All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Billy Batson]

Turnout was higher than 2016.

"Turnout could break the 2008 record, The Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston says. Among things I want to know: How many new voters? And how many Latinos?"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...*-updates.html

Just the early voting this year was 70k (which was known before Saturday) compared to 2016's caucus with 84k votes with no early voting.

[Billy Batson]

[PaulBullion]

Does Sanders still believe that cervical cancer was caused by women not having enough orgasms? Has he been asked that during any of the town halls?

[Billy Batson]

Warren campaign staging a black barbershop to get the black male vote

[jetengine]

Personal preference. I'd rather it have been Warren in the lead, but like I said it is what it is.

Will of the people line is pure humbug to be honest. People are stupid animals led by the overt propaganda used to an almost disturbing level. It would have merit if we lived in a society that had fair and free elections. To use a great example my nation voted in a 80% Tory Majority, I'm pretty sure their will isnt for MORE Tory Austerity.

[PaulBullion]

Will of the people line is pure humbug to be honest. People are stupid animals led by the overt propaganda used to an almost disturbing level. It would have merit if we lived in a society that had fair and free elections. To use a great example my nation voted in a 80% Tory Majority, I'm pretty sure their will isnt for MORE Tory Austerity.

It is so frustrating. And the people who are the most affected by propaganda think they are the most enlightened. It's like with conspiracy theorists.

[PaulBullion]

[Superbat]

Sanders eviscerates the conventional wisdom about why he can't win

In Nevada, he exposed his main rivals as weak, divided, and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about their viability.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...lection-116762

LAS VEGAS — On Saturday in Nevada, Bernie Sanders laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries.

You could see the dominoes of punditry cliches falling inside the caucus rooms. At the Bellagio Hotel, which held one of several “Strip caucuses” meant to be easily accessible to hospitality workers along Vegas’ main drag, 75 Sanders supporters gathered along the wall of a ballroom.

The powerful Culinary Union, which opposes Sanders’ Medicare for All plan and spent the final weeks of the campaign in a high-profile fight with his campaign, was supposed to weaken him. And yet the Sanders’s ranks were speckled with red-shirted Culinary members. (Overall, Sanders won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, besting all of his rivals.)

Sanders wasn’t supposed to be able to break through with black and brown voters, but the group was racially and ethnically diverse. (Sanders won 27% of African Americans and 53% of Hispanics across the state.) The Sanders movement is supposed to be limited to those crazy college kids who don’t remember socialist as a slur. But there were plenty of older Sanders backers at the Bellagio chanting “Bernie” along with their 20-something comrades. (Sanders won every age category in the state except Nevadans over 65, which he ceded to Joe Biden.)

Sure, the numbers are tiny. In a state of 3 million people, turnout of over 100,000 participants is considered enormous. Candidate events here on the days leading up to the caucuses were sleepy affairs, with fewer attendees than in Iowa and New Hampshire where the big cities are a fraction of the size of Vegas.

But the Sanders victory still exploded a lot of myths. He was said to have a ceiling of 30% or so. Remarkably, against a much larger field of candidates Sanders is poised to come close to the same level of support as he did in 2016 in a one-on-one race against Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost 47%-53%. (He was at 46% with a quarter of precincts reporting as of this writing.) He was said to be unable to attract anyone outside his core base. But he held his own with moderate voters (22%) and won across every issue area except voters who cared most about foreign policy, who went with Biden.

All of this makes the results of the Nevada caucuses, which in the past have not been treated with the same importance as the contests in the three other early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — matter more this year. They have helped settle lingering questions about Sanders' appeal.

More important, Nevada exposed his four main rivals as weak, divided, and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about how they can still win.

Warren came in a distant fourth place but still argued that since the Vegas debate on Wednesday, when she reversed a year-long plan not to pillory her opponents, “our support has been growing everywhere.” Except Nevada, apparently. In fact, voters who decided in the days following the debate were roughly divided between supporting Sanders (24%), Pete Buttigieg (21%), Warren (21%), and Biden (19%).


After her unexpected surge into third place in New Hampshire, Amy Klobuchar had a narrow window to consolidate support and emerge as a serious threat to Sanders. Her poor showing in Nevada — sixth place with less than 4% as of this writing — left her little to brag about in her caucus evening speech. She had to reach back to the story about braving a snowstorm during her outdoor announcement speech last year instead of pointing to anything positive in the Nevada results. Without much money, organization, or a realistic expectation of doing well in South Carolina, she is likely to be an afterthought going into Super Tuesday.

The momentum of Buttigieg, who was Sanders' strongest opponent in Iowa and New Hampshire, stalled out in Nevada. He slipped into third place, well behind Biden. Long-shot candidacies need to continue to surge forward with unexpected results to overcome doubts. But Buttigieg’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire was not enough to change the minds of enough people in Nevada. A victory here for him would have been catalytic, but the Sanders blowout has halted his rise. (He is still likely to be second behind Sanders in the delegate race, but the early states are all about momentum, not delegates.)

