Is Hillary Truly A Goldwater Girl?

One of the more frequent criticisms I hear regarding Hillary Clinton is that she’s a Goldwater Girl; a woman who, in her youth, volunteered on the presidential campaign for one of the most hyper-conservative candidates ever to run for the Oval Office – so conservative, in fact, that he was rejected even by the ultra-restrictive Republican electorate of 1964.

Well, it’s true. Hillary was a young girl in high school when she volunteered for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. However, according to her classmates, and the friends she made on the Goldwater campaign trail during this time, she was having serious doubts on some key issues. Some of them were even afraid that the Goldwater campaign might kick her out if they heard some of the things she was saying, especially about women’s rights.

In one of her classes, a teacher made her play the role of Lyndon Johnson in a mock debate, in order to “learn about the issues from the other side.” To her surprise, she found herself sympathizing with much of what Johnson had to say. It forced her to begin to re-evaluate some of her own ideas (Living History, p. 24).

By 1968, she had completely turned her perspective around, volunteering for the anti-war platform of Eugene McCarthy, and even traveling to New Hampshire to do canvassing. She still had a few conservative vestiges, as she worked as a Washington D.C. intern for Gerald Ford, and worked with the unsuccessful Republican primary campaign of Nelson Rockefeller. But by the time she graduated from Yale Law School, she was completely liberal. She also met another young law student there named Bill Clinton. Together they worked on George McGovern’s campaign in Austin, Texas, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Before you harp on Hillary for once supporting a radical republican in high school, ask yourself one thing: What did YOU believe in high school? Is it the same ideology you have now? I’m guessing not. We have all radically changed from our high school days, and for anyone to judge each other based on their high school selves is the ultimate in shallowness.

Besides, Hillary is now 69 years old. She was 17 when she was a Goldwater Girl. Are we really so stupid as to judge her for something she did more than half a century ago?

If we are, we all deserve a good “Trump” – right on the head.

Eric

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Bernie Sanders for DNC Chair!

I've been floating this idea out there now with various friends on Facebook, and getting a little bit of negative feedback about it. But that negative feedback is making me examine the idea in closer detail, and the more I look at it, the more I like it. Here's my idea, and I'm thinking it's nothing short of 100% brilliant:

Bernie Sanders for DNC Chairman!

But no! You might say, I want Bernie for president!

Well, no, that's simply not going to happen. Bernie would need 90.5% of the remaining delegates just to tie Hillary. Leave out the superdelegates, and Bernie needs 68% of all remaining pledge delegates. You've already read my quantitative analysis posts (if you're currently reading this, that is), so you know I've run the numbers. If the metric we use is Bernie garnering the needed target percentage to catch up with Hillary's lead, then Bernie has lost twelve states in a row (not including Wisconsin, where he missed the target percentage by only 1%). Plus, Hillary's poll numbers are up in California and New Jersey. The fracas in Nevada and Bernie's "sorry, not sorry" response to it have hurt his brand, causing his poll numbers to begin to decline. True, it's only a slight decline, but when you need to go full-throttle forward, and immediately, even a slight step backward is as good as running in the opposite direction.

If I may go off on a slight tangent, is it possible that Bernie has gotten a little power-drunk? Well, it's certainly hard to argue against that observation, isn't it? Never before has this Senator from relatively quiet Vermont ever known popularity like this. He doesn't seem to have anyone around him who isn't a yes-man, or who has the courage to speak truth to power. Yes, he's had one hell of a run, and it must be so very hard for him to admit to himself that the ride is finally over. Hell, I wouldn't want to admit it either, if I were him! He's continuously held aloft by the loud cheering of his adoring fans, and he can no more remove himself from it than a ping pong ball can extract itself from the air of an upturned hair dryer. He's trapped by his own fame, and he will likely not see it until June 7.

If that.

So, now we have a problem. What do we do with this huge constituency that he's built up? How do we mollify such a large and rabid minority - yes, minority, albeit a significant percentage - when they are threatening "nuclear option?" That is, voting for Sanders as an Independent?

