2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Syt]

It starts with a Mumia quote.  How is that sane? 

That's part of the problem.  The fringe media--on both sides--is so readily accessible now, it's given a validation it doesn't deserve. Media that tacks too hard, from CounterPunch to Breitbart, would never have made the radar 20 years ago.  Now, even the nuttiest of wings is a click away.

What I find worse than the handful of people who take those outlets seriously are the people who apply the logic "the truth must be in the middle" to serious media and the lunatics.

[CountDeMoney]

What I find worse than the handful of people who take those outlets seriously are the people who apply the logic "the truth must be in the middle" to serious media and the lunatics.

The Lamestream Media is soooo biased, this has got to be The Truth.

[derspiess]

I'm reading this thing on Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/10/the-big-split/

It starts sane but quickly go down from there. I thought I understood these people, turns out I don't.

It starts with a Mumia quote.  How is that sane? 

I dont know who that is.

Convicted cop killer. International hero among far leftists.

[alfred russel]

"California Secretary of State reporting 4.6 Million ballots left in the state. If true, Clinton will win ~51-52% of national popular vote."

Crazy vote share for someone who lost the electoral college. It's supposed to be virtually impossilbe once the win is by more than 2 percent.

Tim, thank you so much for posting this highly credible information. California is now reporting, and Hillary has less than 48% of the vote.

[derspiess]

[derspiess]

Btw this is what I had seen yesterday.  CNN briefly changed their popular vote projections and then put Hillary back in front saying they encountered a "design flaw".

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2016/11/10/plot-twist-cnn-now-saying-that-donald-trump-won-the-popular-vote-n2244077

[Phillip V]

Wikipedia seems good at continuing to update vote totals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016

Clinton and Trump have now both cleared 60 million.  They each need 61 million to beat Romney.

[Legbiter]

Tim, thank you so much for posting this highly credible information. California is now reporting, and Hillary has less than 48% of the vote.

Fatebinder Tim. 

[Fate]

Wikipedia seems good at continuing to update vote totals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016

Clinton and Trump have now both cleared 60 million.  They each need 61 million to beat Romney.

I saw a projection that it'll be about 64 million per person.

[derspiess]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/keith-ellison-dnc-sanders_us_5824dfd6e4b0f616ef303153

By all means

[Eddie Teach]

You got some reason for thinking Ellison would do a poor job?

[Fate]

Ultra left wing Muslim heading the DNC? Great way to outreach to the white working class. We'll carry the West and East coasts next time, for sure.

[celedhring]

Do the party chairs have that much influence over the party political direction anyway? They have a hand on the levers for sure but I understood it's merely an organizational position.

[Razgovory]

Do the party chairs have that much influence over the party political direction anyway? They have a hand on the levers for sure but I understood it's merely an organizational position.

Apparently so.  Do somehow they created millions of additional votes for Clinton.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Eh, party chair is really important in mid-terms, they're often instrumental in organizing the slate of candidates and helping decide where to focus money. Howard Dean got a lot of credit for this in the 2006 midterms. During a Presidential general election, the party chair is much less important than the party's presidential nominee and their campaign.

In the primary it's relatively important, as the party chair can obviously wield power to help one candidate over the other. The biggest way this happened in 2016 was the scheduling of the debates benefited Hillary over Bernie. Additionally a high ranking member of the DNC was leaking debate questions to Hillary. Did this steal the primary from Bernie? Seems pretty doubtful, I don't see how either materially generated many votes for Hillary. Hillary won the primary mostly because her "pre-primary" campaign soaked up all the important endorsements and more importantly, with them, all the important party money sources. That squeezed any serious "establishment" candidate completely out of the picture.

This wasn't totally dissimilar from 2008 when she did the same thing, but in 2008 throughout the entire campaign Obama was doing better with establishment figures/traditional political backers than Bernie ever did.

Bernie's power against Hillary as an insurgent showed how weak she was, but Bernie ultimately lost because he didn't know how or wasn't able to get black votes, and that's a unique problem that Obama didn't have at all as an insurgent. I don't see how more debates, or Hillary being told she'd be asked about the death penalty or about the Flint water crisis at a debate would've made Bernie not lose states like Mississippi 80-20.

There's probably an argument for "weighting" Democratic delegates based on whether the state has recently sent its electoral votes to a Democrat, or based on the percentage of the state vote usually won by the Democrat. It's kinda silly Hillary won the primary because she did great among the Democratic primary voters in states like Mississippi, Alabama and etc which wouldn't come within a mile of turning blue in the general. Hillary won some of the big blue states that were blue anyway (NY, CA); she didn't win many swing states in the primaries. She won NC/PA/FL/OH, but PA/FL were more for structural reasons. They both didn't allow same day registration in the primary, and both actually required you to pre-register as a Democrat weeks in advance. Any State like that was always rough for Bernie because most of his primary voters weren't pre-registered as Democrats for years and years, many were independents or first time voters who missed registration deadlines for the primary election. Most importantly in several important Trump states Bernie won handily--WI/MI for example.