Whenever AOC does run, she will be attacked for not being progressive enough.

AOC has shown a willingness to work with moderates for incremental changes. She too reasonable for many of the far left. I stopped following John Cusack months ago on Twitter because of his constant attacks on her not being liberal enough.
The number one reason the far left will never gain real power: they eat their young even worse than the run of the mill Democrat.

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Three primaries going ahead today, looks like three more big Biden wins.

Sanders probably won't drop out but I'd love to see this over with and Biden step into the nominee role now.

Edit: AOC has really grown on me, I love her measured perspective on what the Dems have to be to move forward successfully.

Bernie dropping out now for the good of the party and the country would be the right move.

I think Bernie drops, talks about how we need to focus on the virus, not bickering, Dems and country need to unify to remove incompetent President, etc. If there's ever a moment for him to look magnanimous, this is it.

But Bernie's been opening new offices. I think he's playing a cynical strategy hoping that the virus blunts Biden's momentum.

Or b/c every primary will now have weirdness related to voting, he can claim he was robbed when he loses a primary.

Absolutely nothing about Bernie makes me think he will do the right thing here.

Yes.

In 2016 he kept complaining about the superdelegates and then ran all summer on a strategy of maybe the superdelegates would give it to him.

I was thinking good thing Bernie won't be around in 2024 and then remembered he's just a year older than Sanders.

Yeah, but in the Nevada debate Bernie reversed his position and said the delegate leader should win. That was when it looked like it he would be the leader. He needs to drop out and endorse the nominee.

No surprise to me but do wonder about the demographics & breakdown. Do these also hold true for the younger crowd also.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/polit...rch/index.html

It looks like Bernie is getting obliterated in Florida. Roughly 2.5 to 1 with around 30% of the votes counted.

There looks like almost as many votes for people that have already drop as for Bernie in Florida. He is getting spanked.

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Currently 60.5% vs 22.7% with 58% reported.

Isn't it safe to call it by now?

Surprising turnout in FL. Much higher than 2016.

I think, just to be safe, we should let the Supreme Court decide Florida’s winner.

They couldn't call it till all the polls where closed, Ed.

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It closed at 7pm I thought?

Looks like Florida voters don't care about the literacy rates in Cuba.

Bernie miscalculated that all that support for him in 2016 was actually for him but it was just anti-Hillary. Biden is more likeable and winning every county in every state. Sanders needs to drop out tonight and endorse Biden. In 2016 he was actually winning states. Now he isn't even winning counties.

The panhandle didn't close until 8. Two different time zones.

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I joked about the Iowa caucus being the new whipping boy but am wrong. Yeah, Florida still holds strong even after 20 years!

Thanks! I was confused.

That's what I have been seeing, Jas. Many people chock it up to simply sexism, and some of it might have been. Much of the difference though, comes from how many people just did not like Hillary. She made many enemies inside the Democratic party.

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And after 4 years of Trump people just want someone stable and competent and that's Biden. Maybe that has something to do with it too.

Bernie is getting killed. At this point he probably should suspend.

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I've never read the comments on PredictIt before. I wandered down there tonight to see if people had theories on why Hillary is still over 5%.

Pro Tip: Never ever read the comments on PredictIt. I was there for five minutes, and now I think that I'm convinced that the FBI framed Michael Flynn because he was trying to stop Mark Rich from creating coronavirus to help Bill Clinton rape Jeffery Epstein. Or something.

They're all just trying to sway the odds to help their position. Or at least, that's what I tell myself. It's more entertaining if you believe that.

Progressive Marie Newman beat pro-life conservative Dem incumbent Dan Lipinski. This is a good thing. We need people like Manchin in states like West Virginia. There is no reason for a guy like Lipinski in a seat Clinton won by 15 points.

Clean sweep by Biden. Congratulations.

Bernie, give it up. Accept the fact you were a bum and deadbeat dad until you got elected to office at 41 (?) and it wasn't the system holding you down or oppressing you. It was you being you. Don't give Trump a chance at another 4 years because of your hubris.

Nobody is the same person today they were almost four decades ago. What matters is who Bernie Sanders is now, not who he was the first half of his life.

All the more reason to drop out. He shouldn't be focusing efforts on a lost campaign as a senator.

Or at least "indefinitely suspend" the campaign in case Biden has a heart attack or something.

I could be wrong about this, but I think that all of the candidates who "drop out" are technically "suspending" their campaigns.

I always figured that was for campaign finance reasons (and it might be), but I also figure that would let someone jump back in if a disaster happens.

Ok, I giggled.

