Here’s my take on ratfucking, if you’re so inclined. If you are in a state with open primaries, vote for Cruz, not Trump. If Cruz wins (unlikely), he will be a worse general election candidate. If Cruz denies Trump a majority of delegates, Trump will have to cut an ugly deal to get some other low-energy loser’s delegates, or the GOP powers-that-be will engage in an ugly floor fight. If Trump is denied the nomination because of a floor fight, he’ll run an independent campaign. Any of those outcomes are good for Democrats.
That all said, Trump is leading in winner-take-all states like Florida and Ohio, so he’ll probably roll up a majority of delegates in much the same way that a dung beetle rolls up a ball of shit.
Jade
Why is everyone so excited that Hillary won big in red states that she is not going to carry in November. Sanders is winning blue states. This is the same thing Mitt Romney did in 2012. He won big in Blue states and lost red states.
Say hello to President Trump.
Cacti
@Jade:
Big red states like Iowa, Nevada, Virginia, and Massachusetts?
superpredators4hillary
I’m not one of those commenters that usually thinks you’re a moron.
peach flavored shampoo
@Jade: Say what? So if it’s the same thing Romney did in 2012, and seemingly so successful, where’s President Romney? I’m so confused.
p.a.
Perhaps best to take a passive approach instead under the assumption they’ll fuck themselves up worse than we can sap the fort. Not happy with that metaphor…
SuperHrefna
I like the way you think, but honestly I’d be scared karma would bite me in the form of President Cruz. The other day this sweet old man was giving me a hard time about my Hillary bumper sticker and I just deflected him, because I didn’t want to find out who he was in favor of ( I know it wasn’t Bernie because he gave me an earful about him too) because his wife long arms my quilts and I just want to get along with them. I thought it over later and decided i would be more horrified if he had been a Cruz supporter than a Trump supporter because Cruz is pure evil. Trump is a fascist dictator in training but I tell myself a lot of his supporters are frightened and ignorant. That doesn’t excuse them but it makes it easier to live in a world with so many of them. But Cruz supporters? I just can’t fathom what is going on in his supporters’ minds.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Jade:
Sure! Drumpf is going to carry Minnesota so our only hope is to nominate Bernie. What color is the sky on your planet?
berliner2
Elvis Clinton won WV, KY, TN, AK and LA in 1996. Prisc-Hilla can do this too.
Marmot
One rat to fuck them all!
Mnemosyne
Meh. Our primary in California is so late that there are no ratfucking opportunities. I’m pretty sure the Republicans here are going to go Trump, because they’re crazy assholes who love celebrities.
WarMunchkin
@Jade: Because this god awful stupid meme is actually being repeated at-large: our delegate formula accounts for this phenomenon, and Sanders still loses.
@SuperHrefna: I just realized that bumper stickers are hashtags for old people.
aimai
@Jade: I get why people are this dumb. They mistake one part of the argument for a different part of the argument. If it were true that HRC won extremely enthusiastic voters from very small or insigifnicant states who were totally unlike the majority of other Democratic voters then you would be correct. However that isn’t what is happening. She is winning large numbers of enthusiastic voters in swing states, big states,and blue states. People are extrapolating from that information to feel that she has a pretty good shot at doing well in the general. For example her fired up/anti trump voters in red states will force Trump to spend a lot of money playing defense in those states. if he doesn’t he risks losing the down ticket races when her voters come out but his are complacent. See how that works? In addition her voters, if they feel they are in a hard red state where their vote doesn’t count, can fan out across the country and do gotv for her or contribute money for her to other races. See how that works?
Mnemosyne
@Jade:
In 2008, some guy named Barack Obama won big in the primaries in red states like South Carolina. Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?
Cacti
Hey Mixey, any thoughts on how the deeply unpopular and disliked candidate Clinton has managed to get more votes than any D or R candidate in the nomination to date, including about 1 million more than universally admired candidate Sanders?
Kthxbai.
Napoleon
@Jade:
So f-ing what. Come the fall she is going to win the blue states. Your argument, to the extent there is one, is ridiculous.
Calouste
@Jade: Sanders has won 4 states, one of them his home state, won by Obama in 2012 worth 26 Electoral Votes. Clinton has won 4 states won by Obama in 2012 worth 34 Electoral Votes.
Sanders can’t even win where he is supposed to win.
cmorenc
I never dreamed that supporting Cruz might possibly be a progressive-minded tactic, but dang if you didn’t lay out the case for how that might actually be accomplished…
Thoroughly Pizzled
I could never vote for Cruz. All the perfumes of Arabia would not be able to wash me of his stench.
