Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

No one could have predicted…

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Why Iowa? Why New Hampshire?

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Why Iowa? Why New Hampshire?

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nh primary sap boiling toles

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
.

There’s yet another GOP debate tonight (8pm EST, on ABC), but I don’t think I’ll be watching it. Stage is down to “just” Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Bush, Kasich, and Christie. The NH primary is on Tuesday, in the face of two potentially troublesome snowstorms, because apparently the weather gods are beginning to hate the media/campaign people almost as much as those of us bombarded with pre-primary political ads. And yet, “everybody” has to pay attention to New Hampshire, just as “everybody” had to pay attentio to Iowa. Is this really any way to officially start a national competition with so much depending on the outcome?

Professor Krugman:

The outsized role the Iowa caucuses play in the nomination process is, as almost everyone acknowledges, sort of stupid. But where does it come from? The immediate answer is that it’s about the news media, which seize on the Iowa results and use them to tell narratives that can, in turn, have a huge impact on fundraising and later voting…

…[I]t’s obvious that the media have strong herding instincts; almost everyone wants to be somewhere close to the middle of the pack, telling the prevailing narrative. But there are many narratives that could, in fact, prevail. Partly that’s because such narratives can be self-fulfilling, and partly it’s because actually being, you know, right isn’t that important compared with being on top of the trend. So anything that gives special salience to a particular narrative can produce convergence on that narrative, even if everyone realizes that what’s going on is basically stupid…

None of the camps in either party are happy with the Iowa results — there’s an argument to be made that the whole jury-rigged “heartland virtues” system just made things worse this year, between the Cruz people ratfvcking Carson to cheat Trump (to the earned-media benefit of Rubio), and the penny-ante thimble-rigging required on the Democratic side to assign a finite number of delegates before all of them died of ennui.

And nothing I’ve seen indicates that New Hampshire is going to be any less of a circus.

Is this really the best we can do?

Reader Interactions

171Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ll probably watch the debate since the face-plant potential is at an all-time high. Trump must be itching to reverse the loser narrative; Carson is surely plotting revenge on Cruz for his Iowa shenanigans; Jeb and Christie are desperate to pants Rubio, etc. The air on stage will be thick with flung turds. What’s not to like?

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Betty Cracker:

    Also, Trump has been going nuts with his language in rallies the last few days. We can always hope he’ll drop a big noisy S-bomb or F-bomb at the debate, sending the moderators to their fainting couches and bringing down the wrath of the FCC on ABC.

  6. 6.

    bystander

    I think Hallmark is having a Murder She Wrote marathon, so I’ll probably be missing the repub debate. Unless of course the moderators include Angela Lansbury, William Windom and Special Guest Stars Kathryn Grayson and Mary Withers.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    Understatement of the year (so far) from a newspaper crime report:

    Tampa police say a shooting at a club involves seven victims. Authorities said they did not yet have information if anyone was killed.

    Lt. Ricardo Ubinas said early Saturday that police were on the scene of the shooting at Club Rayne, 8123 N. Nebraska Ave. His statement did not give information on fatalities.

    Officer William Copulos of the Tampa police said the shooting was being investigated and police would release more information later. He said he believed there may have been a disagreement in the club but did not have specifics. No other details were immediately available.

    Ya think?!?!?

  8. 8.

    Baud

    Whatever happens with this election, I hope someone takes a serious look at the primary process. Democrats in particular should be on the forefront of making it easier to participate in primary elections and having a fair process.

  10. 10.

    bystander

    Just saw on Rachel Maddow that Jeb! has had no success campaigning with a talking topographical map (and I say that because I loathe her) so he’s going to run an ad featuring his beloved brother. He’s bought time during the Superbowl. Are there strictly local spots or is everything national? Anyway, could turn the whole thing into the Superbowel.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    To answer your question Anne, yes this is the best we can do. If only because it isn’t any worse than anything else we might do. You have to remember we belong to that particular sub species of Homo Sapiens known as Americanusassholus. We can fvck up a wet dream. How else does one explain the political relevance of Rick Santorum?

  14. 14.

    MBunge

    Iowa and New Hampshire are like a microcosm of what is fundamentally wrong with our politics. There’s no reason for them to be so important but we don’t trust ourselves enough to do anything about it.

    Mike

  15. 15.

    Mary G

    @bystander: Yes, that’ll help. Trot out that ex-president the Republican party has had in the Federal Witness Protection program for the last eight years. So much so that they talk about Clinton/Obama ideas like the first eight years of this century didn’t happen. What an idiotic plan.

  18. 18.

    satby

    Another Republican debate? Ugh. I’ve successfully avoided all debates so far but especially Republican ones. I’m not mentally strong enough to see any of that and not go all Hulk on my TV. I was bummed that I was facing another 5 hours of driving today after diving for 6 1/2 yesterday, but knowing that I will miss that makes me feel better.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @efgoldman: If he doesn’t have any political relevance, how do you explain all the spilled ink about him these past few months? He get’s his money from somewhere and he still continues to spew his vile mix of piety and politics over the airwaves and people still listen. Yes, he’s a joke, and we all know he’s a joke, but the joke is on us. I’ll laugh but it’s only because crying won’t do any good.

  25. 25.

    Kirbster

    The negative advertising from the conservative SuperPACs is something to behold, as the candidates attack each other from the right. Each and every GOP candidate is secretly an Obama-loving squish who is insufficiently bellicose on foreign policy and unacceptably soft on immigration. Sitting GOP governors get pilloried for actually trying to govern pragmatically (their ideology is not pure!) and (worst of all) accepting FREE MEDICAID MONEY. The message is that the ideal conservative is unwaveringly callous and cruel at home and abroad.

  26. 26.

    different-church-lady

    If I were designing the primaries from scratch, I would make candidates first compete in summer in the bowl of an active volcano. While wearing synthetic fur.

  28. 28.

    debbie

    @efgoldman:

    (After 20 years in commercial and public radio, the language on HBO still startles me.)

    Nah, just makes me nostalgic for family dinners back when I was a kid.

  30. 30.

    low-tech cyclist

    One obvious thing is that the early primaries could WAY better reflect the Democratic Party’s demographics. Forget Iowa – lead off with Delaware or Rhode Island.

  32. 32.

    Zinsky

    I won’t be watching the debates. They just raise my blood pressure. However, I would give anything to hear a moderator ask, “Why are none of the GOP candidates talking about responsible governance? It’s all about killing people, erecting barriers and blowing things up?”

  33. 33.

    low-tech cyclist

    @efgoldman:

    Anyway, doesn’t everybody get fucking HBO now?

    Hell, some of us don’t even bother with cable. My wife and I realized we would be paying a thousand bucks a year to watch a few hours of TV a week (neither of us have ever been big TV watchers), and decided we could find ways to blow $1000 that were actually fun.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    Yeah, there are problems with both Iowa and New Hampshire each time.

    However including a compact, easy to get around state and a relatively less populous state away from the coasts aren’t totally bad choices when it comes to honing a campaign,

  40. 40.

    oldgold

    The entire electoral process is effed up beyond all recognition. The Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary are the least of our problems.

  41. 41.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Kind of off topic, but I’m heading out to a bonfire soon, to stand in the snow. It’s a fairy land here today in Boston. Can’t leave without stirring up the Bernfeeler/Shillary pot, though, so I’ll leave this here.

    You’re welcome.

  42. 42.

    Major Major Major Major

    @satby: My dad said “maybe all the Krav training had something to do with it?”

    And I said “That’s not exactly the sort of thing they teach you?”

    And he said “Well they do teach you how to wound the xiphoid process, so there’s that.”

  43. 43.

    Virginia Highlander

    Can a post be off-topic in an open thread?

