The Next President of the United States

[MintTrav]

Breaking news - Warren is viable in Sparks!

Biden had one voter on the first count, who walked over and sat with the Warren group, pushing Liz over the 15% line and making her viable for delegates. Game on!

[MintTrav]

Final result from Sparks:

59.1% Sanders
35.5% Warren
3.2% Gabbard
2.2% Steyer
0.0% Biden

Warren then collected most of the other camps' supporters to take almost 40% of the delegates. I love this electoral process - it's such a fair system compared with ours.

[Marky147]

So what does this mean in the terms of the race.

Presume Jim can still dream about paying cash for his new holiday home?

[bookiebasher]

So what does this mean in the terms of the race.

Presume Jim can still dream about paying cash for his new holiday home?

75000 voted early in Nevada so Warrens strong debate performance didn’t  have
an effect on the result .

Super Tuesday will be pretty much do or die for all candidates except Bernie.

The most recent national poll out yesterday put Warren in 2nd place.

What confuses me , unless I have confirmation bias   , are the two betting markets
Predictit and Betfair.

On the exchange she’s 120  with Pete at 13 and Biden at 20 and Hilary at 50.

Predictit have 25-1 Warren 20-1 Pete   Biden , Hilary 20-1.

So I had better get my camping gear out if I want a holiday this year.

[Marky147]

No glamping, either




Seth is com.

[MintTrav]

If last week's debate was about Bloomberg, it seems that tonight's is likely to be about Bernie. The front-runner should naturally be the main target, but it doesn't always turn out like that.

The longer the split of the moderate vote between several candidates continues, the better it is for him. It's the same problem the Republicans had in 2016 - the choked-up lane is eventually forced to settle on one representative but, if they leave it too late, the front-runner in the clear lane can have banked so many delegates that they are uncatchable, even though most of their party prefers their ultimate opponent to them.

In 2016 Bush, Christie, Cruz, Kasich and Rubio had 50% of the New Hampshire primary vote between them, but allowed Trump to take the win with 35%. He went on to pick up South Carolina with 33% and then won seven out of eleven Super Tuesday States, despite reaching 40% in only two of them, and never looked back.

This time, Bernie won NH with just 26% and is currently winning Nevada with 39% (33% on first count).  Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer together received more than half of the first count and 48% of the final one, so would have easily beaten Sanders if they had come together behind Biden, who is a distant but clear second - and the only one of them who can win the nomination.

Bernie is heading for a strong second position in South Carolina, on top of his wins. He was so confident of victory in Nevada that he went to California on Friday and made his Nevada victory speech on Saturday night in Texas. As the new national front-runner, he had a good but safe debate last week and would prefer the same again, but it doesn't seem it's going to happen. Some of the others have been warming up by attacking him in advance. At least, it's good practice for facing off against Trump later in the year.

[MintTrav]

Largely as expected, with a few minor surprises. The most memorable moment came from Bloomberg, of all people, though not in a good way.

Sanders wasn't as good as usual, misjudging the audience badly and being booed a couple of times. He is the only one who didn’t need a strong performance though, and will be content to have come through, not unscathed, but less scathed than it could have been.

I can't say Bloomberg was good, but he wasn't as bad this time. The others had used up most of their worst shots at his character, and he's on better ground on policies, though still a duck out of water in this environment. Just when he was achieving his dream of things going averagely, he came out with a bizarre line about how he was surprised the others had turned up after his fantastic performance last week. As a self-deprecating joke, it reads better afterwards than it came across at the time. In real time, it was so deadpan it seemed like he was serious and there was a silence while everyone, candidates and audience alike, processed it - ‘Did he just say that? Surely he doesn't think he did well? Oh, it's a joke.’ It was out of place with what was being discussed at the time, but he had clearly been told that he had to get it in. His team had a week to come up with some zingers and that was their offering. In fairness, it will be remembered and may age better than the silence it created on the night.
 
Biden needed a strong performance and he over-delivered – the clear winner for me; though others don’t agree.
 
Warren continued to attack Bloomberg, not as effectively this time. I hope she knows what she’s doing, cos I would have thought her main focus should be to undermine Sanders. Laying into Bloomie last week damaged him but didn’t result in lots of votes for her in Nevada, though I guess it resuscitated her flagging campaign. Like Biden and Bloomberg, she is playing a long game, but she needs to get that far.
 
The other three all did well in their own ways, but are irrelevant at this stage. That could possibly change at some point for one of them, but probably won’t.
 
So Joe to win on Saturday in South Carolina, closely followed by Bernie and Steyer. But still no-one knows whether any of this matters – and we won’t know until Super-Tuesday.
 

[bookiebasher]

Bernie will be happy he got through it pretty much unscathed.

The DNC sold tickets for $1750 to $3200 for the event which probably altered the dynamic
and demographic of the audience somewhat.

Moderators were pretty awful and it was pretty much a non event in terms of shifting public
opinion.

I will be amazed if Biden does any good Super Tuesday. He may well scrape a win in  South
Carolina but he continues to show his age with ridiculous gaffes and loss of memory.

If he is the best the Democrats have got to take on Trump then god help them.

