I love this post so much. :D

There seems to be a slight arbitrage opportunity at PredictIt right now. There's an old market on will the next president elected be a woman. It is not getting much play. You can buy a No share on that market and a Yes share on Hillary Clinton on the "who will win the presidency" market for ~.90. The only way that those don't turn into a dollar is if we end up with a non-Hillary woman being elected.

I have not dug into this, so there may not be a ton of shares available. And PredictIt limits your purchases. But, .90 to get a dollar in November, for those who want to look into it.

I wonder why it was ever that way? Fiorina? Palin a long time ago? Obama pulls martial law like I've been reading on some internet sites? :)

It was established early so folks like Fiorina, Palin, Warren, and Haley were still possible.

Didn't take long for that to go away. It's like a 97 cent price now.

We need a website for that sort of stuff.

Looks like Hillary is going to get a narrow win in NV. That might spell the end for Bernie. He's in for a real rough patch in the next couple of weeks.

It's still all about the email thing. In the end, an elderly, angry Jewish white man, even if he's in tune with the politics of the left, is going to struggle to gain votes.

Everyone should notice, on both sides, the enthusiasm he generates from younger white voters, however. He may be a long shot himself, but his message is an important one for the future of American politics.

Interesting bit of "magic wall" analysis on CNN earlier. If Hillary wins every remaining state by a 55-45 margin, taking 49 of 50 states, then she would arrive at the convention short of pledged delegates for the nomination. She'd go over the top with superdelegates of course but she's not exactly keen on that method.

Can you imagine how badly that would gall her? To be beholden like that?
As utterly loathsome as her opponent is, the prospect is at least mildly amusing.

Oops wrong thread

Especially when you look at some entrance polling data and you see blacks went overwhelming for Clinton. SC and Super Tuesday should give Clinton a massive lead.

And when you look at the enthusiasm generated at the right, one wonders who may be left in the future for those in the middle. Are the two major parties doomed to move more and more to the edges?

Until the people in the middle show the same energy and willingness to finance campaigns, yeah.

I agree with this guy.

ping Elizabeth Warren

Unless there's a smoking gun (and I think we would have seen one by now), I don't see how the "email thing" is going to create new people who distrust Clinton. Again, she's been a known quantity for over two decades. Opinions on her are calcified. They're not going to change because of the latest Republican witch hunt.

The same young, white, college educated, middle to upper-middle to upper-class voters who also found/find standard bearers in Warren (per QS), Wellstone, Kucinich, Bradley, etc....

It's great, but it doesn't win a national election.

I think I'm with Jim suggesting that if an improbable candidate like Sanders can make this serious a run by lighting a fire with that subset of the (D) universe, then maybe that's a serious shift. Of course Kucinich wasn't serious...but the numbers bore that out resoundingly. Nothing to see here.

This time, when Sanders declared he was running, virtually everyone pegged this as a similar quixotic effort to generate conversation and to drive some left-leaning elements into the party platform and debate. Which is a healthy part of the process, many wold say. But he wasn't actually running to be President.

The fact that he ha made this into this much of a race is possibly a sign that the party is really primed for something different. Maybe it's transient, but maybe not. If I'm in the half dozen people working with Senator Warren, though, I am really liking what I'm seeing here. She could be the next one to take that torch, and could work for the next few years on outreach across racial lines to address the obvious weak spot there.

She could be a really powerful candidate in 4/8 years.

Politically strong, yes, but she will be 71 in 2020. What the Democrats want is someone in his or her 30s right now who can get up there at the convention in July and attract notice. I don't know if that person exists.

I think the Clintons want that to be Cory Booker. He's the only youngish surrogate they have doing the talking head circuit.

Though I think its somewhat telling that the far-left folks attracting notice are a person in his 70s and a person in her 60s. It appears to me that the younger elected Democrats are bit less anti-capitalist than the Sanders or Warrens of the world would like, and are more third way.

Who knows what the mood will be in the next open Dem election, but if it's like this year, Booker is a square peg for a round hole.

I think the Dems do have a problem with a shallow bench. Partially that's a legacy of 2010 redistricting and partially that's what happens when you've held the WH for 16 of 24 years. Generally young candidates are insurgents.

It's not about creating new people who distrust Clinton. It's about her not being able to capture pretty core Democratic voters who see this as another reason not to vote for her. I count myself in this category.

I *think* what Jim is saying there (and if this is what he's saying, I agree with it,) is that the chances that Sanders have for earning the nomination are "still all about the email thing." In other words, apart from HRC dropping dead, Sanders has basically no hope of getting the nomination unless that thing blows up crazy, she gets indicted, etc.

And more importantly than the substance of the email thing is the impression it leaves. It's just a constant reminder that when you're in the Clinton business, you are simply going to be surrounded by outright sliminess, legalistic excuses, absurd denialism, and questionable judgment. Despite the whitewash of the Bill Clinton record, that is a real hallmark of what he brought to the White House. Not entirely of his doing, no, but it's definitely the way they operate.

