Sunday Open Thread [4.24.16]
PENNSYLVANIA—CBS News/YouGov–Trump 49, Cruz 26, Kasich 22
PENNSYLVANIA—CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 51, Sanders 43
INDIANA—CBS News/YouGov–Trump 40, Cruz 35, Kasich 20
INDIANA—CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 49, Sanders 44
President Obama “is trying but failing to reassure foreign leaders convinced that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. They’re in full-boil panic,” Politico reports.
“According to more than two dozen U.S. and foreign-government officials, Trump has become the starting point for what feels like every government-to-government interaction. In meetings, private dinners and phone calls, world leaders are urgently seeking explanations from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Trade Representative Michael Froman on down. American ambassadors are asking for guidance from Washington about what they’re supposed to say.”
NBC News: “When asked why he thinks he’s losing in those states, Sanders responded, ‘Well, because poor people don’t vote. I mean, that’s just a fact.'” Well, that may or may not be true, but wasn’t the whole point of Bernie’s campaign is that he will inspire a revolution where people who hadn’t voted before would rise up and ….vote for Bernie? If Bernie is losing because poor people are not voting at all, yet alone for him, then it looks like Bernie has failed to create his revolution, by his own admission.
Nate Silver: “It also helps that Trump’s system-is-rigged message is relatively simple and plays into the media’s master narrative of the Republican race as a conflict between the Republican base and the GOP establishment. The Republicans’ delegate selection rules, by contrast, require an attention to detail that narrative-driven stories about the Republican race can misconstrue.”
Donald Trump told supporters that he’s “not toning it down,” a day after his chief adviser assured Republican officials the GOP front-runner will show more restraint on the campaign trail, the AP reports.
Said Trump: “I’m not toning it down. Isn’t it nice that I’m not one of these teleprompter guys?”
Dan Balz: “For Trump, the bridge-building represents the challenge of trying to reassure nervous Republican leaders that he can avoid the erratic behavior and divisive rhetoric that have given him the highest negatives of any candidate in the 2016 race while reassuring his angry base that he is not selling out to a party establishment that many of them loathe.”
“For state and national Republican leaders, the outreach highlights the conflict between the revulsion many of them have felt toward a candidate who has trampled on core GOP values and inflamed much of the electorate and a grudging acceptance that it is increasingly likely the controversial New York billionaire will be leading them into a fall campaign against Hillary Clinton.”
“Ted Cruz notched another delegate landslide Saturday, stretching his advantage in a competition that might never occur: the second ballot of a contested Republican National Convention in July,” Politico reports.
“Cruz won at least 65 of the 94 delegates up for grabs Saturday (and he may have won more, but Kentucky’s 25 delegates haven’t revealed their leanings). The Texas senator has so thoroughly dominated the fight to send loyalists to the national convention that if front-runner Donald Trump fails to clinch the nomination on the first ballot, Cruz is well-positioned to surpass him — and perhaps even snag the nomination for himself — when delegates are free in subsequent convention rounds to vote for whomever they want.”
“I have never been more worried about the Republican Party breaking apart than I am today.” — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by The Hill.
And if these poor people elect not to identify with a political party but remain independent, how can they vote for Sanders in party primaries in states that disenfranchise independent voters from primaries? One MSNBC report I saw claimed that Sanders would have won the NY primary had independent voters been allowed to vote for him.
Here’s an idea. Why don’t you write a post advocating that the Delaware Democratic Party allow independent voters to vote in the Democratic primary. You know, do something that sides with people instead of the establishment.
Nbc news reported this morning that Delaware is an open primary state. Is that true!
Both Trump and Sanders are running into the populist dilemma in attempting to wrest power from a political organization. Parties develop rules to insulate themselves from populist uprisings, and the only way to beat that in the long run is to join the party and play by the rules long enough to get into the positions of power necessary to change them. But then you are an insider and not a populist any more, and most folks who get that far get diverted into the power games and profits of insidery politics.
“Populism is irrelevant,” say the Borg. “Populists will be assimilated.”
And by and large they are. What you are hearing now is the populist death rattle I grew up watching Henry Howell utter time and time again in Virginia in the 1960s and early 1970s: “The big boys have made their deal!”
Going populist in the currently constructed system is almost always a long-term loser.