    This should have been posted to last night’s Bunker update, but seriously Guardian, what the actual fuck? Slobbering over Snowden I can sort of understand, but the militia movement? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

    I read the world-news pages at both the BBC and The Guardian and I swear between the two I probably don’t know a damn thing about world events.

  44. 44.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Catholic Churches response to the Zika virus:

    Robert Kennedy, chair of the department of Catholic studies at the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, said the church was unlikely to ease its stance in light of the crisis. “I think the church will take what steps it can to offer support – material, spiritual and personal – to families affected by the problem, but I see no circumstances in which the church will repudiate its teaching about artificial contraception.”

    The church believed that “some kinds of acts are always wrong” and these included “contracepted intercourse,” he added. “No set of circumstances can make acts like these morally good.”

    Remind me again why so many seemingly decent human beings remain affiliated with that morally bankrupt institution?

  47. 47.

    The Golux

    @Mary G:

    Trot out that ex-president the Republican party has had in the Federal Witness Protection Witless Projection program…

    Even more descriptive.

  48. 48.

    Eric S.

    @satby: Lujack passed away in December 2013.

    My parents moved to the Chicago area in 1979. I was 7 going on 8. We had a family breakfast every morning before work and school and Lujack was the DJ for WLS. We always liked forward to he and Tommy Edwards doing Animal Stories.

  50. 50.

    sparrow

    @OzarkHillbilly: Lots of them just ignore the contraception thing, and lots of other inconvenient doctrines, even though they may be fairly devout (aka, tribally committed) otherwise. My father is a catholic, goes to church every week and even sometimes more, volunteers, gives money, etc. He had his tubes tied before getting an annulment of his first marriage (which produced 2 children! I still never understand how that got done), and remarrying. I know my parents kept condoms in my dad’s bedside table all during my childhood. I never asked them about it, but unless they were complete hypocrites they must have just decided to agree-to-disagree.

  53. 53.

    satby

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Best line of many killer lines: “This election will not have been given to her, she will have earned it. If you can respect that, if you can’t deep down in your heart of hearts give credit to a woman who has done so much for her country and still has more left to give, if you can realize that this woman has been brutally attacked for a quarter-century simply for having the last name Clinton, if you can do all that then you can swallow your pride in November and cast a vote for someone who will be leaps and bounds ahead of whoever the Republican Party nominates after his months-long three-ringed circus. If you truly care about this country the way that you proclaim to do, then you will vote for the Democratic Party nominee for president”

  56. 56.

    El Caganer

    @Betty Cracker: Are you really sure you want to do that? A few days ago Chubs Chubbie told Joe Scarborough that he was going to start ‘pounding the meat.’ I don’t know exactly what this means he’ll do tonight, but the images it conjures up are not promising.

  58. 58.

    Eric S.

    @satby: I’ve seen that happen before. Somehow a news story gets recycled and it looks current in no short part because the ads are dynamic. The date line on stories is also often in the fine print.

  59. 59.

    Germy

    So Christie is monkey spanking, Cruz is rat fucking…

    I was listening to PRI yesterday (don’t know why) and someone said they were talking to Jeb’s money people. They were asked what they’d do if Jeb underperformed at the next showdown, and their reply: “Rubio, Rubio Rubio”

    So I guess there’ll be a mass $ migration to the waterboy.

  60. 60.

    Baud

    Washington State Via Reddit

    A gun-rights bill introduced at the Capitol on Friday includes six quotes from America’s Founding Fathers about the importance of guns to democracy.

    The problem is, half of those quotes are fake.

  61. 61.

    Germy

    @Baud: It’s one thing when deliberately wrong information gets into the brains of our neighbors and family. It’s another thing when deliberately wrong information gets into the brains of our legislators.

    Wait… what brains?

  62. 62.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: The Church is against artificial contraception, but it’s perfectly ok and advocates (in third world countries) natural family planning, which can have success (symptothermal method) effectiveness of 99.6%. It has the benefit in poor countries of being free too.
    I’m an ex-Catholic, but judging the entire Church by the corrupt fuckers of the American conference of bishops is misleading. I don’t agree with the Church on almost anything, but their stance is internally consistent at least.

