USA Politics

Travis The Dragon said:
Well, I don't have to go to the circus this year because the one I just saw on the democratic debate more than satisfied me.
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Yeah, Warren completely gutted Bloomberg, and Sanders got in some good shots on him too. The Buttigieg/Klobuchar stuff was a bit weirder.
 
Warren trounced everyone in that debate, I thought. But it's probably too late for her to move the needle.
 
I missed the first half but Warren is consistently the best debater of the group. It’s unfortunate that her campaign is pretty much over.
 
Mosh said:
I missed the first half but Warren is consistently the best debater of the group. It’s unfortunate that her campaign is pretty much over.
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She was straight fire. If anything can do it for her, this is that anything. Unfortunately, nothing can do it for her. Bernie has taken most of her gas and run with it.

Watching Bloomberg get eviscerated time and time again was great, though. He was totally unprepared.

Biden was also there, and did absolutely nothing to change his momentum. He's absolutely done.
 
Watching Biden sputter has been interesting. I was never convinced that he would keep his front runner status, but I expected more of a gradual decline leading up to Iowa. This is like a crash and burn.
 
Mosh said:
Watching Biden sputter has been interesting. I was never convinced that he would keep his front runner status, but I expected more of a gradual decline leading up to Iowa. This is like a crash and burn.
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Yeah, he vastly overestimated his own chances, and the media did the same. The reality is that there is very little appetite for Biden in white America, and we'll find out about black America when SC happens (but it doesn't look good).
 
Not exactly politics, but still attention worthy

The University of Southern California announced plans Thursday to offer free tuition to students whose family incomes are less than $80,000 a year.

USC President Carol L. Folt unveiled two new policies to make the university in Los Angeles more accessible to students, including the free tuition break, which will begin for freshman entering this fall. The school also plans to stop calculating homeownership when determining a student's financial need, calling it a "break for homeowners" in its press release.
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www.nbcnews.com

USC announces free tuition for families making under $80,000 a year

The University of Southern California also said homeownership will no longer factor into its calculations to determine a student's financial need.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
Warren is definitely electable. There’s a difference between electability and not having a realistic path forward based on the contests so far.

Barring a major upset on Super Tuesday, Bernie is definitely going to be the nominee. The question now is more whether he does so with a majority or a plurality of delegates.
 
Mosh said:
Barring a major upset on Super Tuesday, Bernie is definitely going to be the nominee. The question now is more whether he does so with a majority or a plurality of delegates.
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So I've been thinking about this. Super Tuesday has a few different states that have the potential to be open to a Joe Biden surge if he really smashes SC out of the park. The biggest prize there is Texas, but there's a fair few delegates in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina. If he runs the southern states on Super Tuesday and hits the delegate threshold across California, it's likely to push him into a strong second place. Notably, there are no Rust Belt states going on Super Tuesday.

March 10th, though, could be very Biden friendly - Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, and Washington. I'd say Bernie has Washington in the bag, but the others? If Biden grabs 4 or 5/6, it will give him that fabled momentum, maybe enough to carry him to the convention. That's not what Bernie wants.

I noted Bernie was campaigning in Minnesota and I felt that's a mistake. If he wins Minnesota, Klobuchar is done and that helps out Biden and Bloomberg. But if she wins that, she might delude herself into staying in longer, which helps him. He should be in Boston, going for the knockout against Elizabeth Warren.
 
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LooseCannon said:
I noted Bernie was campaigning in Minnesota and I felt that's a mistake. If he wins Minnesota, Klobuchar is done and that helps out Biden and Bloomberg. But if she wins that, she might delude herself into staying in longer, which helps him. He should be in Boston, going for the knockout against Elizabeth Warren.
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I see what you’re saying, but from Super Tuesday forward it’s all about delegates, and Bernie wants to try to get a straight majority of them if at all possible. He beat Clinton by over 20% in MN in 2016, so it makes sense to try to max out his delegate count here.
 