Let me go off on another tangent, here. Sanders can't run as an independent. There are "sore loser" laws on many state law books. And although they probably don't apply to presidential candidates, this has never been fully contested in court. That may well happen someday. But even if not, the deadline for a third-party or independent run has passed for Bernie. Why? Because of the requirements for independent or write-in candidates. A candidate may win as a write-in, but those votes only count if the candidate has registered beforehand with the proper paperwork. By the time the Democratic National Convention is over, five states will have their deadlines passed and another fourteen will be past deadline by the following Tuesday. And there's just no way anyone can raise the number of signatures needed in those states in so short a time. Furthermore, Texas, the third largest state, has had its deadline already passed. It was May 6th. So Texas is out. North Carolina's deadline is April 9th, two days after Hillary will officially cruise to her easy victory in California. So North Carolina's Out. That's 8% of Bernie's vote already struck down before we even begin to consider a "nuclear option." If Bernie waits until the Democratic National Convention to announce an independent run, he will find another 8 states have already missed the deadline. Another three states after that have their deadline on August 1st, only two days after the convention, including California. No, a 3rd party run won't work. Even if he declares now, it's too late.

In other words, my beloved Bernie fans, you have no "nuclear option." Except to be a needless spoiler in aid of Trump.

So, back to my original suggestion. Bernie for DNC Chair. Good idea?

I think so! Look at all the problems it solves: First, it gets rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Some say she's done a decent job as DNC Chair. Others say she's awful. Personally, I don't know enough about her to really tell. But she did run away from Barack Obama's winning record in 2014, which was a tactical blunder of epic proportions. That weighs big with me, and I still hold her responsible for that. On those grounds alone, I would say that it's time to replace her. Certainly many in the Democratic Party hate her, and that can be grounds enough to make a change. In all honesty, she's little more than a placeholder to my mind. I may just change my mind later after I research her record, but for now, that's the way I see it. And even if she isn't, she'd have to be quite outstanding in order for me to decide that she's too valuable for Bernie Sanders to replace her.

Second, it brings the Bernie camp totally and completely in. Every Bernie supporter will back the Democratic presidential nominee and everyone else down-ticket 100%. There will be no more bickering about Bernie getting shoved out. After all, he will have not only been invited in, but given the most powerful party leadership position, second only the presidency. The revolution will have arrived, and it will be the Democratic party's alone.

Third, it erases all the negatives that those opposed to Sanders hate most. They say he's gone narcissistic, only cares about his own ticket and not the Democratic Party as a whole, and threatens to divide the party. But put him at the head of that party, and all that changes. There won't be a single democrat who can say he doesn't care, because suddenly it will be in his best interest to care. It will be both his job, and his sworn duty.

But will Bernie do a good job? I dare say he will! He would primarily be put in charge of raising money and applying national strategy for taking back the House and Senate. He would back candidates that are even further to the left than are currently in place, and he might even foolishly back some candidates who are sufficiently leftist but have no chance to win in a Republican district or a typical election season. But this is NOT a typical election season! The presence of Trump and the endorsements of Sanders will help ensure many formerly Republican districts fall. As far as raising money goes, he would certainly tell all the super-pacs and federal lobbyists to go shove it. Would that hurt the Democratic platform financially? Maybe, but I think that might be off-set by a powerful X-factor, and that's Bernie's incredible money-making powers. He's exceeded everyone's expectations.

What else would he do? Well, he would probably push for getting rid of the superdelegate system. Hell, he might even push to eliminate caucuses. But if that's the price we pay for party unity, and safeguarding our nation for the next four to sixteen years, so fucking what?

"But he's an outsider!" some would say. "He's not even a real Democrat!"

No, but he's certainly a real progressive. And isn't that what really matters?

I know it might make some people nervous, making a loose cannon like Sanders the standard-bearer. But hell, he's a loose cannon anyway! There isn't anything he would damage in the party as its Chairman that he wouldn't damage ten times more as an outsider. So if he's going to be a bull in a china shop, let's make sure he's our bull, and that it's their china! And so, though it might be one hell of a gamble, I believe it would pay off handsomely.

And in an election where Donald-fucking-Trump is actually the opposition's choice, we can afford to be a little-bit "gung-ho."

Bernie for DNC Chairman! It's a good idea!


Eric

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Trump: Yet Another Quantitative Analysis

Why were the nut-balls right this time?

