Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are weird.

Democrats are back in array!

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Bark louder, little dog.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

This fight is for everything.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

So many bastards, so little time.

Giving up is unforgivable. ~Joe Biden

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Happy Nice Thoughts Early NV Caucus Results Open Thread

Happy Nice Thoughts Early NV Caucus Results Open Thread

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The NYTimes has unlocked its Upshot interactive post “Who’s Really Ahead in Nevada?”. As of 5:45pm EST, they’re estimating HRClinton up by 6.

Let’s keep it positive, for the moment…

Because no matter which team wins today, we can all agree that beating the Repubs come November is the really important battle.

(I’ll put up a separate SC Repub primary post as results trickle in… )

Reader Interactions

381Comments

  5. 5.

    FlipYrWhig

    On Friday Chris Matthews and panel were keen on the idea that caucus states favored enthusiastic supporters and hence Bernie. If there are indeed numerous enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporters starting to pop up, a lot of “narrative” is going to have to be rewritten.

  6. 6.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    BWAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAH

    The hang-dog look OF DEFEAT on Rachel Maddow’s and Andrea Mitchell’s face is oh-so delicious.

    NEVER BET AGAINST SNAKE PLISSKEN

    Snake is shown as being very cynical, most likely due to the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, and appears to be willing to do anything to survive. He is terse, and stern in his speech, and holds nothing sacred or even important. He does, however, hold a loose code of honor. He frequently shows coolness, and levelheaded thinking under extremely stressful situations. Although he will kill without remorse, or hesitation, he does not kill for fun, or when it is unnecessary. He is also known for his quick wit and gallows humor.

    #YASQUEEN

  11. 11.

    FlipYrWhig

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Is there anyone in the MSNBC stable who leans Hillary? I guess I watch through a certain prism at this point but I tend to get the feeling that they’re down the line anti-Hillary, either from the “left” (Hayes, Maddow) or from 25 years of general media-Clinton animus (Mitchell, O’Donnell).

  17. 17.

    pacem appellant

    I’ve created a GDOC that tracks the election delegates separate from the combined delegates–which include supers. http://bit.ly/1QR5OmK According to the math, Clinton holds a 52-51 lead over Sanders in EDs. If I were Bernie, I wouldn’t throw in the towel quite yet, but after S. Carolina, the March 1 contests do not have a favorable map for Berners.

  19. 19.

    Origuy

    This isn’t good.

    Harrah's casino site- Bernie supporters chant "English-only" to stop civil rights leader @DoloresHuerta from providing Spanish translation.— America Ferrera (@AmericaFerrera) February 20, 2016

    And the denial from Bernie supporters is coming in.

  27. 27.

    divF

    @FlipYrWhig: Faugh. Political pundits rank right up there with sportswriters for creating synthetic narratives that have no relationship to the actual events.

  28. 28.

    Corner Stone

    Maddow: “After Bernie destroyed HRC in NH, how does this squeaker mean that Hillary really lost NV?”

  29. 29.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @Corner Stone:

    I am. I have a black flame candle that I lit before the incantation, too. Also did a side mumble to mclaren, Ted and Hellen and matoko chan.

  40. 40.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Corner Stone: Oh yeah, I forgot about how much I used to enjoy that! I still think it’s true (that only winning teams have chemistry [although some winning teams don’t], meaning it never explains why winning teams win).

  46. 46.

    Applejinx

    @JPL: I’m not sure that’s exactly a practical assessment. Sounds like sports-team talk, and I’m very interested in what the candidates propose to do and how plausible it is that they mean what they say.

    It would be nice in EITHER event if they prove to be a lot better than the other side. Should Bernie pull this out, I hope to hell you people aren’t right about the sabotage you think he’ll face. Should Clinton do it, I hope we survive the next inevitable Wall St. crash and/or Iran war.

    A thousand times better is saying kind of a lot.

  47. 47.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s right, I saw him sticking it to that Weaver guy on the Sanders campaign over soçialism the other day. Of course in the process he let Weaver get away with blaming Hillary Clinton for the crime bill Bernie Sanders voted for.

  48. 48.

    zzyzx

    What makes this win so big is that Clinton can spend her time in her victory speech talking about issues during her speech because she knows she has a huge run of victories coming. Sanders gave her enough of a scare that she fine tuned her message pretty well.

  50. 50.

    hitchhiker

    Sorry, Rachel.

    I’ve been a fan for years, but watching her cover the D primary has taught me that she’s capable of kidding herself in the most painful-to-witness ways.

    The other day I saw her spend about 10 minutes on the super Tuesday states. In 9 of 12, Hillary was leading by more than 20 points. In 1 of 12, she was leading by only 2. The other 2 were Vermont and Massachusetts. Bernie is ahead by a zillion in Vermont, and by 7 in Mass.

    Guess what she found the most interesting and worthy of spending time on?

    Here’s a hint: it wasn’t that Bernie was losing very badly in 75% of the contests. If things were the other way around and he was winning by gobs in 75% of the contests, that would have been the BIG STORY.

    Instead the big story was that he’d pulled to within 2 points in Oklahoma.

    And what’s discouraging is that for me she just underlined how capable she is of skewing her coverage to make what she wants to be true seem truthy. And that sucks.

  51. 51.

    Tim C.

    I’m old enough to remember the narrative about HRC was all about how she was the dangerous lefty. Also, even if every accusation is true, what the hell would make anyone with one-and-a-half functioning brain cells think “Yeah, I like Sander, but if he doesn’t win the primary, I’d rather through action or inaction have Ted Cruz be president”?

  52. 52.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @geg6: I would imagine a nuclear electromagnetic pulse has shut down their sites, right about now.

  53. 53.

    The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016

    @Applejinx: Even Bush and Cheney balked at war with Iran. And Clinton isn’t going to take a dump on Obama’s diplomacy.

  54. 54.

    MazeDancer

    @FlipYrWhig:

    MSNBC is so anti-Hillary will not be surprised if Joe Scarborough becomes election anchor so he can continue to applaud Trump. Their new line is that Hillary is the “Establishment”.

    Chris Hayes has been obviously pro-Bernie, but he at least has the grace to tweet good things about Hillary. Rachel, on several occasions, including on her show, has noted that Bernie’s narrative that he will bring out unstoppable numbers of new voters, is not true. And that Dem voting has been down, not up.

    Andrea Mitchell’s level of Hillary hate rivals Trump’s feelings about Cruz.

    Their POV feels like voters who are Black, Hispanic, Female, or over 40 don’t really count. That only young, white voters matter. Even though those Black, Hispanic, Female, and over 40 voters are the reason Democrats win elections. Yes, Obama won new younger voters. But they’re older now. And in real America, Black and Hispanic voters are the Democratic margin of victory.

  56. 56.

    Raven Onthill

    I want to know why. It’s been my intuition from the beginning that Clinton’s conservatism would be more popular than Sanders mild socialism, and it seems to be proving out, but I really want to see solid social science research that explains why. I can think of at least five hypotheses:

    1. Familiarity and name recognition.
    2. Popular militarism
    3. Fear of socialism
    4. Obama’s coat-tails
    5. A desire to stand pat, now that employment has improved

    Any more guesses, er, hypotheses?

  58. 58.

    Tim C.

    @hitchhiker: And I agree completely. I’m not saying we can’t delude ourselves as much as any other group of homo sapiens, but the defining feature of the Republicans right now is that they believe things that are demonstrably not true. We need to remain the reality based party.

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    HRC covering some ground here. IMO her reachout to the yoots was not the finest crafted speechifying I have seen.

  60. 60.

    piratedan

    @Corner Stone: and what’s really strange, if Hills is in the pocket of Wall Street and Andrea is actively sleeping with Wall Street (aka Mr. Greenspan) why is there so much animosity? Does Ms. Greenspan want the sand box brigade of GOP coming in and doing who knows what and upsetting the apple cart? Is rank idiocy really that good for business or is she simply an old harridan who never received an invite into Bill’s private chambers?

    For the press, who appear to be nothing more than paid mouthpieces personifying spin, I find it amazing that they hate the Clinton’s so much when all they’ve done is spin the narrative that they’re in the pocket of big money. They get so high and mighty that we elected someone from Arkansas (who also happened to be a Rhodes Scholar) and yet here they are sniffing the asses of a bunch of folks who can’t even string along coherent sentences about damn near anything ranging from immigration to foreign policy to economics.

    I can only imagine how a real news network that was based in the states might do (that wasn’t saddled with the handle of Al Jeezera) that actually informed the public and had a reputation for honesty and accuracy.

  61. 61.

    SarahT

    Charming: Dolores Huerta
    @DoloresHuerta
    7m
    I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced Si Se Puede! #ImwithHer #NVcaucus

  63. 63.

    Corner Stone

    @hitchhiker:

    Sorry, Rachel.

    I’ve been a fan for years, but watching her cover the D primary has taught me that she’s capable of kidding herself in the most painful-to-witness ways.

    Rachel has really gone to a sad place.

  64. 64.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    I’m switching to CNN (even though they’re boring). MSNBC is ridiculous with their in-the-tank coverage for Sanders.

  66. 66.

    Gimlet

    At this point, looks to be a very close election in November.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/269702-hillary-trails-trump-head-to-head-poll

    Feb 17th

    A new poll finds Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton losing to four top Republican presidential contenders, including Donald Trump, in hypothetical general election matchups.

    Clinton trails Republican primary front-runner Trump by a 45-43 margin head-to-head, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Wednesday.

    Clinton also loses to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), 45-44, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), 48-42 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, 49-38.

    Her Democratic primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), fares slightly better against the GOP competition, besting Cruz by a 44-42 margin.

    But Sanders still loses to Trump by 1 point, 44-43, Kasich by 3, 44-41, and Rubio by 4, 46-42, head-to-head.

    Many of the results are within the poll’s 3-point margin of error.

  68. 68.

    Zinsky

    I think the Nevada caucus results suggest young voters (Millenials) can show up at flash mob events for Bernie that they read about on Twitter but can’t be bothered to put down their devices long enough to show up at a caucus and interact with other human beings face-to-face. Bernie is toast.

  73. 73.

    Applejinx

    @Tim C.: Got me there, that would be genuinely appalling. I spent most of my life knowingly voting for evil and the one time I thought I could get tricky and righteous, dear mister Nader showed me how wrong I was.

    I’ve gone deep, deep into poverty and lost about a month of time I couldn’t spare, trying to get a real alternative to Hillary Clinton, but there is no way I will accept Ted Cruz and frankly I trust Donald Trump no better than Clinton: he’s a complete bullshitter and a nationalist demagogue and we stand to at least make some social gains here.