[bookiebasher]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8045425/Joe-Biden-says-150-MILLION-Americans-died-gun-violence-2007-latest-gaffe.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-nelson-mandela-arrest-south-africa-prison-apartheid-south-carolina-debate-a9359596.html

If Warren or any other candidate for that matter had said the insane things Biden has said recently their
campaign would have been over.

Also Trump is going to keep banging on about  Biden's son Hunter and Burisma in any heads up battle.

He's old school , Hilary Clinton was old school , surely democrats must realise the way to beat Trump is
on progressive policies which means Bernie or Warren.

[MintTrav]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8045425/Joe-Biden-says-150-MILLION-Americans-died-gun-violence-2007-latest-gaffe.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-nelson-mandela-arrest-south-africa-prison-apartheid-south-carolina-debate-a9359596.html

If Warren or any other candidate for that matter had said the insane things Biden has said recently their
campaign would have been over.

Also Trump is going to keep banging on about  Biden's son Hunter and Burisma in any heads up battle.

He's old school , Hilary Clinton was old school , surely democrats must realise the way to beat Trump is
on progressive policies which means Bernie or Warren.

Biden has always said off-the-wall stuff. The possibility of him blowing up his own campaign is probably why the party has kept some mainstream reserves ready to take over if necessary. Trump, other Republicans and Fox News are defending Sanders every day and are outraged on his behalf at the Democrats’ antics, so they seem to want him as the nominee. It would seem they believe they can stigmatise ‘Crazy Bernie’ as a fan of Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc to greater effect than they can slander the others.

[nirvana]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8045425/Joe-Biden-says-150-MILLION-Americans-died-gun-violence-2007-latest-gaffe.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-nelson-mandela-arrest-south-africa-prison-apartheid-south-carolina-debate-a9359596.html

If Warren or any other candidate for that matter had said the insane things Biden has said recently their
campaign would have been over.

Also Trump is going to keep banging on about  Biden's son Hunter and Burisma in any heads up battle.

He's old school , Hilary Clinton was old school , surely democrats must realise the way to beat Trump is
on progressive policies which means Bernie or Warren.

I'm not sure this is the right analysis - Obama was youngish but about as old school as you can get and it wasn't so long ago he won an election. Pretty confident he would have beaten Trump too. Clinton didn't lose because she wasn't progressive enough imo. Biden is too old and too irrelevant rather than being too old school in outlook.

I'd be more amazed if Sanders won in the US than if Corbyn or Foot had won here..even against Trump.
 
They could do with an old school democrat with a decent record, decent character, some depth, younger than Biden, older than Mayor Pete - deffo think more Bill and Barrack than Joe or Bernie and Liz from the left.

Obvs just an opinion and it's going to be fascinating to see how this all plays out

[RED-DOG]

Do you have to be a multi-millionaire to have any chance of becoming POTUS?

[Doobs]

Do you have to be a multi-millionaire to have any chance of becoming POTUS?

Not really.  Obama was already rich, but not massively so, and hadn't made much before becoming a senator.   

The democrat field seems particularly well off this time, but Bloomberg skews it a lot. 

[Jon MW]

Do you have to be a multi-millionaire to have any chance of becoming POTUS?

Not really.  Obama was already rich, but not massively so, and hadn't made much before becoming a senator.   

The democrat field seems particularly well off this time, but Bloomberg skews it a lot. 

Obama was at least a millionaire before he became president though. Forbes suggests he made a few hundred thousand dollars a year pre-politics but him and Michelle made about $2.4 million a year in the 4 years after he joined the Senate.

You don't "have" to be a multi millionaire to become President but it certainly helps.

[bookiebasher]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8045425/Joe-Biden-says-150-MILLION-Americans-died-gun-violence-2007-latest-gaffe.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-nelson-mandela-arrest-south-africa-prison-apartheid-south-carolina-debate-a9359596.html

If Warren or any other candidate for that matter had said the insane things Biden has said recently their
campaign would have been over.

Also Trump is going to keep banging on about  Biden's son Hunter and Burisma in any heads up battle.

He's old school , Hilary Clinton was old school , surely democrats must realise the way to beat Trump is
on progressive policies which means Bernie or Warren.

I'm not sure this is the right analysis - Obama was youngish but about as old school as you can get and it wasn't so long ago he won an election. Pretty confident he would have beaten Trump too. Clinton didn't lose because she wasn't progressive enough imo. Biden is too old and too irrelevant rather than being too old school in outlook.

I'd be more amazed if Sanders won in the US than if Corbyn or Foot had won here..even against Trump.
 
They could do with an old school democrat with a decent record, decent character, some depth, younger than Biden, older than Mayor Pete - deffo think more Bill and Barrack than Joe or Bernie and Liz from the left.

Obvs just an opinion and it's going to be fascinating to see how this all plays out

To compare Obama to Clinton and Biden  is a bit of a stretch .  The way Obama came across to the
American and world population  is far superior to anything  Clinton and Biden could achieve .

He had  and still does have real charisma , regardless of whether you think his policies were
old school and not progressive .

Trump won because he was supposedly anti establishment . Obviously that was all bollocks.

To beat him you need someone who’s going to shake things up , like he promised , “ drain the
swamp”.

In my opinion , a boring centrist approach to beating a moron like Trump won’t exactly excite
democrats to go out and vote and going out to vote is key , as Hilary found out .