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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I am so happy that Hillary finally officially has the nomination. This is how a dragon does a happy dance.
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Yeah. I would say the Trump University controversy should be considered the death knell for the idea that Trump has just been saying what he needs to say to win the primary. In the absence of political rivals to contend with during the transition from Primary to General, Trump got bored, wandered off, and picked a fight with a California Judge over his race.
Like, his entire point of attack is that no one of Mexican descent could ever be fair and impartial to Trump because he's against illegal immigration, which all Mexican-Americans naturally support. People who think Trump will suddenly do a 180 in office need to pay close attention to this lawsuit.
That seems to happen a lot in the Trump campaign. He and his supporters are very fond of the, "I'm rubber and you're glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you!" tactic of debate.
1,812 delegates plus 571 superdelegates gives her the 2,383 delegate minimum required for uncontested candidacy.
The "back room decisions" you speak of are probably the superdelegate negotiations.
edited 7th Jun '16 11:48:32 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I get that, but I also understand why people would be a bit miffed at Clinton being declared the winner when she does not yet hold 51% of the vote.
She hasn't locked the nomination, because no superdelegte is locked into voting for the candidate they endorse at this exact moment. Will she win? Obviously, and she'll have very much earned a lot of congratulations when she reaches 51% of the pledged delegates.
The issue is that announcing a result now tells people yet to vote that their vote doesn't matter and can't change anything, when their votes do matter and could change things. There's a reason some places don't allow the broadcasting of exit polls while the polls are still open.
edited 7th Jun '16 11:54:03 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThe math doesn't lie. Even if you removed superdelegates entirely and based the nomination on proportional allocation of pledged delegates, Clinton would still win.
There is a certain dubiousness to announcing the results yesterday, to be sure; it does somewhat suborn the votes today. But that has nothing to do with the DNC.
edited 7th Jun '16 11:57:43 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Well yeah, she's gonna win, but "is going to win" and "has one" are two different things. I'm sure that come November the polls will tell us that Clinton will win the general election, but it would still be regarded as bad form to declare her the winner while people were still voting.
edited 7th Jun '16 11:55:56 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIf superdelegates were ignored entirely, then the amount of regular delegates required to reach 51% majority would be 2,054. Clinton has 1,812 to Sanders's 1,521. Sanders would need to win 533 of the remaining 694 delegates to steal the candidacy from Clinton, while Clinton only needs 242.
But that isn't the case because superdelegates are a thing.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Again, I am not for a moment disputing that Clinton is going to win, that's obvious to anyone who can read a poll and has been for a while now.
What I'm disputing is the idea that the press should call an election before voting has finished.
Admitedly none of this would be an issue if primaries did what every other election does and holds off announcing results until everyone is done voting.
edited 7th Jun '16 12:01:18 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranTo me, the superdelegate thing is an inverse "lipstick on a pig" issue - the vote lead is legit but they add an appearance of cronyism regardless. Their presence will always add a taint to any legit success, especially if we are dealing with someone who does not want to give up for some reason.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanUnfortunately, that's impossible in a primary season that stretches over so many months. They can't withhold the results from Ohio until California has voted; that would be insane. It's only possible when voting takes place in a restricted time period, and is a great argument for a national primary voting day, but that won't happen for a variety of reasons.
Heck, California and New Jersey should be happy that they got within a day of having their votes matter. In the typical primary, the winner is known much, much earlier.
edited 7th Jun '16 12:15:09 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I get that due to how primaries work the result will become clear before the entire thing is over, but there's having a know result became all but one candidate dropped out and there's declaring a hypothetical (incredibly likely hypothetical, but hypothetical none the less) result when voters are literally about to start voting. They could have at least let Californian finishing voting first.
As for a national primary day, you don't even need that, split the primary places up into 6-7 different "super Tuesday" style events and declare the results for each event as they happen, sure the last event might get hit by "it's already decided" but if things are stacked right everyone will get to vote and have their vote counted.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThere was some controversy over superdelegates in 2008. At first, Nevada and South Carolina and then Super Tuesday (which had far more states than this year back then) gave Obama an only thin advantage but as the primary progressed Clinton could never clearly narrow his lead. The superdelegates then started to move to him.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIn theory, the superdelegates could rally behind a candidate who is losing the popular vote and thus suborn the will of the voters. In practice, that has not happened in recent memory, and it's not happening this time, either.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Hillary's campaign was furious at the AP and at NBC for calling the nomination before Tuesday's primaries. It creates the distinct possibility of keeping her supporters home today whilst Sanders' supporters turn out in a fit of pique, costing her campaign some of its perceived legitimacy in the popular vote count.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Ryan clarifies he wasn't calling Trump a racist
, merely pointing out that his statements are.
Christie: 'Trump is not a racist'
House Republican: You could 'easily argue' that Obama is racist
Asshats, all three of them.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanWow, guys.
Are you really going to pile onto the "Obama is a racist because he's trying to bring down white people" line? Because that's where Trump gets a lot of his hardcore supporters.
If the national GOP signs onto a race war, this could get super ugly.
edited 7th Jun '16 12:56:20 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Quite.
Then again, the one place to decide a Race War is on the Race Track.
Keep Rolling OnIn case anybody was wondering why a Trump surrogate called Paul Ryan racist for criticizing Trump, it was because Trump told them to.
He even manages to insult his own campaign staff while he's at it.
edited 7th Jun '16 1:30:12 PM by Eschaton
Is it wrong to hate a certain race? I'm not overly fond of boat races.
The thing with racism is that it's a bit hard to define. In fact, I'd argue there are two types: Racial Supremacy (The KKK, the Nazis, ect), and "Racial Collectivism" (someone who doesn't necessarily think one race superior to another, but nonetheless highly values racial unity or success of races over individuals. This is where "cultural appropriation" watchdogs come in). At worst, Obama is a relatively mild example of the latter. Trump is a very strong example of the latter, and probably the former as well.
Leviticus 19:34I would disagree, in that I doubt Trump explicitly thinks the white is superior to all other subhuman races, KKK/Nazi style (though a number of his supporters do, which is another issue). Implicitly however...
This whole fiasco started not because of direct racism, but because of a personal vendetta. Because this judge won't let Trump off the hook, and Trump wonders why. "No good judge, no good person, no good American, would treat Trump this way." And its here that he defaults to racism. "He's a Mexican, that explains everything."
Of course, the idea that he could actually be guilty of something doesn't even remotely enter his mind.
edited 7th Jun '16 1:53:31 PM by Eschaton
Um, Eschaton, I am not referring to Curiel, but to other lawsuits about racial discrimination in the 70s. As well as some comments by his employees which are more recent.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I suspect that it's in large part due to Sanders, the problem is that while many complaints are valid (officially counting superdelegtes before they've voted seems especially weird) now is the absolute worst time to try and fix it, but it's also the only time anyone cares.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran