2016 Presidential Horse Race

[pumpdog20]

Iowa voted D 6 out of the last 7 presidential elections. Iowa isn't the conservative state those on the outside think it is. It is actually pretty centered on the political spectrum.

 

[IrishLax]

Hillary only had 0.4% more than a 73 year old democratic socialist, in a conservative state.

That has to be a significant loss for her camp, no?

Shockingly, I see some media spinning it against Sanders and calling it things like "crippling" and "he needed to win to have a chance." I don't get it. Makes no sense to me, but then again the media seems to basically have been beholden to Clinton this entire time.

 

[phgreek]

...not a bad night.

Trump's momentum was stunted, and Hillary. I don't know how Dems. look at it, but that looked like an ass beating to me. Consider Sanders didn't even beat the most obvious of drums against her, and he still hung with her...I mean, how can Sanders be running even with the machine anywhere in the world? God love ya Mr. Sanders. I probably won't vote for ya, but I'll always hold you in the highest regard...you are saving this nation from inconceivable AFUedness by taking that monster to the wood shed...YOU GO BOY!

 

[IrishLax]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Clinton won 2 coin tosses tonight: <a href="https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9">https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9</a><br><br>If Sanders had won both instead, he'd be up 664-663 as of now—not down 665-662.</p>— Taniel (@Taniel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/694390253306691584">February 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
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This is how the leader of the most powerful country in the world is potentially chosen. SMH.

 

[phgreek]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Clinton won 2 coin tosses tonight: <a href="https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9">https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9</a><br><br>If Sanders had won both instead, he'd be up 664-663 as of now—not down 665-662.</p>— Taniel (@Taniel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/694390253306691584">February 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
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This is how the leader of the most powerful country in the world is potentially chosen. SMH.

what kind of stupid horseshit is this...is this REAL? Someone has got to do better...

as well is a tie unacceptable at the lower level precinct or whatever? This is just meatheaded. But OH LORD will some Republican candidate have fun with this.

 

[GATTACA!]

what kind of stupid horseshit is this...is this REAL? Someone has got to do better...

as well is a tie unacceptable at the lower level precinct or whatever? This is just meatheaded. But OH LORD will some Republican candidate have fun with this.

Honestly it doesn't make a very big difference since the dems do split delegates in Iowa.

 

[NDVirginia19]

Exactly... those two coin flips are so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things

 

[phgreek]

Honestly it doesn't make a very big difference since the dems do split delegates in Iowa.

It made a difference...clearly in terms of how she is viewed. no one cares about delegates at this point per se..... a loser Hillary is a different animal than a winner even by the slightest of margins.

I get why Iowa does a coin toss...its a way to quickly move on...but still, a coin toss to define momentum in the race...I think a coin toss does a disservice.

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

Shockingly, I see some media spinning it against Sanders and calling it things like "crippling" and "he needed to win to have a chance." I don't get it. Makes no sense to me, but then again the media seems to basically have been beholden to Clinton this entire time.

Time Warner Cable is Hillary's 7th(ish) largest donor.

I'm sure they're unbiased.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Clinton won 2 coin tosses tonight: <a href="https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9">https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9</a><br><br>If Sanders had won both instead, he'd be up 664-663 as of now—not down 665-662.</p>— Taniel (@Taniel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/694390253306691584">February 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
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This is how the leader of the most powerful country in the world is potentially chosen. SMH.

I thought this was a joke at first. I can't fucking believe this is what they do.

 

[connor_in]

Sometimes, Iowa Democrats award caucus delegates with a coin flip

Similar situations were reported elsewhere, including at a precinct in Des Moines, at another precinct in Des Moines, in Newton, in West Branch and in Davenport. In all five situations, Clinton won the toss.

Hillary Clinton Has The Most Statistically Improbable Coin-Toss Luck Ever

DES MOINES, Iowa — One of the most bizarre details to emerge from Monday’s Iowa caucuses was that in six Democratic counties, the ownership of six delegates was decided by a coin flip.

