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

this feels a bit like asking "who will stop the Carolina Panthers from winning the superbowl"
they will themselves, most likely.

publicly funded elections where all the delegates are popularly elected? both Trump and Sanders might have a shot.

Nearly all Republican unpledged delegates, as I understand it, are RNC people or state party chairpersons. If they've even crossed the Trump team's radar, they have to have been written off completely - he has no chance of winning over any of them, unless he started winning actual primaries so lopsidedly that the establishment candidates were already effectively marginalized anyway.

However, the superdelegate count for Republicans is a much smaller fraction of the number of delegates total than it is for the Democrats, where there are around seven hundred superdelegates (including all sitting senators and representatives, past presidents, etc.) out of 2,300 delegates or so total. Which is why there was a lot of attention put on them in the long 2008 primary contest! Here's Silver breaking down the GOP's convention votes in 2012:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/02/25/us/politics/fivethirtyeight-0225-delegatemath1/fivethirtyeight-0225-delegatemath1-blog480.png

Just kinda riffing here: One way of explaining this difference between these numbers has to do with what those delegates are supposed to do: superdelegates in the Democratic party are an establishment check on the possibility of a presumed unelectable candidate inching up towards 51% of the delegate count with a ton of second-place primary wins, since all Democratic primary delegates are awarded proportionally for each state. The GOP has been inching towards proportional primary payouts over the last few years - almost everything was winner-take-all in 2008 - and currently uses a weird system where early-primary states (first two weeks of March, but NOT the four February contests, I think) must be awarded proportionally (to keep the field open, air the party conversation, etc.)... whereas states after that mark can be whatever they want, or something. I actually don't understand it at all but it seems like maybe the superdelegate numbers still reflect the winner-take-all model, which is meant to quash fringey insurgents and cement a front-runner quickly, thus not requiring the superdelegate check. The all-proportional Dem system is, at least in theory, more vulnerable to a race going all the way to the convention; the whopping pile of superdelegates is, again in theory, there to freeze out whichever of candidates A and B is less "establishment," but this has never actually been tested and anyway it's unclear what the reaction would be if they ended up choosing the candidate that had effectively lost the primaries.

I don't know what this means for Trump but it would be great to see an article that really breaks down each state's voting plan and how many delegates are up for grabs (plus bracketing out non-binding caucus votes). My sense is that anything winner-take-all is good news for Trump; the system wasn't designed with the assumption that someone totally unacceptable to the party would actually be leading (by pluralities, but leading) early on. That's supposed to be the role of the party's anointed heir; the fear was presumably that proportional contests would enable the fringe minority! So in an odd flip, it may be that the proportional contests become the party's safety net, yielding a buffer of anti-Trump delegates who can later commit to whoever emerges as the establishment figure. But who the fuck knows.

have we discussed hillary's polling bump from the debate?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/20/hillary_clinton_won_the_debate_scientific_polls_show.html

proven... by $cience!

CNN/ORC poll tells a slightly divergent story (where I've collapsed the 'someone else,' 'no one,' and 'no opinion' answers into "other")

Pre-debate poll (9/17/-9/19): Clinton 42% Sanders 24% Biden 22% O'Malley 1% Other 9%
Post-debate poll (10/14-10/17): Clinton 45% Sanders 29% Biden 18% Webb 1% Other 7%

Pre-debate poll, no Biden: Clinton 57% Sanders 28% O'Malley 2% Other 13%
Post-debate poll, no Biden: Clinton 56% Sanders 33% Webb 2% O'Malley 1% Other 7%

(http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/19/politics/cnn-orc-poll-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-democratic-debate/index.html , pages 10-11)

So if these are representative, both Clinton and Sanders have gained recently, possibly due to the debate, but Sanders has actually seen a bigger bump, both in the Biden and no-Biden universes. Clinton actually lost a little ground in the non-Biden universe, and benefits on paper from the Biden universe, where he seems to be playing something of the "other" role. This is hard to untangle from whether voters' interest in Biden was altered by his absence at the debate or a general sense that he is not going to really run. The debate did seem to move a few people out of the "other" column into picking someone, particularly in the no-Biden universe (as if Biden is acting as an "other" surrogate when he is included).