“advocating that the Delaware Democratic Party allow independent voters to vote in the Democratic primary. ”
Gee and after the progressives worked so hard to put a closed primary system in place in the first place. The Winograd Commission, mostly comprised of Carter supporters, eliminated the open primary because they did not want Republicans (or populist upstarts) voting in the Democratic Party primary.
The primary selects the Party’s candidate. Anyone who is a member of the party can vote in that party’s primary. If independents (like me) want to vote in the primary it is incumbent upon them (and me) to under how to register for a party and then to vote when it comes time. If someone did not understand the rules for voting, perhaps they really shouldn’t be voting in the first place. I have no sympathy for independents who fail to register in time because they were too lazy, busy, occupied, or oblivious of the requirement on how and when to register.
Dave, you go ahead and think about this in terms of your fellow citizens as being “oblivious.” I’ll continue to think of it in terms of opening up an electoral process to encourage more citizen participation in deciding the make up of *their* government. I prefer people to establishments. But to each their own.
@DG “I’ll continue to think of it in terms of opening up an electoral process to encourage more citizen participation in deciding the make up of *their* government.”
But it’s more complex than that. Consider what happened in Michigan this year. In the open Democratic Primary, thousands of Republicans crossed over to try topple the Democrat’s cart, so to speak, casting a vote against Hillary. That’s exactly why the polls were so so “wrong”… they didn’t poll the crossovers.
If you’re going to have a viable two party system, you have to allow each party to protect itself against the ratfuckers and dirty tricksters from the other party.
LE, so you are claiming that Michigan Republicans voted against the weaker Dem candidate in a general election (Hillary) as demonstrated in poll after poll? You really think Republicans are that dumb?
It’s the year of the conspiracy theory! If one’s accepted, all are accepted! 😉
You’d know that there was a political revolution afoot if scores of poor people showed up at the polls to vote for Bernie in the states that have gone so far and couldn’t. They couldn’t because they were inspired to vote for him and were met with the rules at the voting booth.
Poor people don’t vote with the frequency of people who are more financially secure, that is certain. But apparently a large swath of the folks who would benefit most from voting for Bernie also haven’t been engaged enough to know that there is something different to engage with.
Blaming poor people for not joining a revolution is pretty distasteful. Maybe if there had been more work to make sure those folks knew about your message and goals would have been in order.
@DG “You really think Republicans are that dumb?”
I think they hate Hillary that much.
…and the GOP rank and file fears Hillary FAR more then Sanders.
@p “It’s the year of the conspiracy theory! If one’s accepted, all are accepted! ;-)”
Really?? Do I need to dig out the published election analysis for you?
Nope, I get your point, and should have worded it better. Dana just seems to want everyone to accept his conspiracy theories – which are really just excuses when his candidate loses. Amazing how elections always seem to be perfectly run when Bernie wins, but when he loses…
@DG “…the weaker Dem candidate in a general election (Hillary) as demonstrated in poll after poll?”
And anyone who knows anything about politics understands why those polls that show Sanders and Kasich with a huge general election lead, don’t really mean anything.
It requires a considerable degree of cognitive dissonance to say of the candidate who clearly had the interests of the poor more at heart that his true comments about them were distasteful, especially after conceding that he was in fact correct: that the poor don’t vote as much as do the rich.
Pandora, since you have no compunction about attributing to me a mental disorder–paranoid conspiratorial thinking–let me return the favor. You ate delusional. I don’t think and didn’t imply that any kind of conspiracy occurred. I simply pointed out a systemic unfairness. That’s a huge difference. Look it up.
Did you just jump from conspiracy theory to mental disorder?
Here are things you’ve mentioned when Bernie’s lost:
DNC
The deep South
The Poor
Rigged primaries/voting
I might be missing some. But maybe you’re not putting forth conspiracies, maybe you’re just a sore loser???
Why should all the political power lie with two corrupt institutions shutting out half of the electorate? Doesn’t sound very progressive coming from those who claim to be progressives
It always surprises me when Progressives attack Bernie Sanders and those who support him. I get that some may feel that he is not pragmatic enough to succeed but do you disagree with his goals or question his intent? Bernie Sanders is more progressive than Hillary Clinton. That is why many people support him.
I understand why people may choose Hillary for political or governing purposes. However, we can all at least agree that Bernie’s ideas are more progressive.
