Varies by state most likely, I imagine some do & some don't.

Georgia had a "Presidential Preference Primary" on March 1 (along with a couple of minor special elections in localities that needed them).

The "General Primary Election, Non-Partisan General Election, and Special Runoff Election" is coming up May 24.

Depends on who and why. A state that tries to jump the party-established queue risks losing delegates if they do, so their early primary may be non-binding, just to get into the news cycle, with the 'binding, this one counts, please don't penalize us' primary happening later.

I just meant "Early" in the sense that they are among the first to hold a primary. Not that they were jumping the line

This Democratic debate tonight has been unwatchable. Neither candidates are answering the questions given to them and the crowd can't keep themselves quiet at all.

Democrats moving toward the center gave me two of the best presidents of my lifetime: Bill Clinton and Obama. Further, it allowed them to capture moderate voters and win the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.

So I am sad to see Bernie push the party back to the left. He won't win the nomination, but last night's debate showed that he has been successful in getting the rhetoric to shift leftward. I think that this is the first step toward a Walter Mondale level drubbing 8 or 12 years from now.

2014 Effective Tax Rates:

Bernie Sanders - 13.5%
Hillary Clinton - 35.7%

They absolutely should. And I didn't think it was a secret that Clinton makes more money than Sanders, so the context of their incomes was clear by their name.

The point is that Clinton is painted as this Romney-like capitalist who makes all this money from big speeches and takes all this money from big banks, but she definitely pays her "fair share" in income taxes. There's a reason Bernie didn't want to release his returns. He probably never thought he'd get this far or he would've arranged a higher tax rate. Don't think for a second that Hillary couldn't have paid way less if she tried to game this system like the corrupt career politician people make her out to be.

People who are upset about Hilary's speaking fees are not upset about her not paying taxes on them. They are upset that she gave the speeches to employees of companies that nearly destroyed our economy that were "allegedly" pro-banks.

Will be interesting to see if any new Pennsylvania polls come out. I assume that Hillary will win something like 54-46 but the fact that Sestak is currently up by 10 points over party-backed hopeful McGinty is at least interesting. Not sure how much of the Sestak/Sanders crossover there is but there could be something there.

I thought Fetterman was the candidate for Sanders' supporters? He's the only one backing Sanders after all.

And Sestak, while not endorsing anyone this go around, did back Clinton in 2008 over Obama.

I guess what I'm saying is that the "Establishment" D is only running at 30some percent so I wonder if the Hilary/Sanders thing will become a lot tighter than expected.

Maybe she just used H. & R. Block software to do her taxes.

While McGinty may be the "establishment" D, to say Sestak is some anti-establishment outsider is a bit silly, considering he was the party's nominee in 2008, and while in Congress he was a super-centrist. The big time Dems are lining up against Sestak mostly because he already lost to Toomey.

I don't see how anyone who has watched the last 8 years doesn't think we need someone who can be conniving/manipulative. Is Bernie going to 'nice' the Republicans into submission? Especially since he's doing NOTHING to help ensure a Democratic majority will be there to support him?

I posted 4 years ago that I didn't get why Romney was so weird about his taxes since he's been running for so long. If he'd just avoided deductions for a while then he could've released them with no problem. Hillary was smart enough to avoid that same mistake.

The fact that Bernie has been so unwilling to release his returns is a big red flag. I mean the Democrats spent the previous Presidential election excoriating Romney for refusing to release his returns. How would it make ANY sense to then nominate someone who so far has done the exact same thing?

The tax return issue doesn't at all change my view of who Hillary or Bernie are as people, but it does hammer home the point that I've said all along. While I agree with Bernie more on an ideological level, he is completely unprepared for the general election campaign and the Presidency.

Also, many of them are upset that he ran against and beat Specter.

This.

Yep. I like a lot of what Bernie has to say ideologically, but I think in a practical sense, Hillary can be a much more effective President. And her election can help drive the balance in Congress more toward the D side, since she will try to help people down the ballot. I like Bernie the person better, but I think I also like Hillary the President better. I think based on that, I will vote for her in the upcoming CT primary.

Hillary being kept honest by Bernie is the optimal outcome for me.

