The Gaming Den

WaPo thinks that Florida and Ohio are the make-or-break for avoiding a brokered convention

Does the Den agree? Especially, do you agree with the article's assumption that a Trump sweep is the most likely result next Tuesday?

That's how it's been looking for awhile. Florida and Ohio are winner-take-all and they have a lot of delegates, so if Trump can win them that puts him in a really good position to run away with the thing. If he only gets one, the odds of a brokered convention increase dramatically. If he doesn't get either, a brokered convention is pretty much guaranteed. Even if he loses both, he is pretty much guaranteed to have the most delegates at the end of this. If he loses either, it'll be Ohio to Kasich. So the tl;dr is that if Trump wins Ohio he's the nominee and if he loses Ohio the Republican establishment gets to declare that he's not.

Kasich has been a complete nonentity so far though, so even assuming that's because he has spent all his time campaigning in Ohio, I'm sceptical of his chances.

On the other hand, my impression was that Ted Cruz has been surging in Florida?

Kasich is Ohio's current governor. It's basically the only state he has good odds of winning, and last I checked they were polling close with a lot of undecided voters (which probably favors Kasich).

I believe Trump is still the favorite for Florida, but as you may have noticed they've really consolidated their efforts to shut him down. The last debate was basically a farcical pile-on and the party's sponsors have broken open their warchest for a wave of anti-Trump spending in Ohio and Florida. They want to swing it away from him to Rubio; last I looked Cruz had basically no chance of winning Florida.

As it stands, Florida is Trump's to lose and Ohio is close.

Shows what you get for trying to stay informed from the other side of the Atlantic I guess. Thank you.

As a minor aside, the latest polls put Trump in the lead in Florida, but it's a much smaller lead than it was before.

Also, apparently Rubio has a lead in early voting, and generally speaking Trump has done less well with late-deciding voters.

I still think Trump will take Florida, but it may be closer than expected.

Unfortunately that doesn't matter, since it's Winner-Take-All.

It's really kind of ridiculous that delegate allocation rules aren't uniform across the country.

Even if the convention is brokered, if you think about it, a deal between Kasich, Cruz, and Rubio is going to be really hard to broker, but Trump only needs one defector, and it could be anyone.

I'm not sure even a brokered convention definitely excludes Trump at this point.

If it comes to a brokered convention the RNC will be in full open masters mode and Trump definitely isn't winning; a candidate can't actually make their pledged delegates vote for a specific other candidate and the pledged delegates will be in with the establishment. Also, apparently the party gets to rewrite the convention rules at the convention and has floated the idea of nominating Mitt Romney again.

No, he isn't running. Apparently that does not matter as much as you would think.

hyzmarca wrote:It has nothing to do with the babies and everything to do with getting money from the fathers.

"Oh, this has nothing to do with assault," the mugger said, hitting me in ribs with a crowbar. "It has everything to do with theft." He kicked my doubled-over figure to the ground. "I mean, I do want your watch and your phone and any cash you have on you, but let's not be ridiculous, here," he continued, stepping on the back of my neck. "I'm not, like, some kind of sadist."

Shit is always about morality. Morality helps dictate what people consider an acceptable trade-off. It's like when the NRA is down with shooting folks over stolen television sets because they don't think killing thieves should count as gun violence. Talking up the benefits and downplaying or ignoring the costs isn't ethics, it's fucking salesmanship.

To me the only real mystery is why people thought the bill is implausible. We're talking about the same party that legislates for superfluous medical procedures in order to inconvenience women who desire abortions. This wouldn't even be the most literal example of them pettily sticking it to women every chance they get.

Kaelik wrote:Even if the convention is brokered, if you think about it, a deal between Kasich, Cruz, and Rubio is going to be really hard to broker, but Trump only needs one defector, and it could be anyone.

I'm not sure even a brokered convention definitely excludes Trump at this point.

Yeah, depending on how the margins go, Trump could easily be in a position to just straight-up trade Kasich or Rubio the VP slot in return for their delegates. I think Rubio might have a lot of trouble refusing that. He's young and it gives him a huge boost towards securing the nomination in 2020. Also, putting someone who's political philosophy is basically 'insert-party-instructions-in-slot' on the ticket would go a long way to mollifying the establishment.

The real question is, what happens if Trump is unable to contain his narcissism sufficiently to make that deal?

Bernie took Michigan (barely)! This makes all the time I spent phone banking, canvassing, and otherwise volunteering seem much more worth it. A nice side effect of the close race and Trump's strong lead, is I talked at least one Repubkican into voting for Sanders to block Clinton.