Can’t we?
@Jenr “However, we can all at least agree that Bernie’s ideas are more progressive.”
As I see it, they agree on about 95% of the issues. Where they disagree, Sanders may appear to be more progressive, but his views on guns negates much of where he might be better, in my view.
And so, I will focus on the 95% and say that either would be a great and welcome president. Hillary has the best chance to win. Sanders is a risk we don’t need to take.
And so my intellectual support goes to Hillary (But my financial support went to Sanders — I’m paying my son’s credit cards while he is overseas, and he donated $100 to Sanders — for me to pay, of course– Brat! ).
@Andy “Why should all the political power lie with two corrupt institutions shutting out half of the electorate?”
Our whole system is inferior to what many other countries have. The real problems cannot be fixed without major political upheaval.
For example, I’ve had rather interesting arguments with some Chinese professors who have a compelling argument as to why the system in Beijing is better than our system in Washington… and why they don’t have some of the serious problems that we have (of course they have their own problems, but they’re different). They have rampant corruption, but we have rent seekers and captured regulatory systems. I think what we have is clearly worse when you start to dig down and look at the details.
“Doesn’t sound very progressive coming from those who claim to be progressives”
As a progressive, I think we should push for and promote the best we can do within our system, rather than pining for a system we simply can’t enact.
@Andy “Why should all the political power lie with two corrupt institutions shutting out half of the electorate? ”
If you wanted to pose an intellectual question or begin such a debate instead of just offering a complaint you would have to restructure the question thusly.
“Why should all the political power lie with two institutions”
The fact that they are or are not corrupt is not germane to the argument unless you believe the same condition would be acceptable if they were not corrupt. Additionally, your premise that half the electorate is shut out is quite simply false. Any person of voting age can register for any of the two institutions. Lastly, even the premise that there are only two institutions is false since other such political institutions have existed throughout our history.
While there are barriers to the rise of a third or more parties a footing equal to the two, the primary barrier is lack of interest. For most people two parties is just fine. In fact, what you are witnessing in the GOP today is what our politics might look like if we had a different system. We are a large country with many diverse interests. I’m not going to belabor the point, but our system fits our country. Any real alternative to our system (with the possible exception of a major third party) would probably result in the balkanization of Congress and the complete inability to get anything done, which is pretty much what has happened with the GOP.
A better question might be “Why is the voting age population increasingly choosing not to affiliate with either of the two parties?”
@Dave “the primary barrier is lack of interest.”
I really doubt that. If we had Israel’s system, I bet we’d have a handful of parties, maybe even a dozen.
Instead of choosing between two coalition parties, we’d be choosing from smaller political parties, hoping that they coalesce in appropriate ways while forming a actually government. This is a better system.
The barriers to real third party participation have been coordinated by the existing two parties, and even enshrined in law.
I guess you folks want to avoid the question. LE writing some nonsense about China and Dave obviously OK with citizen’s united and corporate control of the process and who the two candidates will be. This is a perfect opportunity to reverse some of this but fear gets in the way and that’s why the people are losing their party. The young folks already see this and do not have the loyalty invested in a corrupt system. Instead of blanket criticism how about an examination of why they’re not engaged
I didn’t avoid the question. I clearly stated that your premise was false. No one is prevented from registering for a party and then voting in that party’s primary.
@LE. Ok I’m listening, make the case why Israel’s system is better? What is the criteria by which you assess each system? Is functionality of government?continuity of operation? participation? representing the will of the people?
“The young folks already see this and do not have the loyalty invested in a corrupt system. Instead of blanket criticism how about an examination of why they’re not engaged”
If they aren’t registered to vote then they aren’t engaged. If they are registered as an Independent/non-affiliated then they are engaged – they just didn’t really research their decision. Most of that, I sense, had to do with the pervasive “both sides do it” meme. If they had researched the system they would have known the primary rules (open and closed). In essence, they disenfranchised themselves. I’m still not sure why Bernie didn’t make switching voter registration his #1 priority.
And this is a perfect opportunity to reverse/change the system – after this primary. I don’t have a huge issue with the system – other than if you want to vote in a party primary you should belong to that party.