New York Primary today. Clinton is +12 in the RCP.

Sanders has won several caucuses in a row, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's momentum. If he were to win New York somehow, that would show momentum and maybe this would turn into a race.

If he were to win New York, it'd be more stunning than Michigan, I'd think. And would cut into the delegate lead quite dramatically.

If Clinton does win by 12, is there any math that gets Bernie the nomination?

Because the Dems do things proportionally, there is no math to get Bernie the nomination. There are no winner-take-all states to give him huge bites of delegates.

Bernie gets the nomination if

Clinton becomes critically ill (like cancer or a major stroke or something)
Clinton gets indicted over the State Department email scandal

Clinton gets the nomination in all other circumstances.

I posted this earlier, but I think this a good starting point to answer questions like this. This pathway was a long-shot scenario to a Sanders win. Since then, he's under-performed these targets in Wisconsin (by 2 delegates) and Wyoming (by 4 delegates). So you can distribute those 6 delegates over the rest of the states to make a new long-shot target. If Sanders loses by 56-44% or so in New York and only gets 44% of the New York delegates, 109, then he will have missed his target there by 19. So he'd be a total of 25 in the hole from the already long-shot path. It's statistically possible to make that up. But he would need double-digit wins in several states where he's currently down in the polls. Or he could, for example, hit all of the targets from this list, but then win California by +28%. Extraordinary unlikely, but I don't think we're close to the Sanders campaign slowing down. If he underperforms this path in New York (which means he loses or wins by less than 4%), and every state next Tuesday, then I think maybe there will be a change in tone in this campaign.

It’s Really Hard To Get Bernie Sanders 988 More Delegates | FiveThirtyEight

Sanders needs 68% of the remaining delegates and superdelegates. It's not realistic to think he has a chance unless something critical changes - and changes quickly.

If Clinton becomes critically ill (per one of albion's scenarios), my money's on Biden before Sanders.

If that happened, I'd never go on Facebook again.

By the way, did you guys know that the very first closed primary in the history of the United States is happening tonight? I mean that's just my guess based on how the Sanders campaign and their supporters have acted in the past week.

Well Bernie has to be somewhat heartened that they didn't call the race immediately.

Clinton so far is ahead 60-40 in majority white precincts of New York City. This does not look like a good night for Sanders.

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) April 20, 2016

The Sanders narrative of this race has grown rather fanciful - the polls seem to have underestimated Clinton's lead a little.

Another fact that should encourage the Clinton camp - Trump likes to boast that he'll put New York in play. He won't. The vote total from the Democrats is dwarfing the vote total from the Republicans. New York and California remain reliably blue anchors around the legs of any Republican candidate, orange or deep red.

Indeed. You have to wonder when the Sanders supporters would accept this... my Facebook feed will be happy, I'm sure.

Well the New York result is in

Early estimate of New York results.

Clinton +16%, 139-108 in pledged delegates.

Totals to date:

Pledged - Clinton 1446, Sanders 1205
Wins - Clinton 21, Sanders 17
Superdelegates - Clinton 478, Sanders 40

Total - Clinton 1924, Sanders 1245
Delegates remaining - 1,407 pledged, 196 superdelegates

Percentage needed of remaining delegates, Clinton - 28.9%
Percentage needed if superdelegates were assigned WTA - 37.9%
Percentage needed if superdelegates were assigned proportionally - 42.3%

The difference between the last two calculations is interesting. Sanders has won 17 contests, but mostly smaller states in caucuses. So if superdelegates were assigned winner-take-all, Hillary has most of the major ones. Her lead would be 304-138 among decided states. But if it were done proportionally, her lead would only be 231-211. However, her lead is 309-31 (102 undecided) with superdelegates in states that have already voted (and 169-9, 94 undecided in those that haven't).

I get why Sanders supporters are unhappy, but I don't think the race is close enough where they should feel anything is being stolen.

It's amazing how closely the vote totals of Clinton/Obama in 2008 match Clinton/Sanders in 2016.

I'm reading a lot on reddit and my facebook wall about how Sanders really won because he won far more counties.

Haha, I love that. That's actually a pretty radical right wing argument. If Sanders somehow won the nomination, he would have zero chance in the general if it was decided by counties.