RobbyPants wrote:Bernie took Michigan (barely)! This makes all the time I spent phone banking, canvassing, and otherwise volunteering seem much more worth it. A nice side effect of the close race and Trump's strong lead, is I talked at least one Repubkican into voting for Sanders to block Clinton.

Sanders beat the polling by a huge amount. He still fell short of his demographic target, but only by 2 percent, which is basically nothing. So he basically got the result he should have gotten in Michigan if the race were tied. He fell well short of both his demographic target and his polling in Mississippi and ended up behind in delegates for the night.

However, Sanders clearly won the narrative for the night. An unexpected win is much bigger news than an unexpectedly large margin on a win everyone saw coming. There are going to be a lot of Bernie surging stories over the next week. That's going to give a lot of hope and energy to Sanders supporters, regardless of what the math actually says. The narrative is a huge thing in media land. And unexpected wins, by no matter how small an amount, are huge for that.

I will say that getting Republican voters to vote for Bernie in the primary with the intention of making it harder for Hillary is pretty loathesome behavior. I understand why you'd do that, but that's really fucked up. Those are votes that could have been used to stop Trump. In the very unlikely event that late Bernie surges give him the nomination and American conservatives remember how much they hate Socialism to give us an explicitly fascist president, I hope you feel your share of personal responsibility for that.

-Username17

While Bernie's win in Michigan is big news, it only ultimately changes the dynamic of the race if he can parlay that into wins in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The simple fact that, even with an unexpected win, he was still below his demographic target, matters. He needs to be beating those targets, and by a fair amount, in his competitive states, since he's getting crushed so much elsewhere.

And while the media will help Bernie a lot, unfortunately for him, it'll only last about three days - because the Republicans have another debate on the 10th and Trump is a giant media vortex that consumes all other political stories. It's really a shame, I think without Trump's malevolent influence on US politics right now the democratic race would be much more interesting and might even boost turnout some.

FrankTrollman wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:Bernie took Michigan (barely)! This makes all the time I spent phone banking, canvassing, and otherwise volunteering seem much more worth it. A nice side effect of the close race and Trump's strong lead, is I talked at least one Repubkican into voting for Sanders to block Clinton.

Sanders beat the polling by a huge amount. He still fell short of his demographic target, but only by 2 percent, which is basically nothing. So he basically got the result he should have gotten in Michigan if the race were tied. He fell well short of both his demographic target and his polling in Mississippi and ended up behind in delegates for the night.

However, Sanders clearly won the narrative for the night. An unexpected win is much bigger news than an unexpectedly large margin on a win everyone saw coming. There are going to be a lot of Bernie surging stories over the next week. That's going to give a lot of hope and energy to Sanders supporters, regardless of what the math actually says. The narrative is a huge thing in media land. And unexpected wins, by no matter how small an amount, are huge for that.

I will say that getting Republican voters to vote for Bernie in the primary with the intention of making it harder for Hillary is pretty loathesome behavior. I understand why you'd do that, but that's really fucked up. Those are votes that could have been used to stop Trump. In the very unlikely event that late Bernie surges give him the nomination and American conservatives remember how much they hate Socialism to give us an explicitly fascist president, I hope you feel your share of personal responsibility for that.

-Username17

You're assuming that Bernie would be a weaker candidate - for which there is no objective evidence.

Yes, he calls himself a Democratic Socialist; and he hasn't been subject to the sustained attack that Hillary has suffered. You can spin whatever stories you like from that, out of conjecture.

But the fact is, he has better favorability ratings than Hillary ( also he does better in Head to head polls but those have no predictive value once favorability is taken into account.) Favorability at this stage of the election cycle is highly predictive. In particular, poor favorability ratings (e.g. Dukakis, Kerry -> Willie Horton, Swift Boat; but the extensive imperical literature is grounded in things like Congressional races for which the N is much higher) presage successful attack ads - even for candidates who are well known and have previously been attacked!

So people are spinning a narrative where Hillary is protected from attacks because she's been "vetted", because the attacks have somehow been used up - which flies in the face of the empirical data. Meanwhile, polls of the "would you vote for a candidate who (is Catholic, Socialist, Black, pro-Choice, whatever)" type have no correlation with election results whatever. We have in recent years a bevy of cases, in many fields, where these narratives by supposedly informed experts contradict the hard data - and the data is almost always right. So HRC may be a stronger general election candidate than Bernie, you can believe it if you like, but you can't reasonably expect to persuade anyone else because you've no actual evidence.

Finally, the crossover voting almost entirely ran the other way, with Dems voting in the Republican race and not vice versa. There were doubtless a few instances but the story of Republican-voting-in-Dem-Primary-to-sabotage-HRC has no grounding in the stats.