While Klobuchar, Warren, and Buttigieg all did worse in Nevada than they did in the first two states, Biden did better, though a second place finish twenty points behind Sanders isn’t much to crow about for a former vice president. Still, being on the upswing, however gradual it is, going into South Carolina is essential for Biden. If he is the first candidate to definitively defeat Sanders in a contest, it could resurrect his campaign. And while in Nevada Sanders did eat into Biden’s support among African Americans, Biden still won that demographic overall.

Biden’s possible resurrection in South Carolina also makes the case for Michael Bloomberg tenuous. Bloomberg got into the race by arguing he would be a Bernie slayer if Biden collapsed. But Biden’s stubborn refusal to collapse completely means that Bloomberg is now more likely to play the role of assisting Sanders’s march to the nomination — by keeping Biden wounded and the non-Sanders candidates further divided — rather than preventing it.

The race is Sanders’ to lose. He’s the best funded non-billionaire candidate. He has the best organization. He is winning the broadest coalition.

[jetengine]

It is so frustrating. And the people who are the most affected by propaganda think they are the most enlightened. It's like with conspiracy theorists.

Dont get me wrong, I like some of Bernies stuff. I just think his fanbase is too agressive, America on the whole is too right wing, he's too damn old (the health issues are...concerning), he's got more skeletons in his closet then this guy...

61puPkAQnqL._AC_SX569_.jpg

....and that when the Right Wing Media machine hits hard its not just gonna be "socialism" it'll be a bloodbath. Not forgetting Russias sketchy interference* and the fact that unless the Dems take EVERYTHING then Mitch will still tell him to eat **** and cancel everything.

*Russia now has no defense when the USA inevitably destroys their economy or meddles in their political sphere. I've seen Russians literally hand wave the og meddling with "Well you guys fucked with Yeltsin" well now its time to crush Russians political class

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It is so frustrating. And the people who are the most affected by propaganda think they are the most enlightened. It's like with conspiracy theorists.

Dude you literally spent the last several days in this thread gaslighting to try to say that someone who hasn’t even placed in the top 3 in a single state is the frontrunner because you were in denial about reality. You are probably the most uninformed people here when it comes to electoral politics and trends.

I wouldn’t accuse a single person of thinking they are enlightened while really falling for propaganda. It says a lot that after all this time you were reduced to wishing a health issue on the candidate you didn’t like. I wasn’t a fan of Hillary and said she was an issue. But I still voted for her. Nobody here thinks you would do that if Sanders gets the nomination despite how much you attacked people in the past for being divisive. At this point you are just lashing out

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Dont get me wrong, I like some of Bernies stuff. I just think his fanbase is too agressive, America on the whole is too right wing, he's too damn old (the health issues are...concerning), he's got more skeletons in his closet then this guy...

61puPkAQnqL._AC_SX569_.jpg

....and that when the Right Wing Media machine hits hard its not just gonna be "socialism" it'll be a bloodbath. Not forgetting Russias sketchy interference* and the fact that unless the Dems take EVERYTHING then Mitch will still tell him to eat **** and cancel everything.

Listen at this point your best alternative is Biden who has failed to win a primary state in multiple elections across his career and Bloomberg who is a Republican that they entire progressive wing won’t vote for. And 4 years ago an establishment candidate who was in the Obama administration and ran as a third Obama term lost. So realistically you never had a good option

[Superbat]

It would save many innocent lives. It's an easy choice.

People were telling me that I sounded authoritarian because I wanted to vote the moderates out of the Democratic party. This is guy is saying he wants a progressive politician to have a heart attack.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It would save many innocent lives. It's an easy choice.

By your logic then Hillary should have as well because she actually lost. You are literally being despicable right now because you aren’t getting your way and revealing what many of us thought about all your rhetoric for the last few years. You don’t care about all the **** Trump is doing. You don’t care about who is best positioned to beat him. You just want to win your way or no way.

If a Trump wins, don’t ever complain about anything his admin did. You are complicit

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

People were telling me that I sounded authoritarian because I wanted to vote the moderates out of the Democratic party. This is guy is saying he wants a progressive politician to have a heart attack.

If anyone of us said that about Hillary or Biden we would have been banned. Something tells me the mods won’t do anything

[Steel Inquisitor]

It’s disgusting that babies are literally in cages because of the Trump administration and you are so upset at not getting what you want that you are attacking the frontrunner. We need unity now.

That's happens to front runners, they get attacked for being on top. Did you think this when Biden was the front runner? Sanders is supposed to be a fighter, not to fragile that he can't take competition in a primary. Children being in cages is no excuse for everyone to surrender to Sanders, he certainly didn't give Hillary that courtesy.