  63. 63.

    Amir Khalid

    @satby:
    I took a look at the rest of the site, and it has a very strong Hillarista lean. I still broadly agree with its conclusions in that article, but those who support Hillary should watch out for confirmation bias.

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    A few days ago Chubs Chubbie told Joe Scarborough that he was going to start ‘pounding the meat.’

    OMG. I know he’s the governor and all, but can he actually do that in public?

  68. 68.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sparrow: I’m a Catholicism survivor. Old enough to remember Latin Mass. My mother was a born and bred Southern Baptist who converted to marry my Papist father (and was threatened with being disowned if she went through with it). Made sure that each of my sisters were on the pill as soon as they had their first period. And yet…. never once used any contraceptives herself. 8 pregnancies, 7 children, the last at the age of 42. So yeah, I know all about how Catholics will pick and choose which tenets to uphold.

    But that wasn’t my question. I asked why do they stay with it? My mother couldn’t. When she was dying, I asked her if she wanted a priest. She said, “No.” and that was all she said. So why do so many stay with it? Habit?

  69. 69.

    Germy

    @WereBear: Yesterday, our indoor cat ran across the living room at fifty miles per hour and jumped up to look out our front window. I was curious what she was so interested in looking at, and saw a small tuxedo cat walk across our lawn.

    Nothing unusual, she likes watching the outdoor cats who wander through our yard. But then the tuxedo dashed across our busy street without looking, and came about one inch from being flattened by a speeding car. He made it the the other side and disappeared into an alley.

    I was immensely relieved he made it. She kept watch for about an hour after that, running from window to window, but I think he was hiding, shook up from the experience. There are some outdoor cats around here who know to stop and look both ways, but he was of the “run quickly across the road without looking” school.

    We keep our girl indoors. People don’t brake for cats around here.

  70. 70.

    satby

    @Amir Khalid: Agreed. But he succinctly states something that makes a lot of people like me crazy, that most of the attacks on Clinton’s “dishonesty” are a result of 25 years of constant right wing smears and propaganda.
    I give the woman credit for not telling the entire nation just to fuck off, which is why she may become President and I never would.

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby:

    The Church is against artificial contraception, but it’s perfectly ok and advocates (in third world countries) natural family planning, which can have success (symptothermal method) effectiveness of 99.6%.

    My mother had one word for that: “Bullshit.” and she had the 7 pregnancies to prove it. (only one was intentional)

  79. 79.

    WereBear

    @OzarkHillbilly: Remind me again why so many seemingly decent human beings remain affiliated with that morally bankrupt institution?

    I believe their official motto is something like, “Get ’em while they are young, and they are in our grip for life.”

    When I discuss it with people, they harken back to sunlight on stained glass, the thrill of their parents at First Communion, feeling uplifted by the atmosphere when they were a child.

    It never ever has anything to do with morals stances or the convoluted beauty of the dogma.

  81. 81.

    Ken

    There’s yet another GOP debate tonight

    This becomes easier to understand if you think of them as reality TV: cheap to produce, and guaranteed audience numbers and ad revenues.

  82. 82.

    WereBear

    @Germy: Youth. Sometimes they don’t get a chance to learn.

    Ours stay indoors, too. If they get bored, they watch a movie on the Chromebook.

    But we don’t get them HBO. Too much swearing.

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WereBear: I haven’t been to a Xmas mass in over 30 years any other kind of mass in over 43 years. I still miss the mystery and majesty of Latin mass even though they stopped giving those when I was 5 or 6. But I don’t miss the nuns, I don’t miss the beatings, I don’t miss seeing my classmates brutalized…

    One of the hardest conversations I ever had with my mother was the one when she apologized to me for what had been done to me. It was hard because I had to watch her struggle with her own… I’ll call it a ‘complicity of ignorance’. As she said, she knew something was wrong but had no idea what. That I had always been a quiet child, but that then I just shut up.