A single delegate remained unassigned at the end of caucusing in two precincts in Des Moines, one precinct in Ames, one in Newton, one in West Branch and one in Davenport, The Des Moines Register reported.

In all six instances, the coin toss was won by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

There may have been more coin tosses, but those are the ones we know about for now.

Now, get ready to do some math.

In a single coin toss, the probability of calling the toss correctly is 50 percent, or one in two. Heads or tails.

But the probably of winning every flip out of six flips is one in 64, or 1.56 percent.

The online study tool “Coin Toss Probability Calculator” has a really intense formula that explains why, but the bottom line is, the probabilities stack on each other.

 

[Cackalacky]

The Bernie Campaign: The Democratic Party’s Biggest Insurrection in Decades | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Forty-eight years ago, a serious insurrection jeopardized the power structure of the national Democratic Party for the first time in memory. Propelled by the movement against the Vietnam War, that grassroots uprising cast a big electoral shadow soon after Senator Eugene McCarthy dared to challenge the incumbent for the Democratic presidential nomination.

When 1968 got underway, the news media were scoffing at McCarthy’s antiwar campaign as quixotic and doomed. But in the nation’s leadoff New Hampshire primary, McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote while President Lyndon B. Johnson couldn’t quite get to 50 percent—results that were shattering for LBJ. Suddenly emboldened, Senator Robert Kennedy quickly entered the race. Two weeks later, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election.

"Candidates often want to harness social movements for their campaigns. But our best approach is to view electoral campaigns as—at best—subsets of movements, not the other way around."
Although the nomination eventually went to Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey—a supporter of the war who was the choice of Democratic power brokers—the unmasking of the party’s undemocratic process led to internal reforms that aided the Democratic Party’s second modern insurrection. It came four years later, when Senator George McGovern won the presidential nomination, thanks to grassroots movements involving young people and activists of color. But any sense of triumph disappeared in the wake of President Nixon’s landslide re-election in November 1972.

The third major insurrection came in 1988, when Jesse Jackson led a dynamic, multiracial “rainbow” campaign for president that had major impacts on the national stage. (His previous campaign, in ’84, had been relatively weak.) The 1988 primaries and caucuses were hard-fought, state by state, with rainbow activists working shoulder-to-shoulder, whether focused on issues of class, race or gender. (Back then, Jackson was a gutsy voice for social justice, for human rights and against war -- much more willing to confront the Democratic Party establishment than he is now.) At the contentious Democratic National Convention that summer in Atlanta, where Jackson delegates were highly visible as 30 percent of the total, the old guard closed ranks behind nominee Michael Dukakis.

Now, as February 2016 gets underway, we’re in the midst of the first major insurrection against the Democratic Party power structure in 28 years. The millions of us who support the Bernie Sanders campaign—whatever our important criticisms—should aim to fully grasp the huge opportunities and obstacles that await us.

Of the three previous insurrections, only one gained the nomination, and none won the presidency. Corporate capitalism—wielding its muscular appendage, mass media—can be depended upon to take off the gloves and pummel the insurrection’s candidate to the extent that the campaign has gained momentum. That happened to McCarthy, McGovern and Jackson. It’s now happening to Sanders.

The last days of January brought one big-daily newspaper editorial after another after another attacking Bernie with vehemence and vitriol. The less unlikely his winning of the nomination gets, the more that mega-media assaults promoting absurdities will intensify.

Meanwhile—at least as long as her nomination is threatened from the left—Hillary Clinton will benefit from corporate biases that wallpaper the mass-media echo chambers. The Sunday New York Times editorial endorsing Clinton could hardly be more fanciful and hagiographic if written by her campaign.

Many of the same media outlets and overall corporate forces that denounced Eugene McCarthy in 1968, George McGovern in 1972 and Jesse Jackson in 1988 are gunning for Bernie Sanders in 2016. We shouldn’t be surprised. But we should be ready, willing and able to do our own messaging—widely and intensely—in communities across the country.