Mnemosyne
@WarMunchkin:
Frankly, I blame Tad Devine. He’s running the Sanders campaign like it’s 1996, not 2016.
Penus
@Jade: Yes, let’s cast our lot with the guy getting 15 percent of the African-American vote and 33 percent of the Hispanic vote. That’s the path to electoral success!
Calouste
I don’t disagree with all that, but a straight Trump victory would have two advantages:
1) The Republican racism is out in the open.
2) Trump actually makes some semi-sane (at least compared to the rest of the GOP) comments about the need of investment in infrastructure, social security, etc. That will help shift the Overton window.
Tegdirb
@Jade: Popular vote is a thing? Some of those red states can be tipped. Also, we don’t need the white dude vote but we do need votes from PoC?
Why are so many Sanders supporters genuinely confused about how elections work? This is endemic.
Mike J
@Jade: I’m old enough to remember when the 50 state strategy was the one true path to victory.
Calouste
OT, but howly shite: Texas County GOP Implodes Over Newly-Elected Chairman’s Crude Tweets
chopper
@Cacti:
and apparently, now OK is a blue state.
♪ ♫ ♬ the more you know… ♪ ♫
FlipYrWhig
@Jade: The top 10 closest states in the 2012 elections were Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Of those, Sanders won primaries in New Hampshire and Colorado. Clinton won Iowa, Nevada, and Virginia. Minnesota was closer than it usually is in 2012, admittedly. But Georgia was 53-45 for Romney and South Carolina 55-44 for Romney, making those two of the weaker Republican states (and on par with Minnesota), and Clinton romped in both of those. I don’t see that Sanders is winning more of the battleground states’ primaries–not that it even matters, which I think it doesn’t.
FlipYrWhig
@Tegdirb:
Because they start with the idea that Sanders should be winning everywhere all the time and work backwards to figure out what skulduggery and/or backstabbing and/or bad faith is responsible every time something else happens.
PsiFighter37
Ben Carson effectively dropping out. He isn’t ‘suspending’ his campaign, but he will also not be at the debate tomorrow.
More time for the clowns to have a good fight!
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
Devine’s CV reads like a who’s who of Democratic electoral fail:
-Executive Assistant to the Campaign Manager for Walter Mondale
-Director of Delegate Selection and Field Operations for Michael Dukakis
-Senior Strategist for Al Gore and John Kerry
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
He seems nice.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Tegdirb: Learning how they work means acknowledging that Bernie can’t win them.
Also, somewhat in their defense, US election law is a disgrace. Should be standardized procedure in every state, not the ludicrous fifty-state mashup we have now.
Redshift
@Cacti: Actually, they do, kind of. States that went blue in the previous election get more delegates relative to their population than ones that didn’t. So “winning red states” is accounted for in the delegate plan, and Hillary is still well ahead in the delegate count.
p.a.
@Mnemosyne: He failed to use exec power to usher in progressive nirvana. It was in all the
papersblogs. #couldashouldawouldaJeffro
@WarMunchkin:
Which would, in itself, make a funny bumper sticker
Or a very meta hashtag
#sticker
Chyron HR
@Jade:
Speaking of things Mitt Romney did…
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne:
?? I’ve been impressed at almost every turn by Sanders’ campaign. They’re doing outstanding when you consider all of Clinton’s name, next-turn, donor base, and other advantages…or even if you just consider the campaign on its own merits.
At the end of the day, I will still be very proud of Sanders and Clinton for their incredibly high-minded and issue-centered campaigns, and will most certainly vote for whomever is the D nominee.
eemom
Nope, nuh-uh, no way. Not in a million years. Not even to save the republic.
Bobby Thomson
@berliner2: AR, not AK. No, she can’t. It’s irrelevant.
Bobby Thomson
@Jade: speaking of ratfuckers . . . .
Calouste
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The rules for the Democratic primaries are actually standard in each state: delegate allocation is proportional with a 15% threshold. Now we just have to get rid of the caucuses.
The rules for the primaries on the GOP side on the other hand are a complete fustercluck. Not only do the rules differ from state to state, some of the rules within a state contradict each other.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
Now, there’s plenty wrong with Jade’s analysis, but none of it is that. In fact, I see that argument come up fairly routinely on balloon-juice while no Sanders supporters are making any allegations of cheating. No one accused Hillary of cheating on this thread, certainly.
