Superdelegates: WTF?

[_EAllusion]

The 2008 Democratic primary had some interesting twists and turns.

Initially, Clinton as a strong favorite. Not overwhelming, but quite strong. As the primaries drew close, Obama overtook her and it looked like he would take the election right away. However, Clinton made a surprise comeback in New Hampshire and regained the status of favorite in national polling.

However, the Obama campaign planned out a 50 state strategy with deep organization while the Clinton campaign was caught flat-footed. Over the next few weeks the Obama campaign secured enough of a delegate lead in a bunch of primaries to make it a strong favorite. Obama effectively mathematically wrapped up the election in mid-February with a landslide victory in my home state of Wisconsin. It's only around that time that Obama actually overtook Clinton in national polling. He was busy wrapping up the national election while trailing in the national polls.

Clinton's campaign juggernaught started ramping up post super-Tuesday defeat. It took a while, but team Clinton started beating the Obama campaign up left and right with its adept use of media. By early Spring, around the time of the Rev. Wright controversy stirred up by Clinton, she started trending upwards as the candidate to beat. She was winning elections again and polling well in more upcoming primaries than not. Her polling numbers gradually caught right back up with Obama.

The problem is that she was mathematically done for by then in the eyes of anyone who knows how to do reasonable projections. That's the time-frame in which the super-delegate conversation came up. She'd have the same argument Sanders can make now, which is that Obama is wrapped up in scandal, she's trending up, and voters are now responding strongly to her.

Her poll numbers only faded relative to Obama when she gave up some time in May.

[_Res Ipsa]

I'm still unable to find any citation of Sanders saying that if he were behind in pledged delegates and the popular vote, that he would try using super delegates to win.

His campaign manager said that was his strategy. And last night he completely ducked Rachel's question on the issue.

MADDOW: Tad Devine, uh, said to Greg Sargent at "The Washington Post" this week that your campaign would try to convince super delegates to support you at the convention on this -- on the strength of what you just said there, that you have a better chance in the general election, that they would try to flip those super delegates to support you even if, at the convention, you're behind both in the pledged delegates and in the popular vote.

Um, I felt...

SANDERS: Well...

MADDOW: -- I thought that was surprising. I just wanted to find out if that really is your campaign strategy.

SANDERS: Well, look, I don't want to get into -- too deeply into process here. First of all, we hope to be ahead in the delegate count. That's the important thing.

Uh, but what I do believe is that, uh, there are a lot of Republican -- a lot of super delegates who have signed onto Hillary Clinton a long, long time ago, uh, and then you have other super delegates who are in states where we have won by 20, 30, 40 points. And the people in those states are saying you know what, we voted for Bernie Sanders by 30 or 40 points, you've got to support him at the convention.

If Sanders leads the pledged delegate count at the end, he has the strongest argument there is for the supers to vote for him. There is no need to talk about hypothetical head to head match ups or whether a super should vote with their state. In 2008, the supers who voted against their states voted for Obama -- the pledged delegate winner. The only reason to talk about those other issues is to create arguments for the supers to override the pledged delegate winner.

[_EAllusion]

I'm still unable to find any citation of Sanders saying that if he were behind in pledged delegates and the popular vote, that he would try using super delegates to win.

See Res Ipsa.

But I wrote this post not that long ago:

viewtopic.php?p=961872#p961872

It contains an example of a reference. You wrote both the post above it and the post below it.

[_MsJack]

Take a look at her history of advocacy and employment on behalf of abuse victims and she looks pretty good.

Not if those victims were named Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, or Jacqueline Long.

Yes, in an atmosphere in which right wingers were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at her and her husband (remember, she killed Vince Foster, you know...), she reacted strongly to allegations of rape and infidelity against her husband.

You say this as if the charges in question are Republican fictions. They aren't. The claims by Broaddrick and Jones are credible. I don't include Kathleen Willey on that list because I do think there are problems with her claims, though things may have still happened as she said they did. Clinton and her supporters say that the victims of sex abuse should be believed. I've never had one give me a good reason for why I shouldn't believe Juanita Broaddrick or Paula Jones.

Yet not only has Clinton told people that these women shouldn't be believed because of the "evidence" against them, she has a long history of lying about even knowing who Juanita Broaddrick is:

http://opinion.injo.com/2016/01/252129- ... -assaults/

Re: Bill Clinton's infidelities (which are also not Republican fictions), I don't really care who Bill Clinton screws on the side. What I care about is that Clinton surrogates famously dealt with these scandals by slut-shaming the hell out of Clinton's mistresses. Monica Lewinsky said her life was ruined and she's been unable to find a job for most of the time since the scandal, yet Bill Clinton is a hero of the Democrat party. Why? If anyone committed the greater sin here, it was the former President.

I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same for my spouse.

I'm sure of what I would do, because my now-ex-husband was fired for workplace sexual harassment years ago. I stridently defended him at the time.

A couple of affairs later and I think it's entirely possible, if not probable, that there was something to his accuser's claims. I'd have to be an idiot to not think it was at least plausible.

Which is why I don't believe Clinton has defended her husband out of a passionate belief in his innocence. There has been a definitive pattern here, and she is not an idiot.

But that doesn't even matter, because it isn't just her husband that she's failed on. In the case of Jacqueline Long, she wouldn't even stand up to a donor who was accused of sex abuse.

Re: the child rape victim, Hillary's accounts have varied as to whether she couldn't get out of it or whether it was a favor. I don't think that matters much. Certainly a feminist can be a defense attorney and may be tasked with defending a rapist or child rapist. Certainly even a child rapist is entitled to a zealous defense under the law.

