"is nuts"...Gob wrote:Your system....Sue U wrote:It will not be Bernie. He would have to win every race from here on out by 60-40 margins to get enough delegates for the nomination. Michigan-squeak 1 or 2 point victories, even if it could happen, will not do it.
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https://medium.com/america-rising-pac/t ... .s9yqyzyzwThe UnDemocratic Democratic Primary
I’ll admit it — I might have been wrong when I predicted last month that the Democratic primary was going to be a “long slog.”
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) promises he’s in the Democratic primary to stay, but that pledge may soon fall victim to simple arithmetic and an arcane Democratic Party process known as “superdelegates.”
A casual observer of politics may wonder: how is that possible? After all, heading into yesterday’s contests, Senator Sanders has won nearly half of the primaries and caucuses held to date: of the 20 contests held so far, Sanders has won eight, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has 12.
Yet, Senator Sanders trails by a more than two-to-one margin in the delegate count: of the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, Secretary Clinton has amassed 1,130 delegates, while Sanders stands at 499.
So what’s going on here?
The DNC doesn’t allocate delegates by simply heeding the will of the voters. Instead they calculate their tallies from a combination of “pledged delegates,” which are earned from the actual votes of real people, and “unpledged delegates,” better known as “superdelegates.”
Superdelegates consist of Democratic officeholders, as well as 21 “distinguished members,” a group made up of former presidents, vice presidents, DNC chairs, etc.
In non-political speak, “distinguished members” are really Democrat political insiders and D.C. powerbrokers, not the everyday voters Democrats claim to represent. ABC News recently reported that, “dozens of the 437 delegates in the DNC member category are registered federal and state lobbyists, according to an ABC News analysis. In fact, when you remove elected officials from the superdelegate pool, at least one in seven of the remainder are former or current lobbyists.”
To put the influence of these insiders in stark context: in 2016, there are 712 superdelegates up for grabs, making up nearly 30 percent of the magic number.
Having spent her last quarter century in Washington, it should surprise no one that Secretary Clinton is dominating Senator Sanders with superdelegates, 458 to 22.
As an insurgent candidate, Senator Sanders’ candidacy is fueled by grassroots energy across the country inspired by his socialist message. Yet his chances of getting his party’s nomination are slim and getting narrower by the day.
This scenario is reminiscent of the early 1980s and the original implementation of superdelegates.
According to CNN, the DNC created the process in 1982 “as a continuation of the effort to bring the experienced, more MODERATE members of the party to the convention to act as a ‘ballast’ against the passions of other delegates.”
In 1984, superdelegates powered the “establishment” candidate, former Vice President Walter Mondale (D-MN), over the “insurgent,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson(D-IL), a point not lost on Jackson, who became one of the system’s loudest and most vociferous opponents. In the subsequent election, Jackson blasted superdelegates as “voodoo politics,” and noted that, “when people are inspired and hopeful, they work diligently. When they feel they have not been treated fairly, they are discouraged.”
In 1984, Jackson won 19 percent of the popular vote, but received only 10 percent of the delegate count. The facts are indisputable: whatever the motivation, superdelegates had a chilling effect on the first viable African American presidential candidate, re-routing and suppressing the will of the voters in favor of the establishment choice.
Ironically, Jackson’s lead negotiator against the DNC’s superdelegate process was Harold Ickes, who has since become a close Clinton confidante and a senior advisor to a pro-Clinton Super PAC, and stands to benefit in 2016 from a process he fiercely opposed in 1984.
Far be it from me to give Democrats advice. But if I were Senator Sanders trying to chart a path forward to the nomination, this description of the 1988 presidential race by Karen Tumulty, then of the Los Angeles Times, would give me chills: “With his stirring oratory and populist message, Jackson has mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters who have not participated in elections before.”
Those words are as fitting of Reverend Jackson in 1988 as they are of Senator Sanders today and so are the likely outcomes of their candidacies.
Jesse Jackson? Viable? Thwarting the will....? I'll have some of whatever this writer is smokingsuperdelegates had a chilling effect on the first viable African American presidential candidate
I'm not disagreeing, and I imagine there are plenty of Republicans who wish they had a 25-30% super-delegate firewall to protect against what is happening.Sue U wrote:So what? * * * Anarchy makes for a poor campaign (see, e.g., GOP).
I imagine there are plenty of Republicans who wish they had a 25-30% super-delegate firewall to protect against what is happening.
8:20 p.m.
Republican Marco Rubio is ending his campaign for the Republican nomination for president after a humiliating loss in his home state of Florida.
Rubio told a crowd in Miami Tuesday that he knows that voters are angry and that there is a hunger for new faces and voices in government.
Rubio's decision was prompted by losses in all but three of the presidential nomination contests but Florida's winner-take-all primary proved the most devastating. Only six years earlier, he was a tea party favorite who crushed the GOP's "establishment" candidate to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.
But the political tables turned on the Florida senator as a 2016 presidential candidate who was lambasted as mainstream in a year when voters cried out for an outsider.
Doomsday Savior? How Paul Ryan Will Pick the Next President
It’s hidden there in plain sight, even if it hasn’t happened since the election of 1825: The people will not pick the next president, Congress will.