    If we have to fucking die it can at least be while getting justice for black Americans and representation for women. I have no idea if that’s even feasible or if America will screw that up too, but I do care about these things. I just think there is great danger in doubling down on the ‘neoliberal’ at this point, but ‘neocon’ means the same thing only nationalist, sexist and racist. That is so not okay.

    The primaries aren’t over yet, but in any event we don’t have to have a President Cruz unless we want one.

  74. 74.

    FlipYrWhig

    If I were Hillary Clinton, immediately after Super Tuesday I would say to Bernie Sanders that I see so much hope and potential in his mobilization of young and liberal voters that I want him to do nothing but that until Election Day, and that he can even keep taking potshots at the Establishment and big finance the whole way through: whatever it takes to keep the kids switched on. Because she’ll want those kids to vote for her in 2020 too, and have her back as the inevitable stalemates and disappointments mount. Their enthusiasm is a good sign. I think Team D needs to channel it by any means necessary.

  75. 75.

    Elie

    Poor MSNBC — its like they had a death wish? I used to enjoy their programs and coverage a couple of years ago… all gone now though… I haven’t watched in a long time. I don’t like CNN but they aren’t quite as despicable… Why did MSNBC decide to go in this direction? We already had Fox and CNN. Why did they want to be “me too”? Complete loss of identity

  76. 76.

    The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016

    @Raven Onthill: 1. Electability.
    2. Bill and Hillary have embraced the black community. Bernie’s still working on it.
    3. There’s not honestly a lot of difference between the two.

  78. 78.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Shout-out to my long time friend Trix, for fighting the good fight, even in the face of the sadly stoopid.

  79. 79.

    Corner Stone

    @Josie: I really have no idea what MSNBC thinks they are doing the last 12 to 18 months or so. What audience do they think is tuning in to see their awful programming.
    I stopped watching Rachel some months ago and in the last year stopped tuning in for Hayes. Never watched LO’D because he was always an insufferable smarmy prick who knows nothing about politics.

  81. 81.

    magurakurin

    @Applejinx: come on brother, she isn’t really that bad. Take a second look from a different angle and you might actually find things to like about her.

  84. 84.

    The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016

    @Gimlet: From the Gospel of Nate, chapter 1, verse 12: “Head to head polls prior to the conventions are useless.”

  85. 85.

    dr. bloor

    @Gimlet: Nobody should give a rat’s ass about a national poll. Novermber is fifty individual elections with varying payoffs, not one election. Only ten or so of those elections are likely to be anything close to contested.

  86. 86.

    JPL

    @Applejinx: Let’s think about three issues, foreign policy, federal land use, and discrimination. The repubs decided that religion gives you the right to discriminate against those who don’t practice your religion. It’s not just the right of gays to marry. The bible says all sorts of things. Foreign policy has more to do with China and Russia in my opinion, rather than Iran, and who knows what types of conflicts could occur. Land use, would do away with Teddy Roosevelt’s dream. The occupation in Oregon had
    little to do with ranching, imo. The goal is turn over the land to states. In order to make money states would sell the land to drillers which would in turn, destroy the environment. 1000 times better is not difficult to achieve. just sayin

  87. 87.

    cckids

    @Applejinx: Just a note, I had 3 Bernie supporters stop by my place (in NV) 2 days ago. They asked for my 2 college-aged kids by name. When I told them that both were away at college & wouldn’t be caucusing here, they thanked me & were going to leave. I tried to engage them in talk about Bernie – told them that my husband & I were also voters (way more often than the 21 & 23 year olds), and asked why they were walking for Bernie. Their only responses? “He’s for healthcare for everyone! And FREE college!” I asked what his plan was for people NOW in college – nothing. They didn’t even refer me to his website.

    The fact that they were really not interested in even talking to anyone over college age was more than a little off-putting. Training people better would be good.

  90. 90.

    geg6

    @SarahT:

    Jesus. They really are asses. Or is this wingnut ratfuckers? I hope so because, if not, the Berniebros have completely lost the thread.

  96. 96.

    Seebach

    @debbie: meh, dicks are gonna be dicks, be we have to be better than the PUMA clinton supporters of 2008. Bernie should stay in for super tuesday just to get his message out but no point in civil war

  98. 98.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Corner Stone: I still watch Rachel but it hasn’t been the same for a while. The long, repetitive rant-like stories that recall Peak Olbermann only using cutesy observations as points of departure… not that good to watch. But if I want to have something on TV while I eat dinner, there’s only so much Chopped I can stand.

  100. 100.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @DoloresHuerta

    I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced Si Se Puede! #ImwithHer #NVcaucus

    I. TOLD. YOU. SO.

  101. 101.

    magurakurin

    @BillinGlendaleCA: probably wise. I was just there, they are still in shell shock. Some victory diaries from the Clinton rear guard there, but the weeping and wailing hasn’t started yet. Some folks appear to be arriving at bargaining as there was a Bernie for VP diary…

  102. 102.

    El Caganer

    Damn, I knew that we’re kind of parochial here in Philadelphia, but…I just went to the http://www.philly.com site to check out the weather and under ‘Breaking News’ it had ‘Nevada Caucus: See the results.” Except the picture above it was of Ted Cruz and his wife.

  103. 103.

    gogol's wife

    I’m ready to send a contribution to Clinton. We HAVE to win this election.

    I lived through Mondale and McGovern, and don’t want to do that again.

  104. 104.

    Raven Onthill

    @Applejinx: It may be a war which Saudi Arabia starts; the new King, Salman, is a bellicose sort. We may have great cause to be happy of peace with Iran.

    @FlipYrWhig: hey, Clinton’s daughter is married to a hedge fundie.

    @geg6: Personally, I’m still amazed that Sanders got as far as he did.

  105. 105.

    JPL

    @debbie: Scary dicks win elections, as do lies. I can’t wait until the zika fly is going to spread us with viruses worse than ebola.

  107. 107.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    TYPICAL SANDERS.

    SPEECH COMPLETELY DETACHED FROM REALITY.

    TOTAL COMPLETE FICTION

    #CULT #KOOLAID

  108. 108.

    zzyzx

    Clinton talked about issues. Sanders talked about election results. Is this opposite day?

    How long can he go on playing the expectation game without actually winning.

    I like how he made it out like South Carolina isn’t even happening. “We’re on to Super Tuesday.”

  110. 110.

    Applejinx

    @magurakurin: She’s gotta show me. I am swayed by the arguments that everybody up at that level gives millions of dollars to each other and it’s like nothing, because that’s very human. It’s also very horrifying: we really have no representation.

    I was really the primary one, months ago, arguing that Hillary upon winning the election (remember when there was actually no chance Bernie would win anything, all those months ago?) would want to make a legacy. I argued that she would read the will of the people and triangulate for largely selfish reasons by figuring out there was a massive leftward swing, and if she wanted to take credit for that she would have to co-opt that energy and pretend that was what she really wanted all along.

    I lost faith in that, but the underlying idea still holds.

    I don’t know whether Hillary Clinton will side with the obvious grassroots leftward swing, or whether she’ll dance with them as paid for her ticket to the ball. It’s really not very fair because we’re absolutely not giving her a chance to be grassroots-funded: if she doesn’t take the PAC money, she’s hosed, and that also means now is a bad time to tell them to fuck themselves. So she HAS to at least seem like she might still support all the status quo.

    But she’s learned an awful lot, she’s clearly ready to do just about anything to find the people who are supposed to elect her, and I could be wrong. It’s so easy to mistrust Hillary Clinton. In a very real sense we can’t know her unless we try her out as President and see what she does.

    I would honestly be delighted if she made me a liar and took hold of the leftward swing we’ve presented her with. One thing about it, it’s absolutely unmistakable at this point. She has to acknowledge the Left.

  111. 111.

    Corner Stone

    @zzyzx:

    I like how he made it out like South Carolina isn’t even happening. “We’re on to Super Tuesday.”

    I thought that was a real miss for a high note finish.

  112. 112.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @gogol’s wife: I’m ready to send a contribution to Clinton. We HAVE to win this election.

    I’m getting there too. I didn’t think I would

    @Raven Onthill: @FlipYrWhig: hey, Clinton’s daughter is married to a hedge fundie.

    I can’t tell if you’re snarking, but I’ve seen that offered as a serious argument against Clinton, and it’s…. not a good one.
    ETA: I remember in 2000, the fact that Al Gore (actually, his mother) owned stock in Occidental Petroleum meant he was a fake environmentalist.

  113. 113.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    “NOW IT’S ON TO SUPER TUESDAY!”

    What about South Carolina?

    #BlackVotesDon’tMatter

  114. 114.

    MazeDancer

    @geg6:

    At the start of the caucus in NV, I watched Twitter. For the most part, Hillary supporters were tweeting about themselves – I’m here, I’m excited, it’s a long line, etc…

    And while some Bernie supporters were doing the same, there were “institutional” attack tweets from Bernie’s side. Like – film everything, expect lies on results, there are reports of Clinton treachery already, and remember, we’re up against “a criminal organization”.

    There was nothing similar from the Clinton side.

    And the Dolores Huerta insulting happened. It was quite the discussion on Twitter. And validated by a few media types. Besides the repulsive racism and disrespect to an icon, without Hispanics, Democrats don’t win.

  115. 115.

    Corner Stone

    Rachel just can’t seem to understand why Bernie winning in NH by large numbers is not guaranteeing him the win for the rest of the states.

  116. 116.

    Gimlet

    Hard to imagine the youth vote enthused about Sander’s message embracing Hillary after the primaries are over.

  117. 117.

    Gvg

    Every Democratic nominee I have watched has been labeled the most liberal by the republican’s and then the media as soon as they were nominated or likely to be and it was used against them in the general. Checking actual voting records before the campaign would show that they weren’t. Strategicly I am interested in how this election plays out where the media and republican narrative has been Sanders is a socialist and Hillary Wall Street. Hope it will help us and hurt the GOP. Frankly the nuts running for the republican nomination would be bad for business IMO. They would all trigger various kinds of trade problems while showing off for their audiences.

  118. 118.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Whenever I hear people talk about how Hillary Clinton is marginally better than a republican, it feels as though they’re waving their white male privilege in my face. This ain’t no joke, this ain’t no fucking game. This country will not survive another republican sitting in the White House, period. It’s not that complicated, folks.

  120. 120.

    Applejinx

    @Gimlet: That depends. We/they might be energized to create a ‘not the neoliberals’ faction in the Democratic party. There’s also a possibility that the Clinton people (less so Hillary herself) will handle things so poorly that they’ll turn off a generation of liberals/socialists and convince them politics is completely rigged and paid for by PACs top to bottom.

    In that event there’s a definite danger of losing the general election, which we’re already seeing in polls.

  121. 121.

