a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

you're not fooling anyone chafee, we know that Olivia is the one that's truly in control

Anderson Cooper should have asked them about Defiance.

source plz

actually it was a CNN FB poll

http://imgur.com/BuPtfgS

guessing that facebook voters trend toward the younger side (advantage bernie)

Yeah but just slightly. My grandma and extended family use it way more than i do.

Facebook is Turning into AARP

also we don't know what time that screenshot was taken or the # of votes cast by that point

i do believe that ppl who streamed the debate skewed towards bernie though

Kids prefer Snapchat and Instagram.

I've got the final numbers screenshotted (says votes closed at the top) and sanders is still at 81%

Clinton was up to 13% and iirc the total votes were just under 18k.

are we really arguing about a facebook poll as being indicative of anything

like you know how actual polls are conducted right

that article on aarp facebook misses a key point with its reflexive "they like to stay in touch with their grandkids!" stuff -- these people are guzzling inflammatory clickbait just like everyone else. if anything they had a head start.

yeah it's like, point in favor: those #s are crazy. point against: it's a facebook poll

i think i saw that bernie brought in like $20million after last night

Speaking of polls:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/14/politics/republican-poll-donald-trump-nevada-south-carolina/index.html

Dr. C is right that "there was definitely an effort to hype the debate as AT LONG LAST a SHOWDOWN, TONIGHT THE GLOVES WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY COME OFF!, and to throw out questions that the candidates could have, but didn't, turned into GOING FOR THE JUGULAR, CLINTON RIPS SANDERS etc."

Plz explore this further, though. I don't think most Democratic primary voters wanted a bloodbath. And we wouldn't necessarily have rewarded a candidate for going after Clinton's jugular. Indeed, many would see that as a negative - even those of us who don't like her much and aren't jazzed by her candidacy. That's more a Republican mindset: "We want a candidate who FIGHTS and who will BRING THE PAIN and who will CALL OUT OBAMA" etc.

Hillary's vulnerabilities are pretty well known; you can get a heapin' helpin' of them from any right-wing source you please. Nobody is going to change their mind about whether they matter or not. If her Democratic rivals try to score points with e.g., Benghazi, they end up looking petulant at best, mean meanyheads at worst. IMO this crop does not have the skillz to criticize Hillary without it backfiring on them.

i think the gen point is the major media is playing Capt Save-A-Hil

i don't know how these things are "scored" anyway

1984:

debate 1: Reagan fumfers, babbles, ends droning about the Pacific Coast Highway

start of debate 2: " I will not exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." GAME OVER

clinton's "the iranians" made me think of "the libyans!" from back to the future

My father, another Vietnam vet, called Webb "the poster child for PTSD."

yeah, for real. if this horrible event from 45 (!) years ago is still foremost in webb's mind when he's at a presidential debate, that's... unsettling. and sad.

Perhaps, Dr. M., but it is not just playing Capt Save-A-Hil. It is save-the-narrative. The narrative is that the crazies are on the other side. Dems this cycle? Their job is to be mostly boring and civil and not fuck it up. Genuine fireworks on the left would distract from that narrative, so we will not be having any fireworks thanks.

At present, the only way in which the narrative of the Democratic race is permitted to change is that we get to periodically oscillate between "IS HILLARY DOOMED?" and "Whew! It seems Hillary is not doomed!" Were the dynamic of the race different, the narrative would be different and they would be pushing/protecting that narrative instead.

did anyone else notice that nauseating self-satisfied smile o'malley flashed (inadvertently?) when he thinks he hit a point home?

The narrative is that the crazies are on the other side. Dems this cycle? Their job is to be mostly boring and civil and not fuck it up. Genuine fireworks on the left would distract from that narrative, so we will not be having any fireworks thanks.

are you talking about the media? if so, you have to be kidding, they would absolutely love excitement and fireworks in the democratic nomination process! there may be public perception that the republicans are fucking insane and the democratic side of the election is relatively civil, but that's not a narrative the media spun up out of thin air. the media are not making up the fact that the republican party is engaged in a civil war, can't even manage to select a leader for their own party, and is currently being dominated in the polls by donald trump and ben carson.

"did anyone else notice that nauseating self-satisfied smile o'malley flashed (inadvertently?) when he thinks he hit a point home?"

He's just about as sleazy as the dude who played him in the Wire.

he gives me john edwards vibes

(that is not a good thing)

Plz explore this further, though. I don't think most Democratic primary voters wanted a bloodbath.

oh no, not at all - just that CNN would like to have an exciting story to run. they would be thrilled to have chaos in both parties so that they can actually milk serious ratings out of this campaign during the period when normally nobody at all is tuning in. i think this graphic from 538 is quite evocative:

https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/bialik-demdebate-tv-ratings.png

Each of the two GOP debates this summer — Fox’s in August and CNN’s in September — drew more than 23 million viewers, according to Nielsen data provided to us by ESPN Research. That’s more than double the number who tuned in to any one of 54 primary debates ahead of the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections for which we have data.

so yeah i think they would be stoked if the Dem race looked more like the GOP one, it just isn't going to. this isn't just a "dems are sane, republicans are insane" situation, though obviously that matters - but the heir-apparent quality of clinton's campaign goes back for eons, making it seem like there's barely any back bench of dems ready to swing for what would otherwise appear to be a wide-open race. those people obviously stayed home, whoever they are right now. chafee and webb feel like your mike gravels and wesley clarks, they would have been non-starters even in a race without a frontrunner. o'malley i don't know about. sanders is a bill bradley, but much bigger to a point where i insist it's something qualitatively different. but it's in the "inevitable frontrunner faces some challengers" sense that the comparisons to gore/bradley make the most sense to me. gore was just obviously the nominee from day one, otherwise you figure people like kerry or biden would have gone ahead and thrown their hat in. hell, maybe it would have been cuomo's year at last. anyway in a world without the clinton factor we might have five real candidates, though i still doubt it'd look much like the GOP field, where the 'establishment' candidates can't get a real foothold.

