Monthly Archives: February 2016

Comparing 2008 to 2016

By DocJess | Published February 17, 2016

It normally rings true: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Or – the more things change, the more they stay the same.  But the world change in the past 8 years is huge. First, about the blog, then on to the campaign.

If you’re a long-term reader, you know that Matt started DCW in 2005, Oreo joined in 2007, I in 2008. Since then, we’ve had writers and commenters come and go. Currently, our SCOTUS and legal work is accomplished by TMess.

Back in 2008, we were the go-to source for all things Super Delegate related, and had some interesting scoops on the Denver convention. Matt, Tom and I worked what seemed like 10 hours a day, in addition to our day jobs, our families, and the campaigns on which we worked. I’m not convinced any of the three of us slept a full 4 hours out of any given 24.  Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math — Week of February 15

By tmess2 | Published February 15, 2016

This week is a weird week in the presidential primary process.  For almost all primary states, both parties hold their primaries on the same date because the date is set by the state legislature.  Even in caucus states, there is a tendency that both parties will choose the same date.  In South Carolina, however, the parties choose the primary date for their party.  So this week, the Republicans have their primary in South Carolina, and the Democrats have their caucus in Nevada.  Next week, the two parties will flip with the Republicans going in Nevada, and the Democrats going in South Carolina.

On the Republican side, the four states in the pre-March 1 window are exempt from the proportionality rule.  South Carolina has chosen to go with a winner-take-most system.  The candidate who finishes first in each of the seven congressional district will win the three delegates for that district.  The candidate who finishes first state-wide gets the twenty-six at-large delegates and the three automatic delegates.   At least according to the polls, Trump seems to be safely in the lead for the twenty-nine state-wide candidates.  If one of the establishment candidates has a chance at winning one of the congressional districts, it is most likely to be the 1st district or the 6th district.  Ted Cruz’s best chance of winning a congressional district will be the 3rd, 4th, and 5th districts.

On the Democratic side, Nevada has some weird rules.  State law designates how many delegates each precinct gets to the county convention and how many delegates each county gets to the congressional and state district conventions.  The counties get one delegate to the state convention for each 150 registered democrats in the county.  The formula for the precinct is more complicated.  In counties with fewer than 400 democrats, each precinct gets 1 delegate to the county convention for each 5 registered democrats.  This ratio gradually changes so that in the largest counties (those with more than 4,000 democrats), each precinct gets 1 delegate to the county convention for each 50 registered democrats.    Because this formula simply makes the county conventions larger and does not alter representation at the conventions that actually choose delegates, it should not have an actual impact on who gets Nevada’s delegates to the national convention.  While Nevada will report raw vote totals, the key in Nevada (as in Iowa and other caucus states) is figuring out how many delegates each campaign will have at each of the county conventions and what that means for delegates at the state convention where delegates will actually be allocated. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court — Front and Center

By tmess2 | Published February 13, 2016

Elections matter.  In 2012, President Obama won the right to nominate judges and justices to fill vacancies on the bench — both in the lower federal courts and on the Supreme Court.  In 2010 and 2014, the Republicans won the right to vote down any unacceptable nominees.

Earlier this morning, Justice Antonin Scalia passed away.  In 1986, President Reagan nominated Justice Scalia to fill the Associate Justice spot that had belonged to Justice Rehnquist when President Reagan nominated Justice Rehnquist to be the new Chief Justice.  For most of his career, Justice Scalia was the intellectual leader of the ultra-conservative wing of the Supreme Court.    This vacancy — if filled during this Administration — would be the first time since 1970 that a majority of the Justices on the Supreme Court will be Democratic appointees.  This vacancy will have both short term and long term impacts on politics.