    DCF

    @Applejinx:

    Wall Street Analyst Says Hillary Clinton Would Be the Best President for Healthcare Investors
    https://theintercept.com/2016/02/20/wall-street-analyst-says-hillary-clinton-would-be-the-best-president-for-healthcare-investors/

    Amidst a tense battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over competing visions for health care, a leading Wall Street analyst has put out a report saying that Clinton would be the best candidate for healthcare investors.

    In a report titled “Healthcare: Our 2016 Outlook,” S&P Capital’s IQ Healthcare Equity Research’s Jeffrey Loo writes that Clinton should be the preferred choice for the industry because she will preserve the Affordable Care Act and be unable to pass meaningful drug reform legislation:

    Overall, we believe the best scenario for healthcare investors is a Democrat, presumably Hillary Clinton, winning the Presidency, as we anticipate the Republicans retaining control of Congress. In this scenario, in spite of Clinton’s numerous “threats” to rein in drug prices, allowing the re-importation of drugs, and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, we believe it is highly unlikely Clinton will be able to pass these initiatives through a Republican controlled Congress. Conversely, the Republicans’ efforts to repeal Healthcare Reform, would be thwarted by a Clinton veto as we do not anticipate the Republican obtaining the 2/3 votes to override a veto.

    The report makes clear that it views the gridlock created by a Clinton administration paired with a GOP Congress as the rosiest picture for the healthcare industry.

    Clinton has frequently boasted during Wednesday’s about her record during the 1990s. “I fought really hard,”she said at a Democratic town hall earlier this month. “The insurance companies and the drug companies spent millions against me. I know what it’s like to go up against the status quo and special interests.”

    But now it appears they’re rooting for her.

  122. 122.

    debbie

    @Gimlet:

    Especially when they’re being so dismissive of that youth vote. Stupid to take anyone for granted like that by showing disrespect.

  125. 125.

    cckids

    @Applejinx:

    It’s so easy to mistrust Hillary Clinton.

    Why? I hear this regularly from both R’s and Bernie supporters, but never get an answer that isn’t based in a Fox/Limbaugh reality as opposed to, you know, actual reality. What, specifically, is so different about Hillary from other politicians, that brings on this distrust?

  126. 126.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    BERNIE REALLY WON BY LOSING!?!1/!1 — MSNBC (A MATH/REALITY FREE ZONE)

  128. 128.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    I just can’t bring myself to worry yet; the GOP couldn’t buy an election with the bunch of candidates they’re trying to pimp right now.

  130. 130.

    Gimlet

    @Applejinx:

    If Bernie’s supporters believe his message that Hillary has been bought by Goldman Sachs and represents corruption, it’s hard to rationalize how they would then support her in the general election rather than sit home.

  131. 131.

    weaselone

    @Gvg:
    Don’t worry. Hillary’s record is actually quite liberal. If she wins the nomination, it’s almost certain that the Republicans and media will nearly instantly pivot to calling her the most liberal candidate for President ever. The rub will be that excluding minor party candidates, they may be right.

  133. 133.

    PsiFighter37

    A win is a win, and glad to see this isn’t going to be the nailbiter that Iowa was.

    It seems like things are getting back on track. A bit disconcerted that there were Berniebros telling folks in Vegas ‘English only’, which simply proves my belief that the political spectrum is a circle and not a line.

    Hoping for lots of injuries on the GOP side tonight. I think ideally:

    1) Cruz
    2) Trump
    3) Jeb?!
    4) Rubio
    5) Kasich
    6) Carson

    I want Cruz to win, because that will just make Trump more insane. And Jeb sticking around longer will continue to be a plague on Marco v2.1.

    Realistically, I think that Trump will probably win by a narrow margin, and that Rubio will beat Jeb. But I think the above is best from the ‘rooting for injuries / more vulgarities’ standpoint.

  134. 134.

    Elie

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    I know THAT’s right. Aint nothin else for me and I am past listening to babbling about “revolutions” that occur from the top/down. Revolutionaries tear up shit by design and as we have seen, that doesn’t always immediately end up with something better. Usually things are shitty. In any case, true revolution is not top down. Bernie is doing a good thing to force discussion and awareness of some key issues. Otherwise the man is not ready for prime time though I see he has a big enough ego to think he is all the time prime time. I’m ok with that as long as he and his folks don’t lose the thread about the goal here, which is not to have their socialist revolution but to prevent one of the orks from taking over this country. I hope they remember that, but I am not 100% confident.

  136. 136.

    Seebach

    The Clinton win should help establish that democrats will choose experience and centrism over free candy and ponies. If the republicans go with their fascist nightmares we do have a chance of setting ourselves as the only adults in the room.

  138. 138.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    YOU CAN ONLY STOP THE OLIGARCHY AND PLUTOCRATS BY SENDING MY MULTI MILLIONAIRE CAMPAIGN MANAGER MORE OF YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY!!

  139. 139.

    cckids

    @DCF:

    But now it appears they’re rooting for her.

    They fought (and won) against getting anything passed. Now that the ACA is reality, they want to keep that cash flowing. They believe in the R’s blocking anything more getting passed, and they may be right, but at least Hillary won’t tear down the whole damn house.

  140. 140.

    mike in dc

    Sigh. Well, hopefully:
    1) She will win the election handily
    2) She will have coattails, enough to win back the Senate and nudge Speaker Ryan to blink
    3) She will govern slightly to the left of Pres. Obama instead of being a caretaker president, maintaining the status quo or(worse) governing to the right of the current President
    4) She will be re-elected
    5) She will have selected a true progressive as her running mate, preferably a minority, and preferably young enough to be viable in 2024

    Congrats to the Clinton folks. The race isn’t over, but the handwriting is on the wall, at least to me.

  141. 141.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I remember in 2000, the fact that Al Gore (actually, his mother) owned stock in Occidental Petroleum meant he was a fake environmentalist.

    You forgot:
    He has a BIG house.
    He rides on airplanes.

  143. 143.

    Applejinx

    @DCF: I wouldn’t be surprised if all the various industries WERE rooting for her. They’re presiding over a system that’s collapsing, and every single other option is disruptive or destructive. The Republicans are very likely to wreck the joint, and Bernie Sanders intends to kick over a lot of applecarts in his own way.

    The ONLY choice for Americans who think we are doing okay and should stay the course and things will probably be all right, is Hillary Clinton. Everybody dead set against her believes things are about to fall apart one way or another (myself included: if this is really Sanders’ last gasp for the general election, I am obliged to turn around and vote on black and womens’ rights issues where Clinton is stronger than Sanders, because I don’t believe a protest vote for any Republican could possibly help anything or anybody.)

  145. 145.

    PsiFighter37

    @Seebach: I mean, that’s pretty much a given. Clinton v. Rubio – she will absolutely light into him for his abortion stand (no exceptions whatsoever). Cruz and Trump will be cakewalks.

  148. 148.

    Elie

    Hillary is 100% Presidential. The ONLY candidate running in EITHER party who is, in my opinion. The Republicans aren’t even hominids.

  151. 151.

    cckids

    @debbie: Because it’s an impossible, no-win question. Every adult knows they’ve lied at some time. If she’d said no, that would have been pointed out, if she said “yes”, that would be flogged to death. Maybe she’d have been better off to say ” I’ve never lied in a matter of importance”, but that gets into nit-picking really fast.

  152. 152.

    Comrade Mary

    @Gimlet: I’m seeing one Sanders supporter at another site (she’s upper west side, very well off) saying that if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination she would be glad to support Bloomberg. Tonight she’s saying that she may even be looking for a Republican if Sanders doesn’t make it, and it scares her. But I guess Clinton is even scarier to her.

  153. 153.

    FlipYrWhig

    @cckids: my personal favorite is the idea that when she says something that one of her detractors _actually agrees with_, even THAT is a problem, because she obviously doesn’t really mean it and is trying to coopt the left. I hear that over and over and over in the blogosphere. It’s entirely self-reinforcing and can’t be broken.

  154. 154.

    Elie

    @debbie:

    I sure know I am not gloating, but I am happy and relieved. I take nothing for granted and know she has a hard road ahead and lots of enemies. I wish Bernie the best but I do not think that he is the best candidate.

  155. 155.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @PsiFighter37: I like those results! But I can’t imagine that Trump’s big lead will evaporate. The Donald at #1, #ZodiacTed at #2.

  157. 157.

    magurakurin

    @Applejinx: see, it’s possible. And we are here, with out stretched arms to pull you up on the train when you are ready…come on along…we’re goin’ to the White House.

  158. 158.

    Corner Stone

    @debbie: You also seem to think the HRC doing a bark on stage is a problem, somehow.
    Mayhap the point has to been missed?

  165. 165.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Maria Shriver ‏@mariashriver

    Gotta admire @HillaryClinton Persistence toughness and strength wow #NVDemsCaucus

    109 retweets 242 likes

  166. 166.

    Corner Stone

    @Baud: Everyone got she was “dogwhistling” the GOP dogwhistle coded terminology. It was immediate, and dare I say, humorous.

  168. 168.

    Corner Stone

    @debbie: Sheeeit. They already have the ads with HRC sporting glowing red demon horns coming outta her forehead. Gimme a damn break.

  170. 170.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: wasn’t Napoleon Bloomaparte just making noise about running if Sanders won the D nod? I have no doubt he wants to be president, I just think the only thing eh wants to do less than actually campaign (“you want me to shake hands with… them?” I suspect Bloomberg could teach Maggie Smith how to show aristocratic disdain with the minimal flexing of facial muscles) is let someone else to run on his money (Sorry, Scarborough, keep groveling for that Veep spot from Trump).

  171. 171.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @Baud: Saw the Hillary bark on Colbert, with no context or commentary, as part of an unrelated segment – hilarious!! She should bark at the convention.

  173. 173.

    DCF

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I wouldn’t bet the homestead on that prediction just yet…HRC is a deeply-flawed candidate, and given her appeal to the ‘head’ (as opposed to the heart), the passion that fueled Obama’s GE victories will not be there for her….

  174. 174.

    LanceThruster

    The crowing by Hill supporters kind of shows how spooked they were by Bernie. He was always a longshot, yet he’s been pretty damn competative in places where Clinton was supposed to smoke him. If she gets the nom, she’s lucky the Rethuglcans are to a person, so atrocious. Do not want her, but will hold my nose for her (though in CA, a Dem win is not much in doubt)

  175. 175.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    David Axelrod‏@davidaxelrod

    Better tone and message for @hillaryclinton tonight. Not about her. About people. What contrast to NH!#NVDemsCaucus

    176 retweets 384 likes

  181. 181.

    Applejinx

    @Gimlet: Actually, that’s not so hard.

    It’s much the same as for me. In the event that Hillary takes the nomination, then there will be no other option. Let’s assume a worstcase scenario, where she runs against Trump who tries to run to the left of her while saying she’s Establishment and he’s the new Sanders.