However, all of the changes are within the 5% margin of error so it could also be that the race hasn't changed whatsoever, or that Clinton actually lost support across the board - basically everything I'm typing here, and anything else we read analyzing a single poll, is basically meaningless. This is where once really hankers for 538 aggregating the poll results, etc....

(Well, Sanders's gain in the non-Biden world is 6%, but still, pretty close to the margin.)

ralph nader has opinions about bloomberg

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/09/ralph-nader-21-reasons-michael-bloomberg-can-be-elected-president-in-2012.html

ralph nader has opinions about bloomberg

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/09/ralph-nader-21-reasons-michael-bloomberg-can-be-elected-president-in-2012.html
--1999 ball boy (Karl Malone)

First gay president

biden needs to fuck off at this point

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/george-w-bush-ted-cruz-trump

W doesn't like ted

yeah I saw that too p funny

w still being w

"He’s a young, first-term senator; I’m not sure if that qualifies you to be president,” Bush said, according to two event attendees. “Of course, if he wins [the nomination], I’ll be back here next year telling you that doesn’t matter.”

remember this great truism: literally everyone who has gotten to know ted cruz even briefly thinks he's a gigantic asshole

there's something charming about W's cynicism

It's all just shades of awful. Trump is a xenophobic blowhard but he seems positively guileless next to Cruz (who comes across to me like a middle manager who'd hang out with his employees off-hours in order to root out potentially fireable offenses).

lol Vox: http://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9574013/jim-webb-quits-presidential?ref=yfp

Cruz (who comes across to me like a middle manager who'd hang out with his employees off-hours in order to root out potentially fireable offenses).

otm

lol @ someone that oily not gettin any bush love

Bush liked sycophants and guys who acted tough, not guys coated in petroleum jelly.

oil joeks

Cruz (who comes across to me like a middle manager who'd hang out with his employees off-hours in order to root out potentially fireable offenses).

otm

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 20, 2015 3:01 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmaooooo

‏@ggreenwald
Saudis give big, new contract to key Clinton insider: brother of her campaign Chair, big donor himself #Podestas

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/hillary-moneyman-highlights-new-saudi-connection-194828485.html

have we discussed hillary's polling bump from the debate?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/20/hillary_clinton_won_the_debate_scientific_polls_show.html

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 20, 2015 6:07 PM (47 minutes ago)

i'm shocked, shocked, that slate would run an article suggesting that hillary clinton won the debate:

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/10/hillary_clinton_and_bernie_sanders_at_the_democratic_debate_she_won_but.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/13/hillary_clinton_won_the_cnn_debate_with_a_surprising_performance.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/hillary_clinton_s_debate_performance_should_end_the_joe_biden_talk.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2015/10/hillary_clinton_won_the_foreign_policy_debate_the_former_secretary_of_state.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/14/bernie_won_polls_not_the_debate_hillary_won_the_debate.html

lol Reid doing some classic knife-twisting here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-reid-paul-ryan-house-speaker_5626879de4b02f6a900e20a4?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592&ref=yfp

yellowcard, not PREZIDENSHUL content

d'oh right

"I'm a Paul Ryan fan," Reid told reporters.

"He appears to be one of the people over there that could be reasonable. I mean, look at some of the other people," the minority leader continued. "I don't agree with him on much of what he does. I think what he's done with Medicare and Medicaid, what he wants to do with it, I disagree with. But generally speaking, I think we've been able to work with him."

^^ didn't Reid pull this with the Harriet Miers nomination?

haha yes

please, ONLY 4-year-long auction/circus content!

CORRECTION: This story previously identified Reid as the Senate majority leader.

Old habits die hard.

harry reid is pretty good at politics

https://www.thenation.com/article/sorry-fellow-bernie-fans-maybe-hillary-really-did-win-the-debate/

This is not at all what they are saying

― a strawman stuffed with their collection of 12 cds (jjjusten), Monday, October 19, 2015 9:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

RONG

"The activists expressed particular concern over white people dominating the burgeoning legal marijuana industry"

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/bernie-sanders-we-the-protesters-marijuana-republican-debate/

The argument comes from Michelle Alexander as per http://www.alternet.org/drugs/michelle-alexander-white-men-get-rich-legal-pot-black-men-stay-prison e.g. She is a Board member of a leading #NottheBureauofLandManagement constituent organization: http://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/michelle-alexander-angela-davis-join-dream-defenders-advisor#.kbRAod3ne

Just because you are weirdly obsessed with location defining humanity doesn't mean you actually get to reform every argument on the planet to conform with that.