COOPER: Another -- another question for each of you, starting with Governor Chafee.

Name the one thing -- the one way that your administration would not be a third term of President Obama.

CHAFEE: Certainly, ending the wars. We've got to stop these wars. You have to have a new dynamic, a new paradigm. We just spent a half-billion dollars arming and training soldiers, the rebel soldiers in Syria. They quickly join the other side. We bombed the...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: President Obama's generals right now are suggesting keeping troops in Afghanistan after the time he wanted them pulled out. Would you keep them there?

CHAFEE: I'd like to finish my question -- my answer.

And also we just bombed a hospital. We've had drone strikes that hit civilian weddings. So I would change how we -- our approach to the Middle East. We need a new paradigm in the Middle East.

COOPER: Secretary Clinton, how would you not be a third term of President Obama?

CLINTON: Well, I think that's pretty obvious. I think being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we've had up until this point, including President Obama.

COOPER: Is there a policy difference?

CLINTON: Well, there's a lot that I would like to do to build on the successes of President Obama, but also, as I'm laying out, to go beyond. And that's in my economic plans, how I would deal with the prescription drug companies, how I would deal with college, how I would deal with a full range of issues that I've been talking about throughout this campaign to go further.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/13/the-oct-13-democratic-debate-who-said-what-and-what-it-means/

Wow that's pretty exciting. "Building on the successes" but "going beyond" certainly sounds like a new and fresh thing to do.

Nice way to cut off that hospital reference, Cooper. They pay you well.

Why do you guys think the pundits have promoted the WILL BIDEN RUN? storyline? To create drama where none exists.

To create a blood bath.

Casting call.

Alfred otm

He's not going to run, but his people have created a feedback loop. If he runs, he's even dumber than I thought.

i figure it's good for biden's ego for him to think that people want him to run, and it would be a big blow if he actually were to run and see how thin his "support" really is. so he has no reason to actually run.

Trump and Carson are tied. This is so awesome.

I think that graph from 538 definitely shows that people still love to go to the circus. Trump has attracted a lot of attention from people who do not care and are probably not even likely to vote.

I mean the idea that Trump or Carson could win the nomination - this is so amazing. It's amazing. It's incredible.

Trump and Carson are tied.

which poll? the poll DJP linked to above shows trump way above everybody (including Carson) in NV and SC

and are probably not even likely to vote.

exactly. they'd have to stumble over the corn liquor jugs in front of the bed.

Trump has attracted a lot of attention from people who do not care and are probably not even likely to vote.

Since our elected officials are basically the public entertainment branch of industry it is a given that a proven entertainer is doing well. Look at Reagan.

"Who's vice president, Jerry Lewis?"

http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Hoap.jpg

In case people wanted a concise version of why I said what I did upthread

http://usuncut.com/politics/6-reasons-bernie-sanders-actually-owned-the-debate-despite-what-pundits-claim/

some of those stats seem more convincing than others - as pointed out, web-based voluntary polling isn't much of a measure of anything (aside from the enthusiasm of the kind of people who like to take voluntary polls on the web, I guess) - - - but things like the focus group entry are much more interesting:

When the mainstream media polled focus groups to ask who won the debate, group participants overwhelmingly chose Bernie Sanders. CNN selected a group of undecided voters in Nevada; conservative messaging guru Frank Lutz picked a focus group of Democratic voters in Florida; Fusion picked out a focus group of millennial voters from Miami. And in each instance, focus groups thought Bernie Sanders won the debate. Luntz’ participants described Sanders as “strong,” “smart,” and “for the people,” with nearly all participants picking him as their favorite. Fusion’s focus group picked Sanders 8-3.

obv. focus groups are bullshit too, so what's interesting here is that CNN put together the one, and then ignored the results AFAICT. like why even spend the money then?

because they're an outlier

or turned out to be an outlier

also lol @ Luntz

that piece is sad jjj, sorry - just poorly sourced, openly biased, cherrypicked, etc.

HuffPo article takes a similar tack:

This is why the focus groups of actual voters on CNN, Fox, and elsewhere declared Sanders the winner of the debate, not Clinton. Actual voters are not looking for conformity to a conventional standard, however appealing it may appear. Actual voters want the real thing, not the appearance of it. Sanders' authenticity was unmistakable.

the problem is there is absolutely no statistical, historical evidence to back up that voters ever "want the real thing" when it has come down to elections. Voters DO vote according to "superficial standards", they overwhelmingly respond (and vote for) candidates that are "friendly and personable", "at times tough and aggressive" and "confident and in command of her facts" (ok maybe less so on the facts thing, generally speaking). This analysis is pure wishful thinking about the electorate, backed up by poorly sourced internet polls and focus groups - neither of which have ever been reliable indicators of anything when it comes to elections.

yeah the left engages in this kind of stuff all the time: THIS TIME the people will win, because the people are on our side! people really want progressive change!

there's a guy around here, john nichols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nichols_%28journalist%29) who routinely writes editorials, etc. about how this or that poll or election shows that people really want /x/ and then blithely (?) ignores all the elections that have gone the wrong way in this state in the last five years.

it's a weird pollyanna phenomenon by people who should know better. it's insulting to the intelligence, or to mine, anyway.