Why did the GOP get stuck with Donald Trump, a man who is universally agreed upon by the left, the center, and even a good chunk of those on the right as completely off his rocker? Well, there are many reasons, two of the most primary being the ending of the Fairness Doctrine by Ronald Reagan (with no vote from Congress whatsoever), and the other being the deregulation of the radio airwaves under Bill Clinton. Both these changes allowed the consolidation and corporatization of all the radio stations until only three corporations owned most of the airwaves, and nearly all the talk radio stations were owned by just one, namely Newscorp, a.k.a. Clearchannel. Day and night they spewed nothing but hate rhetoric, and now the hate rhetoric candidate has won.

But that's just the fall of free media. There's also the math. I'm going to tell you about the math.

Trump insists the people chose him. But did they really? He points out that more people voted for him than ever voted for Romney in the primaries, and he's right - by a long shot. The Trump factor got people out to vote in a voting season where most people usually stay home. Primary season is rerun season, and your average voter, at least in elections of the past, has not bothered to really notice. Until now.

But even then, most registered Republicans voted against him. Here are the numbers:

Donald Trump did not outright win any states in the first 34 contests. In fact, in each of the 21 of those early states where he "won," he only scored more than the other guys with an average of only 33.1% of the vote. That's normally not enough to get you elected to a school board, much less a presidency.

But it gets worse. The Republican system awarded Trump with more delegates, even when he didn't secure a 50% majority of votes. In Florida, for example, he only got 45.7% of the votes, but took all the delegates. The majority of Floridians voted for someone else, but Trump took the entire state. Does that seem fair?

Trump finally won a state with a 50% majority with New York. He hasn't lost one below 50% since. Yet even then, that's only seven states out of the 41 which have voted so far. In the earlier states, people voted overwhelmingly for someone other than Trump, and the only reason they lost was because that vote was so divided.

In all, 10,654,918 Republicans have voted for Trump. And 15,909,112 have voted against him and for someone else. That's a 67% margin of registered republicans who would rather have had another candidate!

So let's everyone quit bitching about superdelegates supporting the Democratic candidate who is legitimately leading her rival by 2 million 700 thousand votes, shall we? It's the Republicans who have truly mastered vote theft. And we haven't even discussed the gerrymandering of Congress.

I am reminded of how democracy self-destructed in Egypt back in 2012. They won themselves a democratic revolution, then blew it in the elections. Why? Because the liberal majority could not coalesce around a single party, and so their field was flooded with dozens of candidates who fractured the vote. The Muslim extremist candidate, Mohammed Morsi, ended up winning. An American dignitary who visited Egypt around that time cautioned many Egyptian politicians about exactly that sort of thing happening. She warned them that unless they could forge political alliances and be pragmatic, that they would fracture and spoil the vote, thus allowing an extremist candidate to win, and forcing the Egyptian military to step in and institute a Junta.

In the end, that's just what happened. Oh, and that American dignitary? You guessed it: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Republicans got stuck with Trump because they couldn't compromise politically, and got stuck with the worst guy who could bully the most votes. Let's not make the same mistake on the Democratic Party side, and thus allow Trump to win the whole thing. Let's not ignore Hillary the way the Egyptians did.

Hell, we've been at this democracy thing far longer than they have. So you'd think we'd know better.

Eric

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What Now For Bernie?

Bernie Sanders has won.

No, not the election last night, not even if you include Rhode Island. And no, not the Democratic Party nomination. There’s no realistic chance of him ever winning that (as you’ll see by my number crunching in a moment). No, he’s won a movement. He’s won a constituency. He’s won a large block of the progressive base, and he will never lose it.

Now the question is, what does he do with it?

First, let’s all face a hard reality check. Bernie can’t win the Democratic nomination. That ship has not only sailed, but has been set on fire like the Viking funerals of old. How dead is his candidacy? Let’s look at the hard numbers:

Bernie has, according to CNN, 1359 pledge delegates. Excluding all remaining super delegates, there are 1021 delegates remaining. Add those two together and you get 2380. It takes 2383 to win the nomination outright. Bernie is three short! In other words, Bernie Sanders is mathematically locked out from being able to win the nomination outright! Even if he won 100% of everything left, he would not win!

It gets worse. Hillary’s lead over Bernie in pledge delegates has ballooned up to 307. To catch up to that number, Bernie now needs to win 65.03% of all remaining pledge delegates. Essentially, he needs to win 2/3rds of everything left, just to have a remote chance – and that only leads to a contested convention.

Hillary’s grand total of delegates now, super delegates included, is 2168. She needs 2383. That means she only needs 216 more delegates. That’s tiny! It’s only 21.16% of the remaining 1021 pledge delegates remaining! If you include the remaining 175 super delegates which are still out there, she only needs to win 18.06% of them! She could get her ass completely and thoroughly kicked from here to the convention and still cruise to an easy  nomination victory!

Bernie would not only need to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, he would have to crawl past those jaws, down defeat’s esophagus and pull victory out from the gallbladder.

Now, the Bernie camp will be quick to point out that in order for Hillary to avoid a “contested convention” by winning enough pledge delegates to reach 2383 without any super delegates, she would need to win 70% of the remaining vote. (70.225%, by my calculation.) But if we are extra generous with Bernie, and speculate that Hillary wins only half of the pledge delegates that remain, she would only need 29% of the super delegates to finish Bernie off. Bernie would have to convert 71% of the pledge delegates into coming over to his side, and she already has 502 of them, and she already has 70% (69.82%) firmly committed to her! Plus, as we already know, that just won’t happen. The press will have looked at the numbers above and concluded the same thing. They will know that Bernie is done for, as will the electorate from here on out. People like to vote for a winner, and so Hillary is guaranteed a greater than 50% margin in the remaining states. Oregon may be a stubborn holdout. Maybe West Virginia will go for Bernie. But it won’t matter. Hillary could well have the nomination sewn up before California even votes on June 7th, and if that happens, Bernie’s percentages will go through the floor. Hillary will get her 70% of delegates, and then some. There will be no “contested convention,” and even if there were, Hillary would win that easily, too.
It’s over for Bernie. Anybody who says otherwise is delusional.

Okay, so Bernie’s birdie is now a lame duck. So what? What happens now?

There are really only two choices: Bernie could use his power to consolidate the Democratic party base. He could use his power to help his fellow liberals. He could, through endorsement and campaigning, win over a huge swath of House and Senate seats. He could actually bring about the “revolution” this way! Together, a Hillary and Bernie coalition would be an unstoppable force!

Or he could fracture the liberal base, be a sore loser, and disenfranchise an entire segment of the populace to the political process. He might even run as a third-party independent. After all, he’s done that before with tremendous success in Vermont. But in so doing, he could hand the presidency over to the fascist Trump. Even if he doesn’t break away, his rejection of Hillary could become a boon for the Green Party and possibly even the Libertarian Party, but most definitely it would be a gift to the Republican party, who could end up winning, even with a candidate who stinks on ice as badly as Donald Trump does.

Believe it or not, I’m actually encountering fellow liberals, some of whom I’ve known for years, actually advocating this! I think they may be unaware of the conservative Facebook ghosts masquerading as liberals on various feeds who are deliberately stoking the fires of hatred towards Hillary. But even if they are, they seem not to care. They would rather burn the house to the ground than see it go to another insider.

As if the word “insider” were somehow a guarantee such a person would not be a reformer.

The health of democracy is tied irrevocably to the health of democracy in the United States, and the economic health of the world is permanently tied to the dollar. If we advocate tearing it all down, we bring down democracy’s pinnacle, and the dollar with it. With the fall of the dollar would go the Yuen, the Yen, the Rubel and the Euro. We would literally take the entire world down with us. Some Bernie-backers are actually calling for this right now, determined to never let their “Bernie or bust” dream die. But all I can hear when I listen to such irrational rhetoric are the cries of the impoverished children in America who will know no real future because the republic decided to self-destruct instead of self-improve. I hear the shrieks of the starving third-world children who will die because American food aid dried up in the ensuing chaos. I see the cries of families in nations like Haiti and Mozambique who were actually beginning to turn things around thanks to foreign aid, and who will be able to do nothing except watch it all come crashing down around them because Europe and America will be unable to care for themselves, much less other nations. I see a resurgence of the Trump faction who will take advantage of the chaos to transform America into a Christianized version of the Taliban, where abortion is universally outlawed, and religious freedom taken away from Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, Shintos, atheists and agnostics. I see this condition becoming permanent, as the age of super-surveillance transforms America into George Orwell’s 1984. And all the victims who are permanently trapped by this outcome will turn to our generation and ask, “Why!? Why, when you had the chance to unite, and win things for the good of all, did you not do so? Why did you let all humanity become enslaved?”

