When Bernie met Hillary

Bernie Sanders on Single-Payer HealthCare Classic video from 1993 where Bernie Sanders advocates for single-payer healthcare in the United States. He hasn't changed a bit.

Sanders just gained about 6 statewide delegates in Polk County, Iowa (Clinton lost 6 too), Won Iowa?

Love that video clip- especially the hair.

Bernie has been making the same stump speech slice he was elected mayor of Burlington. It's still right.

Good to see Bernie still has the resources to stay in the race and poke at Hillary, despite having virtually no path to the nomination at this point. There's some talk of him being Hillary's running mate, but Liz Warren seems like a better bet. Mrs. sanepride, a devoted Bernie supporter with absolutely no love for Hillary, got pretty excited about this prospect.

It isn't over until it's over, at least not until Tuesday when Ohio and Florida have their primaries. It's a big if, but is Sanders can win both (they're winner take all) then he still has a shot.

Also, who knows, that FBI investigation into Clinton's email fuckery may turn up something damning before the nomination. Maybe not enough to cause her to drop out of the race, but enough to cause some of those super delegates to switch teams.

FL and OH are winner-take-all only for the Republicans. For the Dems all states' delegates are awarded proportionately, which is precisely why Bernie's chances are slim-to-none. Even if he were to win both (right now polls show Hillary way ahead in both) he'd basically have to run the board for all remaining primaries in order to catch up to Hillary's delegate count.

Actually, on the Democratic side, all the primaries are proportionally allocated. Only on the Republican side do you have winner-take-all contests.

As for Clinton's email issues, from what I've seen and dug through of publicly available information, there isn't anything there. There has been a lot of misinformation repeated by the right-wing press, but from my viewpoint both as a lawyer and someone who has dealt with classified information issues, she didn't do anything that warrants criminal charges (and she has pretty good defenses even then). That said, if there's something there, I'm sure the investigators will find it.

As for the super delegates, I'm reasonably certain that if Clinton or Sanders has the majority of pledged delegates going into the convention that they will respect the will of the voters.

Yeah, the email issue is largely bullshit. Whatever problems Hillary has are pretty much policy-related. All of her so-called 'scandals' are inventions of the right-wing noise machine.

I don't think the GOP wants to indict Clinton on anything, for two reasons:

1. They see her as the only sane alternative to Trump that isn't Sanders.
2. