Checking The Headlines About Bernie

Headline at NBCNews.com: "Bernie Sanders Doesn't Say No to Hypothetical Clinton VP Slot."

Headline on the TIME website: "Bernie Sanders Says Superdelegates Should Consider Hillary Clinton's Email Scandal."

That combination is sort of hard to read.

Would Hillary ever consider offering the VP slot to Bernie? Or is she already planning how to destroy his political career after the election, whether she wins or loses? I honestly couldn't blame her either way.

A Washington Post article begins: "The math is clear: To come from behind and win the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders needs a huge win in the last major contest of the Democratic presidential primary season — California."

No. Actually, the math clearly says that Hillary has got the nomination locked up and that not even a huge win in California can change that.

Speaking of math and a huge win in California -- I don't see any math anywhere which suggests that Bernie will score a huge win in California (which wouldn't get him the nomination anyway). Last week two polls about the California Democratic primary were released. One said Hillary was up by 18 points and the other said she was up by 2 points. Why did almost every MSM news outlet give heavy coverage to the poll that said it's close and no coverage to the one that said Hillary is blowing him out?

Mendacity? Or stupidity? (And which would be worse?)

A headline at PoliticusUSA says Diane Feinstein Uses Math To Show Bernie Sanders That It's All But Over. You can follow the link and see if you agree that that's what Feinstein is doing. To me, it reads more as if Feinstein is struggling to remain diplomatic and keep from losing her temper over the way that Bernie still has not yielded to simple math and withdrawn.

I lost the struggle to stay diplomatic about the math back in March.

Several headlines report that Bernie is calling for the removal of some Democratic party leaders from their positions in the convention because they are "allies" of Hillary.

Mother of Sweating Jesus. The whole Democratic Party are allies of Hillary, because she's the Presidential nominee, and because the Presidential election is very important. All of those superdelegates Bernie is hallucinating about leaving Hillary, are her allies. We're kind of in this together. And a lot of Democrats are still assuming that Bernie is with us.

I hope so. I surely do.

I also hope that the party leadership won't give Bernie one more convention concession until he does something to earn it. (I would like to take this opportunity to point out that Bernie has only been a Democrat since 2015, and that he continues to behave an awful lot like an Independent.) And as I've mentioned before on this blog, there's basically one thing he can do to earn the party's support -- support the party's Presidential nominee.

It's basically that one thing, and doing things like endorsing the Democratic challenger of the chairperson of the Democratic National Committee (Can anyone even remember why he got mad at her? It was something to do with her publicly demonstrating that she was competent enough in math to know that Hillary is the nominee, wasn't it? Do we want political leaders who are competent in math, or do we want Republicans and Bernie Bros?) is not helpful.

Politics Is Depressing

Because it reminds you how much stupid there is in the world. Take the Republican Party. First they were stupid enough to let Donald Trump become their Presidential candidate, now more and more of their leaders are stupid enough to endorse him.

But even Republicans did the delegate math so much better than Bernie and his supporters. When the other Republican candidates had all dropped out of the race, Trump was much, much farther from being nominated than Hillary is now. There are 913 delegates still up for grabs in the Democratic race. Hillary needs 73 of them to clinch the nomination. Bernie needs 841. That means he needs over 92% of the remaining delegates.

There was a way in which the Republicans could've prevented Trump from getting the nomination, and it was hardly brain surgery: more of them just needed to remain in the race as candidates for the nomination against him. When there were still a dozen or so candidates in the Republican contest, Trump often led the results for a particular state's primary or caucus, but he would lead with far less than 50%. He never got close to a majority of the vote until he was close to the only candidate left. Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, Christie & Co wouldn't even have had to keep spending any money or time on their campaigns, wouldn't have had to keep buying ads or making speeches: just don't say they were withdrawing from the race, and a big majority of Republicans would've kept voting for someone other than Trump, and the #1 choice of all Republicans would have still been -- as I suspect it would still be in a make-believe what-if world -- anybody but Trump. Then all that would be left for the big shots to do is negotiate who would win at the convention on the 2nd ballot.

IS that brain surgery? AM I really that much smarter than everyone else? I really don't think so... Still, somehow, things go horribly, stupidly wrong.

As I have mentioned already several times in this blog, Hillary clinched the nomination quite a long time ago. The assertions that Bernie could still be the nominee are, just like the accusations against Hillary that she did something wrong in the case of Vince Foster or Whitewater or Monica Lewinski or Ben Ghazi or Lehman Brothers, straight-up bullshit. And the same way that you have to be really stupid to believe that Hillary did anything wrong in any of those cases, you have to be really stupid to believe that Bernie could be the nominee.

I wish journalists would say more often that great swaths of the public are being stupid when it's true.

I wonder how often they say it when they're not on the air or writing for public consumption.

Imagine a world in which journalists told the truth, instead of adhering to that bullshit they erroneously refer to as "objective journalism."

Then again, I'm assuming that most political journalists actually do know their asses from holes in the ground. Many times in my life I've been overly optimistic.

KHOU: "Hillary Should Release Her Superdelegates"

That's what a link said on Google News. But when I clicked on the link, all that was there was a big empty KHOU page with a notice in tiny print that this story had been removed.