The immediate short term is that — except for a handful of issues — Justice Scalia is generally a solid vote for the “conservative” side of legal issues.  Those cases that would have been a 5-4 split in favor of the conservative side will now be a 4-4 split.  On a 4-4 split, there is no decision and the lower court opinion stands (unless the Supreme Court opts to reschedule the case for the following term).  Additionally, as it takes a favorable vote from four justices before the Supreme Court grants full briefing and argument on a case, the tradition when there is a vacancy is to hold cases that have three votes for full review.   In particular, the continued extension of “free speech” rights to make it easier for conservatives to raise money and harder for liberals to raise moneys is temporarily on hold.   The current opt-out provisions for the contraceptive mandate will probably also survive.  Any decision on the immigration policy will either favor the White House or leave it back to the lower courts to decide on the merits (the current issue before the Supreme Court only concerns a temporary injunction pending a full trial). Continue Reading...

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Post-New Hampshire: Where Do They Go from Here

By tmess2 | Published February 12, 2016

In the typical presidential campaign cycle, the calendar year before the primaries is spent doing two things — raising money and campaigning in the early states (almost entirely in Iowa and New Hampshire).  The reasons for this focus are simple.  There is not enough time after Iowa and New Hampshire for a campaign to raise the type of funds needed to “go national.”  Additionally, several major states come early in March; so the campaign has to start working in these states even before the first votes are counted.  Both parties have a history of candidates with surprisingly good results in Iowa and New Hampshire who did not have the resources on hand to turn those early results into a successful national campaign.  On the other hand, as several candidates in this year’s campaign have already shown, failure in Iowa and New Hampshire mean the end of the campaign.  For the eight candidates still running, the question after New Hampshire is simply what’s next.

On the Democratic side, with only two candidates, this question is simple.  As 2008 showed, in a two-candidate race (especially with proportional representation), candidates need to run everywhere.   The last South Carolina polls were in January, before either the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, and the newest Nevada polls are even older.   The demographics in South Carolina and Nevada are significantly different than the demographics in Iowa and New Hampshire.   In the long run, whether this race will be close will depend upon if Sanders can convince minority voters and poor whites in rural areas to support him.  While — in European terms — Sanders is a “pink” at most, his characterization of himself as a “Democratic Socialist” might become an insurmountable barrier to gaining these votes in areas in which he is less known as socialist is a “dirty word” to a lot of voters who do not understand the significant distinctions between various progressive political philosophies.  While there are some potentially favorable states on March 1 (Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and maybe Colorado), Sanders needs to keep things close in Nevada, South Carolina, and the remaining March 1 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia).

The Republican side gives candidates more choices on how to play.  The New Hampshire results have scrambled the field.  If Marco Rubio had been able to follow-up on Iowa with a strong finish in New Hampshire, he would have become the favorite to win the nomination.  His weak showing has given both Jeb Bush and John Kasich a degree of hope to become the consensus candidate.  At this point, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz need to run everywhere.  In the pre-March 15 states, while each state has slightly different rules, a general rule of thumb is that 20% state-wide and top two in each congressional district equals delegates.  While Kasich, Bush, and Rubio continue to split the moderately conservative vote, the path is clear for Trump and Cruz to pad their delegate totals — making it harder for the candidate who survives between the other three to get the nomination. Continue Reading...

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Let’s Talk Super Delegates

By DocJess | Published February 11, 2016

Back in 2008, DCW published everything daily we could find on the Super Delegates. This year, it’s a little different since Hillary Clinton received many commitments prior to the voting beginning. It’s important to remember that “Super Delegate” is a media term, it refers to party regulars who are allowed a vote at the convention. The full list of 712 people include:

  • President and Vice President (if they are Democrats)
  • Democratic House and Senate members
  • Democratic governors
  • Former Democratic presidents and vice presidents
  • Former Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate
  • Former Democratic speakers of the House and Democratic minority leaders
  • Former chairs of the Democratic National Committee
  • Certain State Democratic leaders

The remaining 4,051 delegates are selected either through the caucus process, or directly elected via primaries. 2,382 delegate votes are required to turn a candidate into the party’s nominee. Already, over 400 delegates have committed to Hillary Clinton. It’s expected that today the Congressional Black Caucus will endorse her also. There is a split in the Progressive Caucus with most endorsing Clinton. Remember, though, as we at DCW learned in 2008, the pledges and endorsements can change over the course of the campaign.