    In that case, let her run on social justice and make the election be about how Trump wants to build a wall and keep the Mexicans out. Run against the theocrats, run against the union-busters. Run to the left and sort of quietly cover up the Wall Street funding: it’s true they’re funding mostly Republicans. It’s true that we haven’t given her a chance to even try to use grass-roots funding: everybody went all in for Bernie so fast that Hillary has has no chance at all to try for that: she’s seen as PAC-funded. If not for Bernie (and Trump, kinda) they ALL would be, this is by no means some special Clinton sin. This is American politics, which we have not been able to overturn at a stroke just by throwing money at Bernie.

    And Clinton is not going to be able to ditch her PAC money because I’ll tell you this, she’s not goddamn getting donation money out of me at this point. I may end up owing her my vote but she’s been using the PAC money to neutralize the efforts of me and a lot of good people and she will have to prove herself by her actions, so she will NEED to stick with that PAC money on into the general election. I hope she gets more, from industries who want to cling to status quo.

    If I thought we could have status quo by voting for it, I’d have been a Clintonista all this time (well: nah, as a Vermonter I can’t help but like Bernie, but you get the idea). I think we’re looking at the continuing erosion of America while a shrinking class of wealthy pretends everything’s fine, and I think it’s all going to come crashing down very soon.

    BUT, it’s possible that out of ANY candidate including Bernie, Hillary would minimize the damage of that (and there’s a very good chance on social issues she’s the best. Not a certainty, but a solid chance)

    I wish we could have the Hail Mary pass of a Socialist president, shaking things up hopefully in a populist way. If we can’t, we’ll have to do what we can with what we’ve got.

  184. 184.

    bk

    I live in Nevada – Las Vegas, to be precise. I am a registered Democrat. I did not caucus today. I am one of many who believe that both candidates are light years better than whatever hairball the GOP will puke up this year. But this caucus process is stupid. The total number of votes was, what, about 10,000? We make fun of the Iowa process, and rightfully so, and today was just as bad, because it was sunny and 70 and many of us had more things to do than go crowd into a corner of some room with people that you don’t want to hang with. Had we had a primary, there probably would have been 10 times the turnout. Caucuses are dumb.

  186. 186.

    DCF

    @Applejinx:

    As I have pledged in prior posts, I will vote for HRC if she is the Democratic nominee…but if I’m asked whether I am enthused about doing so, the answer is a resounding ‘No’…she is an incrementalist, a corporatist, and a hawk…which means, for those who require a translation, that she will be far less progressive than President Obama and will simply ‘hold in place’ rather than pioneer significant (and necessary) changes….

  187. 187.

    Brachiator

    Demographics. Looking at CNN reporting, Sanders got more of the Latino vote than did Clinton (53 to 45 percent)

    Sanders got more male vote (53 to 44 percent)

    Look forward to more GOP results, and Rubio surging mightily to 3rd place. The GOP has got to be worried about Trump and Cruz doing well.

  188. 188.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Clearly, she’s a corrupt corporate shill pro-war sellout who helped Hillary decide to personally conduct the Iraq war to cover up speech income and the real story behind the murder of Vince Foster.

  191. 191.

    FlipYrWhig

    @LanceThruster: And in a way, Bernie doesn’t have to win to be a winner. But in an entirely different way, he has to win, and that didn’t happen.

    @DCF: check the polls at the top re: enthusiasm.

  192. 192.

    Walker

    @Comrade Mary:

    You see a lot of this talk on the interwebs, but they are not a representative sample of the overall voting population. The over-priviledged young people (and that is what many Bernie supporters are) that think this way are unlikely to sway this election.

  193. 193.

    eldorado

    i will vote for her. but her incrementalism leaves me cold. yes, we can’t get the changes needed because republicans control the house. what i want to know is what is her plan to change that in 2016/2020 and beyond? f’ing lead.

  195. 195.

    Mike J

    @cckids:

    What, specifically, is so different about Hillary from other politicians, that brings on this distrust?

    Other than killing Vince Foster? Decorating the Christmas trees with dildos? Smuggling cocaine through Mena, Arkansas?

  196. 196.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Stefanie Black ‏@StefanieBlack9 3m3 minutes ago

    @HillaryClinton how much did you pay your volunteers to try and screw up the votes in my precinct? #NVDemsCaucus #FeelTheBern

    1 retweet 2 likes

    THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DISCONNECT YOUR CAMPAIGN FROM THE REALITY GRID – TRUTHERS.

  199. 199.

    Brachiator

    @DCF:

    which means, for those who require a translation, that she will be far less progressive than President Obama and will simply ‘hold in place’ rather than pioneer significant (and necessary) changes….

    I am not a strong HRC supporter by any means.

    But here is one absolute fact. HRC was not governor of Arkansas or president of the US. If she is the nominee and later wins the election, she will be in position to execute according to her vision, if any, not chained to the past decisions of her husband or even her own past record in the Senate. And her time in the Senate was relatively brief.

    People who are convinced about what type of leader she might be are, quite frankly, and respectfully, full of shit.

  200. 200.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @Applejinx:

    Y’know, I’ve dealt with many people on “the spectrum” for years, and am familiar with how they speak and organize their thoughts. I’ve also dealt with people who were such raging assholes that people (and some clinicians) actually thought that they were on the spectrum as opposed to just being so obstinate, abrasive, malingering and stupid that it looked like they’re in the spectrum.

    You fit that second group, don’t you?

  203. 203.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Raven Onthill: My mom has a son in law who works for a hedge fund. She also has daughter in law who’s a full-time lefty activist. Which one gives you the truer picture of my mom’s opinions?

  206. 206.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Applejinx: devil’s advocate here: as a committed socialist shouldn’t you be pouring your time and money into down ticket community and local politics rather than investing it all in a single figure head central leader?

  208. 208.

    Raven Onthill

    @cckids: I think being the establishment Democratic candidate and trying desperately to play it down is probably the biggest reason for the distrust; she cannot be both that and in any sense a woman of the people, yet she is trying to have it both ways.

  210. 210.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @eldorado: so far it’s to raise $30,000,000 million dollars for state and local parties, while Mr Revolution has raised the grand total of a 1,000 bucks for down ballot races.

  211. 211.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @bk: That’s 10K county level delegates elected, not 10K voters.

    If you had better things to do than participate, fine. But IMHO, if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain about the outcome.

    I’m not arguing for the caucus system. It’s undemocratic. But it’s what you have.

  212. 212.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @FlipYrWhig:

    In the permanent Revolution, prudence requires watchfulness even of allies, for they may be capitalist roaders eager to curry favor in return for major concessions betraying the Revolution later on.

  214. 214.

    Mary G

    The little animations on the Guardian website results page are nuts. There’s only 0.2 percent of the vote in South Carolina reported and they are driving me crazy already.

  216. 216.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    |||||||||| Trump won South Carolina. ||||||||

    Analyst on MSNBC’s first reaction comment to Brian Williams “Well, you gotta remember that it’s a very white primary down here”.

  218. 218.

    Germy

    I took a break from all the political stuff to watch Doc Martin. Hilarious episode. And Sigourney Weaver played a grumpy American patient, who at the end of the exam asked a confused Doc Martin “so how much do I owe you?”

    Doc Martin replied “Nothing.”

  219. 219.

    DCF

    @Brachiator:

    She has a long (and bifurcated) record – and her inclination is to follow, rather than to lead…her history, IMO, is a reliable predictor of her future behavior(s)….

    Oh yes…I’m quite regular, thanks…and my vision is not clouded by blind partisanship and delusion(s)….

  221. 221.

    Elie

    @DCF:

    Have y’all been looking and listening at what is going on in this country lately? simply ‘hold in place’ , as you say it, IS PLENTY FUCKING IMPORTANT and I don’t assume that is a foregone conclusion as you seem to. You want to dig into the foundation of a house that has a large crack that is growing and spreading. This aint the time to put on a new porch….

  222. 222.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @FlipYrWhig: Hillary’s son-in-law’s mother was said to be the deciding vote on Bill Clinton’s budget that included significant tax increases on the rich. Cost her her seat in Congress. Ever notice there’s no such thing as virtue-by-association?

  228. 228.

    Applejinx

    @DCF: Yes, absolutely. And due to her extremely tough and determined efforts, that incrementalist corporatist hawk is holding off a genuine grassroots revolution, that on the OTHER side of the aisle, is completely flattening the Republicans.

    Think of that. Our bench is so fucking good that the same societal wave, that’s CRUSHING the Republicans, is not quite taking out Hillary. I’ve been saying all along she’s tough, and I’m not wrong there.

    I too am very concerned about the hawkishness, but others are suggesting that (because of the rarefied Beltway air) Clinton’s used to taking huge sums of money from all comers, not just one isolated special interest. Here’s how I see it.

    If she loses, she’s a carpetbagger who took tons of money from PACs and lost twice. She’d really owe all those people, and they’d wash their hands of her.

    If she wins the Presidency, here’s the catch: pretty much all those special interests are presiding over crumbling domains. They, whether it’s Wall Street or the Israel lobby, would like to believe they bought themselves a President. But they are all facing various threats and instabilities, and they will all have to come crawling to her for things like bailouts and aid. And she’ll have made it, at that point: though hobbled by Congress, if she makes it to the White House she sets the rules.

    I don’t think she wants to just do their bidding. We ourselves are making her call in every favor in the book, in order to prevail, but in another sense we’re just expressing the will of the electorate. To not do that would be dishonest.

    I’m not convinced Clinton would be the faithful lackey of anybody, much less special interests. I agree on the centrist thing but she may have expectations of her own: for instance, in exchange for the Wall St support and using Wall Street reformers in her cabinet, she may expect them to never need another bailout. And she might be mighty pissed off at them if they screw that up. To be centrist is to expect the machine to keep ticking, trouble-free. I’m predicting massive trouble. I’m not predicting that she’d be happy about that.

    These are strange times. All we can do is send our messages, and I think that’s going better than expected. Beyond that, we get into how human beings behave: and humans are awful human at times.

  229. 229.

    Corner Stone

    @FlipYrWhig: I’m a hair away from starting in on that motherfucker. To be clear, not Botsy.
    I had errands earlier or else Bartholomew and I would have had words.

    And honestly. God damn but stop fucking using DCF as your sockpuppet for fucksakes.*
    *Applesauce, I mean.

  230. 230.

    Chyron HR

    Okay, Hillary supporters, you need to shut up and treat the Bernie fans with the respect that they would never in a million years show you, or they’ll sit out the election. Got it?

  231. 231.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    BUT, BUT……………………..HE SAID DUBYA DIDN’T KEEP US SAFE!?!?!!

    BUT, BUT………………………..HE SAID THEY LIED ABOUT WMDS!!!

    BUT, BUT………………………..HE CALLED DUBYA A LIAR!!!