Ya, 1964 was the last time a Democratic presidential candidate won more counties than the Republican. Johnson won all the big rural states that have a lot of counties and low population density.

Sometimes Sanders' supporters really put their feet in their mouth, re: race. Those big population counties they are poo-poohing... where do they think the vast majority of African-American and Hispanic New Yorkers live?

I have all of the politics subs filtered out on reddit so I don't normally have to see them. Last night I went to /r/all so that I would just get everything and read through a few threads to have a good laugh.

There is some admirable stuff there, phone bank organization and the like, where people are trying to actually do something to make a difference. I absoultely respect that. Outside of that though there is an unbelievable amount of delusion.

.

Well here's a calculator for the Democratic race

The Race to 2026 Delegates

That's pretty good. :)

Bernie math is real. /r/politics is a fascinating place right now. It's probably warping my view of the average Sanders voter, but, it's fascinating.

I just wonder how long this will all go. If Sanders gets swept today and only matches or under-performs the polls, will this all still be portrayed by Sanders, the Bernie Bros, and the media as a race in which Sanders is building momentum to an inevitable coronation and revolution?

Well, some of them are actively thinking that superdelegates will leave Hillary's side "as they did in 2008" (forget that that was completely and totally different in terms of how many superdelegates shifted and how many were undeclared at this point in the cycle), and that Sanders may be able to then win on the 2nd ballot.

Tim Robbins says that the election is being stolen from Bernie because the exit polls don't measure the actual results.

The talk right now is that losing every state today wouldn't hurt him that much because they'll win the last 10 states and only need roughly 65% of the delegates from those 10.

The enthusiasm his supporters has is admirable, but the fact that they truly believe Hillary is stealing the election makes them look crazy. At no point do they accept that there may be an issue with his platform or his message.

I don't think the problem is his platform. I think Sander's problem was that he didn't build a national brand soon enough. The more people hear of him the more they like him.

Although it doesn't help that many of his supporters treat him like a messiah and are insufferable.

Just from a strategic standpoint, this Bernie or Bust movement seems like a terrible idea. Let's say the progressives make all this noise about staying home and Hillary still wins the election, the progressive movement is completely marginalized. Hillary can easily claim the center on day one because that's who put her in office.

The only way the superdelegates shift is if he actually has a lead in the polls and/or the actual delegate count, at which point, the superdelegates don't really matter anyway.

That depends. I mean New York voters heard plenty about him, but still rejected him heartedly. His platform resonates with a particular group of people, and regardless of how much he is heard from, other groups (African-Americans, older people, moderates) don't cotton to him. He does well in states that are very white and have a lot of "liberals".

Summary for Today's I'm-Running-Out-Of-Synonyms-For-Super Tuesday Primaries.

Standings

Pledged: Clinton 1,446, Sanders 1,205, Remaining 1,407
Superdelegates: Clinton 483, Sanders 40, Unannounced 191
Total: Clinton 1,929, Sanders 1,245

Magic Number: Clinton 458, Sanders 1,142

Today's Contests

Connecticut (55 delegates). Clinton +6 in RCP average
Delaware (21). Clinton +7 in one poll done last week
Maryland (95). Clinton +24 in RCP
Pennsylvania (189). Clinton +16 in RCP
Rhode Island (24). Clinton +3 in limited polling

All contests are proportional. Still not sure what Bernie supporters are thinking when "we was robbed" enters their heads.

Voter suppression in New York and other states is what they're complaining about right now.

Well over 100,000 democrats were taken off the voting roles and we have this republican to thank for it (or at least she's currently suspended without pay). It probably didn't hurt Sanders though.



Voter suppression is something anyone believing in democracy should be concerned about.

Being concerned about it and believing there's a national conspiracy targeting Sanders voters are two different things.

He's only about 2.7 million votes behind. That's child's play for a professional suppressor.

Have they ever mattered?

And Clinton takes 4 out of 5. Will likely win by 30 points in Maryland and over 10 points in Pennsylvania. She picked up 75+ more delegates today.

No. But if you listen to the Bernie Bros, he'd win if it wasn't for superdelegates, except that's literally the opposite of what is true.