At the same time, we should not confuse electoral campaigns with long-term political organizing. Campaigns for office are quite different matters than the more transformative task of building progressive infrastructure—and vibrant coalitions—that can endure and grow, year after year.

Genuinely progressive candidates can inspire and galvanize—and sometimes they can even win. But election campaigns, especially national ones, are almost always boom/bust. Sometimes they can help to fuel movement momentum, but they aren’t the engine.

Election campaigns are distinct from movements even if they converge for a while, no matter what pundits and campaign spinners say. Candidates often want to harness social movements for their campaigns. But our best approach is to view electoral campaigns as—at best—subsets of movements, not the other way around.

The Bernie campaign could be a watershed for progressive organizing through the rest of this decade and beyond. That will largely depend on what activists do—in the next weeks, months and years.

-Norman Solomon

 

[Cackalacky]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Clinton won 2 coin tosses tonight: <a href="https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9">https://t.co/NcFYnQjsZ9</a><br><br>If Sanders had won both instead, he'd be up 664-663 as of now—not down 665-662.</p>— Taniel (@Taniel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/694390253306691584">February 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
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This is how the leader of the most powerful country in the world is potentially chosen. SMH.

what kind of stupid horseshit is this...is this REAL? Someone has got to do better...

as well is a tie unacceptable at the lower level precinct or whatever? This is just meatheaded. But OH LORD will some Republican candidate have fun with this.

Honestly it doesn't make a very big difference since the dems do split delegates in Iowa.

Exactly... those two coin flips are so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things

It made a difference...clearly in terms of how she is viewed. no one cares about delegates at this point per se..... a loser Hillary is a different animal than a winner even by the slightest of margins.

I get why Iowa does a coin toss...its a way to quickly move on...but still, a coin toss to define momentum in the race...I think a coin toss does a disservice.

I thought this was a joke at first. I can't fucking believe this is what they do.

Sometimes, Iowa Democrats award caucus delegates with a coin flip



Hillary Clinton Has The Most Statistically Improbable Coin-Toss Luck Ever | TheBlaze.com

 

[RDU Irish]

coin toss is BS - make the delegates stay until the tie is broken, if nobody hops sides then tie is broken when someone leaves (i.e. gives up). That is the beauty of the Caucus format.


Republicans doing straight up vote is lame. This early in the process make it more personal and give people a chance to have their vote count - if you can't muster a delegate then jump on with one of the others that is a person or two away from getting an extra. Really helps weed out the 2%ers and build coalitions.

 

[wizards8507]

Shockingly, I see some media spinning it against Sanders and calling it things like "crippling" and "he needed to win to have a chance." I don't get it. Makes no sense to me, but then again the media seems to basically have been beholden to Clinton this entire time.

It's a race thing. For Bernie to have any shot at the nomination, he has to win the "white states." He polls terribly among minorities. Hillary will win states like South Carolina by 20+ points.

 

[tussin]

Great night for Rubio. I was really worried that the party was screwed and last night calmed my nerves (somewhat).

 

[RDU Irish]

Superdelegates for Dems are just as much of a fix as the "coin tosses". 20% of delegates are the machine - good luck fighting that.

For the Rs, it will be interesting to see where the support runs to for the folks who need to drop out. About 1/4th of the vote was not for the top three - that is a lot up for grabs. Part of this game is gathering enough delegates to be a power broker too - Ben Carson probably fits that bill, Rand Paul may have the network to pick up one or two per state as well - which can add up. I don't think either of those guys are running an expensive campaign like Jeb so they may be more long term viable (in the sense of hanging in it longer, not really having a chance of winning).

If Cruz, Rubio and Trump are head and shoulders above the rest, Carson and Paul delegates may be enough to push any one of them over the top. Trump really needs Cruz AND Rubio to split support to have a chance, as soon as it is a two person race I don't see how he can hold up.