Maybe it was removed because someone in a position of authority at KHOU realized, or was told, that superdelegates cannot be released. They are already completely free. That is exactly what is so super about them. They can change from backing one candidate to backing another anytime they like. They don't need anyone's permission to do so. (So far 1 has switched from Bernie to Hillary and 0 from Hillary to Bernie.)

You can add "refusing to free the superdelegates" to the long list of things Hillary is accused of that she never did.

Yesterday Hillary won the Washington state primary by about 54 to 46%. If you're confused because you think that Bernie already won most of the delegates from Washington, you're right, he did, back in March. Washington has caucuses which select delegates, and also a primary which is basically just a poll. Bernie, who is so concerned about how Democrats disrespect the will of the voters, got over 70% of the delegates from Washington, and less than 50% of the vote.

It seems that more and more journalists are stating that Bernie is not dropping out or pivoting or being reasonable, because he has become addicted to the adulation of those crowds.

It seems that more and more people are finding it harder and harder to believe him when he says that his #1 priority is to stop Trump.

I think it's been nearly a day since I mentioned on this blog that I'm thoroughly sick of Bernie and that I grow steadily more so. Well, I'm still thoroughly sick of him (and those of his supporters who haven't yet jumped ship and denounced their former Ahab), and my dissatisfaction still grows and grows. The Democratic leadership keeps saying, Leave Bernie alone, and Bernie keeps abusing that gift. Bernie says that democracy is messy. How long (oh Lord, how long?!) before that one comes back and bites him in the ass, because the Democratic leaders realize that being nice to him will do them no good, and decide instead to go negative on Bernie?

I hope it goes without saying that I hope I'm completely wrong about Bernie, and that he will make good on what he claims -- day out and day in -- is his #1 priority, and reconcile with Hillary and concede and get his troops behind her, SOON. Go ahead, Bernie. Shock us all: be reasonable.

How Many Of The People Who've Voted For Bernie Are "Bernie Or Bust"?

The people who insist that Bernie still has a chance to win, that the other Democrats have been cheating, that Hillary must withdraw from the race etc, have received most of the airtime and ink devoted to Bernie's supporters. Why? Because infotainment has too high a priority compared to hard news, and the mainstream media tend to find crazy people more interesting than sane ones? Or maybe because the media are too dumb, or too lazy, or both, to investigate things like the relationship between the sizes of crowds at political rallies and numbers of votes?

It would be nice if it turns out that the vast majority of the people who have voted for Bernie are not crazy at all, but are people who generally vote Democrat, who can do math well enough to see that Hillary will be the nominee, and have already decided to vote for her no matter what Bernie says or does. It would be nice if the irrational die-hard fanatics, including, quite possibly, Bernie himself, are a small enough group of voters as to be statistically insignificant in November.

That would be ultra-suede sweet.

It would also be very nice if a poll were taken of the world's leading mathematicians about Bernie's chances of winning the nomination. Or of prominent math professors, or if that also can't be managed, then at least a poll of grad students in math.

One after another in the past several days, prominent Democrats have gone on the record saying that they are certain that Bernie will switch from bashing Hillary to supporting her sometime before the convention in July. Man o Manitoba, do I hope they're right. He sure doesn't sound that way these days, though. I hope they're right, and that this is a case where my autism renders me unable to perceive things which are plain to the neurologically-typical.

I have to tell you, the suspense is killing me, waiting for signs that Bernie will concede and get behind Hillary in a major way, or that a sufficient number of people who voted for him will dump him like a sack of dirt and back Hillary no matter what Bernie does and says.

Drop Out, Bernie

It has become a widespread Democratic rallying cry: "The Republicans haven't compromised with Obama in seven and a half years, and the Nevertrumprepubs have started compromising with Trump in less than 3 weeks?!"

Yes indeed, many of them have.

Now if only we didn't have to keep waiting for you to compromise with reality, Bernie, so that we could focus the whole Democratic Party on stomping boo-boo in November.

The calls for you to drop out are increasing. But so far I haven't noticed any from within the group of your supporters. [UPDATE, 1:52 PM: I've found one.] A lot of them were saying before yesterday's primaries that it was essential for you to get 65% in Oregon, that if you didn't, it might be time to fold it up. Let's check: did you get 65% in Oregon? No, of course not: you got 54.8%. Uhh. How many of those very same supporters of yours, who were saying that if you didn't get 65% in Oregon, it would be time for an Agonizing Re-Appraisal of The Entire Situation, are today actually agonizing over such re-appraisals? I don't see one, and unfortunately, I'm not surprised.

How's that campaign to get Hillary's superdelegates going? Not well. So far 6 of Oregon's superdelegates are with Clinton and 1 for you. The Kentucky primary was practically a tie: oh, until you look at Kentucky's superdelegates. 3 of them are with Clinton and 0 for you. No superdelegates so far have switched from Hillary to Bernie. But at least 1 has switched from you to Hillary.

It's as if they're trying to tell you something, Bernie. It's as if they'd rather that the whole party started concentrating on November, instead of having to continue to deal with the endless temper tantrum your campaign has turned into.

It's not just that you've lost the nomination, Bernie. That happened months ago. You're also starting to lose what overall clout you had. And the longer you wait until you drop out, the more of it you're going to lose.

Just write out the platform you want, hand it to Debbie, and if you drop out, she'll take it, and wash your car, too. A week from now, maybe she won't.

