Showing posts with label delegates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label delegates. Show all posts

Monday, June 6, 2016

Berners Lament as AP Calls Hillary Presumptive Nominee

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Previous Related Posts:
Bernie's Endgame Failure
Bernie Supporters Trash Nevada Dem Convention
Bernie Brats Need to Stop Dissing the South
Desperation in Bernie Land
Pope Suggest Psychiatrist for Bernie
Bernie Surrogate Calls Hillary Supporters "Democratic Whores"
Susan Sarandon Likes Trump Over Hillary
Bernie Camp Blames Hillary for AZ Loss
Bernie Gives Hillary The Hand of Silence

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On Monday June 6, 2016, the Associated Press decided start calling Hillary Clinton the "Presumptive Nominee" a day in advance of the New Jersey and California primaries. Using phone polls of superdelegates added to real pledged delegates from the elections, AP and NBC News both called the race for Hillary, and others followed. Her fans and voters cheered, ready for the primary season to be over. But not the steadfast Bernie fans, clinging to false hope and already suspicious of the "rigged" primaries.

The best case scenario is that the next 24 hours will be a pressure valve allowing the Berners to rant and lament and mourn before turning to the general election. Worst case scenario - the "Bernie or Bust" folks make life hell for everyone on the internet, and continue to do so right up until the Democratic Convention because they feel robbed.

In some ways, this steals thunder from the Clinton campaign, making her victory and speech tomorrow night an anticlimax. But victory is victory, and just as sweet. Meanwhile the Bernie fans are apoplectic as they rant about the oligarchic dystopian nightmare of a winner winning.

























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And the Berners Lament...

AP Truthers Unite over Hillary's "Secret Win"


































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Saturday, May 21, 2016

Bernie's Endgame Failure

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As the 2016 Democratic Primary season winds down, it's obvious that Bernie Sanders has lost his once rather noble narrative.

His surrogates have been a hot mess - Obama critics such as Cornel West and Cenk Uygur - Naderites such as Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore - and befuddled pundits who have garbled the message such as Nina Turner and Shaun King. There have been several disastrous demonstrations of Bernie-Bro chaos, such as the protest at a Clinton rally in California during which children were screamed and cursed at and signs were destroyed, along with the latest debacle at the Nevada State Democratic Convention which ended in police action.

Bernie doesn't seem concerned with uniting the Democratic Party. Instead he is vowing to plow ahead to California, win by miracle or (more likely) lose to Hillary, then somehow persuade the super delegates to flip to him at the Philadelphia convention this summer (and please send money!). He's just doubling down on his campaign spin, and seems to believe every pipe-dream his followers espouse:

Update: Bernie doubled down on Sunday Talk Shows:

Interview with Jake Tapper 5-22-2016 on CNN



Jake Tapper: Now you were making a point about the superdelegates, but what you left out of that data is that while it’s true – you have roughly 46 percent of the pledged delegates, Secretary Clinton has roughly 54 percent of them. It seems unlikely that you’ll actually achieve the majority of the pledged delegates.

Sanders: I assume that most of the people who come to my rallies can do arithmetic!
The point that I was making is there’s something absurd when I get 46 percent of the delegates that come from real contests — real elections, and 7 percent of the superdelegates. I am the stronger candidate because we appeal to independents, people who are not in love with either the Democratic or the Republican Party,”


From This Week with George Stephanopoulos: Will he be Hillary's running mate? Um...

STEPHANOPOULOS: If you don't, sir, and this is my final question.
Are you hoping to be considered if Secretary Clinton's running mate?

SANDERS: It's a little bit early to talk about that. Right now, our function is to do everything I can, George. And you're going to see me running all over California; we're in New Mexico now. We're going to do everything that we can to get every vote and every delegate that we can and go into that convention with as much momentum as is possible.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Didn't hear a no. Senator, we'll be talking to you soon. Take care.

On Hillary as the "lesser of two evils" compared with Trump:

We need a campaign, an election, coming up which does not have two candidates who are really very, very strongly disliked. I don’t want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils. I want the American people to be voting for a vision of economic justice, of social justice, of environmental justice, of racial justice. That is the campaign we are running, and that’s why we are getting the support we are.




From Yahoo News
Sanders insisted there is a “possibility” he could pull ahead of Clinton. He acknowledged this would be improbable and would take multiple major victories among the six states that will vote on June 7. Nevertheless, Sanders vowed to take his “fight” to the party’s nominating convention, which will take place in Philadelphia in late July.
“We have the possibility. It will be a steep climb, I recognize that, but we have the possibility of going to Philadelphia with a majority of the pledged delegates,” Sanders said. “Some people say that we’ve got a steep hill to climb to do that. And you know what? That is absolutely true. But you know what? Together we have been climbing that steep hill from day one in this campaign.”

Yeah, okay - a steep hill to nowhere because Hillary Clinton will win California, and also New Jersey and Washington D.C.

And along comes Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver to refute the Math, which "media narrative" instead of reality:

From NPR Interview
AUDIE CORNISH: But if he has to win 68 percent of all the delegates going forward, in all the races, and he falls short of that — you know, do you have an obligation to be honest about what his path is?
JEFF WEAVER: Well, no, but see, but that’s a media narrative from people who think that politics is just standing at a board, doing mathematics. But it’s much more than that.

And about that Convention:

CORNISH: So for the record, you are planning to contest the convention?

WEAVER: Well, I think what is going to happen is at the end of the District of Columbia, which is the last jurisdiction to vote in this process - and once that happens, if the senator has substantial momentum, if he has substantially closed the gap in terms of pledged delegates, if the public polling continues to show that he's a much stronger candidate, I think there's a strong argument to be made to superdelegates that they should take another look.
I mean, there are hundreds of superdelegates who support Hillary Clinton who announced their endorsement for her before the race even started, before they even knew Bernie Sanders was in the race. So...

CORNISH: Right, that's why I'm asking. So essentially, you're saying, yeah, if all of these things line up the way you're describing, you want - you're saying that your campaign will - you guys will raise your hand and say, yes, we want to contest this. This is not over.

WEAVER: Right, we'll go there. And, you know, superdelegates don't vote until they actually go to the convention. So let's see where the race stands at the end of the voting process. And then let's see what happens when the superdelegates actually vote in Philadelphia.

But slowly some past Bernie supporters are coming to their senses and realizing Bernie's day is done and we should be focused on Trump.

This week the Twitter hashtag #BernieLostMe trended for several days. And while the faithful keep their spirits up by vowing #BernieOrBust, signs are that the "revolution" may be coming apart at the seams.



















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Thursday, May 5, 2016

Hillary Running Against Bernie and Trump

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In spite of not winning the Indiana Primary, Hillary Clinton had a strong week as a candidate.

After Donald Trump accused her of playing the Woman Card, Hillary raised 2.4 million dollars by offering supporters a literal Woman Card for a donation.







She began the vetting process for Vice President, and of course Twitter had a few suggestions.











And she turned towards the general election in a big way with two ads targeting Trump:





Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders is still a major stumbling block for Hillary. He won Indiana possibly due to Independent and GOP cross-over votes. Even though the state was a virtual tie in delegates and Bernie's lead was slim, his followers once again saw it as "momentum" leading to the big prize of California at the end of the primary season.

And Bernie came out swinging at Hillary, telling her he wasn't going anywhere.








However, those able to #FeelTheMath and accept reality are realizing that the numbers are not in Bernie's favor, and he probably won't catch Hillary on delegates.











However, the Berniebot Believers are never going to give up, and most of them are never going to vote Hillary in the general election. And Bernie's surrogates are still calling for increased donations to keep them going, while building up hopes for a longshot win. It's a con game, and it isn't helping the Democratic Party.

The main lessons from this election year are clear: the Democratic Party needs to fix several things before next time. No more support for Independents pretending to be Democrats. No more open primaries allowing Republicans to tamper with our primaries, and hopefully no more unfair caucuses keeping turnout low.

As it stands now, Hillary and her supporters are having to turn toward the general election and Donald Trump while dealing with rabid Berniebots who basically regurgitate far-right memes about Hillary.

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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Bernie the Sore Loser

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Previous Related Posts:
Bernie Brats Need to Stop Dissing South
Desperation in Bernie Land
Susan Sarandon Likes Trump Over Hillary
 Bernie Camp Blames Hillary for AZ Loss
Bernie Gives Hillary the Hand of Silence
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The night of the New York Primary, Bernie Sanders was at Penn State giving a speech. When the event ended and he found out he had been trounced by Hillary Clinton, his reaction spoke volumes. He didn't go back to a microphone and give a concession speech. He didn't ask his entourage of reporters to send out a message of good will to other Democrats. Instead, he left his press corps stranded in a Pennsylvania airport at 10 pm at night and flew back home to Vermont where he only spoke to local reporters, still not giving a message of any sort that would prove him to be a gracious loser.

Nope. He's just a loser. A sore loser.





And then the conspiracy theories began, but they've been there all along. The election was "rigged" by Hillary and the "establishment." The election was stolen. Something was wrong. How could Bernie have huge crowds at his speeches, but so few votes? Don't crowds of unregistered voters always equal votes? And isn't it unfair that Independents needed to register, like, last October or something? Rigged! Disenfranchised! Voter Suppression!!!

As if that wasn't bad enough, Bernie's manager, Jeff Weaver, immediately went on MSNBC and made an arse of himself trying to explain some vague way for Bernie to win in spite of logic and math. It was quite a spectacle.

There's a Path!!!



