It’s almost like Hillary’s supporters on BJ are creating and sustaining false narratives to deflect other arguments.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
If Sanders manages to pull it out, I will happily vote for him. However, his campaign has spent many months chasing white voters and ignoring minority voters, and that’s hurting them in the primaries that are outside of majority-white blue states. It was a bad strategy, and now they’re paying for it.
Ironically, it’s the same failed strategy that Hillary tried in 2008. Fortunately, she didn’t make the same mistake twice.
trollhattan
Test, my post got eated with nary a mention of games of chance or establishments wherein they occur, etc.
Okay, anyhoo, I want Cruz to remain in as long as possible, using his combination of sociopathy and debate skilz to damage Trump and in turn, present a delicious target for Trump to return fire.
Chyron HR
@Kropadope:
I found the dishonest argument. What do I win?
AnonPhenom
It’s a fight for the GOP party brand now. If Trump and his reactionary lumpenproletariat make it to the Republican Convention with 1237 delegates he owns it and any dissenters will have to leave to start their own party or join the Dems (FSM forbid). If the Washington based Party Insiders can get the remaining candidates to work together towards achieving a brokered convention, they can snatch the nomination away from Trump, and because this will alienate his supporters (Trump is almost guaranteed to run as a third party if this happens), lose the presidential election, but retain the GOP brand (for what it will be worth). In either case, whatever hopes McConnell & Co. had of retaining control of the Senate just took a sharp blow to nads.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne:
Just because he didn’t succeed in getting minority, well black, voters, doesn’t mean he didn’t try. He was aggressively pushing the message abut how our criminal justice system treats minorities unfairly, how laws are enforced unequally, how militarization of the police is eroding trust and particularly hurting poor, mainly minority, communities, the disparities in sentencing, and the horror of the private prison system.
Most of this didn’t break through the media bubble, as is regularly demonstrated here on balloon-juice, where people regularly assert “he doesn’t have a policy regarding X” or “he doesn’t have a backup plan for Y.” All comments made by people who either didn’t know what he was actually proposing or, worse, were deliberately ignoring his positions to sustain a favorable narrative for Hillary Clinton, who apparently shits rainbows.
So, no, it isn’t the same failed strategy Hilary used. In fact, Hillary is using the same strategy from 08 that failed, lying about her and her principle opponent’s records, paint that opponent us unprepared. People just didn’t see through her BS this time, which is stunning since it was literally the same playbook. Perhaps there was something else going on to explain this phenomenon.
sharl
@Calouste: Yeah, Weigel mentioned something about that guy earlier today:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@berliner2: You need Ross Perot and a Time Machine
St Bernard is now incorporating the line Chuck Todd fed him about HRC’s Goldman Sachs speeches into his stump.
Stupid fucking asshole.
LAO
@Calouste: What a classy bunch! thanks for the laugh.
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
Like it or not, Sanders’ own supporters hurt him on race. It’s hard for the campaign to get the message out to black voters when your supporters are attacking civil rights icon John Lewis based on a mistaken photo identification.
And racial issues are more than just policing issues, and African-Americans are not the only minority voters.
Bernie seemed to be doing pretty well on race for a while after the BLM kerfuffle and I was hopeful that he was going to pull it out, but it all got subsumed under the noise his most fervent supporters were making. Howard Dean 2.0.
boatboy_srq
@superpredators4hillary: Please stop mumbling at the mirror. It really isn’t good for you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: Meet Connie Colvin
Here’s Connie on the Democratic primaries
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: I hadn’t realised LePage had relocated.
Steve in the ATL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Not a well person”–give her points for self awareness!
The Thin Black Duke
@Mnemosyne: Unfortunately, some (white) people don’t seem to understand that defining African-American voters as “uniformed” is not a winning strategy. The world that the empty talking heads on TV are describing is a fantasy that African-Americans and other people of color learned to ignore a long time ago. Minority voters learned the hard way that elections have consequences.
Tegdirb
@Jeffro: They’re great at using tech and social media (even if they haven’t quite figured out how to yield that power yet).
Not so much at everything else.
misterpuff
@Calouste: Drumpf is taking notes.
Amir Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t believe for one minute that there is any sort of smoking gun in those speeches Hillary gave. There are no marching orders for Wall Street’s surreptitious takeover of the planet on behalf of the Illuminati. The most embarrassing revelation will be that the speeches are full of tedious blah blah blah — that Goldman Sachs and companies like that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for no more than the prestige of Hillary’s presence .
Steve in the ATL
@The Thin Black Duke: That has to the result of racism, even if subconscious. Who the hell can argue that many white voters are well-informed?