Hillary won my state.

DSMatticus wrote: I believe Trump is still the favorite for Florida, but as you may have noticed they've really consolidated their efforts to shut him down. The last debate was basically a farcical pile-on and the party's sponsors have broken open their warchest for a wave of anti-Trump spending in Ohio and Florida. They want to swing it away from him to Rubio; last I looked Cruz had basically no chance of winning Florida.

I heard this morning that Cruz opened ten offices in Florida. I'm not sure if the goal is to block Rubio, or what, because it seems impossible for him to take it from Trump.

FrankTrollman wrote: I will say that getting Republican voters to vote for Bernie in the primary with the intention of making it harder for Hillary is pretty loathesome behavior. I understand why you'd do that, but that's really fucked up. Those are votes that could have been used to stop Trump. In the very unlikely event that late Bernie surges give him the nomination and American conservatives remember how much they hate Socialism to give us an explicitly fascist president, I hope you feel your share of personal responsibility for that.

Yesterday, the lead Clinton had was minimal and the lead Trump had was huge. Those votes wouldn't have stopped Trump at all. You were talking about the math not lying two paragraphs earlier, and you're conveniently ignoring that, now. Also, Sanders polls better head-to-head against Trump than Clinton does. I know polls are only so accurate, but the way it looks now, a vote for Clinton looks more likely to be a vote from Trump than a vote for Sanders does.

Also, my share of the responsibility is exactly as large as as everyone else that did or didn't vote. I didn't brain wash anyone or put a gun to their head.

DrPraetor wrote: Finally, the crossover voting almost entirely ran the other way, with Dems voting in the Republican race and not vice versa. There were doubtless a few instances but the story of Republican-voting-in-Dem-Primary-to-sabotage-HRC has no grounding in the stats.

Anecdotally, I have a cousin who is a Democrat who voted not-Trump instead. I've heard that a lot of nominal Clinton supporters did, which might have been part of why she lost Michigan; they assumed the lead was bigger than it was and that it was safe to not vote for her.

Not to mention that Hillary's big states are southern states that will probably vote primarily Republican in the actual election anyway. If we didn't have a bullshit electoral college, and so the actual popular vote mattered more, then I might care about Hillary's lead, but as it is, the states she's won aren't going to carry her for the election.

RobbyPants wrote:I heard this morning that Cruz opened ten offices in Florida. I'm not sure if the goal is to block Rubio, or what, because it seems impossible for him to take it from Trump.

That is a little weird. Obviously, if Rubio doesn't carry his own state, he's almost certainly done for; his plutocrats could prop him up until the convention in the hopes of his being the establishment compromise, but he'd be so damaged by that loss it's hard to imagine him having any traction.

The thing is, Rubio is already predicted way down in Florida, Ted Cruz has no chance to win, and it's a winner-take-all state. So all I can think is that someone in the Cruz campaign did the math and determined that however much money they're spending there is worth it just to make extra sure that Rubio is mortally wounded on the 15th.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:I heard this morning that Cruz opened ten offices in Florida. I'm not sure if the goal is to block Rubio, or what, because it seems impossible for him to take it from Trump.

That is a little weird. Obviously, if Rubio doesn't carry his own state, he's almost certainly done for; his plutocrats could prop him up until the convention in the hopes of his being the establishment compromise, but he'd be so damaged by that loss it's hard to imagine him having any traction.

The thing is, Rubio is already predicted way down in Florida, Ted Cruz has no chance to win, and it's a winner-take-all state. So all I can think is that someone in the Cruz campaign did the math and determined that however much money they're spending there is worth it just to make extra sure that Rubio is mortally wounded on the 15th.

That's as much as I was able to take from it. Everyone is always saying that Cruz is trying to turn this into a two-man race, and to have himself be the one solution to Trump. He's, ironically, doing so by bolstering Trump in one state.

RobbyPants wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: I will say that getting Republican voters to vote for Bernie in the primary with the intention of making it harder for Hillary is pretty loathesome behavior. I understand why you'd do that, but that's really fucked up. Those are votes that could have been used to stop Trump. In the very unlikely event that late Bernie surges give him the nomination and American conservatives remember how much they hate Socialism to give us an explicitly fascist president, I hope you feel your share of personal responsibility for that.

Yesterday, the lead Clinton had was minimal and the lead Trump had was huge. Those votes wouldn't have stopped Trump at all. You were talking about the math not lying two paragraphs earlier, and you're conveniently ignoring that, now. Also, Sanders polls better head-to-head against Trump than Clinton does. I know polls are only so accurate, but the way it looks now, a vote for Clinton looks more likely to be a vote from Trump than a vote for Sanders does.