    It made sense that she would not be able to figure it out. She grew up SB, had no experience with Catholic schools. My old man was on the road all the time and when he was at home she was loath to bother him with problems when she wasn’t even sure there was a problem.

    I never held it against her or him. But I have never forgiven the legions of adults in that school who were perfectly aware of what was going on in that classroom.

  90. 90.

    feebog

    @Amir Khalid:

    A few days ago Chubs Chubbie told Joe Scarborough that he was going to start ‘pounding the meat.’

    OMG. I know he’s the governor and all, but can he actually do that in public?

    He will have to find it first.

  91. 91.

    OldDave

    @satby:

    … Larry Lujack passed away

    Again?!? (Lujack passed in December of 2013.) Can’t quite remember of it was Lujack or another WLS jock who once introduced a new Ringo Starr song via a long story about the Poe Toe Graph.

  92. 92.

    scav

    OT Whoop! First Folio day for me at the Illinois stop. Preserved forests indeed. With luck, I’ll come back to watch something civilized, rather than the debates. Titus Andronicus or maybe all of the Wars of the Roses.

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    Apollo 14 astronaut, and the sixth man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell, has died at age 85. (And yes, I checked the date of the report.) RIP. I was fascinated by those early astronauts back in the 1960s and ’70s, and it saddens me that they are of an age that they are all dying off.*

    *Of the “original seven” (which group did not include Mitchell), only John Glenn is still alive — and he’s 94 years old.

  98. 98.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I kind of like that the first two candidate selection events of the election season are ridiculous and nonsensical. Hear me out. Most of our politics is show and blather. It’s inefficient and downright confounding. Without two glaring examples of our process making absurd mistakes and drawing irrelevant conclusions right at the start we might forget that the rest of it is very little better. The faceplams that open the voting (and caucusing) serve as a reminder that the system is a mess and we need to pay close attention.

  104. 104.

    Honus

    @OzarkHillbilly: similar story here. Both parents Catholic, I’m one of six kids, my four sisters all used birth control. Mom never did but always complained that the church never allowed it. “They’re changing a lot of things, why don’t they change that?”

    A lot of the reason people stay is community. In rural West Virginia where I grew up Catholics were a minority and most immigrants were Catholic. The church provided an identity and a community, and on the whole, was a force for good.

  105. 105.

    Keith G

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: Exactly right.

    If a primary system was developed that started in a representative state, that first swing the bat would become even more important – both for the general public relations of the candidates but also for the follow-on fundraising.

    The fact that Iowa and New Hampshire are smaller, and quirkier electorates allows for non establishment candidates to create more noise and gain more traction relative to the institutional favorites.

    I am betting that many folks here who want a change were quite happy with the results of the small and quirky and non-representative Iowa caucuses in 2008 which allowed an insurgent candidate to clobber an establishment favorite.

    Ohio is often mentioned as a representative state. In 2008, Clinton beat Obama by 200,000 votes and that’s after Obama had already shown himself to be a very vital candidate. Imagine how the story might have unfolded had Ohio been the first contest.

  107. 107.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
    The N-word. If he calls Obama that on a national stage, his primary poll numbers will go through the roof. By now, he must know it. The question is whether he’s saving it for a rainy day, or has some tiny shred of decency left.

    @Baud:
    As a Baudist, I will be voting for Hillary because Baud has already won… my heart.

  109. 109.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @OldDave:
    There does seem to have been a string of these recently, stories of deaths for people who died years ago. I wonder what drives that and if there is a reason for the number recently or its just a coincidence.

    BTW are you the same “OldDave” from uscho?

  110. 110.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    Technically. If enough nonwhite voters stay home, and enough white voters vote Republican. But won’t a campaign message targeted explicitly to white people put off a lot of liberal white voters, who might then turn to a candidate such as you?

    PS: I wish I were American, so I could vote for you.