We wrote about this last week on Medium, and now the story is beginning to flesh out.
Politico reports that leading conservatives will meet on Thursday to plot out a third-party spoiler plan to beat presumed nominee Donald Trump.
With Marco Rubio suspending his campaign after losing the Florida primary and it is beginning to appear he will reverse his previous words to support a nominee Trump.
Because there will be a third party candidate — and their name will likely be Mitt with a Kasich or a Rubio on the same ticket.
Michael Bloomberg practically left a breadcrumb for this theory in plain sight when he declared that he would not be running for President this cycle. While pundits focused on why the math wouldn’t work out for Bloomberg against Trump or Hillary Clinton, the former mayor of New York City buried this interesting analysis in his op-ed this week.
In a three-way race, it’s unlikely any candidate would win a majority of electoral votes, and then the power to choose the president would be taken out of the hands of the American people and thrown to Congress. The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress would vote for their party’s nominee. Party loyalists in Congress — not the American people or the Electoral College — would determine the next president.
What could be a major story-arc out of House of Cards or Veep may likely become a reality for our country come November when both Trump and Clinton do not secure a simple majority of electoral votes and Mitt Romney is elected President.
Here’s how it will happen:
Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination out right. The establishment won’t be able to stop him. He will get 50 percent. So there will be no brokered convention. There will be no Mitt Romney savior moment in Cleveland.
When Trump secures the nomination out right this summer, the establishment goes ballistic: Terrified at the prospect of losing their party with Donald Trump as president.
Suddenly they realize, “holy shit, what if we could stop Donald Trump and keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House?”
So they run a moderate establishment Republican as a third-party candidate — 100 percent as a spoiler candidate. Worst case scenario oh, they prevent Donald Trump from winning the White House. Best case scenario they pull enough votes away from Hillary Clinton to prevent her from securing the necessary majority of 270 electoral votes.
Then the election goes to a House of Representatives ballot presided over Speaker Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s former running mate in 2012.
If neither candidate gets 270 electoral college votes, Congress picks the president. And he will be called President Mitt, the one who is laying the groundwork for this doomsday electoral scenario.
It’s right there, hidden in plain sight in the 12th Amendment of the US Constitution:
The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.
And Congress can pick whomever they damn well please.
A moderate conservative third-party would definitely pull enough votes away from Trump to tank his candidacy, but the right candidate could also spoil it for Clinton.
If you remember, in the 1992 election, Bill Clinton was unable to secure a simple majority of the popular vote, with Ross Perot serving as a third party spoiler — not only taking votes away from the Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush, but pinching off the odd moderate vote from the Democrats as well.
But Ross Perot was never able to win a state, thus, he was never awarded any electoral college votes.
In this cycle, however, a third party spoiler candidate could in fact carry a handful of states. Bloomberg recognized it and realized the grave implications of that type of candidacy — taking the highest elected office in the free world out of the hands of the people and into the hands of a Tea Party-influenced, yet establishment-Republican Congress.
If you are an establishment Republican right now, this is actually an even better outcome than a brokered convention: Because you have even greater control over, not only the conservative nominee, but the ability to handpick the next president.
And Speaker Ryan will ensure that Mitt Romney will be handpicked. Why else would you fly out for dinner in Utah?
The election of 1825 is our reference for this crazy-likely theory.
The election was actually in 1824 and Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, raking in 42 percent. John Quincy Adams came in distant second with barely over 30 percent of the popular vote. William Crawford and then Speaker of the House Henry Clay came in third and fourth respectively. Problem was, no one won a majority of the electoral college (also fun-fact: all four of the candidates were part of the same party, the Democratic-Republicans. Oh, also: Crawford had a stroke after the November election). With no legally elected President, the decision was kicked over to the House, where they deliberated for 3 months to determine who would be the victor.
Lobbyists? Everyone thinks they were invented in the lobby of the Willard Hotel during the U.S. Grant Presidency 45 years later. But believe it, lobbyists were in full effect those three months. And, they delivered the “Corrupt Bargain:” an unprecedented decision where Henry Clay presided over the ever-so-unpopular-with-the-electorate election of John Quincy Adams.
The battle’s been lost, the war is not won
There is potentially a corrupt bargain underway in plain sight in the election of 2016 with the possibility of not only saving the Republican party but remake American electoral politics. John Kasich won big in the Ohio primary — he could carry Ohio again in the general.
Just imagine: a third party spoiler candidacy is waged by Mitt Romney (choosing, say Kasich as his running mate). The addled country is fatigued by Donald Trump’s endless shenanigans as well as burned out by the scorched earth campaign against Hillary and her emails.
Ohio goes. So does Michigan. And Utah. Maybe Idaho and/or the Dakotas.
With even just one of those states spoiled, you have a doomsday scenario where both Donald and Hillary do not have a majority of electoral college votes.
And so the election goes into 2017 — and Speaker Ryan holds the gavel.
Where does the hammer drop?
Adam Phillips is pastor of Christ Church: Portland (Ore.). He formerly led faith mobilization for The One Campaign (ONE.org).
This harebrained theory was co-conceived and written with Chris LaTondresse, VP of Communications and Strategy at The Expectations Project and former advisor at USAID’s Center for Faith Based and Community Initiatives.