Glossing over some numbers - Rubio won the population centers in Iowa. That bodes well for him in the long run but maybe not short run. Rs will win flyover country but Rubio being a force in cities makes him very viable in the big show.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

It's a race thing. For Bernie to have any shot at the nomination, he has to win the "white states." He polls terribly among minorities. Hillary will win states like South Carolina by 20+ points.

This really blows my mind. Bernie appears to have policies that would most benefit minorities unless I'm missing something? Does he reject a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants?

What puts Hillary out front of Bernie with minorities?

 

[connor_in]

Sorry, I saw this and had to post it

 

[wizards8507]

Superdelegates for Dems are just as much of a fix as the "coin tosses". 20% of delegates are the machine - good luck fighting that.

For the Rs, it will be interesting to see where the support runs to for the folks who need to drop out. About 1/4th of the vote was not for the top three - that is a lot up for grabs. Part of this game is gathering enough delegates to be a power broker too - Ben Carson probably fits that bill, Rand Paul may have the network to pick up one or two per state as well - which can add up. I don't think either of those guys are running an expensive campaign like Jeb so they may be more long term viable (in the sense of hanging in it longer, not really having a chance of winning).

If Cruz, Rubio and Trump are head and shoulders above the rest, Carson and Paul delegates may be enough to push any one of them over the top. Trump really needs Cruz AND Rubio to split support to have a chance, as soon as it is a two person race I don't see how he can hold up.

Glossing over some numbers - Rubio won the population centers in Iowa. That bodes well for him in the long run but maybe not short run. Rs will win flyover country but Rubio being a force in cities makes him very viable in the big show.

Pretty concise analysis.

A lot of the talking heads last night seemed to lump Trump, Cruz, and Carson together in the anti-establishment side of the party, basically implying that Rubio is screwed, but I don't think that analysis is correct whatsoever. The Cruz people aren't Cruz people because they're anti-establishment (though they might BE anti-establishment). They're Cruz people because they're conservatives.

 

[wizards8507]

What puts Hillary out front of Bernie with minorities?

Bill.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

Hillary only had 0.4% more than a 73 year old democratic socialist, in a conservative state.

That has to be a significant loss for her camp, no?

Iowa is not a conservative state.

Republicans in Iowa are extremely conservative, which is why conservative candidates play to the Evangelical vote so much there. But but the state is very purple. It has voted Republican once in a presidential election since 1984 (Bush in 2004). For decades, the two senators were Grassley (very conservative) and Harkin (very liberal). That changed this last election when Joni Ernst won with very low Democratic turnout and a very weak candidate. In that same stretch, there have been two Democratic governors and one Republican governor (Terry Branstad, who had his 5 terms split up by the two dems...he's now the longest serving governor in the history of the country).

It's not a liberal state, but it sure as heck isn't conservative.

 

[dublinirish]

Iowa is not a conservative state.

Republicans in Iowa are extremely conservative, which is why conservative candidates play to the Evangelical vote so much there. But but the state is very purple. It has voted Republican once in a presidential election since 1984 (Bush in 2004). For decades, the two senators were Grassley (very conservative) and Harkin (very liberal). That changed this last election when Joni Ernst won with very low Democratic turnout and a very weak candidate. In that same stretch, there have been two Democratic governors and one Republican governor (Terry Branstad, who had his 5 terms split up by the two dems...he's now the longest serving governor in the history of the country).

It's not a liberal state, but it sure as heck isn't conservative.

could you explain why it's not a conservative state? Are the cities in Iowa quite liberal and its the rural areas that are more conservative?

 

[IrishJayhawk]

could you explain why it's not a conservative state? Are the cities in Iowa quite liberal and its the rural areas that are more conservative?

That's basically it. Western Iowa especially is very conservative. That's where Steve King is the representative. It's quite rural and very demographically homogeneous.

The cities are very different. Des Moines, Ames, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls/Waterloo, the Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorf), and particularly Iowa City are all much more diverse and much more consistently liberal. There are also a huge number of small liberal arts schools in Iowa. Those schools tend to be more liberal and the towns are often a mix.