But that's the easy part. The more difficult part would be to explain that eminently rational course of action to all of your idiot, die-hard, screaming, chair-throwing, Democratic-Party-HQ-defacing, death-threat-making followers. But for you, it'll only be difficult. For anyone else, it would be impossible.

But you're going to stick with your "until every last vote is counted" pledge. Aren't you.

Count this: Hillary has 1767 pledged delegates, you've got 1488. Hillary has 524 superdelegates, you've got 40. (# of superdelegates switching from one candidate to the other: see above.) Hillary has won 27 primaries, you've won 21. Hillary has gotten 12,728,414 votes, you've gotten 9,627,507. (That's 55.6% for her, 42.6% for you. Who's disrespecting the will of the voters?)

Number of people who've realized that it's impossible for you to win the nomination: rising fast.

Calls for you to drop out: increasing. Expressions of alarm at the anti-social behavior of many of your supporters: increasing. Comparisons of their behavior with that of Trump's supporters: increasing. Impression that both you and your supporters are out of touch with reality: spreading.

Days left until Nov 1: 167. One less every day. You've said your number one priority is stopping Trump. Time for you to actually start on that project: past.

ANOTHER Way You Can See Hillary's Already Got The Nomination

There are, of course, many ways of seeing this, and I think most people have seen it by now. But the people who are still talking about Bernie's "path to victory" are a striking example of how, if you really, really don't want to see something -- you won't.

I saw a headline in Mother Jones today, to the effect that Hillary Clinton is not a monster. The actual headline was not "Hillary Clinton Is Not A Monster," but that was the gist of it. The actual headline said something about how she's honest and responsible.

I didn't stick around to read the readers' comments. Just wasn't in the mood this afternoon. I did read another story on another left-wing site, this one by one of Bernie's die-hards. He said that Bernie must get big majorities in Oregon, California and New Mexico. In reality, on math-based Earth, it doesn't matter if Bernie gets 100% of the vote in Oregon and in all of the 7 other remaining states and the D of C, he's still lost. But today, this math-challenged Bernie die-hard said that if he doesn't get a big majority in Oregon tomorrow, he's lost.

Hillary's going to beat Bernie tomorrow in Oregon. Bernie won't get 60%, he won't get 50%. What is the guy who wrote this story going to say tomorrow night when Hillary is declared the winner in Oregon? Will it be something consistent with what he's saying today? Will he say that Bernie's campaign has lost, that it's time for Bernie's supporters to unite with the other Democrats behind Hillary and help her kick Donald Chump's ass?

It's very hard for me to believe he's going to say anything like that. It's very hard for me to believe that the "road to victory" won't be revised in an even more reality-free way. I hope I'm wrong. I could use a pleasant surprise or two from that crowd.

Well -- that Hillary's-not-a-monster headline on Mother Jones' website was exactly such a pleasant surprise from exactly those guys. So thanks for that, Mother Jones, I needed it.

Oh, the other way you can see how far ahead Hillary is, which I promised in the title of this post: if you add up all the electoral votes in the 26 states where Hillary's won the Democratic primary, they add up to 316; the electoral votes in the 16 states Bernie's won add up to 124.

Go math!

You're Not Going To Be Elected President In 2016, Bernie. But You Can Still Be A Hero

You're still saying, every chance you get, that you have a chance at winning the Democratic nomination. You don't have snowball's chance in Hell. And if you really don't know this, if you really can't do even that much math -- well, then I'm wasting my time trying to talk to you, and this post is strictly for the benefit of other people.

But assuming that you actually can do the math and that you realize that Hillary will be the nominee, why do you keep acting as if you don't realize it? The thing is, there are a lot of your supporters -- nobody knows for sure how many -- who can't do the math. Are you doing them any service by feeding their delusions?

Over and over, you say that your #1 priority is to ensure that Trump is defeated in the fall. So act on that. You can do more than any other single person to swing votes away from Trump and to Hillary, by dropping out of the election NOW and doing all that you can to persuade your supporters that they must vote for Hillary.

You know Hillary personally, you know she's not history's greatest monster and not a Republican in disguise. You know how close most of her positions are to yours and how far to the Left both of you are from the Republicans. But a lot of your supporters, including a lot of very noisy ones, clearly don't know any of this, and they need to hear it from the only person they would possibly listen to about Hillary: you.

You can go down in history as someone who united a nation in a time of great peril, the peril being the possibility of a Trump Presidency. Oh, you'd be such a hero. And the movement you've been in will go on, but with real power, with many of its people in office, getting things done, all clearly due to you. You will have moved the Democratic party a long way back to the Left, and people will love you for it. They will remember.

The thing is, of course, that the longer you wait to drop out and work to unite people around the goal of stopping Trump, the less your impact will be. The more time goes by, the more people will realize that Hillary has won the nomination -- and not just won it, but won it by miles and miles. The 2016 Democratic Presidential campaign has been very exciting, but it was never close, except in the deluded minds of some of your followers. That delusion is fading. The longer you stay in the race, the more you look like a nut, and the more the people who talk about you being elected President in 2016 look like nuts. In a socially-responsible society, nuts are looked after to make sure they're not hurt, but in the positions of power in politics and other practical affairs, they're shunned. They're not allowed to take over, with very few and disastrous exceptions like Hitler and Trump.

