Super Tuesday open thread

Biden wins Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina? I don’t like how this is going.

@Perry

I see Joe Rogan being brought into our broader movement, which includes trans rights

Imma hafta disagree real hard on that one. Joe Rogan ain’t been brought into shit. Like, beyond the abject fuckery of Sanders positioning the guy as a person whose political opinions have any value (the exact opposite is true)
1)Rogan did not pledge to vote for Sanders if he’s the nominee (let alone help the campaign), he gave a non-committal ‘I like the cut of this fella’s jib’
2)if you welcome nazis (crypto or otherwise) into your broader movement, it will become a nazi movement. As inevitable as the sunrise. One would hafta have a whole lotta faith in ‘the movement’, Sen Sanders, or both not to think the embrace of the alt right thru Rogan an existential threat. Faith, I admit I completely lack

@Oogly
Looking at your graph there, and just thinking out loud, it’s interesting that Buttigieg actually did better than Sanders with LGBTQ+ voters when controlling for total support. Not a big difference, and Sanders is definitely not a phobe (regardless of how lackluster I think he’s been on that front, see above). Just seems to lend credence to having an openly gay person run being important to a lot of people. And now that he’s out, I wonder where his support (queer and straight) goes now

A bit more than this tokenism tier candidacy

Eh… maybe let’s don’t do that. That word has a meaning, and it’s not when black women do bad things. Ironically tho, the fact that ‘the most diverse primary ever’ was left to get significantly less diverse just in time for the actual voting is a pretty good metaphor for tokenism

@WWTH
I also wanna add to what you said by pointing out that the convention is not after the primary. The convention is part of the primary. What do people think the delegates (super and otherwise) are for, decoration? No, the voters choose them, and they choose the nominee. It’s up to Sanders and his delegates/surrogates/supporters to win over enough people to take the 2nd round. The ‘Warren needs to drop out or she’s stealing the nom from Sanders’ thing is really just saying ‘I don’t think my guy can actually close the deal’. Or worse ‘he shouldn’t need to’

CA is where Bernie is expected to do really well, so take heart. I’m just glad Bloomberg doesn’t seem to be winning any states.

@Naglfar

Probably Biden; Pete endorsed Biden after dropping out

Maybe. I’m working on an entirely non scientific hypothesis that endorsements aren’t as surefire as a lotta people think, so here’s hoping I’m correct 😛

Oddly, Sanders is leading in Texas, where I would expect more people to be conservative/centrist

Another, much more scientifically rigorous, hypothesis is that demographics is destiny and ideology is illusory. The preponderance of evidence suggests that the media’s ‘ideological lanes’ framing of the Dem electorate (conservative dems vote a certain way, liberals vote a different way) isn’t really true. Everyone likes Warren, Sanders voters like Biden 2nd best and vice versa. What’s more far more predictive is black voters prefer Biden to Sanders to Warren, Latin voters prefer Sanders to Biden to Warren, young voters prefer Sanders to Warren to Biden, etc. The Texas Dem party, like in Nevada, is largely young and Latin, so Sanders winning makes sense

@Aaron
I’ll hold my nose and vote for Biden in the general if it comes to that, but I rather doubt he can beat Trump. It seems too eerily reminiscent of 2016: a moderate who doesn’t get people particularly excited against a fascist, with a persistent scandal allegation that won’t go away no matter how many times it is debunked (Hillary’s emails or Hunter Biden’s Ukraine business).

@Axecalibur:

It’s up to Sanders and his delegates/surrogates/supporters to win over enough people to take the 2nd round. The ‘Warren needs to drop out or she’s stealing the nom from Sanders’ thing is really just saying ‘I don’t think my guy can actually close the deal’. Or worse ‘he shouldn’t need to’

I suspect the thinking of some is that if the convention goes to a 2nd round at all, then the nomination will be thrown to Biden by the superdelegates and smoky-back-room politicking; therefore, the only shot for a progressive to get the nomination is to get to the convention with a majority, not just a plurality; and therefore splitting the progressive vote between Warren and Sanders is dangerous and likely to let Biden steal the nomination, the way Hubert Humphrey cheated Eugene McCarthy out of the 1968 nomination, and that this in turn risks a Trump landslide, like Nixon’s 1968 landslide. This could be motivating some progressives to strongly desire the progressive vote unify early behind one candidate.

But it’s likely already too late for that now; one of the two would probably have to have dropped out before Super Tuesday to avoid incurring that risk. At this point, calls for Warren (or Sanders) to drop out are going to be very counterproductive.

I wonder where his [Buttigieg] support (queer and straight) goes now

Data I saw somewhere suggests almost evenly split among Sanders, Warren, Biden, and Bloomberg, with a very slight edge to (surprisingly) Sanders.

So, Buttigieg dropping out didn’t move the needle meaningfully. Which is better than I’d expected, as I’d expected his support to go predominantly to Biden or at least not-Warren-or-Sanders. Perhaps the LGBTQ portion of his support made the difference, as they don’t seem to like the other “centrist” candidates.

@Naglfar:

Oddly, Sanders is leading in Texas, where I would expect more people to be conservative/centrist

It’s the large Hispanic population there. As soon as I saw the Nevada results I expected Sanders to get big delegate hauls from the rest of the southwestern states, including Texas and California. Similarly it was predictable from Biden doing well in South Carolina that he’d take a lot of the southeastern states. So, Biden gets the southeast, Sanders the southwest and likely much of the northeast, Bloomberg is discovering what Steyer recently learned — you can buy your way into the contest and even buy changes to the rules to get onto the debate stage, but you can’t buy the people’s votes — and Gabbard is unlikely to claw her way up above 1%, which means the decisive matters now will be a) which way will the northwest go? and b) which way will New York go? If both go to Sanders it might net Sanders a majority going into the convention, but any large scale inroads by Biden or Warren in those areas will likely limit Sanders to a plurality, if not throw the plurality to Biden. And then the superdelegates on the second ballot will almost certainly throw the nomination to Biden either way.

Breadtube

?

Goddamnit, looks like it’s gonna be Joe.

I’m just glad Bloomberg doesn’t seem to be winning any states.

Honestly I was hoping he would syphon votes from Biden, but it looks like that won’t be happening.

This primary is like watching a train wreck play in slow motion. This whole affair should be between Bernie and Warren period. Bloomberg and Biden have committed so many gaffes and hurt so many people it is beyond ridiculous they are getting this much support.

So. Worst case and a second Trump term happens- how would the post-Trump recovery happen? Sanders might run again but he’s already old and there’s no guarantee he’d be able to run in 2024. I’m currently acting on the assumption that the country and the planet will still be standing or at least be salvageable, but obviously it’ll take time to stabilize things.

That goes double if Bernie’s health fails him now- all his support will need to go somewhere and I don’t see it going to Warren or Biden. The former is too much of a centrist policy wonk to really deal with systemic issues and the latter is…Joe Biden.

@Anonymous
If trump wins democracy in America is dead,

Biden appears to be winning more states, but Bernie will likely win Texas and California. He might still come out ahead today.

Not ideal, but I’ll be okay with Bernie. Please no Biden. Bloomberg isn’t going to be winning the nomination, at least.

With CA and Texas Looking Like Sanders I see it as him having this in the bag. Only worry now is that people are now seeing this as contested convention with no one really saying for 100% sure who gonna take it now.

But I guess even that forecast is gonna get shattered because it’s 2020 there is no such thing as impossibilities.

@epitome of incomprehensibility

The tune of the American anthem is taken from a 1770s English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven”. As my high school history teacher put it, “no sober man could hit those highs”.