I’ve said this before… Imagine if the GOP wrapped up their primary after Iowa. All of them loved, loved, loved their chosen candidate and no one was running against their chosen one. Everyone okay with open primaries that let Republicans (who have their candidate) being able to vote in the Dem primary?
@Dave “Ok I’m listening, make the case why Israel’s system is better?”
Look around. No country has copied our system, despite our apparent success. It’s a hot mess. Even the governments we created or help create (e.g. Japan) are not like ours and do not have our flaws. For example, our system is deeply flawed with way too much power going to tiny states with few people. This makes it ripe for exploitation… and exploited it’s been.
When you have many parties, they keep each other in check. If one party runs off and does something outrageous, the others abandon it. So many governments in the world have fallen apart for just this reason… and that’s a GOOD thing.
We have a government that does not fall apart, and in a time of crisis, that’s actually worse. What happens if the GOP gains all levers of power (the presidency, the house and the senate)… where are the brakes on the ridiculous excesses that have been “promised” to the rabid rabble?
@Dave you totally avoided the question. Why should some one have to jump through hoops to vote for a candidate to try to get them on the November ballot when their taxes help finance the process? The status quo just allows the establishment to retain power. Basically this is what you and I guess others on this blog want even though they continually bitch about the status quo and how the Democratic Party is corporate owned
“Here are things you’ve mentioned when Bernie’s lost:
DNC
The deep South
The Poor
Rigged primaries/voting
I might be missing some. But maybe you’re not putting forth conspiracies, maybe you’re just a sore loser??”
Yeah, you are missing something alright, but courtesy keeps me from identifying it.
But I will point out that in your galloping parade of errors, you gratuitously assume that I thought Sanders ever had a chance to win the nomination and because he didn’t I’m now a sore loser. I have to burst that bubble, I’m afraid. I never believed that Sanders would win the nomination because the rank and file of the Democrats are now too much like moderate Republicans on economics. You know, like the writers of Dem party establishment blogs. But I know. I know what you’re real problem is. You resent me pointing that fact out.
Look Andy, we evolved into what is basically a two party system because of Duverger’s law. We have a single winner of each contest. This tends to promote a two party system because people abandon weaker parties when they have no chance of winning or weaker parties coalesce to form a stronger party, ultimately becoming a dominate party in a two party system. That’s what we got and have had since about 1790 something.
Each party has their own rules which are established by the party members. It’s the same in every organization. The members make the rules. You either want to create a multi-party system or you want to regulate how the existing parties operate. You are free to create other parties and subsequently create a coalition of those parties in order to become a dominate party or you can obtain membership in the existing parties and change them from within.
There is an open registration process where any citizen of the legal age can become a member of whatever political party they choose. There is no entrance fee. There is no test. There is no criteria or background check. You just register and poof! you are a member and can receive all the junk mail the party can manage to send you. In Delaware you can do this online even. You characterized it as jumping through hoops when it’s anything but. I recognize that you are making an emotional argument rather than a logical one (sort of a lament), but the simple answer is rules are rules and you can’t the rules unless you are member of the organization. That’s the way organizations work.
And just because I recognize that, doesn’t mean I like it. I just don’t engage in argumentum ad passiones because it’s a logical fallacy.
@Dave “That’s the way organizations work.”
Of course this totally overlooks the collusion between the two dominant parties to make it difficult for new parties to rise up. There are a whole host of annoying laws, rules, regulations,… established with that one and only intent.
To overlook the corruption and then to dismiss Andy’s valid concerns based on that is just wrong.
Andy’s complaint is that people are disenfranchised because they didn’t get to vote for someone because they did not have membership in the party that the candidate chose to belong to. I simply pointed out that the candidate made a choice to run under the party flag and the independents could have made the same choice to join in order to vote for him.
That the parties are corrupt or collude is quite beside the point and since the we’ve had this status quo for umpteen years I find this sudden concern to be oddly coincidental to say the least.
It has actually been a concern for many for quite some time. Those powers-that-be are just very good at controlling the dialogue. Whats refreshing is how threatened the party establishment and the party loyalists seem to be because of it.
As long as public funds pay for this farce then it should be totally open. People register how they do for their own reasons and they should not be forced to change because the corrupt hacks say so as long as public money is paying for it.
Fine, Andy. I agree. Get working on fixing that. 😉
The Hypocrisy runneth over