  111. 111.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Germy: The GOP Establishment knows they can’t win if they don’t win Florida. So they’re desperate for JEB? or Marco to win. Even though they’re apparently hated in Florida. They don’t see any other way.

    The next few weeks should be interesting. The Teabagger candidates are all so damaged, and they all know this is their chance, that the knives and shrapnel flying should take almost all of them out…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  112. 112.

    Cacti

    @Keith G:

    Fair points.

    The one state at a time approach until Super Tuesday has its limits, regardless of what States are chosen.

    A more accurate gauge of a candidate’s national support would be to open with several States at one time, representing all of the different regions of the country. Something like: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, all at once, and throw in a mid-Atlantic and Pacific coast state too.

  113. 113.

    cmorenc

    @satby:

    I don’t agree with the Church on almost anything, but their stance is internally consistent at least.

    Consistency can be an overrated virtue – consider that young drug company Martin Shkreli (who raised the price of a vital drug his company had purchased ownership of by 4000%) is relentlessly consistent in practicing the principles of Ayn Rand.

  114. 114.

    delk

    @satby: We’d wake up and change the station from Wally Phillips.

    I think Bob Sirott is the only one of those guys either alive or working.

  117. 117.

    WereBear

    @OzarkHillbilly: But I don’t miss the nuns, I don’t miss the beatings, I don’t miss seeing my classmates brutalized…

    Most of the ex-Catholics I know had the same experience. For every child they terrorized into compliance, I hope they lost ten.

  118. 118.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @WereBear:
    George Carlin:
    The church part and the neighborhood part were typical but the school was not. It wasn’t one of those old fashioned parish kinda prison schools with a lot of corporal punishment and Sister Mary Discipline with the steel ruler, right? (SMACK!) OOOWWWWW! MY HAND! AAAAUGGH! And you’d fall two years behind in penmanship, right? “Well, he’s behind in penmanship, Mrs. Carlin. I don’t know why.” He’s crippled. He’s trying to learn to write with his left hand.

    We didn’t have that. We got..somehow we got lucky, . . . It was nice; like I say, a lot of classroom freedom…in fact there was so much freedom that by eighth grade, many of us had lost the faith.

  119. 119.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Olivia Nunzi @ Olivianuzzi
    Jeb! refers to Jeb Jr. as “2.0”

    Richard M. Nixon ‏@ dick_nixon 24m24 minutes ago
    Richard M. Nixon Retweeted Olivia Nuzzi
    He is like one of those explorers who vanished into the Congo in 1875 and emerged in 1920 to see motorcars.

  121. 121.

    Kropadope

    When I called the media herd animals, like Prof. Krugman does, someone here called me anti-Semitic. I still haven’t figured that one out yet.

  122. 122.

    Keith G

    @Cacti: Starting with several states at once would necessarily handicap the lesser known and lesser connected candidates. Having to cover exponentially greater travel and lodging cost as well as more media spending (because a candidate can only be physically in one place at one time) will cause money to become even a greater factor in the very first contest of a primary season.

    I see a dump truck full of ways that the fix ends up being worse than the original problem.

  124. 124.

    tallpete

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: Or it could serve as a reminder that the system is a mess and hopeless which discourages participation.

    The value of retail politics has eroded with today’s 24 hour media. The argument that the current system allows less well funded candidates a chance to win is not as strong as it was pre-interwebs.

    The country should be divided into 4 or 5 regions. One state from each region (randomly assigned each cycle) is included in first date. A second state in each region is the following week, etc. for 4 weeks. Start in April not Jan.

    How to enforce this for rogue states that insist they’re special (IA, NH) and deserve outsized influence on our politics (bloated Ag subsidies)? Both parties penalize noncompliant states by severely reducing their delegates. Also candidates pledge not to visit/place ads in these states.

  125. 125.

    WereBear

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I will never forget the interview with Peter O’Toole where he was explaining how he lost his Catholic faith:

    “See how my hands are different? This is is all crooked, I gesture with the other, it’s a swan…”

    “What happened?”