I want a better answer to give them than, “We didn’t want a political insider.”

Bernie lost the nomination. But he won his following. He is now a political movement. He may have lost the war, but now he has the power, and the responsibility, to win the peace. Now is the time to do so.

And if he doesn’t, we know the kind of man he truly is.


Eric

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Is Hillary Cheating?

I hear it from Facebook debaters all the time, insisting that Bernie's string of victories leading up to New York must have won him enough ground to catch up to Hillary, and because he didn't, that the system must somehow be rigged.

Well, in a nutshell, bullshit. Once again I've crunched the numbers, and put everything together in a neatly organized, easy-to-understand graph. Even the Republicans who are pretending to be Democrats bashing Hillary on Facebook will understand this one. Observe below:

These totals focus on pledge delegates, leaving out the super delegates altogether. Observe how Hillary's winning totals, shown in blue, are largest in the largest states, and how Bernie's wins, shown in green, tend to cluster around the smallest states. Pending elections are shown in grey. See it now? Bernie's greenest totals are in some pretty tiny states near the bottom of this rather top-heavy totem pole.

Bernie's recent winning streak consisted of Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. As you can see, Wyoming, whown by the tiny space at the bottom, is hardly worth mentioning, as are Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska. Utah, is only slightly larger, and still not much of a mouthful. Only Washington and Wisconsin are noteworthy, and they are rather mediocre.

Now look at Hillary's wins. The real eye-poppers are Texas and Florida, which together comprise roughly 75% of her winning margin so far. See the difference?

So Hillary's commanding leads come from her winning strategy - she goes where the people are. Bernie, while winning lots of real estate, cannot win that way.

Because it's not how much land you conquer, it's how many people vote for you. One person, one vote, not one square mile, one vote.

Eric

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Can Hillary Avoid A Contested Democratic Convention?

Recently, a friend of mine posted this particular tidbit onto Facebook:

It's an interesting argument, and I called bullshit on it when I saw it, because I'd just recently run these numbers in a recent blog post, and knew first hand that this sort of argument was just silly. But it occurs to me that many Bernie supporters might be thinking this sort of thing, and so I've taken it upon myself to evaluate just how likely it is to be true. What did I find? Well, it's still silly, but not for the reasons you might expect. Read on and learn:

First, we need to see where this post got its numbers from. They are going on the number of delegates needed to win the nomination for the Democratic Party, which is 2,383. Next, they are assuming that if Hillary does not have enough pledge delegates to win the nomination without super delegate support, it will result in a contested convention. (That's not true, but we'll ignore it for now.) So one takes the number of pledge delegates Hillary needs to get to 2,383 (which is 1,079), divide that by the number of pledge delegates yet remaining (1,667), and you get 0.64727. Multiply that by 100%, and you get 64.727%, which rounds up to 65%. (All source numbers are from CNN.com.)

Okay, so that first number checks out. And we know from our previous calculations in earlier blog posts that Bernie does, in fact, need to win 57% of all remaining pledge delegates to catch up to Hillary's current lead. So the two main percentages quoted are spot on.

The problem is in how these numbers are structured.

Hillary currently has a lead over Bernie of 229 pledge delegates, which is why Bernie needs 57% of all the remaining ones just to catch up. By leaving out this one fact, it is easy to compare 65% to 57% and conclude that Bernie's hurdle is smaller, and therefore his path to the nomination is easier. But this is comparing apples to oranges. The numbers aren't being allowed to play fair.

To make an objective analysis, let's apply the same standard to Bernie that was applied to Hillary. We start with Bernie's current pledge delegate total, which is 1,075. Subtract that from the total he needs to win the nomination (2,383) and we get 1,308. (Again, figures from CNN.com.) Divide that by the number of pledge delegates remaining (1,667), and we get 0.784643, or 78% rounded.