So... even if you don't really care about the email thing, having the latest Clintonesque mini-scandal still floating around does serve a political purpose. I think an awful lot of people with "Ready for Hillary" bumper stickers would still bite their lip a bit if asked one of those perennial poll questions "Which candidate do you trust?" You need to be hardcore to stay in step there.

I'm still of the view that Bernie wouldn't have this much support if the mainstream voters were enthused at all about the mainstream candidate, but I think a lot of Hillary's support is in, as QS and digamma suggested, the "bite their lip" camp.

I'll put it this way: I'm voting for Sanders in the primary (assuming he's still in the race by May, when Indiana does its primary)...but by the general election, I'll likely not be voting democrat.

I don't dislike Clinton on policy, generally. (Plenty of quibbles, but not any more than I have with dems overall.) I just don't feel like she's honest. And I can't vote for that. I'll vote for the opposition first...or more likely, I'll throw my vote away on a third party if the opposition turns out to be Trump or Cruz.

How you try to get us to where I think we should be going is just as important to me as getting there.

+1

Reading this, am I right that anyone can vote in the Democratic/Republican primaries? Always assumed that you had to be a paid up member of that particular party to vote in the primaries.

Every state (or really, the party leaders in that state) can make its own rules on that. In my state, the Dem primary is open to anyone who isn't a registered Republican, the Republican primary is open only to registered Republicans.

Edit: This link has a list of primaries with info about which are closed to party members and which are open.

http://www.uspresidentialelectionnew...dule-calendar/

...and comments like those are a reason why I think the SCOTUS vacancy is on balance good for the Democrats in the general election. If you lean that way, but have reservations about the party nominee, there's nothing better than fraidy-cat fearmongering about a crazy Court (or the ability to stop one) to help crack the whip and get you back in line. Surely that strategy will be fully sharpened by July.

Oh, if that's what Jim meant, then I certainly agree. What I would emphasize is that constant mentions of "the email thing" are either wishful thinking or just concern trolling at this point.


Yes, fine, but let's not forget that this is primarily the product of a GOP cottage industry built to slime the Clintons that started with Gennifer Flowers in 1992 and show no signs of abating. Did anything Bill Clinton do approach the significance of selling the Iraq War, or outing Valerie Plame, or Iran Contra, just to name a few examples.

Perhaps the Clintons don't help themselves with their manner, but to essentially assert that the Clinton Administration was more shady than any since Nixon is to simply buy the narrative as told by Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, and everyone else in that circle over the past two decades. Kudos to the GOP for creating such a lasting stain on the Democratic party, but let's not pretend it's anything other than a particularly effective smear campaign.

Hell, I didn't know there were even any Ds left that tried to defend the Clinton's as anything other than the slimiest occupants of the WH in history. It's not even that hard for me to find Ds that will admit they figure Hil had Foster murdered.

Learn something new every day I guess.

I could be wrong, but I *think* this is an unusual position, and that brings up a dynamic that is increasingly likely to be in play in November: in a Clinton vs. Trump general, we have the potential for record turnouts, but not because of enthusiasm for a candidate, but because of utter disdain/hatred of the other side's candidate.

I dunno, Hillary simply isn't nearly the boogeyman she once was when you put her beside Grandpa Unicorn.

The hate still exists for HC but I honestly don't get a sense that it's as widespread. I mean, hell, they've managed to find a candidate that could get me to actively campaign for her (hypothetically) so I think that HC-hate remains deep but not quite as wide as it once was.

Or utter disdain for both candidates. I can see where record numbers of those who usually vote just leave that field empty. Of the five who still seem in the running, I could never vote for four and the fifth becomes more unappealing every day.


My take on this is that young people are just as angry as everyone else. Polls consistently show the generic congress-beast is extraordinarily unpopular.

For fiscal conservatives, the reason is the debt. If we're approaching $20 trillion in debt, we're spending our future. They genuinely believe that their children will be the first generation in America who will be less well off down the road.

Under Obama alone, the national debt will have grown by about $40,000 per person.

But how is that message received by Sanders supporters? Well, you look at who supports him and it's as overwhelming an age thing as anything I've seen in politics. He sees the same problem as the fiscal conservatives. His answer is that if older people are spending their children's future through bigger government, the answer is to spend that money directly on the children instead. They see today's politics as a big party where old people are propping themselves up with tomorrow's money. They want their share before it's all gone.

Fiscal conservatives want smaller government to fix the debt problem itself. Sanders wants bigger government to literally insure that future. Same primary issue, but radically different solutions.

Thanks for the link. Didn't know that the Pacific Islands had their caucuses either. Or Puerto Rico.

After a quick Wikipedia check these territories can vote for the presidential nomination but not for the Presidential elections. Is there a particular reason for this?

Part of the problem is that I'm not a very good (or very dedicated, I guess) progressive by Dem standards. I'm a registered Democrat, but I actually prefer the SCOTUS to lean to the conservative side.