  235. 235.

    ruemara

    @DCF: Turnout is down in the all important caucuses. If passion is the strength of Sanders’ campaign, wouldn’t it be up?

  236. 236.

    Raven Onthill

    @FlipYrWhig: But is your mom’s job enforcing banking laws? There is a tough conflict of interest there. My impression is that Clinton is in fact tough enough to lay down the law on her son-in-law, but I doubt that she wants to to begin with.

    My father in law is a top business consultant who was married to a leftist activist, in a place where the gap between rich and poor is much wider than in the USA. It unsettles me to see him negotiate the conflict between his ideals and the realities of his privileged life. It seems to me that there may be something similar in the lives of the Clintons.

  237. 237.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Raven Onthill: What even IS an “establishment Democrat”? I know what an establishment Republican is. I think this cycle people started to talk about establishment Democrats but just ported the “establishment Republican” definition over to it. But I also highly doubt that you would be saying you trusted Hillary Clinton if she had run as whatever that term means.

    If you mean what other people call the DLC, pro-business market-friendly Democrats, how are they the “establishment” exactly? What do they dominate and who do they silence? How many of them even are there?

  239. 239.

    Applejinx

    Decorating the Christmas trees with dildos?

    Well, shit, you should have said that before! She’s got my vote ;)

  240. 240.

    CaseyL

    They’ve called SC for Trump with less than 1% of the vote counted? Ah well… A Hillary-Donald election would be one for the ages. Tough smart broad versus thin-skinned stream-of-consciousness loudmouth.

  245. 245.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @DCF:

    I find Applejinx to be a thoughtful realist with insightful thoughts (as well as a fellow Vermonter).

    LOLOLOL

  247. 247.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think there is virtue by association, because if Tad Devine were running the Hillary Clinton campaign, we’d never hear the end of how he helped invent super-delegates and was in bed with Goldman Sachs (via Corzine).

  250. 250.

    Mike J

    @CaseyL:

    They’ve called SC for Trump with less than 1% of the vote counted?

    And France24 seemed amused about Bush coming in last. I think comcast just played with the lineup again. Didn’t think we had it but I saw it on the schedule and it’s not an extra. Channel 334.

  251. 251.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m sure this is true

    Brian Beutler ‏@ brianbeutler 9m9 minutes ago
    Commentator on MSNBC calls the South Carolina GOP primary “a pretty white event,” unlike every other GOP primary, I guess…

    is this?

    southpaw ‏@ nycsouthpaw 15m15 minutes ago
    MSNBC panel agreeing that saying George W. Bush was the President on 9/11 is equivalent to “blaming George W. Bush for 9/11.”

    Brian, Andrea, Tweety and… Rachel?

  254. 254.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @CaseyL:

    Tough smart broad versus thin-skinned stream-of-consciousness loudmouth.

    Clearly, the answer in 2020 for the GOP will be to select a True Conservative, as Donald is not one.

  256. 256.

    Elie

    @CaseyL:

    And I would not be surprised if the Bush crime family would save some special sauce for the Donald out of resentment and revenge. I don’t see that clan going quietly into the night after the butt whup Trump gave their boy. And insulted Mama Barbara and Dubya too? Naw — They hold grudges and can be very very poisonous. They may not have been able to save JEB! this time, but they will exact their revenge on the Donald in their time. Count on it.

  257. 257.

    DCF

    @Elie:

    One can only ‘tread water’ for so long before one tires – and drowns. I would suggest the alternative – swim for the most promising shore….

  258. 258.

    Applejinx

    @FlipYrWhig: Thanks, man. I’m trying to see reasons that I and my fellow berniacs might use to find hope in a Clinton nomination. It’s worth it to make an effort because the stakes are pretty high, and because I genuinely would like to have even half the faith some of you folks have in her.

    She’s such a freaking tough competitor that we can’t just fall back on clapping harder, and I think a lot of people are pretty tapped-out money-wise: we’ve nearly matched her warchest through small donations.

    It’s nice to see some people at least trying, a little, to build a coalition. Some people don’t seem super good at doing that, possibly because they have already written the whole Bernie wing off as Trump/write-in voters, and they seem real happy about that. I’m not. It doesn’t seem a good way to go.

  259. 259.

    Emma

    To those of you who want revolution: start it yourself. Get involved in local politics. Run yourself if you’re minded to. School boards can be as important as state governments. Build up the progressive movement in your states.

    And to those of you that will vote for Hillary even though you’re not enthusiastic: good. This falling in passionate love with a warrior hero is better left to bad science-fiction novels and Latin-American countries. At the end, politics is not about enthusiasms, it’s about making a choice between two possibilities. Neither one might be fantastic but sure as sunrise, one is worse than the other.

  261. 261.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    MSNBC reporter “Terror, seems to be the big subject regarding Trump winning here in South Carolina”

    Funny, that’s true for pretty much all sides on this election. Most especially the GOP establishment watching in horror.

  267. 267.

    Highway Rob

    Is that Joe Scarborough’s real nose, or is he wearing Groucho glasses? (ETA: Sans stache, of course.)

  268. 268.

    Emma

    @Applejinx: Christ, don’t you get it’s not really about Hillary or Bernie. It’s about keeping the damn Republicans off the President’s office!

  272. 272.

    Ksmiami

    And it looks like the Kasich threat has been effectively neutralized. He was the only candidate on the GOP side that had me worried cause he’s actually a human. Phew. Onward

  273. 273.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Anne Laurie, top:

    (I’ll put up a separate SC Repub primary post as results trickle in… )

    Any old time….

  274. 274.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    The 2020 cycle will be dominated by candidates Bolton, Gaffney, Steve King and Louie Gohmert. VP choice will be Liz Cheney.

  275. 275.

    JMG

    The poll sci wonks do comparisons of every Senator and House member in comparison to their peers in voting. In her time as Senator, Clinton was firmly in the party median. She served as Secretary of State for the man who beat her out of a nomination she thought was hers. What does it take to convince people! SHE’S A DEMOCRAT!!!!
    She’s far from perfect. I gave up expecting that from pols around age 12, thanks.

  280. 280.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    What’s funny is that people like Joe Scarborough think

    1) a debate is held,
    2) someone “wins”, mostly in the minds of observing pundits, and
    3) that person must get the most votes in the next State primary.

    He’s amazed that Trump clearly “lost” the debate yet won here.

    These guys spend a lot of their time on the air shaking their heads saying “Isn’t it amazing, just a few weeks ago everyone thought that X was true, now look, it’s Y!” When what they mean is “Isn’t it amazing that we have no idea we’re just making this shit up as we go?”

  282. 282.

    Fair Economist

    @DCF:

    She has a long (and bifurcated) record – and her inclination is to follow, rather than to lead…her history, IMO, is a reliable predictor of her future behavior(s)….

    No, that’s just false. She spearheaded a major and successful education reform in Arkansas and she led the campaign for a well-designed healthcare reform, even if it was politically unsuccessful. If we’re limited to an executive action president by a Republican House, I doubt anybody would do a better job. She knows her stuff and she works her butt off designing good policy.

  284. 284.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Emma: It’s nice to have that passion-inspiration bond with a candidate but it’s also a rare thing. Maybe people who have Obama ’08 as the first election they’ve ever been aware of think that was a typical case. Those of us who are a little older than that would say it was kind of a weird blip by American political standards.

  285. 285.

    Applejinx

    @TheMightyTrowel: Part of the reason I’ve been supporting Bernie is that, at the very first town hall I attended before any of this caught on, he spoke passionately about how we have to build the sense of civic duty, be involved in our communities, and make exactly those sorts of local-politics organizations.

    I worked for OFA twice and couldn’t find even a hint of a Democratic organization during the midterms. I could find nobody doing what you’re suggesting. My hope is that Bernie’s organization will persist so we can continue to coordinate, at the grass-roots, and do exactly that since the DNC would not do it for us and seems uninterested in that kind of reach-out, hence the traditionally bad Dem performance in midterms or anything other than Presidential elections.

    It’s useless in American politics to lean on the Greens or Socialists, if any: and I’m from Vermont, where we ALWAYS have a bunch of little parties like Progressives or Liberty Union, running. We need better Democrats, even if we gotta replace them.

  286. 286.

    debbie

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Can’t believe that Cruz is third. Guess Rubio’s the real winner.

    ETA: Kasich’s numbers are pathetic. Hopefully, this will get him to get his Lightness out of the race.

  287. 287.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ksmiami: Does Katich have a billionaire? Seems like the last go ’round there were more identifiable sugar daddies. Whither Foster Friess? Ken Langone? I guess Marco has two sugar magnates, a billionaire Miami car dealer, and a Cuban American real estate developer who used to give to the Clintons

    Have I now given a new boogey man to the keyboard radicals who think Goldman Sachs is hiding under the bed waiting for them to fall asleep?

  289. 289.

    Mike J

    538:

    DAVID WASSERMAN 7:43 PM
    If I had to bet on second place, I’d put a very slight bet on Rubio over Cruz at the moment. Very early returns in Charleston County show him leading Cruz there 2-to-1, and very early returns in Greenville County show a virtual three-way tie between Trump, Rubio, and Cruz.

  290. 290.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @efgoldman:

    Remember, they’re not on the air to inform you (or anyone else), they’re on the air to capture the maximum number of eyeballs to watch the commercials.
    The sooner everyone realizes that’s ture of all commercial TV and cable, the better off we’ll be.

    Said it a hundred times. Their business model is selling your attention to the highest bidder. They’ll do whatever they have to to maximize the value.

  291. 291.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    Oh, I nearly forgot – in the 2020 cycle, Bolton, King, Gohmert and Gaffney will engage in a bitter battle over which ones were selling out conservatives.

  295. 295.

    Elie

    @DCF:

    We have competing analogies. Ok — I’ll play. You can drown while swimming to shore also. I prefer my analogy that deals with the structure and strength of our government rather than swimming. We have a number of breeches to the structure and integrity of what has been built. I think you would acknowledge that. Unless you want to completely scrap and start from scratch, this would not be a time to mess with the structure except to shore it up. If your house is slidding down the hill, do you try to figure out how you can add a room? Ok — if the house had already collapsed, well, you would be in a different landscape where a new structure was necessary. We aint there – YET… though we could be if a Republican is elected. Meantime you are trying to design the new room even as the whole structure slides down the cliff…

    Get.Real.

  298. 298.

    gogol's wife

    @DCF:

    Supreme Court. That’s all the enthusiasm any sentient being should need.

    Do you REALIZE what power the Supreme Court can (and already has) exert?

  299. 299.

    Ohio Mom

    @Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: um, as a mom of a young man on the autism spectrum who is sweet, shy, determined always to do his best, and works very hard to fit into a world that doesn’t always make sense to him and yes, that includes gritting his teeth and being flexible, I just want to ask, Can you come up with any more negative stereotypes about autistics?