Just because it potentially doesn't matter doesn't make being a crab in a bucket not shitty. In fact, it makes it petty, spiteful, and shitty. The Democratic Party needs to be unified in the increasingly likely worst case scenario Trump wins the nomination. It's not about the math, it's about not being a shithead. And you do realize there are a lot of minorities who like HRC and wouldn't vote for Trump, right? Like the ones in your state who just got fucked by a Republican government incredibly recently?

Bernie supporters always seem to forget minorities exist and have their own needs and thought processes, unless they want to bring up the civil rights thing as some kind of tokenism.

And your share of the responsibility is much greater, since you have been acting as an active force in trying to get someone elected, to the point where you will convince a Republican voter to run against the stats and block the candidate you don't like. You can't brag about swaying votes and then say you're just another brick in the wall when it comes down to denying culpability.

Mask_De_H wrote:Just because it potentially doesn't matter doesn't make being a crab in a bucket not shitty. In fact, it makes it petty, spiteful, and shitty. The Democratic Party needs to be unified in the increasingly likely worst case scenario Trump wins the nomination. It's not about the math, it's about not being a shithead. And you do realize there are a lot of minorities who like HRC and wouldn't vote for Trump, right? Like the ones in your state who just got fucked by a Republican government incredibly recently?

"The Democratic Party needs to be unified, and that is why trying to get anyone besides Clinton to be the Democratic Nominee is Treason!"

Yeah, sure thing fascist whatever you say. If you have to declare that no one is allowed to vote against your candidate without it being treason, then you are the fucking problem.

Nevermind that all your bullshit about "the democratic primary needs to be united" is not even remotely true, and isn't hurt at all by Sanders winning a state or two.

Mask_De_H wrote:Bernie supporters always seem to forget minorities exist and have their own needs and thought processes, unless they want to bring up the civil rights thing as some kind of tokenism.

Clinton supporters always seem to forget that anyone but wallstreet exists.

Clinton supporters always tend to be assholes who value pretense over reality.

Clinton supporters always tend to be liars who pull the race card as an argument against Sanders, but turn right around and fuck minorities in the ass as soon as they get what they want and don't need them to elect the candidates that don't actually want to address racial problems.

Clinton supporters always tend to be completely wrong about everything and be trying to destroy the country with their treasonous voting for candidates I don't like.

When you figure out why what you said is just as wrong and bullshit as those things, then you get to graduate to having a real conversation with adults, instead of blathering on in your little echo chamber.

Mask_De_H wrote:And your share of the responsibility is much greater, since you have been acting as an active force in trying to get someone elected, to the point where you will convince a Republican voter to run against the stats and block the candidate you don't like. You can't brag about swaying votes and then say you're just another brick in the wall when it comes down to denying culpability.

Uh... Look dude, convincing people to vote for a candidate you don't like isn't evil.

Your best fucking case is arguing that convincing Republicans to vote in democratic primaries is evil, but... that's fucking stupid. If a state wants to enforce that they can, and if they don't then it clearly wasn't worth the time to write laws. As a Democrat* who voted in Texas Republican primaries for most of my fucking life, I'm going to call bullshit. If you don't think your candidate can win, but your vote might make a difference elsewhere, that's a good fucking reason to vote in another fucking primary.

*Technically, according to the state of Texas, this made me a Republican, but party label or not, that didn't stop me voting for democrats in the actual elections.

Mask_De_H wrote: Just because it potentially doesn't matter doesn't make being a crab in a bucket not shitty. In fact, it makes it petty, spiteful, and shitty. The Democratic Party needs to be unified in the increasingly likely worst case scenario Trump wins the nomination. It's not about the math, it's about not being a shithead.

I don't think it's that black and white. I know several people who refuse to vote for Clinton, but said they'd vote for Sanders over Trump in the General.

Mask_De_H wrote:And you do realize there are a lot of minorities who like HRC and wouldn't vote for Trump, right? Like the ones in your state who just got fucked by a Republican government incredibly recently?

Did you mean "wouldn't vote for Sanders"? I'm confused what you mean, here.

Look, Mask, if HRC wins the primary, then I'll fucking vote for her. That doesn't mean I don't think her pockets are bulging with banker money that will keep her from changing anything about Wall Street in a meaningful way, and I don't remember her telling young black activists to hush and be better (ie, more acceptable) activists before they expect her to help. It just means I'm not about to actually hurt my country by not voting, or voting GOP, or voting third party.

But in the primary, you can be damned sure I'm voting Bernie and trying to excite other people about a candidate who's at least willing to try to tell Wall Street to go fuck itself and listen to minorities on the matters that are actually about them.