One month later, California finishes its vote count, and Clinton wins.
The final result is somewhat closer than it appeared it would be from the 72% of the votes they counted right away. But it still wasn't really close.
It still has absolutely no impact on the Democratic nomination.
I still can't figure out why they didn't release updates as they went, so that the newscasters could say, for instance: "45,000 more votes were counted today in the California Democratic Primary, meaning that 87% of the total have now been counted and that it's still completely obvious that Hillary will win and that the primary won't matter anyway."
The Bernie-or-Busters are still taking advantage of every news story, real or pseudo-, to scream that they wuz robbed and that Hillary is history's greatest monster. I (and many others) still wonder how many of them are Republican trolls who've planned all along to vote for Trump, and how many are actually too stupid to tell the difference between Hillary and Trump and will vote for Trump basically out of spite.
It still seems that with each passing day, fewer and fewer people care what the die-hard Bernie Bros (including Bernie. Most definitely including the die-hard Bernie-Bro-in-Chief, Bernie) say or do about anything. And I for one am so glad. Take your goons, Bernie, and fade into oblivion with them. Good fucking riddance.
People considering voting Green or Libertarian or another third party still seem not to grasp that they'd be wasting their votes, if not helping the candidates they hate the most, because the US still doesn't have proportional representation like the countries where Green and Libertarian Parties actually have power.
Republicans are still beating the dead Hillary Clinton email horse. They still don't seem to have learned that Kenneth Starr (along with a whole bunch of other Republican creeps and hypocrites and sociopaths) made Bill Clinton MORE popular.
I can't believe I still haven't seen anyone else speculate that Micah X Johnson may have been an innocent patsy, like another man accused of being a sniper in Dallas 42 1/2 years ago and killed before anyone could interrogate him in much detail or with much transparency...
Showing posts with label california democratic primary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label california democratic primary. Show all posts
Friday, July 8, 2016
Sunday, June 5, 2016
It's Not Just Math Bernie And His Gang Are Resisting -- It's Reality
According to CNN, Hillary got 1,308 votes in the Virgin Island caucuses yesterday, or 84.2%, while Bernie received 190 votes, 12.2%. Hillary got all 7 of the Virgin Islands' pledged delegates. 2 of their 5 superdelegates are supporting Hillary and none are supporting Bernie.
If Bernie had gotten 84% of the vote and all of the pledged delegates, he and his supporters would be saying that it proved that he is the stronger candidate and that Hillary should withdraw for the sake of the Democratic Party. They'd say things like: "85% percent of all the Americans who voted yesterday agree that Bernie is the candidate who should face Trump! Clinton is defying the will of 85% of the American people!" and so forth. As it is, if they noticed that there were caucuses in the Virgin Islands yesterday and that Hillary handed Bernie his ass, they will say that it shows how the system is rigged and that caucuses are undemocratic and that Hillary and all the other Democratic insiders are corrupt and that Hillary is a corporate thug and history's greatest monster, and so forth.
I'm so sick of Bernie. I can't imagine that Hillary would ever pick him as her VP, but what do I know. Apparently she hates Barack, or at the very least she did back in 2008, and she's made nice with him for public view, and maybe more than just for public view, what do I know. Maybe the ability to stomach someone like Bernie is an example of why Hillary is a great politician and I am not.
The fantasy-land Bernie and his supporters are living in by continuing his ever more farcical campaign fits with his political career. Remember, he's only been in the Democratic Party for about a year. He only joined because he knew he could make more of a splash with his campaign by using the Democratic Party than if he campaigned as an independent. But he hasn't shown signs of wanting to return the favor and be of use to the party.
What's really strange about him having called himself a Socialist instead of a Democrat until he decided to use the Democratic Party for this Presidential run is that none of his positions were ever to the Left of what could be found within the Democratic Party. It appears that he was an independent and a self-described Socialist (the only Socialist I've ever heard of with no affiliation to any Socialist party) in order to feel special without being special.
Just as in this campaign he wants things which aren't his, and hallucinates that he has them: the will of the American people, a strong mandate, the lion's share of the votes and the delegates if one corrects for all the ways in which he's been cheated. It's all just daydreaming, and I'm sick of it. Politics is very serious, and it calls for people in touch with facts.
We can't judge how widespread his support continues to be just from all the noise made by all of his reality-challenged supporters who make noise at his rallies and on the talking-head news shows, because we don't know how big that bloc of hard-core supporters has ever been compared to the group of all the people who have voted for him. The polls in California are all over the place: some say the primary on Tuesday will be very close, some say that Hillary is way out in front.
And so many mainstream media outlets continue to report on only the polls which say it's close, and to ignore the ones saying it will be a blowout for Hillary. Why do so many of them keep ignoring the polls showing Hillary with a lopsided lead? That's so strange. I'm sick of that, too, frankly, as should any reality-based person be. Some of the press tell us that Bernie's campaign is running out of money. That would seem to indicate that he's running out of support. Perhaps because a significant number of his former supporters are significantly more reality-based than he is, and are tired of this farce?
Well. We'll see what we see today in Puerto Rico and on Tuesday in New Jersey, North Dakoto, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico and California on Tuesday.
That is to say: some of us will see what we see, and those who only see what they want to see will continue to see only what they want to see, whether that's massive popular support for Bernie or massive corruption and rigging behind Hillary, or whatever it is they want to see. What actually happens won't matter to them. It hasn't so far, there's no reason for that to change.
If Bernie had gotten 84% of the vote and all of the pledged delegates, he and his supporters would be saying that it proved that he is the stronger candidate and that Hillary should withdraw for the sake of the Democratic Party. They'd say things like: "85% percent of all the Americans who voted yesterday agree that Bernie is the candidate who should face Trump! Clinton is defying the will of 85% of the American people!" and so forth. As it is, if they noticed that there were caucuses in the Virgin Islands yesterday and that Hillary handed Bernie his ass, they will say that it shows how the system is rigged and that caucuses are undemocratic and that Hillary and all the other Democratic insiders are corrupt and that Hillary is a corporate thug and history's greatest monster, and so forth.
I'm so sick of Bernie. I can't imagine that Hillary would ever pick him as her VP, but what do I know. Apparently she hates Barack, or at the very least she did back in 2008, and she's made nice with him for public view, and maybe more than just for public view, what do I know. Maybe the ability to stomach someone like Bernie is an example of why Hillary is a great politician and I am not.
The fantasy-land Bernie and his supporters are living in by continuing his ever more farcical campaign fits with his political career. Remember, he's only been in the Democratic Party for about a year. He only joined because he knew he could make more of a splash with his campaign by using the Democratic Party than if he campaigned as an independent. But he hasn't shown signs of wanting to return the favor and be of use to the party.
What's really strange about him having called himself a Socialist instead of a Democrat until he decided to use the Democratic Party for this Presidential run is that none of his positions were ever to the Left of what could be found within the Democratic Party. It appears that he was an independent and a self-described Socialist (the only Socialist I've ever heard of with no affiliation to any Socialist party) in order to feel special without being special.
Just as in this campaign he wants things which aren't his, and hallucinates that he has them: the will of the American people, a strong mandate, the lion's share of the votes and the delegates if one corrects for all the ways in which he's been cheated. It's all just daydreaming, and I'm sick of it. Politics is very serious, and it calls for people in touch with facts.
We can't judge how widespread his support continues to be just from all the noise made by all of his reality-challenged supporters who make noise at his rallies and on the talking-head news shows, because we don't know how big that bloc of hard-core supporters has ever been compared to the group of all the people who have voted for him. The polls in California are all over the place: some say the primary on Tuesday will be very close, some say that Hillary is way out in front.
And so many mainstream media outlets continue to report on only the polls which say it's close, and to ignore the ones saying it will be a blowout for Hillary. Why do so many of them keep ignoring the polls showing Hillary with a lopsided lead? That's so strange. I'm sick of that, too, frankly, as should any reality-based person be. Some of the press tell us that Bernie's campaign is running out of money. That would seem to indicate that he's running out of support. Perhaps because a significant number of his former supporters are significantly more reality-based than he is, and are tired of this farce?
Well. We'll see what we see today in Puerto Rico and on Tuesday in New Jersey, North Dakoto, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico and California on Tuesday.
That is to say: some of us will see what we see, and those who only see what they want to see will continue to see only what they want to see, whether that's massive popular support for Bernie or massive corruption and rigging behind Hillary, or whatever it is they want to see. What actually happens won't matter to them. It hasn't so far, there's no reason for that to change.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
If Bernie Wins In California, It Will Mean Hillary Still Clinched It Back In March
If Hillary wins in California, it will still mean that she clinched it back in March.
Bernie keeps talking about winning over superdelegates. The superdelegates have been perfectly free to switch sides whenever they want. Since Bernie has started ramping up the talk of winning superdelegates over to his sides -- since even the math-impaired (including Bernie? Or is he only pretending to be math-impaired? And which would be worse?) have begun to see that it would be impossible for him to get the nomination without a lot of them switching, only 1 superdelegate has switched sides -- from Bernie to Hillary.
Does Bernie not see that the superdelegates are exactly the same people he keeps insulting as part of the crooked establishment that keeps cheating him and his followers? (Or is he only pretending not to see it? And which would be worse?) Why would a Congressperson or Governor say to him- or herself, "Bernie's been verbally abusing me all year -- and now that he's endorsed my opponent in the Democratic primary, he's won me over! I'm going to switch from Hillary to Bernie!"?
That won't happen. That is how far from reality Bernie's campaign is.
Over a year ago I endorsed Hillary, saying:
"Would I rather see Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders be elected POTUS in 2016? Honestly: yes. Does either one of them stand a chance of being elected? Unfortunately: no. This is the thing about politics: it's about compromise. It's constantly about compromise. Without compromise, nothing ever gets done in politics."
Since then I've gotten to know Bernie a lot better, and I no longer would pick him over Hillary if it were just up to me to pick the President, because I see how far Bernie is from political reality. As Barnie Frank pointed out recently in response to Bernie demanding that he be removed from the rules committee (ain't gonna happen. The demand was not reality-based), Bernie has actually accomplished very little in his quarter-century in Congress. Gotten very few bills passed. Just called himself a Socialist (when Frank is actually farther to the Left, to name one example of politicians who've actually passed bills and changed things) and felt smug and let the white people who kept voting him in feel smug, with little justification.
People keep saying that eventually Bernie will be reasonable. God, I hope so. But there's no denying that reasonable would've been dropping out in March. There's been absolutely nothing reasonable, rational, reality-based about him continuing to stay in since then. I hope I'm completely wrong. But it seems to me that our main hope of beating Trump is that enough of Bernie's supporters are reasonable, and drop him without waiting for him to become reasonable. Drop him like a great big heavy red-hot rock.
Bernie keeps talking about winning over superdelegates. The superdelegates have been perfectly free to switch sides whenever they want. Since Bernie has started ramping up the talk of winning superdelegates over to his sides -- since even the math-impaired (including Bernie? Or is he only pretending to be math-impaired? And which would be worse?) have begun to see that it would be impossible for him to get the nomination without a lot of them switching, only 1 superdelegate has switched sides -- from Bernie to Hillary.
Does Bernie not see that the superdelegates are exactly the same people he keeps insulting as part of the crooked establishment that keeps cheating him and his followers? (Or is he only pretending not to see it? And which would be worse?) Why would a Congressperson or Governor say to him- or herself, "Bernie's been verbally abusing me all year -- and now that he's endorsed my opponent in the Democratic primary, he's won me over! I'm going to switch from Hillary to Bernie!"?
That won't happen. That is how far from reality Bernie's campaign is.
Over a year ago I endorsed Hillary, saying:
"Would I rather see Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders be elected POTUS in 2016? Honestly: yes. Does either one of them stand a chance of being elected? Unfortunately: no. This is the thing about politics: it's about compromise. It's constantly about compromise. Without compromise, nothing ever gets done in politics."
Since then I've gotten to know Bernie a lot better, and I no longer would pick him over Hillary if it were just up to me to pick the President, because I see how far Bernie is from political reality. As Barnie Frank pointed out recently in response to Bernie demanding that he be removed from the rules committee (ain't gonna happen. The demand was not reality-based), Bernie has actually accomplished very little in his quarter-century in Congress. Gotten very few bills passed. Just called himself a Socialist (when Frank is actually farther to the Left, to name one example of politicians who've actually passed bills and changed things) and felt smug and let the white people who kept voting him in feel smug, with little justification.
People keep saying that eventually Bernie will be reasonable. God, I hope so. But there's no denying that reasonable would've been dropping out in March. There's been absolutely nothing reasonable, rational, reality-based about him continuing to stay in since then. I hope I'm completely wrong. But it seems to me that our main hope of beating Trump is that enough of Bernie's supporters are reasonable, and drop him without waiting for him to become reasonable. Drop him like a great big heavy red-hot rock.
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