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« Liberal Outrage: February 2016 | Main | Liberal Outrage: April 2016 » Liberal OutrageBernie wins bisexuals in a landslide! Ok, i assume that's just based on a small sample size. But for that and more breakdowns of Bernie's support, see this post by Carl Beijer which is actually kind of a follow-up to this media criticism post. Beijer's data comes from the Reuters tracking poll and there are various caveats about that which i won't get into, but Beijer's broad point should still stand no matter how the data is sliced. By fnord12 | March 30, 2016, 4:12 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Thank you Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii for voting 70 to 80% for Bernie. At this point we have to ask ourselves why Hillary Clinton won't drop out. She's just forcing Bernie to spend resources that he could be using to unify the party against the Republicans in November. By fnord12 | March 27, 2016, 2:47 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (4)| Link Thank you Dems abroad, Idaho, and Utah. 70-80% blow-outs is pretty amazing. As for Arizona, Clinton won big, and that is bad news for Sanders. But the situation in Arizona was a disaster. Too few polling stations, resulting in insanely long lines, and people that switched registration from Independent to Democrat to vote in the primary only to wait on those very long lines find out that their switch didn't happen. Lifelong Democrats are claiming it happened to them, too. And apparently the AP called the state for Hillary while people were still on line, which is malpractice when delegates are awarded proportionally. It's the sort of thing that breeds legitimate suspicion. And we've been seeing failures along these lines in most of the primaries so far (not necessarily this bad). It would be nice if our media could devote some attention to it on a national level, but as Nate Silver said: By fnord12 | March 23, 2016, 7:22 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link Keep fighting the good fight. By fnord12 | March 16, 2016, 9:05 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (12)| Link I'm linking to an article about Hillary Clinton struggling to answer a question on Obamacare at a town hall, but i don't mean it in the context of the primary wars. The point is that every time someone has a problem with their health insurance, every time something is confusing, every time prices go up, it's now going to be thought of as part of the ACA, whether that's fair or not, or whether the person is doing the right things or not. This is the cost of going with the Rube Goldberg compromise that is the ACA. It's certainly true that an "everybody can buy into Medicare" solution would have come with its own disruptions, but it would have been much simpler to explain, and that simplicity has major political value, which in turn has major practical value. People could not irrationally blame the system when their private insurance goes up, analysts (like the one in the article) could not blame people for making the wrong decisions on the exchange (or for not using the exchange), etc.. The Medicare solution would also have problems, but people and politicians would understand what those problems were and they could be identified without having to interview each person in great detail. And that would help in a big way with people that (think that they) don't like the ACA, which puts it at much more risk than it should be. By fnord12 | March 15, 2016, 8:24 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link That was a BFD. And a belated thanks to Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine. But Sanders' victory in Michigan, per 538, was "one of the greatest upsets in modern political history". Which makes you wonder if he may do better than he's polling elsewhere, either in other rust belt states, or just generally. It also shows that he can be competitive with non-white voters outside of the South. And it shows that Clinton's last minute lie that he didn't support the auto bailout didn't work. Sanders is still down in delegates, and, thanks to proportional allocation in Michigan and a big loss in Mississippi, that didn't change last night (in fact, it got somewhat worse). But for now i'm just very happy to see a surprise win for Sanders, and i'm happy to see that Sanders' message does resonate with people in post-industrial economies like Michigan. Whatever happens in this primary, politicians would be idiots to not take notice of that. By fnord12 | March 9, 2016, 7:23 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (12)| Link Thank you Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma (!), and of course Vermont. And a nod to Massachusetts; that one was close and it's a wash in terms of delegates. The old narrative was that Bernie was going to get crushed in Nevada and South Carolina and then he would lose all his momentum and get knocked out on Super Tuesday. Well, he actually did ok in Nevada (he did get crushed in South Carolina). But the bigger problem with the old narrative was that the assumption was, like a typical insurgent, Bernie would be out of money by now and without the momentum he'd have to drop out. However, that's not what's happening. Bernie is being supported by a million+ small donors, and he's got enough money to go all the way to the convention. The fact that he won some Super Tuesday states is really just gravy. The calendar gets much better for him going forward. Most of the South, which seems to be Hillary's stronghold, has voted at this point. Granted she's picked up a decent delegate lead, especially thanks to Texas, and she's still definitely the favorite to win, but it's not over. And even if Hillary continues to add to her lead, there'd be no point in dropping out until California, which has 20% of the delegates. And California votes at nearly the end, at the same time as New Jersey. So i think for the first time ever, i get to vote in a presidential primary and have it actually potentially mean something. And for a candidate that i think is pretty awesome. By fnord12 | March 2, 2016, 7:36 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (10)| Link « Liberal Outrage: February 2016 | Main | Liberal Outrage: April 2016 » |