Jer said:
I see what you’re saying, but from Super Tuesday forward it’s all about delegates, and Bernie wants to try to get a straight majority of them if at all possible. He beat Clinton by over 20% in MN in 2016, so it makes sense to try to max out his delegate count here.
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It's not all about delegates, but delegates are much of it.
 
LooseCannon said:
So I've been thinking about this. Super Tuesday has a few different states that have the potential to be open to a Joe Biden surge if he really smashes SC out of the park. The biggest prize there is Texas, but there's a fair few delegates in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina. If he runs the southern states on Super Tuesday and hits the delegate threshold across California, it's likely to push him into a strong second place. Notably, there are no Rust Belt states going on Super Tuesday.

March 10th, though, could be very Biden friendly - Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, and Washington. I'd say Bernie has Washington in the bag, but the others? If Biden grabs 4 or 5/6, it will give him that fabled momentum, maybe enough to carry him to the convention. That's not what Bernie wants.

I noted Bernie was campaigning in Minnesota and I felt that's a mistake. If he wins Minnesota, Klobuchar is done and that helps out Biden and Bloomberg. But if she wins that, she might delude herself into staying in longer, which helps him. He should be in Boston, going for the knockout against Elizabeth Warren.
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These seem like upset scenarios to me, and ones that still lead to Bernie winning albeit in a contested convention (which nobody wants). Bernie is looking strong in Texas and NC and the media narrative/momentum favors him.

South Carolina will definitely affect things, although it is starting to seem like Biden might not finish as strong there as he needs to. Iowa weirdness and surprise victories in previous races has also kept the field from winnowing as much as Biden needs or may have expected at this point. As you noted, people like Klobuchar still being in hurts Biden. Also keep in mind that Bernie was crushed in SC in 2016. If he's competitive this time around, he might steal the media narrative again.

The Bloomberg factor also plays a role here. I think at this point it's unlikely that he comes close to winning the nomination, but he has enough potential to disrupt Biden's Super Tuesday. States like TN and OK that should be easy gets for Biden might become much more competitive.
 
LooseCannon said:
It's not all about delegates, but delegates are much of it.
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Sure.

Looking at it from another angle, Bernie needs to try to get a straight majority of delegates for the first round of voting at the convention. If he falls short of that, then he’ll have to deal with ~500 superdelegates being added into the next rounds of voting, and most of them will be in the bag for an establishment candidate TBD. In this scenario Warren delegates will probably consolidate behind Bernie, so it’s more to his advantage to focus on drawing votes away from moderate candidates, unless doing so costs him a first-round majority. This probably benefits him the most across both scenarios.

What will be really interesting is if Bernie comes into the convention with a slim plurality, and the superdelegates are in a position to swing the final nomination either way. If they screwed Bernie in that scenario they would absolutely take a turnout hit on the left, but they’d have to weigh that against the potential gains in the middle in the general. And if they went with the establishment candidate in that scenario, the president would be pounding that point into the ground for months to try to depress Bernie Bro turnout even further.

Having Bernie as the nominee would present some challenges, but there’s definitely overlap between potential Bernie and Trump voters in a way that doesn’t really exist with other Democratic candidates. Especially in the rust belt.
 
If Bernie comes into the convention with a slim plurality and the superdelegates go for an establishment candidate, you can guarantee a Trump victory in November.

Edit: Granted, this scenario favors Trump regardless of what happens, but Bernie is the safer option there.
 
I will be glad when Tuesday is over .. I do not watch a ton of live TV but every other ad is Bloomberg/Steyer/Sanders/ads from a few Congressional seats.
 
bearfan said:
I will be glad when Tuesday is over .. I do not watch a ton of live TV but every other ad is Bloomberg/Steyer/Sanders/ads from a few Congressional seats.
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It will certainly free you of that for a few months...then it starts back up again after the summer.
 
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