I believe 1984 was the closest, but Mondale got to the convention at the last pass with sufficient regular delegates.

My facebook newsfeed has been settling down from all the Bernie support the last week or so. I guess it's finally sinking in. A lot of people I know are split if they should vote for Hillary in the general or vote third party.

Apparently being a warmonger and overall lying piece of shit is better than having a republican president for some of my Bernie friends (kinda hypocritical). The ones who will vote third party are doing it to spite Hillary and the DNC.

Really says something, doesn't it?


The canonical example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

Eventually almost everyone will come home. It happens every four years.

I'm part of the 7% of Sanders supporters who will give serious consideration to voting Trump. I don't believe any left shift Hillary pretends to put on, and some part of me still believes Trump's running a trolling campaign whose actual moves if elected would devastate conservatives.

Ultimately, I may still vote Hillary, with the lack of enthusiasm that I did in voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Or I might go third party. I just don't know yet.

Am I alone in thinking this could be one of the rare election cycles where VP picks actually matter?

Yes. With Trump and Clinton on the ballot, the VP pick would have to be on the level of Pope Francis or Vladimir Putin or the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan to make a difference.

dola:

This happens every four years



Twitter makes it seem worse this year, but if you believe the polling, this primary is actually less divisive than most in the past.

I think the % of Sanders supporters who don't bother voting anyway is much higher than the % who thinks Clinton is worse than Trump or Cruz.

Edit: Though it is fascinating that some significant % of apparently liberal Sanders supporters prefer a candidate who wants to deport all illegal immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the country, and wage nuclear war on ISIS. I don't know what that says about what this election is really about, but it's definitely about something new. Maybe the far left and the far right can start their own party together if they have this much common ground. We could have a moderate party with liberal and conservative factions, and an extremist party who supports any policy that involves "revolution"/"blowing it all up."

You're probably not alone but you aren't going to get any group discounts with that crowd either.

The only way VP picks might matter in this race is if you sincerely believed somebody was going to shoot the frontrunner right after the inauguration.

Exactly this. Usually VP candidates are picked to bolster either some perceived weakness, either policy or experience or geographic or demographic. However, both of these candidates are so well know, including all their weaknesses that no VP candidate is going to be able to paper over those weaknesses.

Even if Trump is playing some long con where he is secretly liberal, the problem is that he's clearly unqualified to be President. This is a guy who thinks he can appoint someone to the Supreme Court to investigate Hillary's e-mails.

I think Trump is liberal on most social issues, but that isn't really relevant to what a president does. I think he means what he says in terms of immigrants and Muslims and nuclear war, views he absolutely would use the executive power to pursue. I think there's a very good chance that any terrorist attack against the U.S. or U.S. interests, even on a small scale, would lead to a nuclear World War III with Trump in charge. And this isn't like Bush where some people feared that, compared him to Hitler, etc, but there wasn't a ton of substance behind it - this is stuff that Trump and his base openly revel in.

Fetterman really screwed up Sestak's senate campaign and while I agree/align with Fetterman, I don't think McGinty will beat Toomey. Toomey is basically an asshole and Sestak likely beats him if 2010 wasn't an epic tankjob for democrats.

Definitely will vote for Fetterman if he decides to challenge any statewide race again though. Just don't think this was the right time to get involved.

FTFY

There was so much noise about GWB wanting to invade Iran and starting WWIII that I pretty find any comparisons for any candidate laughable now. It's certainly has no bearing on how I will vote, but I know for many, it works. I don't see a scenario where I vote for trump, but scary talk like this won't cut it. Just focus on how he's a Democrat in sheeps clothing and you have me convinced to stay away. :)

Yeah let's just let Hillary be president instead. At least with her in charge of the military there's no questioning whether or not she might go into war.

I definitely agree that the Bush speculative fear-mongering was out of control in 2004. With Trump though, I'm just relying on his words (always risky with Trump, I admit), and what his supporters seem to want.

Instead of Trump or Sanders? OK, deal. I think there's an election first or something, but I'm pretty confident that will be the outcome.

If we're going to war either way, then I definitely want Hillary instead of Trump. Trump running a war is one of the scariest possible things to imagine as a potential outcome for this election.