The real Stop Trump campaign, ever since he won the Republican nomination, has been Hillary's campaign, and Hillary's campaign will get on with taking care of business, with you or without you. With you joining it now -- right now -- it could be a juggernaut, not only winning the White House in a landslide, but also winning Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and flipping Mayoral offices and City Councils and judgeships from Republican to Democrat, from sea to shining sea, so that a Democratic President and all those other Democratic elected officials will actually be able to pass laws and appropriate money and get things done, things like repairing the infrastructure and expanding Social Security, and restoring funding to education and reducing tuition costs, and converting the US to wind and solar and other clean energy -- you know: all of that long line of things which Hillary supports just as much as you do, as do the vast majority of Democratic office holders and candidates for office, and Democratic voters.

Hillary is going to take care of business with or without your help. I don't think you can actually cost her the election and get Trump elected -- the very opposite of what you claim is your #1 priority -- but you certainly can make the Presidential election, and all of those other elections, much closer than they need to be. The sooner you get on board, the closer the expansion of the social safety net and the restoration of the infrastructure and the conversion to clean energy, and all of the other things that you and I and Hillary and almost all Democrats want, will come.

But the longer you wait, the less power you have here. The more you insist on behaving like a nut who doesn't know when he's been defeated, the more people will treat you like a nut, and the less of a factor you will be in November.

Unless you actually go full retard and 3rd party. You're acting nuttier and nuttier, but I still don't think you're that far gone just yet.

Assuming that eventually you're going to be supporting Hillary and Democrats in general, the sooner you start, the more significant your support will be. If you wait too long, as I said, I don't think it will actually mean that Trump beats Hillary, but it could mean that the House and the Senate stay Republican, and that a lot of the state and local offices stay Republican as well. And then, what will you have accomplished? You will have thrown a huge temper tantrum, and because of that tantrum we will get much less of what both we Democrats and you want, than if you do what politicians have to do very often: compromise in order to get most of what they want, instead of none of it.

Time is of the essence. The longer you wait to drop out and endorse Hillary, the more you will be ignored by sensible people who have to get on with this -- beating Trump -- with our without your help. The longer you wait, the more you will leave us only with the option to ignore you.

How Many People Still Think Bernie Can Win?

It's discouraging, how hard it is to get through to some people with the math showing that Hillary will be nominated.

I mean, obviously, there is SOME respect for math in our society, or computers wouldn't work and buildings and bridges would collapse before they were built and we'd all be living in caves and eating bugs out of each other's hair. But somehow, in this situation, those who can do math are mistrusted by -- how many people are we talking about? How many hardcore Bernie holdouts are left who truly believe he can be the nominee? That's a somewhat more difficult math problem.

How can we extrapolate from the numbers of people in Bernie's rallies, and the numbers of those still saying never-say-die on their blogs and in other media, to the total number of mathematically-illiterate true believers?

I would think that some of those who seem like true believers are only pretending to be. Jeff Weaver, for example. Presumably, that scary bastard is gettin' paid. Who knows what he actually thinks.

What are your estimates of the total number of those who still can't see that Bernie has no chance at the nomination? Did the West Virginia primary actually make that number rise? When -- if ever -- will the number shrink to statistical irrelevance?

How many people will believe for the rest of their lives that Bernie actually won the nomination and that Hillary -- somehow -- stole it? Is Bernie among that number?

C'mon, we can have some real math-geeky fun with this. I have little formal training in math, but to make up for that, I'm autistic and have some unusual raw ability to understand numbers. I would love to see formulas and charts, I hope I'll be able to keep up.

If You Think Bernie Still Has A Chance, You Can't Do Math

To an article with the headline "Why Is Bernie Still Running," a reader responded, "Because he's won 10 of the last 15 states -- what part of that don't you understand?"

I don't even understand which 10 and 15 states you mean, because since March 15 there've been 17 state primaries plus Guam and Democrats Abroad (and not counting March 15 there've been 12 state primaries and Guam and Democrats Abroad), and Bernie has won 10 of those states plus Democrats Abroad, and Hillary won the other 7 states plus Guam.

If we count delegates instead of states -- which is what this is about, whether you understand why or not -- then since March 15, including March 15, Bernie has won 759 delegates, and Hillary has won 766. Before March 15, Hillary was ahead by 762 delegates, and now she's ahead by 769. When she gets 148 more, she will have clinched this.

Yes, I'm counting the superdelegates. Why? Because I haven't heard of one single superdelgate currently committed to Hillary who's mentioned a possibility that he or she might change his or her mind and switch to Bernie.

And why would they? The supergelegates are the very same Democratic politicians Bernie has been verbally abusing nonstop on his campaign, complaining that they've rigged the primaries and that they're corrupt, yada yada. I salute them for so rarely having lost their tempers in public so far when the topic has been Bernie.

148 to go. It's mathematically possible that Hillary might get all 148 of them before the California primary on June 7. Mathematically possible, but she won't. She also won't get none of them. She could get very nearly 148 more before June 7. On June 7, there will be 6 Democratic primaries with a total of 694 committed, non-super delegates at stake, including the 475 at stake in California. If Hillary wins 0 delegates anywhere from here on out except in California, she would need 31% of the committed, non-super California delegates. 148 is 31% of 475. Hillary is averaging 52.5% in polls of likely voters in the California primary. And since March, her numbers in California have been going steadily up.