  300. 300.

    Nate Dawg

    Where does Bernie go from here?

    I think after tonight, his chances of winning, or even being very competitive, aren’t particularly good.

    But can Bernie use his momentum and voters to craft a liberal progressive vision for the Democratic platform that will *actually* get policy commitments from Clinton?

  301. 301.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Applejinx:

    DNC would not do it for us and seems uninterested in that kind of reach-out, hence the traditionally bad Dem performance in midterms or anything other than Presidential

    It’s not quite clear which is the chicken and which the egg, though. I think the DNC doesn’t know how to overcome Democrats’ slipping attention when there isn’t a presidential election happening, true, but no one else seems to know either. I’m not sure if the problem is not trying, or trying and not working, or that nothing works at a fundamental level on the audience that cares vaguely who the president is and essentially not at all about any other political office. If Bernie can crack the case he’ll have done a lot of good. If Berniacs take over the Democratic Party the way Goldwaterites took over the Republican Party, fan-damn-tastic. Make it so. But Obama didn’t crack the case and I think he had a lot of advantages and goodwill on his side.

  302. 302.

    Applejinx

    By the way, are Koch and Botsplainer real Clinton supporters? I’m wondering if they might be there to antagonize people against Clinton, and shouldn’t be taken as typical Clinton supporters. I’m seeing, shall we say, a wide disparity between Clinton people.

  304. 304.

    Highway Rob

    Schadenfreude help request, because my Google skills appear to have deserted me — can anyone link me to photos/videos of sad people at the Bush HQ? He’s fallen so far out of the discussion that no one’s bothering to cover him closely.

  306. 306.

    DCF

    @Elie:

    I am more ‘real’ than you will (probably) ever know (through no fault of your own)…there is a middle ground between the extremes you delineate here (‘tearing it down’/starting from ‘scratch’) versus (minor) cosmetic repairs when serious structural repair(s) are what is required….

    You can indeed drown ‘while swimming’…the difference (as opposed to treading water) is that 1) one chooses the most likely direction regarding the goal and 2) moves toward it with purpose and intent to do so before (and if) one succumbs to exhaustion….

    Our political system is, I believe, at what Thom Hartmann refers to as an ‘inflection point’…the alternative potentials from that point are what the Chinese might refer to as ‘interesting’ (times)….

  307. 307.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Hillary had the lead in voter enthusiasm in Iowa, as well. There is a big difference between ‘loud’ and ‘committed.’ It’s damned encouraging for the general.

    @The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016:
    4. Her positions on the issues are excellent and progressive.
    5. Personality. She is warm, calm, and confident. Many people prefer that to angry shouting.
    6. Trustworthiness. Sanders’ heart is in the right place, but it’s becoming steadily clearer that he cares about dogma, not facts.
    7. Race relations. I’m a white male, and even I can see the Republican Party is waging a damn race war. I want the candidate who has acknowledged she knows which battlefield we’re on, not the one who keeps trying to pretend it’s really economic stress.

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
    Come on, man. I’ve been as irritated as anybody, but we can be dignified about it.

  308. 308.

    TallPete

    @Nate Dawg: His chances never were very good, but Sanders should stay in as long as he has the money. You never know what bad news could come out of Clinton campaign, which is why she makes me nervous as a general election candidate.

  310. 310.

    Raven Onthill

    Well, the DLC dissolved in 2011. Generally speaking, I’d say they dissolved because they have been successful; adherents of their views now control the Democratic Party. So I suppose you could say that the DLC has become the Democratic establishment.

    @FlipYrWhig: “how are they the “establishment” exactly?”

    I’d say that what makes them “establishment” is ties to older voters, the big banks, and the national security state.

    “What do they dominate?”

    The Democratic Party. Progressives can’t swing the party leadership. Think of the ACA vote. Progressives pulled out all the stops, and they lost. If they couldn’t win that one, their only power in the party is over things the party leadership doesn’t care that much about.

    “who do they silence?”

    You and me. Their interests are the interests of the 1% and the national security state. “Just because you are on their side does not mean that they are on your side.”

    “How many of them even are there?”

    More than most progressives like to think, for sure. My intuition is that much of the Democratic Party is looking for safety in the “conservative” choice of Hillary Clinton, and that this is based in a failure to grasp that we are not in a situation where the lessons of the past are of value or, at least, the wrong lessons are being held ot.

    “But I also highly doubt that you would be saying you trusted Hillary Clinton if she had run as whatever that term means. ”

    I don’t distrust her the way most voters do, I think. I have a sense of who she is, and I think in many ways it is good. (But, Henry Kissinger? Brrrr.) But she has to dissemble to win elections, and it shows. There is a profound conflict between what most of us want and need and what the Democratic establishment wants.

  312. 312.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Applejinx: Well, look, the Bernie people have been pretty loud and proud since IA and NH, making very big claims about the unstoppable movement, and the would-be liberal media (like MSNBC) has been longing for Bernie too, so sometimes people want to blow off steam and show that those opinions aren’t uniformly held. I’ve been as big an asshole an anyone on many of these threads, and that’s the reason why. ETA Or at least that converged with my baseline level of assholishness.

  315. 315.

    DCF

    @Nate Dawg:

    I believe this would only happen if HRC was faced with no other acceptable (to her) alternatives…I fully expect she will tack to the center (read: Third Way) in the GE, and stay there (with periodic/slight drifts to the center-left) should she be elected President….

  316. 316.

    Elie

    @DCF:

    Hell, we are already in “interesting” times. I am less trusting of major revolution than you are AND I just don’t see Bernie’s appeal leading to that. Folks are NOT in the street and the sense I have is that somehow his supporters think we can have an elected revolution. That aint how it works. Also, revolutions are messy and very unpredictable. Revolution is tearing down your house without bothering to figure out where you can live. No one wants that, babe. That is the LAST thing. Maybe there are a few romantics who think that kind of chaos is cool and desirable, but I am much more cynical having paid attention in my 65 years. So I respect your point of view, but I just don’t buy that Bernie offers what you desire. Which is not to say that revolution might not eventually happen. But Bernie will not be leading it top down as the result of a popular election.

  318. 318.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Baud: If one were cynical and paint with a really broad brush, one would say:

    1) TV channels exist to sell advertising.
    2) Companies by advertising on TV channels.
    3) Companies are run by white men who are Republicans.

    If one buys all that, then it’s not surprising why TV channels cover things from a GOP point of view.

    A way one could show that that simple 3-step explanation was wrong would be to argue that TV channels want to sell a certain kind of audience to companies, so they have to tailor their programming toward particular kinds of people. Unfortunately, when it comes to politics on TV, the more leftish audience apparently is a much smaller demographic than the more rightish. (Maybe lefties read blogs and don’t watch TV as much, etc.)

    It looks like to fix this, we either need more lefties running companies, or we need more lefties in the general political-TV-watching population. Or both.

    Or lefties need to realize that TV just isn’t going to be “balanced” any more and accept it and move on. And maybe build-up alternative political media to TV…

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who isn’t saying any of this is easy, but just pointing out that those who say “it’s just business” have a point.)

  319. 319.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Raven Onthill: I don’t know what actual people do these things, though. State-level party chairs? big donors? Which big donors? I feel like the Democratic Party’s big donors are people like trial lawyers. I think you’re imagining a sort of back-scratching coziness that feels more on the mark as a version of how the Republicans work. I have a hard time seeing Democrats as that organized or shady. YMMV.

  321. 321.

    Raven Onthill

    @Elie: an elected revolution beats the other kind, for sure. And why not? The Republicans did it, after all.

    Do you think that we are going to see orderly predictability in the next four years, regardless of the results of the election?

  324. 324.

    FlipYrWhig

    @DCF: No chance. There aren’t any votes in the center anymore. Triangulation worked for Bill Clinton because he was willing to push Republican priorities to the left and the Gingrich Republicans were willing to move the ball down the field with by deal making with Democrats. It won’t work for Hillary Clinton because 21st century Republicans have no priorities other than tax cuts, slut shaming, and ethnic cleansing, and don’t believe in working with Democrats at all.

  325. 325.

    Applejinx

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    7. Race relations. I’m a white male, and even I can see the Republican Party is waging a damn race war. I want the candidate who has acknowledged she knows which battlefield we’re on, not the one who keeps trying to pretend it’s really economic stress.

    I hear that. As much stock as I put in economic stress and the challenges we face there, you’re damn right the Republicans are brewing a race war, and I’ve probably underplayed just how wrong I think that is. I have more than one black friend I’d take a bullet for (due to knowing millenials, cartoonists, and musicians, three different circles in total: yeah, I’m a musician) and I’ve been in social situations with black friends or acquaintances where I had to go ‘okay, if cops came up and began to attack my black friend, what would I do?’

    That’s probably the primary angle I’d take towards rationalizing a vote for Clinton. Sanders is a longshot, a hail-mary pass, and what’s more, in no way is Bernie a complete answer. We have to be strong on racism and sexism BECAUSE we know better than Bernie, he’s for specific purposes and a message that’s not being sent any other way. In no way is supporting Bernie a message not to care about racism: I was hopeful that after his #BLM experience he’d take those issues on board, and he has but not in a central way.

    If that costs him the nomination, and we have to elect Clinton, I hope to hell we can use that opportunity to MAKE those racism issues be central. I could get pumped up about that in a way which can’t happen over Clinton’s economic or foreign policy views. If she fights Trump, I hope she nails him to the wall over the nationalism and racism, because I can get behind that, was already behind those issues.

    Bernie hasn’t given me much opportunity to do that. He’s from such a white state, and he honestly doesn’t see things like reparations as politically possible, and his whole performance more or less forces us to gloss that over and try to make the best of his strengths. Well, Hillary could make fighting racism her strength. I’d like to hear more about that. Hell, I could use the same argument (putting money in the hands of people) that I use for Bernie, to argue for reparations. I am extremely proud that my software plugins have a small but enthusiastic rapper/producer contingent. It makes me feel like I’m doing my work not just for people exactly like me.

  326. 326.

    DCF

    @Elie:

    Revolution is tearing down your house without bothering to figure out where you can live.

    I’m 58 (retired) – so roughly a quarter Saturn cycle behind you – but from where I stand, a revolution is all about figuring out where you can live, and assessing the cost(s) from that point forward…what any of us do after that evaluation is as individual as we are….

  328. 328.

    Applejinx

    @FlipYrWhig: That’s cool, I completely understand. I put more stock in seeing variation out of people, and there are a lot of names here I’m more likely to hear out when they get snippy, on the strength of how they acted when they weren’t engaged in a verbal blogfight.

    You’re certainly proving to be one of the people I’m trying harder to listen to. There are a couple who don’t really seem like they have that kind of variation.