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly, and didn’t he win Latinos in Nevada? I don’t have the breakdown for Colorado, but that’s a heavily Latino state, too, and Bernie won there. I’m not the one ignoring minorities other than black people, I singled out black people as a minority he’s doing poorly with, because really that’s the main one.
I’m sorry, I have a hard time accepting this given that when I engaged in racially themed discussions regarding the presidential race, no matter how often I pointed out that Bernie is pushing real hard on racial disparities in policing and sentencing, on police militarization, on pay disparities, etc. Hell, when I point out that I, myself, work harder trying to bring attention to these issues than many other issues, I’m basically just told to STFU and go home. Or “Bernie marched with MLK!!! Har, har, har.”
It’s like some pre-judgment was made about Bernie and his supporters and there was nothing anyone could say or do to shake some people of that impression. If your response to “I care about what is happening in your community and want to work with you to help stop it” is “I don’t need your help or your vote, bro,” then maybe you have your own problems to work through.
Heliopause
Wait a minute. Are you telling a blog full of Hillbots there is no need to vote for her going forward? You know, her record thus far outside the South is either (1) a substantial defeat or (2) a very narrow victory. She’s still the prohibitive favorite but I think she’s going to need some of the votes you’re offering to give away going forward.
Unless this post itself is a ratfuck. Hmm…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amir Khalid: and some meaningless flattery of Wall St executives, which will give St Bernard and his followers something to screech about, because we all know rhetoric is far more important than actually winning elections and boring stuff like policy and legislation
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
You realize that you are not representative of the most vocal Bernie supporters, right? Take a look at former front pager Angry Black Lady’s Twitter feed sometime and see how the vocal Sanders supporters present themselves to her and to other prominent black people on Twitter. See how people responded when waves of Sanders supporters descended on John Lewis to call him a liar and worse.
Yes, it’s frustrating when people who support the same candidate you do decide to be assholes, but don’t blame the people who’ve been the targets of that assholery for not being willing to give you a fair hearing after they’ve been subjected to that.
randy khan
@Kropadope:
People might get different impressions of what matters to Clinton and Sanders for a variety of reasons, say by looking at their websites.
Right now, the top item on the front page of Clinton’s site is “Hillary’s Racial Justice Plan,” and an item about her trip to Flint also is in the top 5.
Bernie’s page has a blurb about the living wage, and when you click through the blurb to the front page you get bio information (which admittedly includes his work with CORE, although you have to scroll down to get to it). On the issues page, “Racial Justice” is the 8th item.
Bob In Portland
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Qatar.
Yeah, just the other day a guy at the bar gave me a quarter million for no fucking reason. He just wanted to hear me talk, tell him he was a nice guy. He even let me tell him to “Cut it out!” when he spilled his drink.
I guess you’re rich enough your kids don’t have to go into the military and die in half-assed wars around the globe in order to give Exxon and BP more control over petroleum.
Bob In Portland
@randy khan: So he must be a racist! Jeez.
Well, get your ya yas out.
Jade
@peach flavored shampoo: That is the point. Romney won blue states in the primary that remained blue in the fall. Therefore, no President Romney.
Can Clinton win the red states from super tuesday in November? if not, = Romney.
Jade
@Mnemosyne: He did not win SC or the South at all. Lets see if she wins the big blue states like Obama.
Tegdirb
@Jade: Nate Silver gives Hillary a 98% chance of winning Michigan, a 99% chance of winning Illinois and a 99% chance of winning Florida.
Are those states big and blue enough for you?
Bob In Portland
@The Thin Black Duke: Would calling white voters in the South uninformed be considered racist? Because they are.
The South is very conservative and generally uninformed.
I realize that it’s a small sample size, but every black person in the run up to South Carolina that was interviewed in the press or on the air uniformly said that they didn’t know anything about Sanders and were happy with Clinton.
Maybe you’ve got another phrase. “Satisfied with the status quo.” Or, “John Lewis said so.”
Bob In Portland
@Tegdirb: What are the odds for a war with Hillary in the Oval Office?
sharl
@Calouste: Oh frabjous joy, the Weird Twitter collective is starting to dig into the guy’s Twitter history, as is their wont
~
~
Then again, the man will occasionally throw you a curve ball; he apparently cannot be categorized quite so easily:
~
It’s a shame he no longer is on the market (though that could change). He would make a great campaign staffer for Trump. I’m thinking staff researcher or something like that.