It appears Sanders struggled primarily in the urban, rural, and suburban parts of the state. pic.twitter.com/aETmqa7vKN

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 18, 2020

I assume "Bum until 41" is related to Hillary's attack on bernie claiming that he never worked until he won an election at that age? Which is not true at all anyway.

Yep. And if something happens to Biden, I wouldn't be surprised if folks like Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and even Harris jumped back in to try to win on the 2nd or 3rd ballot.

I think there's also just no legal mechanism to remove yourself from a ballot once you qualify. My Dem primary ballot had 15+ names on it. If Deval Patrick got the most votes, then I think he'd win the primary, even though he's not campaigning.

Progressives need to concentrate on getting more representation in Congress on the the local level. Things like the Marie Newman win. Get rid of the DINO's in Dem+8 districts and get more Representatives like AOC and gang. The change won't be a "revolution." Revolutions burn out. How about good, sustainable growth?

If the party go towards democratic socialists like AOC then I'm voting Libertarian all across the board.

Yeah. I am ok with AOC types that seem to be somewhat reasonable but the Bernie Bros and ladies I have seen on CNN during the debates not thanks. They are completely not willing to listen to anyone over the age of 35 it seems. If the party is taken over by that crew I too will leave and provide my vote elsewhere.

2018 was wonderful in that regard, I really hope it can continue once Trump is gone and that it doesn't take a monster like him to generate even the slightest interest towards real change.

Sanders did get a county in the Midwest after getting shutout in Missouri and Michigan: Champaign, home of U-Ill

Tulsi drops out.

I wonder where her 1,000 supporters go to?

Trump.

Tulsi did endorse Biden. Bernie needs to do the same.

Back to Russia?

Strange stuff is going on in Dem primary twitter. Biden hasn't spoken since last Tuesday (which seems perfectly normal to me considering we are in a pandemic). Some Sanders supporters are hashtagging #WhereIsBiden which the speculation (based on nothing really) that he has coronavirus or something nefarious is going on. I think Biden is supposed to speak today and there have been reports that he's been having conversations with Dem Congressional leadership on the legislation proposed. Sanders has convinced some of his donors to give to coronavirus research instead of his campaign and has done some coronavirus live stream things lately - though did manage to miss some votes in Congress while doing so.

I would think those two (especially Sanders given his age and recent health problems) are probably best to stay isolated even if completely healthy.

Bernie's weekend really highlighted both his positives and negatives. On the one hand, he had clear ideas for what to do and communicated those to his supporters well. On the other hand, he was unable or unwilling to work with his colleagues to actually influence the bill being negotiated.

I'm not sure it's effective with voters, but kudos to Biden for comparing Trump to McClellan.

It's nuts to think the President, who loves to use executive power wouldn't deploy the military to construct makeshift hospitals. Is it because Biden suggested it in his coronavirus address a week and a half ago?

So a new nightmare scenario occurred to me, and I hope it doesn't happen, but definitely in the realm of possibility given age. Say Trump and Biden both get coronavirus, and both unfortunately succumb to it.

What happens with the election? Is it Pence vs. Biden's VP (Adams?) or do you have to redo a condensed primary process in the middle of a pandemic, or …

I don't know the law at all in this kind of area.

Suppose it depends on timing, right? If they haven't had the conventions yet, they haven't officially decided on the nominee.

I think it’s more likely he doesn’t want to because in his world every extreme measure is seen as a weakness. If he does it he will just claim he had the plan in place long before Biden mentioned it and we had been working on it behind the scenes all along.

Bloomberg is apparently not going to be doing what he said. Huge shocker!

Bloomberg lays off hundreds as coronavirus bears down - POLITICO

Looks like Bernie supporters are trying to lay the #metoo card on Biden

Did you see the interview where Biden said he was a professor and Penn after he was done in the Senate?

A simple google search shows he was a professor at Penn. Now it looks like a silly, prestige position, but he wasn't lying or confused.

I guess if I givwe my buddies $10 to call me president of Saturn, so be it.

Not quite. Big schools all have these positions where they hire industry leaders or politicians that don't do much, but are highlighted by the college as a prestigious professor.

6 of one, half a dozen of another

Ohio GOP fucking with the primary election.

Are you surprised? It was as predictable as sun-rise. Republicans are going to make any move to vote by mail as convoluted as possible. The last thing they want is people actually being able to vote easily.

Few things at play here:

(1) Make it more likely for Bernie to win (keeping Bernie around hurts the Dems at this point).