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Anger and Denial















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Rigged!











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Still Bernie or Bust!








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Democrats React




















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Hillary Clinton Wins New York Landslide

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For weeks the Bernie Sanders crowd insisted that he was going to "win big" in New York City. After all, he was a hometown boy from Brooklyn, and a few years, or even 40 years, living in Vermont means nothing when you have the Big Apple in your heart.

And indeed, Sanders seemed to have "intensity" and "momentum" right up until the polls closed on Primary Election Day and it all fell apart. Because Hillary not only won the hearts and minds of Democrats in the Big Apple - she got a landslide of support, higher than projected, both in turnout and delegates won.

Bernie didn't even win the precinct where he grew up. He didn't win any ethnic groups, not even the Jewish voters. Yes, he won in white rural counties with few voters and few delegates outside the cities. It just wasn't enough.

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Saturday, March 19, 2016

Trump Looms Large as GOP Slouches Towards Cleveland

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Previous Related Posts:
Nazi Trump Demands Sieg Heil from Crowd - But Not Racist Of Course
Trump and the Klan on Super Tuesday Eve
Trump Triumphant So Far
Trump Jumps the Shark With Facist Ideas
Ted Cruz Dreams of a Jesse Helms Army
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This week several Republican pundits have expressed real fear about a possible Trump Presidency, for instance David Brooks of the New York Times



Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible. In his savage regime, public life is just a dog-eat-dog war of all against all.
As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared.
Trump’s supporters deserve respect. They are left out of this economy. But Trump himself? No, not Trump, not ever.
~ Brooks in his NYT Op-Ed

Next, from Erick Erickson and other members of "Conservatives Against Trump"

Source Here
This morning I participated in a meeting of grassroots conservative activists from around the country who are committed to opposing Donald Trump. We have agreed to release the statement below:

We are a group of grassroots conservative activists from all over the country and from various backgrounds, including supporters of many of the other campaigns. We are committed to ensuring a real conservative candidate is elected. We believe that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump, a Hillary Clinton donor, is that person.

We believe that the issue of Donald Trump is greater than an issue of party. It is an issue of morals and character that all Americans, not just those of us in the conservative movement, must confront.

We call for a unity ticket that unites the Republican Party. If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the party’s nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots.

We encourage all former Republican candidates not currently supporting Trump to unite against him and encourage all candidates to hold their delegates on the first ballot.

Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump. Our multiple decades of work in the conservative movement for free markets, limited government, national defense, religious liberty, life, and marriage are about ideas, not necessarily parties.

Then there is Stuart Stevens, seasoned political consultant, who can't stop ranting about the disaster of Trumpism for his party:












The GOP is hoping that in the next few weeks Ted Cruz and John Kasich can win enough votes and delegates away from Donald Trump to keep him from becoming the Republican nominee for President. But what happens if he is still the delegate leader when they get to the convention floor?

Just the phrase "brokered convention" instills real fear, and yet somebody has to do something:

Ted Cruz: "It would be a disaster"












Stephen Colbert poked fun at Republicans for using the ephemism "Open Convention": "Honey, we don't have an broken marriage, we have an open marriage instead!" He also said:

"See when a candidate wins a primary, he really wins delegates who are committed to him at the convention, but only for the first ballot . . . So if Donald Trump doesn't get 1,237 delegates in the first round of voting, they're all free to vote for whoever, which is great news. The Republican campaign could start all over again. But this time it's all one week: You can binge-watch the death of the GOP."










Trump sent a clear message to all those praying for an open, broken, borked, or brokered convention:

"I think you'd have riots. I think you'd have riots ...I'm representing a tremendous many, many millions of people."
~~ Trump on CNN's New Day

Later he rolled back that answer, saying through surrogate Chris Christie that he didn't mean literal riots:

Via The Hill
“I don’t think he meant literal riots,” Christie said during a press conference in New Jersey, according to The Wall Street Journal. "I think he meant political riots."
Still, Christie, who has endorsed Trump and appeared with him at campaign rallies, predicted that a contested convention selecting the Republican nominee would generate outrage.
“If someone goes in with the most delegates, the most votes, and then they are denied the nomination by what they consider to be political insiders, I think there would be real upset at that convention,” he said. The Republican National Convention will be held in Cleveland in July.



Ex-nominee in 2012 Mitt Romney has been leading the charge to a brokered convention as part of the "Stop Trump" movement, and just yesterday he pledged support to Ted Cruz, even though they are rather strange bedfellows - an Evangelical firebrand and a moderate Mormon.



Trump was not amused, of course, and wasted no time lambasting Romney, joking in Utah that he loved Mormons because they were so hard-working, but he wasn't sure Romney was really a Mormon.





Trump also tweeted at Cruz and Romney:









Back to Stuart Stevens, GOP pundit:



Protesters outside his Utah rally minced no words:











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