    “The crippled one is the one the nuns hit with a ruler…”

  130. 130.

    Cacti

    @Kropadope:

    When I called the media herd animals, like Prof. Krugman does, someone here called me anti-Semitic. I still haven’t figured that one out yet.

    Link?

  131. 131.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @WereBear:
    I grew up in a very Catholic neighborhood and most of my friends went to St. Patrick’s. There were two things I found astounding, their tails of cruelty in the classroom and how obnoxious a few of them were about my Methodist upbringing. The positive I could take out of that second one later in life was that it taught me exactly what it means to be a minority religion in a place & why we need to be aware of what that is.

    BTW – people here are old enough to remember Eugene McCarthy. as a young boy I remember attending a neighborhood meeting while he was running for US Senate. He assumed he knew his audience and said something about “the natural superiority of Catholics”. I never did campaign work for the guy again, his turn to the dark side later in life did not surprise me he was an asshole in cheap clothing.

  135. 135.

    Cacti

    @WereBear:

    Criminy! I never did like him. McGovern did some foolish things but I always felt his heart was in the right place.

    McGovern taught us the abiding lesson that it is better lose pure than to win imperfectly.

    Noble failure forever!

  136. 136.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    What do people here think of a Clinton/Sanders – Sanders/Clinton ticket? IIRC Vt has a dem governor so I assume we would not lose a seat there. Could both sides be satisfied with that no matter which slot their favorite was in?

  137. 137.

    Kropadope

    @Cacti: Found it!!! Not that I would ever want to do anything for you.

    It’s all coming back to me now. The accusation came from cokane. BobS had some conjecture that cokane was thinking about vermin. What I hadn’t seen before, though, was cokane’s stretch of an explanation, something about herd->all act together->kropadope hates Jews and/or Palestinians. I dunno, now that I’ve seen the explanation, I still don’t get it.

  141. 141.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I think if the Sanders movement has any life beyond this primary, he would want/need to be separate from any Dem White House.

    And to be honest, I think he would be a drag on a national ticket

  142. 142.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kropadope:
    Okay, I figured it out, although it took some squinting and looking at it from weird angles. The idea wasn’t that you were being antisemitic, but that you were treating the media just like antisemites treat Jews. The poor media. Shame on you for being so mean to a helpless, oppressed minority. Forced into their Villages, terrified that their garden parties could be raided by members of the government at any time!

  143. 143.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Also, I find this interesting , but I admit this Hohmann guy and I are both reading too much into it

    James Hohmann ‏@ jameshohmann 4m4 minutes ago
    Both times Christie has ripped into Obama, Mass Gov. Charlie Baker put his hands in his pockets & looked down at his shoes awkwardly.

  145. 145.

    Kropadope

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The poor media. Shame on you for being so mean to a helpless, oppressed minority. Forced into their Villages, terrified that their garden parties could be raided by members of the government at any time!

    Hey, they bowed and scraped so hard to get those members of the government to show up.

  147. 147.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):

    Given the ages they would be at the end of just one term (73 for Hillary, 79 for Bernie), I would greatly prefer a younger VP. I’m not being ageist, but it is just pure fact that even the smartest, fittest, and healthiest people are going to experience some decline by the time they hit their 70s, and the job of the presidency is quite amazingly stressful.

  151. 151.

    Keith G

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah, having the Democratic Party of the state of Illinois in charge of the first primary contest. What could go wrong with that?

    Anyway, for things to change would require a massive effort on the part of the national leadership of the Democratic Party, & I don’t see that happening. Also cooperation would be necessary from the states. Don’t see that happening either.

  153. 153.

    J R in WV

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Thanks! That’s really good news, and will almost certainly be overturned by Republican judges at the appeals levels. “We can’t cancel a bad election with no time to organize a good election, can we? Of course not!”

    Wow! I see I am wrong, it was an appeals panel that made the decision.