I'm a staunch believer in the idea that you need progressives to push the "everyman" envelope, but you also need powerful conservatives to slow them down...because people excited about anything are generally idiots. But you also need progressives to be rabble-rousing constantly and pushing the agenda for various sorts of social reforms...because runaway conservatives have a tendency to be authoritarian assholes. (And I don't even mean the political leadership -- I mean the people in my own town, the people on my Facebook, the average grassroots citizen.)

To some extent, I have the luxury of taking the long view, looking at generational progress rather than "this shit needs to be fixed NOW because the situation has become untenable!!!" because I'm a middle class white guy in mostly rural middle America. I also figure that there's never going to be an end of problems to be solved, so it's not like we're ever going to arrive at some progressive or conservative Promised Land where someone delivers fully on all of the promises of their ideals.

I think I'm a very naive voter in most ways, because the general election is more like the World Cup of Politics for me. Every four years, I give a shit. In between, I'm not really paying much attention.

The state by state and DC voting is for electoral college votes with the winner of each state getting all of the electoral college votes for the state*. There are 538 of these votes for president, so you need 270. The territories do not have any electoral college representation so even if they voted for the president it wouldn't actually matter.

They can vote for the nominee because they are part of the national party, although they have very few delegates.


*a few states have some weird proportional districting of their electoral college votes, but it's winner take all in the vast majority of states.

If my views on politics have shifted any in the last few years, it's to emphasize the latter over the former to such a degree where it's not even close. And it's not that in a vacuum I wouldn't highly value character, but I can't imagine, for example, subjecting gay Americans to a rollback of their recent civil rights gains because that other guy seemed so nice.

You're just daring me to use the rolleyes emoticon now.


And with plenty of good reason. Not only, as you note, are they likely to have a lower standard of living than their parents, but getting off the ground post-College is now harder than ever.

I would say that Trump and Sanders are articulating different solutions to these problems for young people that speak directly to different demographic groups within that group of young people.


I don't think you even have to be a fiscal conservative to believe that.

Has it been established that our generation is better off than our parents?

(I mean, we're talking Millennials, right? Because I'm not sure Gen X has ever toppled the Boomers.)

It's a good question, cuervo. One that can't be completely answered until the generation dies off, of course, but I think the common wisdom is that GenX is the first U.S. generation that won't improve on the preceding generation, and the Millennials might be the first generation that slips backwards.

The big positive impact that might help GenX is how much the Boomer retirement wave opens up advancement opportunities. But, on the other hand, if the Boomers continue their tradition of gutting every government benefit* as they age out of it, GenX could have especially difficult retirements.


*Generally those put in place by their parents' generation.

If we don't get skipped*, anyway. I figure I'm already considered too old in my field to be any next hot thing...

FWIW, I'm not even considering retirement. I figure I'm going to work until I physically can't.


* I was thinking about this in terms of representation, too. At least at the top. As has been mentioned, we still have Clinton, Trump, Sanders being talked about in this election, and folks setting up Warren as a future candidate. Cruz and Rubio are around my age (couple years older), but what if Hillary wins and gets 8 years? How many elections do the Xers get past that before we are considered too old -- even if we aren't as old as the Boomers still sticking around? Will we have the same staying power?

Reality bites.

And I think that is where Hillary Clinton will thank God in the general election that Bernie Sanders was her main primary opponent, and actually got a bit of traction. The reason being when Trump (or whoever) tries to call Hillary Clinton a socialist (as they will), the attack will bounce off simply due to the fact that you actually had an honest-to-goodness Democratic Socialist on the Dem Primary ballot who attempted to pummel Clinton from the left.

As for the other discussion going on, I'm with flere here. The right has been trying to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Clintons. I'm not going to deny that Bill, especially, has been a slick operator. However, I'm also not sold that his 'sliminess' was an outlier. Maybe George H.W. Bush didn't get personally his hands dirty, but he definitely had Lee Atwater do so. And maybe George W. Bush didn't personally get his hands dirty - but Karl Rove and Dick Cheney definitely got his dirty work done. Is it because there is a feeling that Clinton is more personally involved in the dirty work?

Anyways, I trust Hillary Clinton to get policy done, or at the very least work to pass policy. She may be slick herself (though I think most of that is just Bill slickness that gets transferred onto her), but whatever slickness is there is in service of passing her agenda... you know, LBJ like (hopefully).

I'll take Bill's slickness over GWB dragging us into unneeded wars anytime. Bill is the best president in my lifetime.

Similar opportunity.

NO on Will the Democrats win is currently at a 39 cent buy.

HILLARY to win is currently at 49 cents.

:lol:

I'll put Obama over Bill, but I share the sentiment. I just kind of look at these Sanders supporters raking Bill Clinton over the coals and am just left with my mouth gaping. Didn't they realize what happened in the 3 Presidential elections prior to Clinton winning? Or just how Congress refused to let his most progressive policies passed (Universal Health Care, gays in the military - Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a compromise), and then he turned to the center to get things done. Some of the stuff isn't what people on the left would prefer today, but there was widespread desire for those changes back then, and of course things move forward (I'm sure FDR was against gay marriage too ;)).

Add to that there are tons of folks, esp in the Democratic Party down South, that still like Bill Clinton.