Category Archives: 2020DNC

Billie Eilish, The Chicks Headline Convention Music Acts

By Matt | Published August 14, 2020

Lots of music to fit in over 2 hours each night:

Viewers can expect inspiring performances from artists including Leon Bridges, The Chicks, Common, Billie Eilish, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Billy Porter, Maggie Rogers, Prince Royce, Stephen Stills and more. The musical acts will be featured across all four nights of the convention, which will air August 17-20, 2020.

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Convention update

By Matt | Published May 25, 2020

A month ago I, and pretty much everyone outside of Trump and his circle, were pretty sure there was no way either party could hold on in-person convention. Now, I’m not so sure. I mean they could put 100 people in a walled off TV studio on the floor of the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, and Trump could give his speech, and the networks would have to cover it as the official convention speech – even if all the other convention activities were virtual.  And if it’s clear the GOP will hold some sort of in-person convention, will Biden feel he has to do the same?

Here’s a summary of how we got here over the last few weeks:

  • On May 12, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee passed the changes necessary to support a virtual convention. Nothing from the GOP, yet, but they could make similar changes anytime they wanted to.
  • Yahoo News floated the following options:

The roll-call vote could potentially take place with one representative from each state entering the hall to announce their vote, one DNC member told Yahoo News. Another DNC member floated the idea of having each state’s representative join the broadcast by teleconference from a symbolic location in their state, such as a capitol building. Continue Reading...

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2020 Delegate Math — Northern Marianas

By tmess2 | Published March 12, 2020

While most states hold elections on Tuesdays, Saturdays have also been a traditional election date as we have already seen this year with the Nevada Caucuses and South Carolina primary.  In past years, the first two Saturdays after the windows open have been somewhat busy.  In 2016, three states held primaries or caucuses on the first Saturday in March (with one contest being held on the first Sunday in March and one contest being held on the second Saturday in March).  While the first Saturday in March was not an available date in 2012, the Republicans had four caucuses on the second Saturday in March.  On the first available weekend in February 2008, four caucuses and one primary took place.

This year, the weekend after Super Tuesday had no contests, and only one contest is scheduled for the second weekend in March.  That contest is the Northern Marianas which will hold its convention on March 14.  The Northern Marianas is an “unincorporated territory” consisting of the islands in the Marianas Archipelego (excluding Guam).  The contest in the Northern Marianas is a territory-wide convention.  In 2016, less than 200 people attended the convention.

This is only the second time that the people in Northern Marianas will be electing delegates to the national convention.  My hunch is that, even though every delegate counts, the major candidates are unlikely to put much effort into this contest, and the vote will be based on what news media and social media coverage Democrats in that territory have seen.  In other words, name recognition and success in the earlier contests will count for a lot. Continue Reading...

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2020 Delegate Math — March 10

By tmess2 | Published March 6, 2020

There is just a little bit of room between Super Tuesday and March 10 for everyone to catch their breath.  Over the past seven days, over half of the candidates have dropped out, and we are left with three candidates (Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard, and Bernie Sanders.)

While we are down to three candidates, one word of warning is appropriate.  As we saw on Super Tuesday, some states have no excuse early voting or mail-in ballots.  On Super Tuesday, we saw some significant differences between the early vote count and the “election day” count.  Simply put, people who voted early may have voted for a candidate who was no longer actively running.  It is unclear if any of these candidates will ultimately win a delegate, but some of these candidates did get a significant number of votes in some states.  The extra seven days should lessen this effect, but there could be — depending on the state — a significant number of voters who voted before February 28th, and some of these voters went with one of the five candidates who are no longer running.

There are seven contests which will conclude on March 10.  (I use the term conclude because one of them — Democrats Abroad — is a party-run primary in which the polls are open for almost one week and others allow early voting.)  Besides Democrats Abroad, the other six contests are Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Washington.  While nominally styled as a caucus, North Dakota is a party-run primary.  Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, and Washington are state-run primaries.  (Washington like California relies heavily on mail-in ballots which can cause a delay in getting final results.)  Under the rules of the Democratic Party, all of these contests are binding and delegates will be allocated based on the votes cast for each candidate. Continue Reading...

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What if they gave a Convention and Nobody came?

By DocJess | Published February 27, 2020

Last evening the first community based US coronavirus case was announced. There is never just one. And so, just like flu hits different areas of the country at different times, there will be pockets and hot spots, and then they’ll clear and there will be others.

In China, the first cases arose in November of 2019. (Yes, that’s correct, not December.) It was noticed by medical personnel in December, who were silenced by the regime (and several later died), and not “believed” by the Xi regime until late January, when they began locking down China. It is now two months later, and China is still in partial lock-down. It will take another few months, at least, to get back to full speed.

The difference between China (and Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan) is that we know it’s coming, and we are learning every day from what those countries do what works and what doesn’t. And we know the best possible thing to do is to test people, and the worst possible thing to do is to place large numbers of people in an enclosed space. Like, um, a political convention with people coming from all over the country, and journalists coming from other countries. Continue Reading...

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How to Win in November

By DocJess | Published February 12, 2020

The most important thing that happened yesterday was NOT the New Hampshire primary. It was the unconscionable meddling by Bill Barr and his thugs on the Roger Stone and Mike Flynn legal cases. However, that has great impact on what we must do to insure that we win in November. Because every time you think they can’t go lower and more dangerous, they find a way. It’s what they excel at. And our only hope is to win back the Presidency….and a few other things.

There’s a lot of pain coming out of New Hampshire as people’s pick fave candidates drop out, or are on the verge of dropping out….as establishment Democrats and Movement people consider their options and our party schisms further.

So here’s my simple solution: as I see it, there are only two candidates who have a believable path to victory against the Orange Menace – we should all pick one, and get on that train, but commit to supporting the other if our pick isn’t successful — because we eat our young, and we will lose in November if we don’t. Continue Reading...

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2020 Delegate Selection Plans

By tmess2 | Published August 7, 2019

While it has taken some time to get plans from all of the states and territories, it appears that all of the delegate selection plans for 2020 have now been sent to the Rules and By-laws Committee (you may remember them from 2008) for review.  One of the key issues for this current set of plans has been how many caucus states there will be for 2020.

Caucuses have been a catch 22 for both sides of the establishment vs. activist debate.  On the one hand, the caucus system rewards organization which — at least in the past — gave an edge to the establishment.  On the other hand, in recent cycles, caucuses reward the candidates with the most enthusiastic supporters — which has tended to be the candidates supported by grass roots progressive activists.  On the third hand, the advantage for the activists come from a system that puts obstacles in the place of broad participation — so, while that system, benefits progressive activists, the basic structure is contrary to some basic principles that progressives hold.   As a result, the rules changes after the 2016 cycle were definitely designed to promote movement away from caucuses and to encourage those that remained to take steps to increase participation, and those changes have had an effect.

In 2016, thirty-seven states and two territories (D.C. and Puerto Rico) had government-run primaries.  Democrats Abroad had a party-run primary.  Finally, thirteen states and four territories held a variation on a caucus — some more open than others. Continue Reading...

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