 

[RDU Irish]

Union influence in places like Quad Cities is pretty strong. Uncles in Bettendorf and Burlington were life long union rank and file, Deere and Case plants along the river in "larger" towns. Teacher unions are also prevalent - schools are often largest employers in small towns. Farmers are essentially small business owners but move over the years from many family farms to fewer large corporate farms has been depleted "red" influences in rural areas where used to be more prevalent. In general, the religious aspect is not nearly as pronounced as bible belt/deep south and more Methodist/Catholic than Baptist. Catholics are more to the east (bluer areas) and others to the West (red).

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty just published an article titled "Rubio-mania is upon us":

The takeaways from Monday night's Iowa caucuses are clear for Republicans: Ted Cruz was powered to victory by social conservatives and his superior ground game. Donald Trump's supporters — as was widely suspected — were less attached to the political process than their preferred political performer, and he subsequently underperformed his polls. Trump is far from finished, but Iowa was an ominous start for the frontrunner. And finally, the much anticipated Marco Rubio moment is here.

Having been stuck in the mid-teens nationally and in most states for months, the Florida senator surged into a very strong third-place finish in Iowa. The conservative and national media began openly cheering for him last night. Just as John McCain's fourth place finish at 13.1 percent in 2008 was declared an astonishing victory, so will Rubio's close third be declared the most important result, in no small part because the polling suggests he would be the GOP's strongest general election candidate against Hillary Clinton.

As for Cruz: The favorite candidate of Iowa's social conservatives, like Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012, tends to outperform the pre-caucus polls. Cruz did just that, beating out Trump. Cruz does have a path to the nomination. He has to consolidate his grip on the parts of the party that strongly identify with ideological conservatism, and win over some Trump supporters in South Carolina. He would also benefit if in New Hampshire we see a three-car pile up between Rubio, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. Rubio's support has been slipping in the Granite State for weeks, due to a barrage of attack ads from rivals. With big-time momentum coming out of Iowa, Cruz could capitalize on this.

Trump, on the other hand, does not get a strong boost out of Iowa. He seriously underperformed the polls. But even if polls in New Hampshire overstate his voter support in the way polls overstated his Iowa support, he is still on track for a massive win. Trump always looked like a more plausible winner of New Hampshire, a state that strongly supported the populist Buchananite revolt in the 1990s. He runs far better in the northeast and in the South. He has massive leads of 15 to 21 points in the polls in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida. He is still an absolute force.

Still, the most immediate result of the caucus will be Rubio-mania. I've been teasing Rubio boosters in the media for declaring every other moment to be a "Rubio moment" while he lagged behind in most polls for months. But he finally broke through that mid-teens cap in Iowa. He ran competitively with Trump.

Pressure to drop out will fall hard on candidates who are assumed to be blocking Rubio's path. That means Bush, Kasich, and Chris Christie. Rubio has been talking up his electability. The hypersensitive search for a "Rubio moment" existed for a reason; the political and media class believes Rubio is the Republicans' best shot at defeating Clinton. Her last name and her '90s-style, DNC-inspired political brand evoke America's past. Rubio looks like the America that is coming into being, built by the post-1965 wave of immigration. Rubio wants to make that pitch: "Yesterday is over."

The other reason that Rubio-mania will take off is less inspiring. Rallying around Rubio will just be too strong a temptation for the GOP's elite and the most established organs of the conservative movement. Rubio's candidacy is essentially based on the premise that nothing from the George W. Bush era has to change for the Republican Party.

Nominating Rubio is a statement that the party does not need a course correction. It doesn't need to stand even more firmly with social conservatives or fight with greater zeal and brinksmanship, as Cruz has argued. Nominating Rubio is a statement that the party does not need to find a less aggressive or less interventionist foreign policy, as Trump, Rand Paul, and (to a lesser degree) Cruz have argued. Nominating Rubio is a statement that the party does not need to offer any policy changes to attract working-class whites, as the candidacies of Trump, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum have, to varying degrees, suggested. Instead, they just have to offer Rubio's story of gumption and rising from under his working-class parents' knees.