I know that this is a useless post. I know that the world is divided into those who are paying no attention to the Democratic primaries, those who can do the math and have done it, and those who either can't do the math or refuse to do it, and also refuse to listen to those of us who can and have. But maybe the bright light I've shown on the ridiculousness of all this has given a chuckle to some of those of us who can and have, and we can use some good laughs.

Bernie Said Global Warming Is The Greatest Threat To National Security...

...and Hillary lost West Virginia because she didn't pander to coal miners by telling them their mining jobs would last forever. That, ladies and germs, is whatcha call irony.

Bernie called his win in West Virginia a "tremendous victory." He gained 2 delegates on Hillary. 2 down, 769 to go. Tremendous. He said, "We can do arithmetic," and the crowd (in Washington state) went wild. But they can't. And they don't listen to people who can.

Who says, over and over, that they can do arithmetic? People who can't. It wasn't Michael who said over and over that he was smart, it was Fredo.

Yes, Hillary broke the rules by having a private email server. Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice broke the same rules. And while Hillary was using the private server she wasn't supposed to be using, the Chinese hacked the State Department email server. You can't make up good stuff like this. What a shame nobody notices it.

What's the greatest threat to the security of the world? Stupidity. What did nobody see coming in the 2016 Presidential campaign? How stupid Bernie is. Those reporters Bernie smugly tells more and more often not to moan or roll their eyes at him, they're moaning and rolling their eyes because they can do the math. Those superdelegates even Bernie admits he would need to get the nomination? They are the very same politicians Bernie keeps trashing, the ones he claims have been thwarting him and "the will of the people" at every turn.

Christopher Columbus lived until 1506, believing until the end that he had sailed to Asia. Will Bernie go to his grave believing that the race between himself and Hillary was close and that the nomination process was conducted unfairly and that he would've won in a fair fight?

Will he ever actually concede? Will he be dragged off of the convention stage, raving, literally unable to let go of the rush to which he's become addicted, the rush of pleasing those crowds? Will he refuse to concede and set off a riot of morons?

Obama: "I Think Everybody Knows What The Math Is." Oh, If Only!

An ABC News story from yesterday:

As Bernie Sanders pledges to take his presidential campaign all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this July, President Obama appeared to imply that Sanders' efforts are all but over – even if he won’t explicitly call on Sanders to drop out.

Asked whether he believes the Vermont senator should end his campaign given the current delegate count, he replied, “I think on the Democratic side, just let the process play itself out. You mentioned the delegate math. I think everybody knows what that math is.”

Wow. Wow. No. No, Mr President: unfortunately, lots and lots of people can't do the math at all. How many? Well, how many people still think Bernie has a chance? At least that many people can't do math worth shit. Bernie Sanders says he's very good at math. Rain Man, who could do the math, said he was an excellent driver. Rigorous and accurate self-criticism is not a universally-shared trait. And competence in math is sure as Hell not universally shared. I've been driving myself crazy trying to get people to grasp math as simple as who was ahead in delegates in the Democratic primaries in May 2008, as simple as reading 2 4-digit numbers and realizing which one goes with which candidate and which one is bigger.

Rachel Maddow appears to be better than average, and better than Bernie, at math. As Jason Easley noted on Tuesday,

"The reality is that Hillary Clinton has moved on to general election mode. Bernie Sanders and his supporters are the only people who are contesting the nomination. It isn’t bias driving this perception. It’s math. Rachel Maddow used reality and math to blow up the Sanders logic for a contested Democratic convention."

But the reality is that you can't make people understand math or face reality.

Yesterday Maddow aired an interview with Sanders. At the end of the interview she gave him several chances to say something conciliatory about Hillary, or something to reign in the more venomous attacks of Hillary by his supporters. Sanders repeated several times that he would do everything he can to make sure Trump isn't elected. Obviously, one big thing he could have done to make sure of that was to say that he supports Hillary. But in order for that to have been obvious to him it would have had to have been obvious to him, as it is to me, Barack, Rachel, Hillary, Bill, Jason, Rain Man and other math geeks, that Hillary is the Democratic nominee. The same way that it's obvious to all of us, and not to Bernie, that Trump is toast in November no matter what Bernie does, but that the size of Hillary's win is still very important, and that Bernie can do a lot about that, and that the sooner he starts to try to convince the Hillary-haters among his fans that they shouldn't hate her, the bigger his effect will be. The same way that it's obvious to us that the only thing that Hillary taking $800,000 from Lehman Bros meant was that Lehman Bros had $800,000 less and the Democratic Party had $800,000 more, and that the size of a bank is not the only measure of its behavior. And that Bernie actually belongs to the elite which he seems to loathe so much. And that his confidence about winning the California primary is downright strange for someone who is so far behind Hillary in the California polls...

Ahhh, what else can I say? Go math!

Yesterday I Was Upset With Bernie For Not Having Dropped Out

But then early yesterday evening I turned off my computer and turned on my TV and channel-surfed between news stations, and I relaxed somewhat, because, apart from clips of Bernie telling cheering crowds that it wasn't over (it's over) and Jeff Weaver, Bernie's campaign manager, doing his usual reality-challenged schtick with interviewers looking increasingly tired of him, it was as if he had dropped out: with very few, very short exceptions, nobody was talking about Bernie, everybody was talking about Hillary vs The Donald. Anderson Cooper asked Hillary if she was upset with Bernie for not having dropped out, she very calmly said no, and they went back to talking about more important things.