So when you see numbers of delegates coming out of primaries and caucuses, they often include the number of Supers. For example, in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders won 15 delegates in the voting, Hillary won 9. However, she has six committed Super Delegates, and there are two uncommitted at this writing. Continue Reading...

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Delegates, DNC, Hillary Clinton, Superdelegates | 2 Comments

New Hampshire Analysis

By DocJess | Published February 10, 2016

The results are in, and Bernie Sanders had a decisive victory last night, besting Hillary Clinton 60%-38% with 89% of the vote counted. He won all age categories, income categories and he even won the women’s vote.

There are two big takeaways from this win. First was seen in the speeches given by the two candidates. Hillary Clinton used her time to replay her biography, and use the word “I” throughout her speech, explaining things she had done, and what she stood for. In contrast, Bernie Sanders used the word “we” over and over, and talked to the issues he was running on. Most notably, while Sanders spoke in terms of the need to undo income equality, to stop the 1% from buying elections, making college free, and shoring up Social Security, Clinton spoke in far more broad terms, like “fighting for women and girls”. It was a striking difference. The message difference is absolute: Sanders has a succinct message that is repeated, the campaign is completely on message at all times. Clinton has trouble with messaging, sticking to the experience model which did not serve her well in 2008. It should be noted that both took time to congratulate the other and showed great respect for the other candidate and his/her supporters. A level of decency and honour not seen on the GOP side.

Continue Reading...

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New Hampshire Math

By tmess2 | Published February 6, 2016

For a couple more weeks, the primaries are still in the one or two states per week mode.  With one or two states, it is possible to do a detailed discussion of the rules for delegate allocation and to clarify the “math” of winning delegates.  Once March 1 hits, with double digit contests on both sides, the battle for delegates will become a multi-front war in which even the campaigns will be trying to figure out where the battlegrounds are.

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, NH Primary | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The New Hampshire Debate: Analysis

By DocJess | Published February 5, 2016

The first thing that struck me about last night’s Democratic debate in Durham, NH was how different is was from any of the Republican debates. First and foremost was the respect that the competitors showed to one another. Sanders called her “Madame Secretary”, and Clinton called him “Senator Sanders”. It bespoke professionalism and decency.

The questions were serious. Things like criminal justice, the Flint water crisis and other topics are never asked of the Republicans. (Probably because the moderators would have to explain what the question was about.) There were legitimate differences in both approach and substance but whenever possible, both Sanders and Clinton looked for, and noted common ground. Further, when given the opportunity to go after one another (Sanders about Clinton’s emails, Clinton about Sanders ads) they declined. At the very end, when asked whether each would choose the other for a running mate, both demurred and pledged to work together and said that either of them was a far better choice than any of the GOP contenders.

So who won? In my estimation, they both did. Both showcased their positions and presented themselves to the American public in ways that many low-information voters hadn’t seen before. An interesting aside: both have plans for what they’d like to get through Congress, but the truth is that Paul Ryan is likely to hold on as Speaker, and thus nothing gets to the floor of the House, even as we regain the Senate. Doesn’t matter who is elected president, until the intransigent leave Congress, it’s all gridlock. Continue Reading...

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, NH Primary, Politics | 1 Comment

Super Bowl matches cities which hosted 2 previous Democratic Conventions

By Matt | Published February 4, 2016

And then there’s always Dave Mason’s song, “Please come to Boston“, which includes the 3 cities which hosted Democratic Conventions from 2000-2008.

 

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Iowa Post-mortem: The Good, the Bad, and the Gone

By tmess2 | Published February 4, 2016

While the parties did not have much choice about including Iowa and New Hampshire in the window of early states, the theory behind the early states is that all four are small enough and different enough to help narrow the field.   While winning is nice, the real goals of the campaigns are:  1) to seem viable enough that supporters (both voters and donors) don’t go looking elsewhere; and 2) to meet targets for delegates.  Candidates who are unable to show signs of life quickly find that their campaigns have no life.

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Elections, Hillary Clinton, NH Primary, Primary and Caucus Results | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Iowa Post-mortem: The Good, the Bad, and the Gone