  329. 329.

    Applejinx

    @FlipYrWhig: You may be right. I’ve said before, back when Bill was tacking right, that’s actually where the electorate was. He wasn’t wrong in that observation, he was wrong in following it (though it brought him popularity).

    The electorate aren’t there anymore, and there aren’t votes in the center. You could be right that Hillary will make no attempt to tack to the center. I’d be thrilled if that were true, I don’t dare quite believe it until I see it.

  330. 330.

    Elie

    @Raven Onthill:

    Of course not. That said, how far out do you try to put new structure on an unstable base? We have work to do to shore up our national foundation. I am not clear whether you think you assume this can be done while tearing it down, but that is counter to practical reality. Maybe you don’t think that the current structure is worth saving? If so, that is not necessarily what the majority of people think or at least that is not yet evident. Revolutions are revolutions. They mean to be destructive and disruptive of the existing order. There has to be a critical mass for that kind of change and usually they are not thinking “orderly transition”. I’m still wanting an orderly transition and to improve the existing system. You may be in another place. I will not support your place. Period. At least not now. I think you are delusional to think a complete system re-do will be elected and then put into place by Bernie. I have no doubt however that your folks and Bernie think that is a possible outcome.

  332. 332.

    dslak

    What’s with these Sanders supporters trying to play nice? On election night, you take your lumps! No cheating by acting sympathetic or human. Fie with you!

  333. 333.

    Elie

    @DCF:

    Man. Saturn seems an apt analogy for where you are. Its in your head. For a bunch of us however that are a lot of stakes in the existing order — jobs, families, doctors appointments. You had better be real serious and know what you are about before you go fucking with that. I’m not interested in your intellectual exercises. The Khmer Rouge also had all the answers. Millions of skulls later, Combodia is still paying the price exacted by the oh so righteous revolutionaries. No thanks (not saying that is what you would advocate)

  334. 334.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @Ohio Mom:

    Applejinx has made the claim in order to escape criticism for his singular method of expression.

    I’m calling bullshit on it.

  337. 337.

    Admiral_Komack

    @Tim C.:
    I’ve NEVER been impressed with Rachel Maddow, so as far as I’m concerned, she can go sulk in that Oval Office mock-up of hers.

  338. 338.

    Ruckus

    @Ksmiami:
    And it looks like the Kasich threat has been effectively neutralized. He was the only candidate on the GOP side that had me worried cause he’s actually a human
    If you mean he is a physical human, they all are. OK maybe little teddy isn’t and that thing on top of tDump’s head for sure is not organic in any way. But if you mean human in a moralistic way Kasich is not human. He really just isn’t. He is a typical republican, every one of his policies are harmful to everyone, and helpful only to money. Not even people with money, just the money itself. His presentation is better, in a strictly comparative way with the other conservative candidates, which is why the right doesn’t actually like him, they don’t know he’s one of them, he doesn’t sound insane enough.

  339. 339.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Applejinx: It’s fine to say that big political organizations like OFA or the DNC should do more during the mid-terms. It’s hard for them to do so, though, when they spend all of their budget (and often go into huge amounts of debt in the DNC’s case doing so), and people only give money to presidential candidates.

    If we want a bigger effort in the midterms, it’s going to cost money. Those of us who can afford to give can’t close our wallets when November 9, 2016 rolls around, and bellyache about how feckless and incompetent the big groups are at running big campaigns….

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who gets annoyed by the DNC, DSCC and DCCC, but realizes we’d be much worse off without them.)

  340. 340.

    agorabum

    @Zinsky: They can show up, but too many are inclined to attack anyone who doesn’t support Bernie as a ‘tool of the establishment,’ which doesn’t go over well for party activists who have been fighting the good fight longer than some of the Bernie supporters have been alive.
    Bernie remains a good candidate with some often unfortunate supporters. He is serving his purpose of challenging Hillary, pulling her left, and making Hillary campaign better.

  342. 342.

    Ruckus

    @agorabum:
    As it has always been when some one bright and shinny shows up with big ideas.
    The problem is we are all in this mess together. And this is the time that everyone gets to work for their idea of the best candidate for our party.
    Those of us with that time on our sides have seen bright and shinny before and maybe even been involved in pushing it and while it is nice it doesn’t work any better than the effort that bright and shinny puts into the effort. Some seem to not understand that real work is involved in being president and that it takes a hard worker not just a lot of shouting. There are many, many veto points along the way of getting things done in our or any national government that isn’t a dictatorship. A candidate that understands that and how to work them should have better results than one who expects to lead by shouting.

  343. 343.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    I thought that goblue72 wanted to set anyone older than 35 on an ice floe, thereby clearing the way for all those youngsters to have their way with the world.

  346. 346.

    Ksmiami

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I THOUGHT KEN LANGONE of Home Depot liked Kasich – but his dismal numbers will probably doom him even if he stays in a few more weeks. I’d say though that the GOP will never run an Evangelical true believer again – I mean if Cruz can’t even win in SC, that’s a good sign that rabid idealogues are passe.

  349. 349.

    Applejinx

    @Disgruntled former Baud supporter: It’s okay, it’s just Balloon Juice :)

    Unless you feel other Berniacs are watching and not taking it gracefully, in which case I would say to them: it’s okay, it’s just Balloon Juice :)

    If you post openly and allow stuff to be known about you, if you’re privileged or well-off maybe you don’t want to do that. If you have pretty much nothing to lose, you can go ahead and do it, and an interesting thing happens: other people start to reveal who they are by how they react to you.

    Also remember it’s blogging and people aren’t necessarily who or what they say they are. I’ve been building bridges which might prove useful in the long run. I don’t particularly care if I’m called names. It’s just Balloon Juice.

  351. 351.

    different-church-lady

    @Applejinx:

    Should Bernie pull this out, I hope to hell you people aren’t right about the sabotage you think he’ll face.

    Jayzus… effin’… CHRIST…. do you have the credulity of a six-year old or something?

  352. 352.

    different-church-lady

    @Tim C.:

    what the hell would make anyone with one-and-a-half functioning brain cells think “Yeah, I like Sander, but if he doesn’t win the primary, I’d rather through action or inaction have Ted Cruz be president”?

    You gotta think like an organic farmer. From Oregon. Or so I’ve heard…

  353. 353.

    mclaren

    @Raven Onthill:

    It’s been my intuition from the beginning that Clinton’s conservatism would be more popular than Sanders mild socialism, and it seems to be proving out, but I really want to see solid social science research that explains why. I can think of at least five hypotheses:

    1. Familiarity and name recognition.
    2. Popular militarism
    3. Fear of socialism
    4. Obama’s coat-tails
    5. A desire to stand pat, now that employment has improved

    Any more guesses, er, hypotheses?

    The well-known long-standing statistical fact that general election voters tend to prefer candidates in the middle of the political spectrum.

  354. 354.

    J R in WV

    @Disgruntled former Baud supporter:

    That really shows how stiff and unlikable she is, doesn’t it?

    Only someone who was really stuck up and prim would bark like a dog on a huge stage, making the whole huge audience laugh at her!

    Hillary is a good person who wants to do all she can to help this country. No one would put up with the BullShit she has put with just seeking power for its own sake. The Republicans are making a big mistake by taking her lightly, and I’m glad to see it.

    She seems like a great person who would have a great time at a neighborhood pig roast or beer festival or any party with amateurs playing music and having a good old time.

    I just don’t get the distrust and hate. It seems totally irrational to me.

  355. 355.

    mclaren

    @Nate Dawg:

    Where does Bernie go from here?

    I think after tonight, his chances of winning, or even being very competitive, aren’t particularly good.

    Bernie lost NV by a couple of percentage points to an establishment candidate with enormous amounts of money and resources and insider endorsements.

    If Bernie had gotten clobbered by, say, 80% to 20% in Nevada, sure, the race would be over.

    Hillary won by 52% to 47%. That’s a 5% difference.

    How does that blow Bernie out of the race?

    Please, explain it to me.

  356. 356.

    mclaren

    @J R in WV:

    Hillary is a good person who wants to do all she can to help this country. No one would put up with the BullShit she has put with just seeking power for its own sake.

    You’re so cute.

    Hillary is a professional political shark, like all the other candidates, who would french kiss a warthog’s ass if it got her votes.

    And you would be amazed at the things ambitious people would do to claw their way into power as the most powerful person on earth (and make no mistake, the president of the United States is the most powerful person on earth).

    People would knife their own children, strangle puppies, eat roadkill right off the highway and crawl over broken glass to get that kind of power.

  357. 357.

    mclaren

    @Ruckus:

    The problem is we are all in this mess together.

    Double-digit millionaires like Hillary Clinton…not so much. If global warming threatens her 10 million dollar mansion in Westchester, she can always buy a deluxe ski chalet in Switzerland. If her presidential bid doesn’t work out, she can always go back to giving $600,000 speeches to corrupt hedge fund bankers explaining that “bashing the bankers isn’t productive, and it needs to stop.” If her political career stalls out, she just retires to board membership on the Clinton Global Initiative, where some of that sweet sweet 71 billion dollars of corporate cash will just happen to make its way into her pocket.

    Hilary Clinton and her cronies are not in the mess together with the rest of us. They’re flying far above it in their private jet on their way to Davos to hobnob with the the Russian oligarchs and Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim and the rest of their billionaire buddies.

  358. 358.

    different-church-lady

    @JMG:

    What does it take to convince people! SHE’S A DEMOCRAT!!!!

    You don’t get it: the supporters of the guy running against her think Democrats suck.

    This is in spite of the fact that he’s a Democrat now.

  360. 360.

    J R in WV

    @mclaren:

    I’m sure some people would do all those things for power, killing puppies and eating glass and all. You may even know some of them, I don’t.

    I also believe Hillary is not one of those people. Those people won’t get on a stage and bark like a dog to make a point. Those people won’t let people laugh at them, or even with them.

    I think Hillary is a remarkable person who has gone through horrific abuse and come out the other side a better person for it. Hell, she’s still getting that abuse, even from other Democrats, and you, too.

    Now, maybe I am completely wrong. Maybe Hillary is really Pol Pot reborn into the White House Family space while she was First Lady. But I really doubt it.

    I cannot understand the hatred, unless it is because of people being subjected to so many lies from Republicans that they have been brainwashed by it. I don’t listen to Republicans, you know they are lying when their lips are moving.

    If they say terrible things about Hillary, well, their lips are moving. And this goes for those media whores who pretend to be middle of the road while preaching the Republican way, too. Wolf Shitzer at CNN and all the rest.

  364. 364.

    Raven Onthill

    The best thing Sanders could do if he fails to win the nomination is to throw his organization’s resources behind the Clinton campaign while maintaining the organizations independence. He would have to be careful, though, not to end up like Hubert Humphrey.