(2) Trial balloon to see what they can get away with in terms of restricting the vote. The general outline is "[Mumble mumble] WUHAN VIRUS [Mumble Mumble], and that's why we had to close all of the polling places in black and Hispanic neighborhoods in November for public health." But the more they can get a sense of what the courts will let them get away with at this point, the better they can start to fill in the mumbles.

(3) Discredit vote by mail by running it very poorly. The vote by mail states show us that it increases turnout and decreases fraud. But the GOP likes low turnout, so they don't want to do it.

(And I'm not quite this extreme, but if you are one of the people who thinks that the GOP also does not mind foreign interference in elections, then the "decreases fraud" part of vote by mail is also something they would dislike.)

Cuomo up to 9% to win the Democratic nomination on PredictIt.

I guess the theory is that Biden possibly gets sick, and if you end up with an open/contested convention, Cuomo has become the golden boy candidate?

dola:

I would note that as that possibility has risen, so has Trump's odds for reelection.

Another interesting tidbit which could work against Biden

Don't overvalue a single poll.

The basic problem of Bernie stans sitting at home or voting for Trump is seen in other polls, but the narrow race and the enthusiasm gap hasn't been consistent in polling.

I have seen a lot of #NeverBiden stuff on Twitter. A lot of Bernie stans going on about how Biden is the same as Trump (it was silly when they compared Hillary to Trump, but this is even more ridiculous IMO - now that we've seen how Trump has governed and any populist things he was campaigning on was a lie).

The Sanders base has a lot of people that don't vote (even for Bernie) and people that won't vote if it doesn't involve Bernie. They really are the left's Trump supporters. For a lot of them it's Bernie or chaos so that they can tell you how much better Bernie would have been.

An interesting "deep dive" on the woman who accused Biden of sexual molestation:


https://medium.com/@eddiekrassenstei...n-e4cb3ee38460

If any of you think Biden beats Trump you are seriously mistaken.

Im not a Trump guy, but Biden is not the guy.

The only way he wins is getting the middle group of voters. That isnt happening. No matter how poorly Trump is handling this, because most of America doesnt believe this virus is real. And because it is hitting mostly urban areas, where the dems dominate and not the rural areas where the Trump voters live, guess what?

Polling doesn't support either of those claims.

From the article:

"With this said, however, it is the media’s responsibility to thoroughly investigate accusations before jumping into a story and allowing those allegations to potentially destroy another human being, or, in this case, a political campaign. Every woman deserves to be heard, but every media outlet still has the responsibility of investigating and then relaying to the public all of the facts at face value."

The hypocrisy of this statement is staggering.

What JPhillips said. My question for tarcone is this: what evidence is there in polling, special elections, the '18 midterms, etc. for your contentions? Anyone can believe whatever they wish, but all the indicators right now point in one direction.

How so? This woman is being heard, and her facts do not add up. Both statements are true.

And you guys said the same thing in 16. All the indicators said HRC wins easily.

Take a poll in rural Missouri or Rural Georgia or......

Polls are taken in mostly left leaning areas. There is a greater concentration of people and its more easily done.

Obama lost a ton of seats in his mid terms, more than Trump. That always happens with a sitting president.

I'll give you that Biden won't win Missouri or Georgia.

This argument has been dealt with on these forums in the past. It's part misleading, and part totally false. Most notable though is the complete lack of any evidence whatsoever presented to support your previous assertions.

Trump winning in '16 was a historical outlier. Only twice in modern history has someone lost the overall popular vote and won the election, the other done being the razor-thin Bush-Gore campaign in '00. Before that, it hadn't happened since 1888. The national polls were right on the money with Clinton getting 3% more of the vote. Additionally, there was a historically high level of undecideds which also played a major factor.

Credible polls are specifically crafted to match the electorate, and there is a great deal of analysis done to ensure they do. Responses are weighted in order to ensure a representative sampling. Ergo, where the poll is taken is not the important issue. Methodology is. And again, disregard polls if you want. What other evidence do you have?

Midterms - Trump's losses in 2018 are higher than the modern average, and with a good economy. Special elections went the same. Obama's results in 2010 were indeed worse, but this is a half-truth as his 2012 results were better than Trump's in '18. For example, George W. Bush's midterms results were both better than Trump's showing in '18.

Spin it how you want. HRC did win the popular vote. But she won them in the wrong places. Trump won the votes in all the right places. And those places will come out and vote again.

No doubt this anecdotal. But Im on the ground. I see what is happening. I was in Gatlinburg TN a couple weeks ago. The people there were very Pro Trump and blamed the mefia, the Chinese and the Dems for this virus.

I talk to people outside my bubble. If you dont think those people that came out and voted fro Trump wont in 2020 after all the crap the dems threw at him this past year and then this virus and the strength of the economy, you are sorely mistaken.

