The Democratic Party Won’t Even ACKNOWLEDGE the Science of What It Must Do to Beat Donald Trump

By
Greg Diamond
– May 20, 2016Posted in: "The OC", 2016 Presidential Election, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Party, democrats, Donald Trump, Fresh Juice, hillary clinton

.

.

.

Nate Silver Blinded by Hillary

Nate Silver and his followers have been blinded by Hillary.

O joy! 538’s honcho Nate Silver has discovered “the hidden importance of the Bernie Sanders voter” — that we are largely non-Democratic and that those who aren’t Democratic are not much disposed to support Hillary Clinton — which is a bit like Columbus “discovering” the hidden continent of North America. (“Hey, you dope — a bunch of us were already here! We’ve known about it all along!”)

Does Nate take this in the appropriate direction, asking whether Hillary or Bernie would be more able to cobble together a winning coalition against Trump?  NO HE DOES NOT, FEEBLE-MINDED OBSERVER!  He doesn’t ask that question even belatedly, but just points out that to win the election, Clinton needs to win them.

Thus, citing Clinton’s reasonably strong general election numbers among self-identified Democrats — she had the support of 87 percent of Democrats in a recent NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll in her matchup against Trump, for instance, and 83 percent in a Fox News poll that showed her behind Trump nationally — may miss her problems among liberal-leaning, Sanders-voting independents. In the Fox News poll, only 30 percent of independents went for Clinton, and in the SurveyMonkey poll, just 36 percent did. But both surveys showed a large pool of undecided independents, potentially the Sanders voters that YouGov identified.

Thus do we Democrats hurtle, down through a tunnel paved with hubris, towards the pit of not being able to defeat Trump — not because DEMOCRATS won’t cooperate, but because INDEPENDENTS DO NOT ACTUALLY PREFER DEMOCRATS.  (Nor do they prefer Republicans.  The hint that you should already know this is in the name “Independent.”)  And our wise Democratic superdelegates — who still have not been able to figure out that the flight from the major parties and deflating turnout are REAL AND RELATED THINGS — won’t be the ones the grasp the significance of this data because their personal careers depend on their inability to do so.

So that means that ultimately our only hope is that HILLARY HERSELF realizes as the convention nears and the fall campaign commences that she’s not going to win with Berniecrats alone — but will only win with Berniependents (a group in which I include third-party members, and maybe even Trump-hating Republicans) — as well. Not only that, but she’ll have to realize that crackpot theories about what will appeal to Bernie independents — “why, surely they’ll love a good-looking young minority male like Cory Booker or Julian Castro!” — are stupid and self-defeating.  In other words, we’re probably doomed.

Do you want to know who Berniependents want on the ticket?  The DNC, if it represented the party rather than the Clinton campaign, should be polling like hell –asking Berniecrats and ESPECIALLY Berniependents — what it would take to get them over the hump of revulsion required to cast a vote for Hillary.

For me, Sanders or Warren as VP, combined with her plodding a nice moderate Democratic course for the next 5-1/2 months, would probably do it — but then I’m a Berniecrat.  Are Berniependents willing to go for Hillary, at ANY price — and if they don’t, do they go Trump, or go home (either to their third party or to their rec room sofa on Election Day)? The time left to find out is passing quickly!

If Democratic Party regulars would rather lose with Hillary than win with Bernie, the responsibility is on them. It’s not on Bernie to stop criticizing Hillary (because then of course no one will figure out that they still have the same fixed beliefs that they’ve had about her all along); it’s not on voters who aren’t Democrats refusing to act like loyal Democrats. It’s that Democrats will have become as passionately fantasy driven and anti-empirical as our most florid stereotypes of Republicans.

You know who would be a good person to make that case? Nate Silver. Unfortunately, he has turned out to be a hidden moron.

#NateSilverMustResign
Tags: , , , ,

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)