I can't really fathom the desire to lose a war (or just surrender without even trying) but {shrug}

That's a (D) thing I guess.

Yes, when you absolutely have to win a war, bring in a businessman/reality TV star to run it.

Everybody knows the answer is a 10-year-old video-game whiz. Next question.

Beats most of the alternatives, at least he seems like someone that would at least try to win instead of going for appeasement or surrender at the first opportunity.

Really Jon, we're just going to gloss over Vietnam like that? The ultimate losing war?

Really? Out of control? I mean, by the time campaign season ramped up in 2004 he had invaded and occupied two countries. Seems to me there was a stronger case for war-mongering than not.

I also don't remember fear-mongering along the lines of "WWIII", except perhaps from fringe elements (though I'm willing to be corrected if people can find actual quotes). I remember that campaign more as "Bush got us into two misguided wars, he's a war-monger, we need to get out."

Again, show me evidence to the contrary. I'm getting old, after all, and it's quite possible I'm forgetting something.


I'll actually respond to this seriously.

A major factor in winning wars has always been planning for it properly (from a logistical perspective) and then managing those logistics and details properly. A case study in how not to do this was Iraq, and we hashed over, on this board, 10 years ago, how poorly Rumsfeld et. al. prepared for that war.

Trump is not a planner in this vein. He likes to close deals, and close them fast. Winning a war requires determination, detail-orientation, and persistence over a long period. Whatever his qualities, these (specifically "over a long period") are not Trump's qualities.

Now you may say that he'll bring on people who can do this. That's fine. But the President's werewithal to see these things through, with all the boring details, is key to the eventual success.

To that extent I would say yes, we're more likely to win a war (or, to use the actual language, succeed in a protracted military engagement) with Clinton than Trump. But I would agree that Trump is far more likely to more liberally use U.S. military strength than Clinton.

Even there, though, Jon, I'm not sure it's a great thing. Using that military costs a lot of money. If Trump (or whomever) goes about deploying it everywhere, are we really going to see a return on that investment? Who do you think is going to care about that more, Trump or Clinton?

If we would have invaded North Vietnam and gotten the Chinese involved we could have nuked them and gotten the Soviets involved. Once the ICBMs start flying victory is just around the corner.

That should be a campaign slogan.

How have we not had Donald Trump's face .gif'd onto this scene? Dr. Strangelove: Major Kong Rides The Bomb 1080p - YouTube

It was a pretty hot discussion point on the liberal blogs around 2007 whether Bush was going to invade Iran and then use that as a pretext to cancel the 2008 presidential election. I was just googling a few of those and the common tone was "you're stupid if you think this group is going to willingly hand over power".

And there were pretty big protests around the country after Bush won in 2004. There was a lot of rhetoric about what his plans were for war and global domination. Here's one thread from here around then discussing that:

Not sure I've ever seen anything like this... - Front Office Football Central

It's a weird presidential election year, maybe the weirdest in our lifetimes, but IMO we haven't come close to the intensity and nastiness surrounding 2004. In comparison, this year is more like a reality show where we all have our favorite characters.

Edit: IMO, the rhetoric around Trump is more based on his actual words and has much more credibility. Trump wants to do things in the United States right now in the name of security that Bush didn't do even after 9/11. Which is pretty amazing if you think about it. So what happens if we actually did have a 9/11, or even a much smaller-scale terrorist attack? He's already promised that he's going to wipe out ISIS very quickly (without telling us how.) Presumably that's either a nuke attack or a ground invasion in several middle eastern countries.

And it's not like with Bush where his supporters and even moderates responded defensively to the exaggerated talk of of his plans - most Trump supporters openly defend these policies and actually want these wars and policies implemented against Muslims and are supporting him in the hopes that those things happen.

Oh yeah, I remember that. To be clear, though, we're talking about "liberal blogs". I don't think you could call that "out of control".

An update heading into the week of Indiana-ness...

Indiana, with 83 delegates, has an open primary on Tuesday and Guam, with 7 delegates has a closed caucus on Saturday.

Sanders is vowing to go to the convention. He says the nomination is still up in the air.

Is that a realistic assessment?