Sometimes polls are wrong, no matter how hard you wish they were right.

I will not vote for Trump, I will not vote for Biden. But Biden is not the guy to get the voters out to win.

If HRC couldnt do it, what makes you think Biden can?

And, surprising no one . . . https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...63d_story.html

But I was in Massachusettes, New York, and California and people at diners love Biden.

Uh... because people don't irrationally hate Biden as they did with Clinton? Look at the Democratic primary - it's becoming very, very obvious that in 2016 a lot of the people voting for Bernie didn't do it because they were all in for democratic socialism, but because they didn't like Hillary. That's why Sanders won Michigan and almost won Missouri in 2016, but 4 years later Biden wins every county in Michigan and Missouri - and those races aren't even close.

It's not spin. As you know, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a fan of Biden. I have no axe to grind here aside from a general strong dislike of Trump.


I don't think they'll do it because they didn't in '18, because in literally every special election that's been held the GOP has significantly underperformed what Trump did in '16, and because the polling data all points that way.


Biden isn't disliked nearly as much as HRC. Hillary was the second-worst presidential candidate in modern history behind Trump. Again that's not opinion, it's what the favorable/unfavorable splits tell us. Biden is basically break-even on that question, far better than either of them; Hillary was double-digits underwater by this point in '16 and stayed there. He's simply a far better candidate, not because I say so but because the public says so.

I live in rural Michigan, where there is not nearly the anti-Biden sentiment as there was anti-Hillary. I mention this only because it's just as relevant as your on-the-ground observations, which is to say anecdotally interesting vis a vis our individual experiences but not at all germane in the big picture.

As was the case with you fraud Libertarians (Republicans that are cowards to say they are one) in 16 a vote for a 3rd party is a vote for Trump except or spin it.

:D

The thing is, none of the places you talk about really matter. Gatlinburg, TN is not a bellwether in any shape or form.

I've said it a few times on here, but a slightly better turnout at the polls in Milwaukee and Detroit gives Wisconsin and Michigan to Biden. Milwaukee showed they could do it in 2018 as they came out for one of the most boring gubernatorial candidates I've ever seen in Tony Evers.

Biden may not have been my first choice but he is winning the Democratic primary with major help from the black community, which just happens to be the major demographic in these cities where he needs the turnout.

Yeah that's nonsense. I voted third party and it wasn't a vote for Trump. You can just as easily say it's a vote for Clinton, which would also be wrong. I do not buy the false binary lesser-of-two-evils argument. I also know personally multiple people who are libertarians, not republicans by a different name, and vote that way.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. That's going to be where the election is decided. You flip them like the Democrats did the House in 2018, Biden has 278 EV. Everything else (Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, New Hampshire) are bonuses.

We agree to disagree which is what makes America great.....well up to the last few years;)

I started the year thinking about the fundamentals, the economy, incumbency, etc. Now, though, I think the election comes down to the virus, not just those infected and dead, but how it affects the campaign and the vote. Does one of the candidates catch the virus? Is there a treatment that saves thousands of lives? How does the economy bounce back, if it does at all in 2020?

LOL. Lessor of two evils taken up a notch! I have no choice but to vote for the two establishment candidates, why even put 3 or 4 other choices on the ballot?!?!? And all candidates on the ballot are a vote for Trump since I support Democrats!

Trump barely won Michigan in 16. Do you honestly think after the way he has treated their governor and the state as a whole during this he wont lose any votes?

I can't really see Biden losing PA. He's from there and has always been more popular with white working class voters than Hillary. They view him as one of them. And you're seeing that in the primary results. Biden wins every county in these states. Michigan has been trending blue so I cant see him losing there either. Biden just has to pick up one more state to win(WI, AZ, NC, FL). There's a lot of time left and a lot can happen but I think Biden is the favorite right now. It'll be interesting to see Trump's poll numbers as the lockdown continues and voters get their stimulus checks, but the economy continues to struggle into the fall.

I didn't see a lot of details other than Pelosi pushing for "vote by mail". IMO this is premature and can see we will have most of this stabilized by then (e.g. curve is flatted, we have lots of respirators and masks, therapeutics will be in the market etc.).

If this is by snail mail, I don't see how that could work well. Vote in person and if there is a pandemic-like reason not to in Nov, then go with secured e-voting with a verifiable audit trail.

Well we have primaries going on earlier than November.

For some fucking reason, Wisconsin is NOT delaying it's April 7 primary.

You can't do e-voting without millions being unable to vote due to a lack of access to technology.