Don't worry BLM, benbbag is here to clarify your position for you

Interesting Bloomberg News interview with Jeb Bush campaign consultant Mike Murphy: Part 1, Part 2

One day after Jeb announced his candidacy, in mid-June, Trump got in. I assume you hadn’t anticipated what that would do to the campaign.
I don’t think he’s been particularly good for the process, he's trivialized it. I remember working in foreign countries in the past where like the beer brands would each run a candidate for president as a marketing gimmick. I thought “God, I hope this never comes to us,” because it just makes the election kind of a cheap card trick. And here we are.

How has Trump’s entry changed the race?
It created a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he'll never be president of the United States, ever. By definition I don't think you can be a front-runner if you're totally un-electable. I think there's there an a-priori logic problem in that.

Has he been dead since he got in?
I think so, yeah. So there's no meaningful outcome to it. But the question is what kind of catalyst is it? It's a huge amount of noise and so we're trying to find the signal in all this. You've seen Trump start to drop now. I think it'll be a very slow drop, but I think he'll continue to drop and the question is: is he ready to lose primaries, will he stay in? And nobody knows the answer to that.

...

It does seem as though, in your theory of the race, Rubio will be the biggest obstacle to being where you want to be on March 16.
The second and third look are going to be very tough on Marco Rubio. That’s just a prediction.

And that’s based on his record?
Based on: there’s not a lot there record-wise. I’m a Marco donor, I was one of his first donors when he ran for the Senate, I’m glad he did—Marco’s always had incredible possibilities. But he needs more time to reach them. Because we look at his record, I think we’re finding what the American voters are, that there’s not a lot. He hasn’t done much.

This was the challenge both Hillary and McCain faced in running against Obama in 2008. Running against the absence of a record is probably a lot harder than running against stuff on the record that more obviously a negative.
I think so, but it’s easier post-Obama than before because we’ve had the Less Filling, Tastes Great great experiment. Now we’ve got the terrible security situation of the world and two presidential terms where the middle class has gotten very little, more pain than anything else. So I think we’ve tried to pick “what’s behind pretty curtain number three” and then we found that it was an empty box there. So we’ll see.

Is there anything in particular in Rubio’s record or background that you feel is a vulnerability but hasn’t gotten media attention?
Well, I think Rubio’s been in this position of promising I’m going to be great eventually and not held to anything. Rubio can be up or down, nothing matters. None of the yardstick being applied to us is being applied to Rubio.

Isn’t that a testament to the fact that the Rubio’s campaign did a better job than Jeb’s of setting low expectations and deflecting media scrutiny as a result?
No, I think it’s just low stakes, you know? Rubio’s kind of an also-ran and everybody’s waiting for the golden moment. So now, if this is his golden moment, let’s take the second look. Why is he running television ads in all three early states and nationally that are paid for by mystery donors? Has he ever been even asked that question?

I don’t think the media understand, it’s $6 million, nobody’s done that with (c)(4) money. We think (c)(4)s are totally appropriate. We have one. We’re proud of it. But it's basically been focused on policy research and things like that, not on television ads that are thinly disguised campaign ads. Rubio's entire spend has been that so far, $6 million all secret donors. It kind of stuns me that he's gotten away with that in the media.

So I think now is the time for Rubio to get out there and show some substance and perform a little bit. Second look...What’s interesting about Marco’s campaign—and in the end I think all the essential truth of the stuff bubbles up to the voters and they sort it out pretty well—is there's a cynicism to it. It’s cynical to run as the creature of new, fresh, while it’s all secret dark money. Maybe from one person, we don’t know. It’s cynical to say, “I’m going to take the lead on defeating this horrible Iran deal that we all hate,” and broadcast your ads to defeat that deal only on the Fox Network, where everybody is already against the deal, instead of running those ads on MSNBC to pressure Democratic senators that were the outcome to beating that deal. Cynically use it just to raise your name ID among Republican primary voters who already agree with you on the deal. There is a cynicism behind the young, fresh brand that I think is going to catch up with him.

