without big money donors.

The political coming of age of those young voters has been imprinted by this experience, and they are the future of progressive politics. The age of the neoliberals is almost done.

91

I’ll give you this…you’ve got persistence and hope.

There’s that term again. For those who may have missed it, basically:

‘neoliberal’ = anyone who isn’t agitating for radical revolution.

So Camille, does that mean Trumpeteers are non-neoliberals?

92

Hrmm…double post.

93

That’s your definition, not mine. I’d be surprised if anyone here agreed with you. Maybe someone who cares will fill you in.

94

That’s exactly the definition your quote implied…I forget who the author was. It lumped together, at the very least, neocons and moderate liberals.

95

For those of us who plain do not know what “neoliberal” means or implies … what is your definition of the phrase and what is usually meant by it?

96

This is what wiki wiki has to say:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

97

Then you misunderstood that quote, and most likely the larger story.

From what I can tell here, you’re conflating foreign policy and economic policy. Some people are both neocons (FP) and neoliberals (EP), but it’s not a given. You can be one and not the other.

98

FWIW I’d agree with this. Many of us were expecting greatness from Obama as the future from that keynote on, and some of us posted that here. The expectation that many had was that it was going to be another cycle away but the time was right. He was no unknown and while progressives and conservatives both declared him to be a hardline progressive he himself portrayed himself much more moderately than that.

99

That’s a good start. Anyone disagree?

100

Sure we can talk on 4/20. But I’ve not really predicted a Hillary loss in NY, so if we do talk on 4/20 let’s bookmark this.

What I am far more concerned about as someone who actually does, for the record, support Hillary, is where she stands after 4/26. That’s a 5-state contest that includes PA. May has contests throughout the calendar. We really oughtta have this conversation again on June 8, because that’s where all of this is headed to, I think.