The die-hard Bernie supporters make a lot of noise. But you have to wonder how many of them there are. It would be nice if Bernie made nice with Hillary and called on all of his supporters to support her. But if he doesn't, you have to wonder how many people will still be paying attention to him.

Bernie's great at shouting about how things should be changed. Hillary's great at planning, step-by-step, how to actually change them. And the biggest part of those plans is about bringing as many Democrats into political office with her in November as she can. No matter who's in the White House, the majority party in the Senate and House is going to make all the difference about how much or little the President can actually do. Those 500+ superdelegates who've committed to Hillary, as against 40-something for Bernie, can see that Hillary is committed to helping them and as many other Democrats as possible take office. And they can see that Bernie, amazingly, doesn't seem to care much at all about their campaigns. This isn't rocket science, even if it actually is over Bernie's head: political parties work together. That's what they're there for. Hillary's raising money for other Democrats. Bernie isn't. Hillary's stumping for other Democrats. Bernie isn't. This is really, really simple.

It boggles the mind to think that Bernie actually can't see why all of those superdelegates are with Hillary and not with him, but it almost looks that way.

It's not rocket science. Even if Bernie never gets it, a lot of Democrats who've voted for him in the primaries will. The New York primary was 16 days ago -- do you remember it? Remember how so many people were exclaiming about how 25,000 people turned out for one of Bernie's rallies in Brooklyn? In the primary, 116,327 in Brooklyn voted for Bernie, and 174,236 for Hillary. For every person who came to that rally, about 4 1/2 voted for Bernie in the primary and about 7 for Hillary. Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx were even more lopsided for Hillary than that. If it was about the number of people who come to the rallies, Bernie would've wrapped up the nomination a long time ago. So far, 12,553,043 have voted in the primaries for Hillary so far, and 9,440,066 for Bernie. So, even leaving the superdelegates completely out of it, she's kicking his ass. Whether he notices it or not.

I think I've been unnecessarily upsetting myself, by paying more attention to hardcore feelers of the Bern than they have merited.

Election Season Math 2016

(Been a while since we played the "arguing with" schtick here on this blog. See if you can spot some of the mistakes. As always, this is real. I for one wouldn't want to make such stuff up.)

ME: 8 years ago today I was supporting Obama and complaining because Hillary hadn't dropped out.

1: It's funny, killary is in the same position she was in with Obama, and Obama still won. Sanders still has a great chance.


2: Maybe that's why Clinton supporters keep insisting that Bernie should drop out.

1: Exactly

3: Hillary needs to drop out. The fact that running her would risk losing the GE to Trump over Bernie's much more assured victory means she can't drop out soon enough.

ME: "killary is in the same position she was in with Obama" 8 years ago today Hillary was 342 delegates behind Obama, 2021 to 1679, and in 2008 California was already over. Today she's 774 delegates ahead of Bernie, 2218 to 1444. 8 years ago today she was in a position similar to where Bernie is now.

1: I take it you didn't follow the election between killary and Obama.

ME: Yeah, I did. I worked on the Obama campaign a little.

1: Pledged delegates Hillary 1,683 Sanders 1,362 2016. Super delegates don't count as they change. But yes, Obama was behind all the way until the end. As she held the super delegates. Deja vu.

ME: Somebody help me. *expletive deleted*

1: I love how you use the end delegate count to try to say Obama was winning the whole time. Sanders has won every open primary. Killary can only win closed primaries where independent voters can't vote. Obama got his lead in pledged delegates with the Missouri primary. He was behind her the whole time before that. Obama got his lead in pledged delegates with the Missouri primary. He was behind her the whole time before that.

Republicans Are Talking About A 3rd-Party Run

That is great.

Bernie is sounding more and more like a 3rd-party candidate. That is not great at all. His plan is to get some of Hillary's unpledged delegates to switch to him. How many of them have so far? Let's all say it together, everybody --

-- none of them.

And as Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico points out, if Bernie wins 100% of the unpledged delegates from here on in, he's still going to need one more superdelegate.

Maybe that math would become plainer to him if some of the superdelegates currently pledged to him switched over to Hillary.

Bernie has said countless times that the most important thing from his point of view is to prevent a Republican from winning the Presidency. It's time for him to start doing exactly that. It's time for him to stop acting like a schmuck.

Nash Riggins of the Independent agrees with me.

As does John McTernan of the Telegraph.

And Yair Rosenberg of Tablet.

Maybe if people showed him some video of him from a couple of months back, talking about supporting whoever the Democratic candidate is, maybe that would help. Maybe remedial math would help. I'm open for more ideas.

It's over, Bernie. Drop out.

How Many Of Bernie's Supporters Will Support Hillary?

Yes, I know that the news is full of Bernie supporters saying that Hillary is a Republican/a corporate stooge/a cannibal/whatever, but the question is: how many of Bernie's supporters are like the "Bernie or bust" nutbags in the news, and how many can see that Bernie and Hilllary aren't very far apart in their positions, which are way, way to the left of Cruz, let alone Donald? How many are the nuts, and how many have a clue? Well, I guess we'll find out.