This was the challenge both Hillary and McCain faced in running against Obama in 2008. Running against the absence of a record is probably a lot harder than running against stuff on the record that more obviously a negative.
I think so, but it’s easier post-Obama than before because we’ve had the Less Filling, Tastes Great great experiment. Now we’ve got the terrible security situation of the world and two presidential terms where the middle class has gotten very little, more pain than anything else. So I think we’ve tried to pick “what’s behind pretty curtain number three” and then we found that it was an empty box there. So we’ll see.

Looool. So people will look at Rubio, think 'I've been burned by someone like him in the past', and then go for Bush...

did ANY of the GOP candidates avoid going all in on #BENGHAZI? now that it's finally beginning to fall apart (maybe premature to say that) it seems like it would be a liability to those who couldn't stfu about it the last few years, namely Trump. but maybe they all couldn't stfu about it?

This is kinda creepy:

But we’re doing a lot of cool stuff in digital and I’m particularly interested in integrating people’s digital life, information about that, with what we know in their voter-file history. And that is slow, tedious work, but that is the puzzle you want to crack. And so we’re funding a lab here to work on that.

What does that mean, a lab?

So we’re doing a lot of lab experiments with different creative. We take ad concepts we have and we do a lot of online testing. We're very also interested, frankly, in the four million voters—like three and a half—who are going to decide the general election, so we’ve already started a lot of data-mining work on that. We’re taking their IP and mobile-device life and finding ways to link it up to the voter-file history we already know, so we get the 360-degree picture on people and can communicate with them really well. That’s the Holy Grail of this.

We’re scraping the Internet for clues about people. We’re very interested in geo-targeting in mobile devices, things like that we use to try to find new insights.

Geo-targeting to the actual location where somebody is using their device in real time?

Yeah, I want to know where the cell phone goes at night. I learn a lot about their mobile life and where they vote and then I start to figure out who they are.

"the american people have no fucking clue" cynicism of that murphy guy is only tempered by his inability to realize that his own candidate is similarly dead in the water

It’s cynical to run as the creature of new, fresh, while it’s all secret dark money. Maybe from one person, we don’t know. It’s cynical to say, “I’m going to take the lead on defeating this horrible Iran deal that we all hate,” and broadcast your ads to defeat that deal only on the Fox Network, where everybody is already against the deal, instead of running those ads on MSNBC to pressure Democratic senators that were the outcome to beating that deal.

this is almost rove-level though - who is this sneaky character, running ads targeted to REPUBLICANS during the republican primary? a real american would be campaigning in the OTHER party clearly! what else don't we know about this "marco" and his shadowy dark money?

"the american people have no fucking clue" cynicism of that murphy guy is only tempered by his inability to realize that his own candidate is similarly dead in the water

whether or not he realizes this is not gonna come across in a interview that he's doing to market the bush candidacy

He is also really high on the idea that 'positive conservatism' is the majority view amongst republican, as opposed to 'grievance conservatism', considering the latest WaPo-ABC polls have Trump, Carson, Cruz and Fiorina combining for 65%.

positive conservatism
compassionate conservatism

Is the data-mining stuff more creepy or less creepy than the same tactics being used to sell you a particular pair of shoes or sports drink, vs. a political candidate?

I don't disagree that it's creepy, btw - I'm just not sure whom to blame: the whole privacy-free technical infrastructure? Marketing/pr/advertising types for exploiting said infrastructure (which could also be called "being good at their jobs")? People in general, for leaving digital trails in the first place? The unholy alliance of money and politics that conspires to protect such creepy intrusion as long as it is good for business?

The entire subtext of that interview is Dan Aykroyd's line from Tommy Boy: "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public."

Biden: I'm Not Running For President

I'm crushed.

Biden...because I AM THE PRESIDENT

*heavy metal riffs*

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/655584572554498048