Technically, it is. Hillary leads by 293 pledged delegates, with 1,023 pledged delegates yet to be decided.

While all these primaries are decided proportionally and there are big states where Hillary should do well, like California where the polls have her up 7 and almost half the remaining delegates are at stake, lightning could strike.

Realistically, though, her lead is going to be around 400 in pledged delegates going into the convention.

And there are 714 superdelegates - one for every one of Babe Ruth's career home runs.

Little Known Story: The Bambino was given his nickname after a local election in the Bronx. An Italian-American Democrat was a long shot in a state legislature race, but there was a big push at the end.

Every single vote was crucial, and there was a woman in the building where Ruth lived who couldn't vote because she had three very young children at home and her husband worked all day at a factory. Ruth loved small children, and he promised to take great care of them so she could make the trip. He even arranged for a taxi to take her to the polling station.

The candidate ended up winning by one vote. Later, he became quite powerful in state politics, even becoming the leader of the New York Democratic party. Since New York was the largest state by far at the time, this was a very important position in the party. He so admired Ruth that when the superdelegate concept came into being, he proposed tying the number to Ruth's career home-run total.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Since superdelegates are unpledged, Sanders' argument is that they will see he is doing better in the national polling, and will all reverse their positions and agree to support him for the nomination.

Is this realistic?

Well, yes, he is faring better in the "what-if" matchup polling. But Hillary is better known and has faced much more negative advertising. Sanders has had a fairly free ride so far because Hillary is afraid to turn off his enthusiastic young voters when she pivots to the general election.

Secondly, what is a superdelegate? Essentially a party insider. Hillary has a 498-41 lead in superdelegates who have endorsed one or the other candidate. Only 175 haven't made an endorsement. Hillary is still getting most of the new endorsements. Why? Because Sanders isn't a Democrat. He always votes with the Democrats, but spends the rest of his time ranting about how Democrats are just as bad as Republicans and we need to dismantle banks and Wall Street. So why would a party insider endorse him? Same reason Cruz is picking up so many Republican delegates for the unbound second vote even though Trump is crushing him in the national vote. Even in Vermont, which Sanders won by more than 70 points with the voters, he only leads Hillary in superdelegates, 6-3. And that 6 is 15% of his nation-wide total.

Even if Sanders grabbed all 175 superdelegates sitting on the fence, he'd need 78% of the pledged delegates remaining to win this race. With nothing but proportional contests, and an uphill battle in California and New Jersey among other states, that's simply not a reasonable thought.

Still, he'll go in the convention mathematically alive, lose on the first vote, give his usual stump speech, provide a lukewarm endorsement for Hillary, and go home.

And the cry of a million millenials and hipsters will be heard across social media

Wow, it's really neck and neck right now. The lead seems to change every time a set of votes come in.

Bernie Sanders has done more zombie situps in this campaign than the Undertaker has done in his career. Keeps a bit of spice in things

Woot.
Bernie declared in Indiana. Fairly close, but by the looks of it Bernie carried the more populous North. Hillary carried the counties along the Ohio, which is probably a good indication she'll win Kentucky. Still, Bernie's keeping the fight up.

Surprised a bit by the margin of Trump's Indiana win, but maybe not. Is it the quality of Trump or the lack of quality of Cruz?

Yes.

Not a single poll had Bernie ahead. The average was +7 for Clinton.

Something to keep in mind in the leadup to November. A lot will hinge on younger voter turnout, and they don't answer the phone. If you want to reach them directly, you have to text them when they're driving or sitting down at a restaurant.

Though, interestingly enough, here is what Nate Silver said around 5:45pm today:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog...pdate-17291359

Current Standings:

Clinton: 1,704 pledged, 498 superdelegates, 2,202 total
Sanders: 1,414 pledged, 41 superdelegates, 1,455 total

2,387 required to win

940 remaining pledged delegates, 175 unpledged.

Sanders needs 83.6% of the remaining delegates to win. Even if there were no superdelegates at all, he'd need about 66% of the remaining delegates.

Still, today was his 19th win in 44 contests. The nomination may be secure for Clinton, but Sanders is making quite a statement.

This is awesomeness.




And sadly, true. :(