So, to avoid a contested convention, Hillary needs 65%, while Bernie needs 78%.
Hillary's goal looks a lot more achievable.

So while Hillary might need something shy of 2/3rds of the vote, Bernie needs almost 80% to avoid a convention fight.
Not looking very promising when the evaluation playing field is leveled, is it?

But let's look at it from yet another standpoint. If Bernie needs 78% percent to win the nomination outright without any super delegates, then the converse also holds true. If he falls short of 78% going forward, he will be mathematically locked out from being able to obtain enough pledge delegates.

He will also be mathematically locked out from EVER catching up to Hillary.

How many delegates can he therefore afford to lose? Well, as we said, Bernie needs 1,308 to win. With only 1,667 remaining, that's only 359 delegates!

Meaning that Hillary only needs to win 359 more delegates, and Bernie can NEVER catch up in pledge delegates!

To put that in perspective, New York has 291 delegates. Maryland has 118. Pennsylvania has 210.

Yeah, it's that bad for Bernie!

"But wait!" you may say. "Isn't catching up to Hillary and winning the nomination the same calculation?" How mathematically adroit of you! But oddly enough, no! Because the percentage that Bernie needs to catch up to Hillary is a much smaller number IF neither of them reaches 2,383 delegates! Which is entirely possible, especially if Hillary needs 65% to avoid a convention fight. However, with Bernie mathematically locked out from being able to get enough pledge delegates, and with Hillary having all the momentum after New York, all the voters in future states, including California, will know it's already over. Bernie fans just won't be able to get excited enough to go out and vote for nothing more than a contested convention. It then becomes highly likely that Hillary runs the table, wins more than 65%, and secures the nomination outright.

At current polling numbers, Bernie will lose at least 411 delegates to Hillary by April 29th! He will lose at least 160 of the 291 available delegates in New York alone! Yes, he will win some as well, but when you need 78% just to win on pledge delegates, Even if we reverse the polling numbers to give Bernie a shockingly HUGE 60% majority upset win, Hillary will still take 116 delegates away from Bernie, taking him 1/3rd of the way towards being locked out in a single swoop! If we do the same thing to Pennsylvania, and again give Bernie an overwhelming 60% majority win upset (contrary to all the polling data yet again), Hillary will still be able to take another 88 votes away from him. Give Bernie every possible advantage and big-state upset going forward, and he will be mathematically locked out by May.

In all probability, he will be locked out on April 26th, when a five-state voting block will vote with Hillary's New York victory giving her all the momentum. After that, Bernie's only hope is to try for a brokered convention, which will almost certainly never happen.

What's that? You want to play the "What if?" game regarding a contested convention with Bernie Sanders anyway? You refuse to give up after New York and Pennsylvania? You are one of those who will fight, fight, fight no matter what because this is the goddamned revolution and WE WILL NOT BE SILENT?! Okay, I'll play along. Let's say, just for funsies, that Bernie succeeds in denying Hillary a total of 2,383 pledge delegates. How big a margin can he score on her?

Just for a comparison analysis, I ran the numbers. Let's assume an exact tie going forward. A tie vote in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and everything up to and after California. If that happens, each candidate would get 833.5 delegates, but since we can't have half a delegate, we'll give Bernie the extra delegate, leaving Hillary with 833 and Bernie with 834. That leaves an ending pledge total score of:

Hillary: 2,137
Bernie: 1,909

Given how far Hillary currently leads in the polls in New York, Pennsylvania and California, this is being more than just generous, in my estimation. I'm outright robbing Hillary to make this calculation.

There are 719 super delegates. To get to the magic number of 2,383 in a contested convention, Bernie would need 474 of them. Hillary, by virtue of her current lead carried through to the end, would need only 246. Or, to put it another way, she would need only 34.214% of the remaining super delegate totals in order to win outright! Bernie, by contrast, would need a whopping 65.925% of the super delegates in order to win.

Bernie would be VERY foolish to try to run for a brokered convention!

And that's the best Bernie can hope for! That's assuming an exact tie of everything going forward! That's assuming stunning comebacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland!