  365. 365.

    different-church-lady

    @agorabum:

    They can show up, but too many are inclined to attack anyone who doesn’t support Bernie as a ‘tool of the establishment,’ which doesn’t go over well for party activists who have been fighting the good fight longer than some of the Bernie supporters have been alive.

    Johnny Rotten expressed it best: “I don’t understand it. All we’re trying to do is destroy everything.”

  366. 366.

    different-church-lady

    @mclaren:

    The well-known long-standing statistical fact that general election voters tend to prefer candidates in the middle of the political spectrum.

    Well, how are we supposed to know if that’s true if we never give them a revolution to vote for?

  367. 367.

    different-church-lady

    @mclaren:

    People would knife their own children, strangle puppies, eat roadkill right off the highway and crawl over broken glass to get that kind of power.

    Yet, strangely, hardly any US Presidents have ever done so.

  368. 368.

    mclaren

    @J R in WV:

    Hillary isn’t Pol Pot reborn in the White House, but she does have the blood of one million Iraqi women and children on her hands — as does everyone else who voted for that illegal war of aggression America conducted in Iraq in 2003.

    Hillary also remains a dedicated, creative and enthusiastic proponent of bombing women and children and burning brown babies throughout the Third World.

    I’ll outsource my criticisms of Hillary to Jackson Lear of the London Review of Books:

    Since leaving government [Hillary Clinton] has become an aggressive critic of Obama’s allegedly timid reluctance to arm ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria (she has backed off since he announced in August that there would be an armed response to Isis). No wonder she’s begun attracting admiring glances from Robert Kagan, Max Boot and other neoconservative ideologues. Like them, she’s given to soaring abstractions about the inevitable spread of democracy…

    In Hard Choices, she tries to construct a coherent rationale for an interventionist foreign policy and to justify it with reference to her own decisions as secretary of state. The rationale is rickety: the evidence unconvincing. Recent history becomes a series of rescue missions, staged opportunities for heroism worthy of Hollywood: mobs of brown-skinned extras look up to see helicopters – we are saved! The Americans have arrived! Such are the dreams that hover unarticulated in our political unconscious, allowing our leaders to redefine war as humanitarian intervention.

    The triumph of fantasy entails the failure of imagination. Exceptionalists like Clinton are unable to conceive of a multipolar world where some nations might prefer to go their own way. Clinton and other advocates of ‘smart power’ don’t acknowledge the legitimacy of other nations’ interests – a notion they view as a relic of outmoded diplomatic realism – unless those interests merge with the exceptionalist worldview.

    Clinton’s outlook epitomises the bipartisan wisdom of the Washington foreign policy establishment, which claims to offer a pragmatic centrist alternative to the extremes of right and left. Yet the centrists turn out to be at least as ideologically driven as the zealots they deplore. The core of their ideology is the belief that the US has a uniquely necessary role to play in leading the world towards an inevitably democratic (and implicitly capitalist) future. The process is foreordained but can be helped along through neoliberal policy choices. This muddle of determinism and freedom is a secular residue of providentialist teleology, held with as much religious fervour and as little regard for contrary evidence as other dogmatic faiths derided by self-styled liberal pragmatists.

    Only a secular providentialist could ask what it means ‘to be on the right side of history’. Clinton poses this question as if it were a guide to policy. The notion that history has a discernible direction, and that nations must align themselves with it, is a relic of the grand historical narratives of the 19th and 20th centuries. Such views are no longer held by serious historians but continue to animate the pundits and politicians in Washington. (..)

    Despite her supposed pragmatism, Clinton shows little concern for the actual consequences of ideas. Her indifference is most apparent in her attachment to the failed military policies of the recent past. While she admits she ‘got it wrong’ in voting for the invasion of Iraq, she shows no sign of having learned from her mistake. On her arrival at the State Department, she began courting General David Petraeus, the ‘architect of the successful counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq’ according to Allen and Parnes, whom she had offended in 2007 by questioning his rosy assessments of American military prospects. In early 2009, Petraeus was head of Centcom, US high command in the region including Afghanistan and Pakistan. By the end of her charm offensive, Petraeus was gallantly offering her sole occupancy of his bed on the flight back from Riyadh. ‘She had won him back,’ Allen and Parnes conclude.

    Clinton’s courtship of Petraeus reveals a deeper amnesia. Like most other Washington policymakers, she has forgotten the failure of counterinsurgency in Vietnam. She praises Petraeus’s strategy for its focus on ‘winning Iraqis’ “hearts and minds”’, but she does not seem to remember the history of that phrase. It entered American public discourse in Lyndon Johnson’s admonition that ‘the ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there,’ which he repeated many times. The phrase was soon appropriated by the antiwar movement as an ironic shorthand for the futility and mendacity of US policy. Eventually the filmmaker Peter Davis used the phrase as the title for his 1974 documentary which exposed the American invaders’ casual brutality and indifference towards Asian lives. Clinton was involved, however tangentially, in the antiwar counterculture. Yet, like everyone else in Washington, she uses ‘hearts and minds’ to refer to the latest version of counterinsurgency. She assumes Petraeus’s ‘clear, hold and build’ operation was a success in Iraq and the model for a further success in Afghanistan. She cites no evidence.

    Clinton’s admiration for Petraeus demonstrates the irrelevance of actual military achievements in the world of the Washington consensus. Petraeus was a powerful man still on the way up and Clinton needed his support. If that meant ignoring the facts, judging his counterinsurgency strategy ‘successful’, so much the worse for the facts. Indeed, Clinton’s aims at the State Department, as Allen and Parnes describe them, were more a matter of public relations than of public policy: to rebuild morale at the department, to rebrand the US in the world and to ‘fortify her own brand’ so she could run for president. (..)

    In slogging through [her book Hard Choices], one is reminded of why the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency is so dreary. The dreariness begins with the real possibility that Jeb Bush will be her opponent, setting up another contest between two dynasties, one of which ‘exploited its vast wealth to obtain political power, while the other exploited its political power to obtain vast wealth’, as Glenn Greenwald recently put it. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the merger of economic and political power in the oligarchy that dominates American public life. Were Clinton to win, her victory would ensure the continuation of business as usual in Washington. The only change would be the return to power of the Clinton machine, an army of loyalists who have been milling about the capital for two decades but whose command has now shifted from Bill to Hillary. Despite their differing styles, the intent is the same: rewarding friends and punishing enemies, the latter with such precision that one of her staffers fears Hillary will come to seem little different from ‘Nixon in a pantsuit’.

    Source: “We came, we saw, he died,” Jackson Lear, review of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, London Review of Books, 5 Feburary 2015.

  369. 369.

    mclaren

    @different-church-lady:

    Yet, strangely, hardly any US Presidents have ever done so.

    Given the history of the Bush crime family, starting with making a fortune by illegally helping Hitler’s biggest munitions manfuacturers evade Versailles Treaty restrictions on arms trading, I’d say that’s tall talk with no evidence to back it up.

  372. 372.

    mclaren

    @Elie:

    Folks are NOT in the street and the sense I have is that somehow his supporters think we can have an elected revolution.

    You may want to rethink your belief system. Václav Havel? Mahatma Ghandi? Kamal Attaturk? Nelson Mandela?

    These people all achieved non-violent revolutionary transformations of their societies.

    Like so many Americans, Elie, you’ve been deluded by ultra-violent Hollywood movies into fantasizing that tectonic social and political change can only come from the barrel of a gun. Out here in the real world, it’s just not true.

  374. 374.

    sharl

    @Raven Onthill: Thanks for that Snopes link. AFAICT it is pretty well researched.

    Now I have to go on Twitter and correct my earlier tweets, as I promised I would if the evidence merited it. Le Sigh…

  375. 375.

    DCF

    @Elie:

    I balance ‘head’ with ‘heart’…your presumptive ‘rationality’ – and extreme prognostications of future ‘revolutionary’ outcomes – are simply without merit. The sky may well fall – but not for the reason(s) you fear…it is our relative complacency in the face of the necessity for REAL change(s) that will lead us further into a morass of corporatist (and cultural) mediocrity….

    And FYI…I have a great deal to lose in the course (and outcome) of this process. You hold no monopoly on ‘risk’ here….

    Biased Pluralism and the Defense of “Reality” in the Democratic Primary
    https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/02/11/biased-pluralism-and-the-defense-of-reality-in-the-democratic-primary/#comments

  377. 377.

    DCF

    @AxelFoley:

    You need to re-check your ‘facts’:

    A disturbing trend is emerging from the Clinton campaign and civil rights/race.
    http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511291477

    Dolores Huerta claims Sander’s supporters chanted ‘English only’. This was almost immediately proven to be false.

    She was forced to backtrack.

    John Lewis claimed he met the Clinton’s in the 60s and implied Bernie Sanders wasn’t there.

    He was forced to backtrack.

    The photo of Bernie that wasn’t Bernie, that was Bernie again.

    The reporter was forced to backtrack(in a dickish way).

    I hope Clinton supporters are really proud of the campaign she’s running. Maybe you should ask yourselves why she’s putting good people in these kind of positions where they have to lie and then cover their asses instead of carrying water for a corrupt and dirty campaign.

    White House defends Sanders against Clinton claim that Sanders has attacked POTUS. Oops.
    http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511283359
    http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/20/1488244/-White-House-defends-Sanders-against-Clinton-claim-that-Sanders-has-attacked-POTUS-Oops

    At a White House press conference, Press Secretary Josh Earnest defended Bernie Sanders against the Clinton campaign claim that Sanders had continuously attacked President Obama.

    More lies confirmed for team Hillary. I guess these don’t count when she said she’d never lied to the American people just two days ago?? Hmmm.

  378. 378.

    Joe Bauers

    Glad that living in a bright red, winner-take-all state gives me the option of not voting for Hillary in the general without it being a de facto vote for the Republican.

    Still going to have to eat the shit sandwich, but at east I won’t have to endure the indignity of asking for it by name first.

  379. 379.

    DCF

    @different-church-lady:

    Let’s amend/correct that (false) proposition to read ‘ DLC/Third Way/Republican-Lite candidates suck’ – particularly when they behave like this:

    Calling Clinton’s Bluff, Sanders Reveals What His Paid Speeches Look Like

    Has Bernie Sanders thrown down the gauntlet after Hillary Clinton’s challenge at Thursday’s Democratic town hall?
    http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/19/calling-clintons-bluff-sanders-reveals-what-his-paid-speeches-look

  381. 381.

    AxelFoley

    @DCF:

    President Obama has a history of being nice to those who shit on him. But Bernie’s on record trashing him and his accomplishments and calling for him to be primaried in 2012 and using folks like Cornel West and Killer Mike to throw shit at him, so you can fuck right the fuck off with that bullshit.

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