I guess we'll find out too whether or not Bernie is a nut, and, if he's not, how much influence he has over those who love him but are irrationally anti-Hillary, however many of those there may turn out to be. It's about turnout now. It's over, Hillary will be nominated. It's been over for a while, but after yesterday's primaries -- Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware -- it has become obvious to a lot more people that it's over. Including Bernie? Some pundits think so. They're expecting a halt to Bernie's personal attacks against Hillary, and a return to him talking about issues, coaxing Hillary to the Left (Is there actually any more room to her Left for him to coax her before she's significantly to the Left of him?) and assuring everyone that he supports the Democratic candidate for President -- whoever that may be.

Will he clearly support Hillary -- as the far better choice than any and all Republicans, that is -- while remaining a candidate? And does that actually make sense at this point? It's not as if he's suddenly going to lose everyone's attention if he ends his campaign.

And will it actually matter that much whether, and to what extent, he supports Hillary? I guess we'll find out. Does he actually not grasp how important it is how many Democratic victories there are down ballet in November? I guess we'll find that out too.

The Cluelessness Of Sanders And Trump (And Possibly Matthews, Unless He's Pretending)

I've already remarked in this blog that I like Hillary's answer when asked why she accepted around $1 million from Goldman Sachs for her 2016 campaign: "That's how much they offered."

But Bernie isn't just mad about that contribution, he seems to be furious whenever Hillary takes big contributions from anybody. Bernie has raised tens of millions of dollars himself, but he seems very proud of how much of it has come in contributions of $100 or less. I don't get that: he's proud of taking money from people who aren't as able to afford it? He's gotten 6-figure donations from public universities and unions, institutions which are struggling these days. Taking a campaign contribution from someone doesn't guarantee that you're going to help that someone. In fact, the only thing it guarantees is that right away, they're going to have less money.

Bernie doesn't belong to a socialist party, but he seems to be one of those socialists who hate wealth, as opposed to hating poverty. He's always going on about Wall Street. His plan to deal with banks attacks them according to how big they are -- as opposed to what they actually do (Hillary's approach, and Barney Franks', and the approach of sanity).

Attacking wealthy people in general is kind of risky for Bernie. He recently released his and his wife's 2014 tax returns, which showed that they made over $200,000. That's not the top 1%, but it's in the top 5%. And he's hanging with people like Spike Lee, who makes much more than enough to be in the top 1%.

I'm not mad at Spike for making lots of money. I'm not mad at Bernie because he and his wife made over $200,000 in 2014, even though I've never made $20,000 in one year. The reason I'm all worked up here is because I'm concerned that someone is running for President who's talking a lot of nonsense.

Bernie got furious when Hillary appeared at a high-ticket Hollywood fundraiser. He called it "obscene." This was an event attended by many of Spike's colleagues -- but that's not the problem for Bernie, the problem is that it cost so much to get in.

It's amazing that someone with such a shaky grasp of what a fundraiser is, has raised so much campaign funding.

I'm ashamed that I didn't get this until someone pointed it out to me yesterday, but that "obscene" Hollywood fundraiser wasn't just raising funds for Hillary. It was a Democratic Party fundraiser. A lot of that "obscene" money is going to down-ticket campaigns: campaigns for Senate and House and mayoral elections, city council elections, etc. That's one part of what was pointed out to me yesterday, the rest of it, the kicker, is this:

Bernie has been asked whether he will campaign for other Democrats, in Senate and House races and so forth, if he's not chosen as the Democratic nominee for President -- and he hasn't said yes. He hasn't definitively said no, but his reaction is a bit cooler than luckwarm. He shrugs and looks like he's smelled a bad smell.

And the kicker of the kicker is this: those superdelegates, who Bernie says should come over from Hillary to him? Those are the very same Senators, Congressmen, mayors, etc, for whom he shows so very little inclination to campaign. The same ones for whom Hillary has been campaigning, along with campaigning for herself.

Gee, why would they, as superdelegates, support Hillary, when all she does for them is raise campaign money and stump for them (while St Bernard treats them the way that someone who hates stinky cheese treats stinky cheese)? It's almost as if they're all in some group together -- a political party, or something.

And so I must apologize for having said that Bernie is a Democrat who calls himself a socialist. Democrats realize that they have to work together as a party. Bernie obviously doesn't get that. (Socialists get that too, that's why there are socialist parties. I don't know what to call Bernie at this point.)

Clearly, Bernie Sanders' most egregious irrationalities pale in comparison to the irrationalities of Donald Trump. Trump has too many for me to deal with all singly, so I'm just going to focus on his claim that he deserves the Republican nomination whether he gets a majority of the Republican delegates before the convention or not.

Again, just as with the Democrats, it's as if the Republicans were some sort of organized group, who had agreed to do certain things in certain ways.

It really bothers me that such a seasoned political reporter as Chris Matthews is 100% with Trump here, and says that it would be loathesome and underhanded and undemocratic and "stealing" and what have you if someone other than Trump were to get the GOP nomimation.

Chris, you chump. I know that many other reporters agree with you on this, but you especially bother me here, because you're sort of a leader among political reporters, and you've been in and around politics for a very long time. And still. I'm going to have to explain things to you as if you were 5 years old:

For one thing, there is nothing unusual about elections in which no one wins until he or she gets a majority of the votes. We have many such elections here in the US, for mayor of certain cities and whatnot. If there are more than 2 candidates and no-one gets over 50% the first time, they vote again, and they keep on voting until someone has a majority. Those second elections (and third and however many it takes until someone has 50%) are called run-off elections. And the conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties have always done it that way, re-voting and re-voting until someone has a majority. So stop acting as if any of this were new to you, please.