Bob In Portland
The two candidates with the highest unlikeable stats are going to run for President. Okay.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: At least when I’m butthurt, I have the common decency to take it out on the people who have made me such, just sayin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jade: Is Massachusetts a ‘big state’?
@Bob In Portland: I’d ask if you were also a former Senator and Secretary of State, but you might think you are, as well as third in line for the throne of Bohemia.
Jim
If I’m reading it correctly the filing deadlines to get on the ballots in twelve of the states (including Texas) is before the Republican convention ends on 7/21. Another 23 or so states have ballot filing deadlines prior to 8/19.
While it might be possible after the convention ends for Trump (or anyone else) to get on enough ballots to make a serious independent run it seems highly unlikely.
Steve in the ATL
@Bob In Portland:
Yes, totally the same. Hillary Clinton is one of the most accomplished women in US history, so she is no more worth listening to than some dude in a bar.
randy khan
@Bob In Portland:
Not my point. It’s just that someone who looks at the two sites would conclude that racial equity is a very important issue for Clinton and barely in the top 10 for Sanders.
And this is consistent with their messaging on the campaign trail. There is no doubt in my mind that Sanders is on the side of the angels when it comes to those issues, but if you ask where he’s going to concentrate his energy, that’s not a top priority. If I were a black voter, I’d notice the difference. Heck, I’m a white voter and I notice the difference.
JCT
LOL- sitting at airport. Chyron on CNN says “ROMNEY SET TO ATTACK TRUMP IN SPEECH”.
Well that should get rid of Trump.
Can’t anyone play this game?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Kropadope:
He mentioned those things in every one of his stump speeches and TV interviews that I heard, but they certainly weren’t aggressively pushed in the fundraising e-mails I got from his campaign. South Carolina wasn’t mentioned once in the e-mails between NV and SC. It was all “we’re gearing up for Super Tuesday and need money!”.
Nobody (sensible) expected that Bernie was going to win everything. Bernie’s heart may be in the right place when it come to trying to get AA voters on board, but his campaign apparatus didn’t act that way. Effort matters, especially when the meme is that you can’t win AA voters.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
joel hanes
@Kropadope:
Just because he didn’t succeed in getting minority, well black, voters, doesn’t mean he didn’t try.
When your strategy for attracting black voters involves smiling approvingly as Cornel West denounces the first black President of the United States, you might as well pack it in — one of the most tin-eared pieces of political incompetence that I’ve ever seen.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Jim: Not only that, but some states have “sore loser” laws that prevent primary losers from getting on the ballot in the fall. Michigan is one example. But, it apparently doesn’t apply for Presidential elections in most states that have them, so there might not be enough other examples to matter.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bob In Portland
@Steve in the ATL: In my metaphor I was Hillary and the guy giving me a quarter million was Goldman Sachs. You don’t seem to understand that.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I think a sore loser law would violate the Constitution for federal elections. No?
Bob In Portland
@Kropadope: Every southern African American man or woman on the street approaching SC and yesterday (at least that I saw or heard or read about, for ex, LA Times and NPR) said they knew who Hillary was and didn’t know about Sanders.
Thank you MSM.
Bob In Portland
@randy khan: No. Have you been to a Sanders rally? In EVERY rally he talks about it. Did you know the stats for black youth unemployment? Bernie does and he says it EVERY rally. When I saw him here in Portland he spent probably a half hour on our racist legal system, how our economic system is racist and what can be done to change it. As much detail as you’re going to get in an hour and a half stump speech.
Granted, whenever the MSM talks about Bernie Sanders and the black vote, it’s always, “Well, the blacks, they don’t like him.” If you are black and the only thing you know about Sanders is that blacks don’t like him, then why vote for him? Especially if John Lewis didn’t see him in 1963 and thinks he remembers seeing the Clintons there.
I would blame his failures among minorities in the South to both the way they are organized to vote (through churches and political machines), plus the lack of information they have about him. I have no doubt that if Sanders were the Democratic candidate in the general that he would pull in the 95/5 split like other Democratic voters. Since neither Democrat is going to win South Carolina et al, Hillary’s edge in the primaries won’t do much good in the general.
By the way, I think most voters are low information voters. And to be absolutely cynical, we all filter out unflattering information about our choice and embrace the most scurrilous rumors about their opponents. Human nature. How else to explain that the two leading candidates for President at this time (Trump and Clinton) have the worst likeability/trustworthy ratings of any of the candidates. We hate them, we don’t trust them, but we know their names.
Plus, I would be interested in how many Southern blacks visited both websites.