It's the part where she claimed that the victim was "emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing" that I find unforgivable, a claim that the victim says was entirely made-up. Feminists are supposed to be kind of against arguing that rape victims were seeking out the sex in question, to say nothing of this being a child rape victim. And her laughing about the case, in a taped interview, came off as very callous without any concern for the victim.

No, her conduct has not been 100% consistent with her advocacy -- neither has mine. Has yours?

I have definitely not turned my back on my principles anywhere near to the extent that Hillary Clinton has. Not even.

I don't agree with everything Clinton has done in her career. But I am more than weary of the over-the-top rhetoric about her that I hear day in and day out from Bernie fanatics.

I'm not a Sanders supporter, and I don't think it's at all over-the-top to say that Hillary has the worst personal record on rape and sex abuse of any Presidential candidate still running right now (and that includes Donald Trump, who may have raped an ex-wife). It's funny how many of my friends think that alone disqualifies Trump from the Presidency, but get quiet when I bring up Juanita Broaddrick.

The only reason the Clintons have gotten away with this stuff is because they have a D after their name instead of an R. Democrats don't care enough about rape victims to defend them when it isn't politically convenient, and Republicans don't care enough about rape victims to consistently hammer the matter (nor do they have the record to come across as honestly caring about victims rather than making a cheap political play). But as someone who genuinely does care about rape victims, it's a "firing offense" for me. I'll never vote for her.

[_Kevin Graham]

His campaign manager said that was his strategy.

Ok, so now we're moving away from the original criticism that has all the anti-Bernie folks screaming "hypocrisy." But I haven't been able to find anything from his campaign manager saying this either. All I have seen are numerous articles with people reading a lot into something that doesn't explicitly say what they're trying to infer from it.

And last night he completely ducked Rachel's question on the issue.

So he's guilty of saying something he didn't say because he refused to confirm that he would do what he hasn't said he would do? Good grief. You see this as "ducking" probably because you're in the tank for Hillary, but I see it as a reasonable response to a silly question. It is basically the same response he gave her three weeks ago when he was on her show:

MADDOW: I’m just gonna add—I’m gonna push you and just ask one more time if—I’ll actually ask you in the other direction. If one of you—presumably there won’t be a tie. One of you presumably will be behind in pledged delegates heading into that convention. Should the person who is behind in pledged delegates concede to the person who is ahead in pledged delegates in Philadelphia?

SANDERS: Well, I don’t want to speculate about the future and I think there are other factors involved. I think it is probably the case that the candidate who has the most pledged delegates is going to be the candidate but there are other factors. And the other factors will be the strength of each of us in taking on the Republican candidate. What I think is most important to all of the delegates, including the super delegates, is that we have a candidate who will win and not allow Donald Trump to end up in the White House.”

In the first interview Maddow was demanding that he say what he would do in a hypothetical and unlikely future situation. He said it was pointless and refused to speculate on the matter. And last week he responded by limiting what had been said to states that overwhelmingly voted for him. This sounds to me like he isn't supportive of a shotgun approach to all superdelegates. Every time he talks on the matter he refers to states that had overwhelmingly voted for him. And this goes along with what Devine has said in the past "Superdelegates should support the people's choice."

See Res Ipsa.
But I wrote this post not that long ago:

Thanks, but nothing in his post or your previous posts supports this claim that Bernie said he would try to lure any and all Superdelegates away from Clinton, in states that she won.

It contains an example of a reference.

The reference was to a video clip from MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell show where she refers back to the interview comments I already posted above. Again, Sanders never said this.

[_Res Ipsa]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/pl ... long-shot/

[_EAllusion]

The other thing to consider about Super-delegates flipping the election to Sanders is that while he is down in ordinary pledged delegates, he's even further down in popular vote total. That's because he's generally done best in low turnout elections. Clinton's lead in total votes is by % even stronger than her lead in pledged delegates. She's up 2 and 1/2 million votes on Sanders. By %, she's winning in a total landslide. If she still retains a popular vote lead at the end, which is highly likely to be the case, that makes it even more disquieting for Super-delegates to flip to election to Sanders even if they wanted to.

[_Brackite]

Unless Hillary gets indicted or falls over dead, she is going to be the next President.
The GOP Presidential Primary has turned into a big mess.

[_subgenius]

The irony of KG posting a complaint about super-delegates is that their creation was simply from the butt-hurt the Democrats got dealt when Nixon trounced McGovern....and subsequently the Democrats took on the favorite liberal mantra...a few select "smart" people know what is better for the people more than the people know for themselves.
The super-delegate mentality is a logical extension of the fundamental philosophy of today's Democratic party...it is founded on elitism and on the notion that the will of the people is secondary to the old white person party oligarchy.

Super-delegate is how socialism is applied to the Democratic candidate nomination process.

So, KG has no real argument against it without exposing his own hypocrisy or convoluted social/political philosophies.

[_EAllusion]

I don't know if you saw this Kevin, but Bernie Sanders campaign manager recently flat out said they are going to try and use the superdelegates to flip the election to Sanders even if Clinton is up in pledged delegates and popular vote after all states have voted. Specifically, he said he would use the time between the final California primary and the Philadelphia convention to do this:

https://Twitter.com/MSNBC/status/722620 ... wsrc%5Etfw

I doubt super-delegates would actually go for this, but that's plain as day. A socialist ignoring the outcome of elections to give the people what's he knows to be good for them. Well, that's unheard of.