For another thing which really ought to be clear as can be to you, the real choice of the majority of the people who have voted in the Republican primaries may well be: anybody except Trump. If over 50% of those who've voted in Republican primaries would rather see anyone except Trump be nominated, then you, or anyone insisting that the nomination belongs to Trump, are the one being antidemocratic.

And for a third thing, how about an "Attaboy" for people trying to stop the campaign of an out-and-out fascist? "Fascist," that's your description of Trump, Chris. You've called Trump a fascist, and you're right, and anti-fascists, even ones who are right of center like the Republican mainstream, deserve your support.

Now, if your grasp of arithmetic is a bit above average, then you'll probably agree with me, Mr Matthews, that neither Trump nor anyone else vying for the GOP Presidential election has a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected POTUS, and that the better Trump does, the greater the chaos in the GOP and the more split the vote on the Right will be, and consequently, the bigger the Democratic landslide will be, even with no help from Bernie. If that's what you're thinking, as a good solid Democrat, than have the stature, the class, to say so, instead of continuing with this nonsense of calling resistance to Trump antidemocratic and dishonest. It's as if you were saying that the electoral votes didn't count in the 2000 Presidential election, because Gore got a bigger popular vote than Bush. You knew that it was all about the electoral college, and that if the Republicans stole something it was Florida's electoral votes, and that the overall popular vote, although poignant, was irrelevant to the overall result. And you know now, in the case of the Republican nomination, that it's all about a majority of the delegates. Please, please, stop acting as if you don't know that.

"The Party Elite Loves Hillary, The People Love Bernie"

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"We're Going To Lose The South Anyway," Sez Bernie. Oh Really?

Bernie's response to Hillary's beating him like a gong in one Southern primary after another is, "We're going to lose the South anyway."

Bernie, maybe YOU would lose the South to Trump. I'm not so sure that Hillary would. There are lots of female and black and Latino voters in the South, and if ever there was a Presidential candidate guaranteed to lose hard in all demographics other than white males, it's Trump. Obama won Virginia and Florida in both 2008 and 2012, he also won North Carolina in 2008 and came close in 2012, and he came close in a few other Southern states both times. The South is changing. It's gradually changing from red to blue.

And Bernie's not going to get the nomination. Maybe my ability to do math in my head really is autisitically-freakish, maybe those of Bernie's supporters who are actually jubilant about yesterday's results are a little behind the curve in math skills, maybe there's a little bit of both involved here, but let me lay some math on you. And when I do please keep in mind that Nate Silver wasn't the only person predicting 365 electoral votes for Obama in 2008, just the most famous one; and that while my 2012 prediction of 350+ electoral vote for Obama was over-optimistic (he got 332), my assurance to every Democrat I met in the run-up to the 2012 who was worried that Romney might win, my assurance that Obama would be re-elected and that it wouldn't be close, was not over-optimistic.

Before yesterday's primaries Bernie said that if he gets 55% percent of the delegates from here on in, he's got the nomination. But that will be the case only if he gets 55% of the pledged delegates from here on in, and if a great number of superdelegates currently committed Hillary jump ship and join him. If the superdelegates who are now with Hillary stay with her, that means that Bernie needs to win 68% of the delegates left. But there's no reason to think he can even do as well as 55%. They're still counting yesterday's results, but it looks like Bernie got about 45% of the delegates for the day. He lost the day. How many days has Bernie lost to Hillary so far? All of them except two: the day when New Hampshire and no other state had a primary, and the day when Maine and no other state had a primary. On those two days combined, Bernie won a total of 4 more delgates then Hillary. Other than that, every single day when there have been Democratic primaries, Hillary's lead in delegates over Bernie has gotten larger.

According to CNN, Hillary currently has 1711 delegates and Bernie has 939 -- with a dozen or so still to be awarded. 2383 is a majority, 2383 wins the nomination. Hillary needs 672 more, Bernie needs 1444 more. If Bernie's results improve to the point that he gets 50% of the delegates in the primaries yet to come, Hillary will have a majority of delegates before the California primary on June 7. California has by far the largest population of any state, a total of 475 delegates are at state in its Democratic primary.

Hillary will have the nomination before the California primary, assuming that she gets 50% or better of the votes in the primaries between now and then, and assuming that the superdelegates currently pledged to her stay with her.

Those are two very safe assumptions.

Bernie says he wants to be absolutely sure that Trump isn't elected President. Hillary beating Trump is about as sure as Hillary beating Bernie for the nomination. One thing which isn't at all sure is how many Southern states Hillary will win. The more states Hillary wins, the more Democrats are likely to win in other elections in November, elections for the Senate and the House and for Governorships and state legislatures, elections for mayors and city councils and so forth. Democrats badly need to win more of these other elections besides just the elections for President. If Bernie gets his supporters strongly behind Hillary, there's a chance for a huge Democratic landslide in all of those elections. The sooner he drops out of the race, the easier it will be for him to get his supporters behind Hillary.

Hillary has 1711 delegates, Bernie has 939, 2383 wins the nomination. That's not difficult math. This thing has been over for a while already. The earlier Bernie does the right thing, the greater the chances for a huge Democratic landslide in November. That's not difficult math either.