  154. 154.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: the old rhythm method was bullshit. The new methods use cervical mucus and basal temperature to determine ovulation, allowing people to abstain in a targeted way the most fertile days. Much more accurate, and the same methodology used (in reverse) to encourage pregnancy in people who struggle to conceive.

    Now, I am an advocate of any contraception that a woman is comfortable with and will work, so artificial contraception is fine by me because not everyone is as motivated. But again, this is a method that is sanctioned by the Church and can be effective, and in third world countries is available at no charge to women who can’t afford hormone based contraception. I think the bigger bone to pick is the Church’s antiabortion stance when a pregnancy is known to be defective, such as an ectopic pregnancy. That’s unconscionable.

  156. 156.

    Heliopause

    Is this really any way to officially start a national competition with so much depending on the outcome?

    Why not? The last two winners of Iowa on the GOP side got nowhere near the nomination, the last winner on the Dem side was a black man named Hussein who then became President. So try as it might Iowa hasn’t managed to shove a far-right hog farmer down our collective throats yet. It doesn’t seem to matter that they get to go first.

    New Hampshire tends to be won by the more centristy candidate on either side, though this year’s polling is a little wacky. So if moderation is your bag then it makes sense for New Hampshire to go early as well.

    Personally I’d like to see Guam or somebody like that go first.

  157. 157.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):

    What do people here think of a Clinton/Sanders – Sanders/Clinton ticket?

    I don’t like it. Bernie should stay in the Senate – he’d do much better there than being Consoler in Chief and the person sent to state funerals, or HRC’s Hatchet Man (where I don’t think he’d be a good fit at all).

    HRC needs someone younger to join her on the ticket. Team D needs to increase the national visibility of its bench. I don’t know if the Castro Brothers are the right players at this time, but we need more than 65-80 year old people being the national face of the party.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  160. 160.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Absolutely. That’s why I’m keeping an eye on, for instance, the Castro brothers and Kirsten Gillibrand.

    From what I’ve seen, any of them would be a good choice. I’m sure there are others.

  161. 161.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @satby:

    the old rhythm method was bullshit

    There was a good reason it was known as “Vatican r0ulette.”

    Also, FYWP

  162. 162.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bill Richardson is a cautionary tale, I think. Ethnic, great resume in lots of executive positions, but he never caught on nationally. Why? Was he simply ahead of his time? Did Obama steal his thunder? Did he not have a compelling domestic message? I don’t recall. I hope the Castro Brothers are looking at Richardson’s experience in running for national office and are learning some lessons, if that’s what they want to do with their future.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: back at my old bloggy hangout (Eschaton) A lot of people said Richardson was blue-doggy and untrustworthy on the environment, and wasn’t there a problem with a lack of respect for women? with his words and his hands? those first are hearsay, the second a vague memory

  164. 164.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I think the surprising, dramatic death of David Bowie (who had arranged to use it as an occasion for art), and the deaths of several other prominent rock-music figures around the same time, triggered this wave. People got in a mood of noticing that a lot of famous people were dying, and in the process they noticed a bunch who had actually died years earlier.

  167. 167.

    Brachiator

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):

    There does seem to have been a string of these recently, stories of deaths for people who died years ago. I wonder what drives that and if there is a reason for the number recently or its just a coincidence.

    Internet social media stupidity.

    Someone famous dies. People search for other celebrity deaths. They either do not notice or the result does not clearly include the date of death. The searcher is hot to post the “breaking news” of the celebrity death. Bam. Stupidity results.

    And yes, I posted a reaction to the “death” of Bob Denver without checking the link for details, and added to the dumbth with my own dumbthness.

    On politics:

    What do people here think of a Clinton/Sanders – Sanders/Clinton ticket?

    I don’t see the long term value in this. And both Clinton and Sanders are East Coasters, making for a narrow ticket.

  168. 168.

    Ruckus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    Don’t remember the specifics but the general gist you have is the same as me. As soon as his name started to rise to the top, so did the issues. The fact that he basically disappeared after that was a telling sign.

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