True, Bernie could win all those states. He could even win them by commanding margins. But he still has to catch up first.

And that's looking very, very, very unlikely at this point.

Just imagine how unlikely it will look after Hillary wins New York. And as to the person who posted the original image above on Facebook, it's still bullshit!


Eric

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Bernie's Odds - Another Quantitative Analysis

We've seen some of the breakdowns on CNN and other news sources about how steep an uphill climb it might be for Bernie Sanders going forward. But now some voices are crying for a contested convention, and are saying that if the super delegates are fair, they will see that Bernie is the better candidate, and give him the nomination over Hillary if the final vote between them is close. Is that a viable argument?

Once again, I've crunched the numbers on my spreadsheet to make you, my seven loyalists, the smartest people in the room in any conversation about this. Assuming Hillary wins in New York (and all the polls say she will), Bernie will lose ground to the point where he has to win 60% of all remaining delegates to catch up. But can he catch up enough to make the argument that he's the better candidate in spite of the delegate count? I don't think so. Here's why.

Projecting the remaining primaries and caucuses is a bit tricky. Some states, like Rhode Island, Indiana and the Dakotas, have no polling data whatsoever. For states like these, I've given Hillary and Bernie a 50-50 tie, just to see how it will shake out. Otherwise, I've proportioned the votes based on any polling data that is current enough to be latter-March or early-April. Here's what I found.

No matter which way one slices it, it doesn't look like Hillary can wrap up the nomination before California, even if she wins everything else going forward outright. To do that, she would have to have a huge string of commanding wins, and even then won't have the nomination sewn up until mid-May at the earliest. So she will finally win, but not until California, and Bernie will be fighting her all the way, even if he's fallen farther behind.

But let's say that Bernie doesn't. Let's give Bernie some commanding wins in states like Indiana, where there's no polling data but demographics have previously favored him because it is similar to Michigan and Wisconsin. Next let's give him the Dakotas as well as West Virginia. Does he have a chance to catch up a little?

Not really. Even if we give Bernie a big upset in a major state like Pennsylvania, the best he can do is keep Hillary shy of the overall pledge delegate vote total of 2383. Now, she will have way more than that due to super delegates. But suppose she doesn't have enough pledge delegates to put her above 2383. That's entirely possible. How far short will she be?

My analysis shows, not short by enough. If we give Bernie the best case scenario, excepting a huge upset in New York, the best that Bernie can hope for is Hillary falling shy by only about 100 pledge delegates. If we give Bernie and Hillary the respective wins based on current polling data, and make all unknown outcomes an even split between the two, Hillary will fall short by only 50 pledge delegates. And if we give Bernie an insane amount of wins, even in big states like Pennsylvania and New York. Hell, let's even give him California by a narrow margin, the most Hillary will fall short by is 150 pledge delegates. Now, there are 719 super delegates in total. If we give Bernie 79% of all super delegates, he will still lose the nomination to Hillary, because she will, worst-case scenario only need 21% of those super delegates to win!

Yeah. THAT'S how far behind Bernie is!

Why? Because Hillary would have won 1) the popular vote and 2) the pledge delegate vote. Fair and square, no rigged voting, and 3) the super delegates won't even matter, even if they overwhelmingly favor Bernie's side (which, get real, ain't gonna happen!).

Yes, I know, I know. Bernie is on a winning streak of seven straight states. Exciting, right? You're feeling the Bern, right? But those states are all some of the smallest ones in our union. The smallest states by population, smallest to largest, are Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska. Bernie has won all three, and two of those three recently (the exception being Vermont), but all three put together do not even make up 1% of our nation's overall population! His other recent wins include Hawaii, Utah, Idaho, Wisconsin and Washington State. Of those five, only the latter two are decent sized states. The other five of Bernie's wins are barely 1.5% of the nation's overall population size. Bernie has a winning streak - in the minor leagues.

So, no matter which way you slice it, Bernie's chances are pretty slim. You may still believe he's got a shot, and he just barely does, but if you're hoping a contested convention is your way out, or if you think persuading the super delegates is somehow going to save Bernie at the end, all I can say is one thing:

Dream on!


Eric

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