Rubio promises to put ground troops in Syria. He offers a very large tax cut to families earning six figures, paid for in expanding deficits. His record on immigration is really not very different than George W. Bush's: a series of unconvincing promises to gain control of America's border, combined with a credible threat to radically expand legal immigration, and create a path to citizenship for millions who entered the nation illegally.

Most of the things that distinguish Rubio from his party are unpopular with the public, namely his support for comprehensive immigration reform and his extremely hawkish foreign policy. But these are very popular with the GOP's elites, and not at all hard to swallow for most conservative elites. Rubio-mania is practically guaranteed. He's the candidate of the future, after all. The GOP is just telling us the future looks exactly like the last Bush administration.

 

[RDU Irish]

Ted Cruz Is Confronted by Angry Iowa Farmer Over Ethanol Subsidies — Listen to What the Man Is Saying Just 7 Minutes Later | Video | TheBlaze.com

Cruz winning Iowa while clearly moving to repeal ethanol subsidies is just short of a miracle IMO. Those "dumb farmers" like the dude in the video refers to himself is the biggest sham smokescreen ever. They are very smart and lobby very effectively to get all kinds of subsidies well beyond just ethanol mandates. They are represented more than fairly in Washington and Cruz is a threat to them. They just benefit from being able to play the pauper, as they say in the south "poor mouthing" while they bankroll enormous assets over time.

 

[wizards8507]

The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty just published an article titled "Rubio-mania is upon us":

I don't know about all of that. Rubio as the establishment candidate is kind of absurd and only makes sense when juxtaposed with with Cruz, Tump, Carson, and Paul. Rubio is a Tea Party conservative and I think the Trumpian attack that he's too "establishment" or the Cruzian attack that he's too moderate are both absurd. He has a grand total of one issue where he's out of line with the base.

Cruz winning Iowa while clearly moving to repeal ethanol subsidies is just short of a miracle IMO. Those "dumb farmers" like the dude in the video refers to himself is the biggest sham smokescreen ever. They are very smart and lobby very effectively to get all kinds of subsidies well beyond just ethanol mandates. They are represented more than fairly in Washington and Cruz is a threat to them. They just benefit from being able to play the pauper, as they say in the south "poor mouthing" while they bankroll enormous assets over time.

Absolutely. It sounds like a joke but the anti-competitive policies of "big cheese" in Vermont are shocking. They call them food "cooperatives," but what they really are is state-sanctioned and legally-protected dairy cartels.

 

[drayer54]

Our precinct had hoped to get 125% of last cycle and we blew that out of the water. People were filing in way late. The only campaigns that appeared organized with their presenters were Fiorina, Cruz, and Rubio. The Trump and Rand Paul people were just going off the cuff and it was kind of funny/terrible.

I was hoping that the Trump precinct leader would get up and use his time to insult the other precinct leaders, but it didn't happen. In the end, I think the candidate of my choice got enough momentum to have a big night and will hopefully gain traction as the Jeb/Christie/Kasich wing gets out.


http://postimage.org/

 

[RDU Irish]

I don't know about all of that. Rubio as the establishment candidate is kind of absurd and only makes sense when juxtaposed with with Cruz, Tump, Carson, and Paul. Rubio is a Tea Party conservative and I think the Trumpian attack that he's too "establishment" or the Cruzian attack that he's too moderate are both absurd. He has a grand total of one issue where he's out of line with the base.


Absolutely. It sounds like a joke but the anti-competitive policies of "big cheese" in Vermont are shocking. They call them food "cooperatives," but what they really are is state-sanctioned and legally-protected dairy cartels.

Agree on Rubio - Politics makes strange bedfellows and the establishment Republicans are coming to terms that Rubio is the lesser of three evils right now. Establishment is screwed here and needs to find a non-sinking ship.

LOL on big cheese. Farmers will sell out to a Democrat if they obviously steer clear of messing with subsidies.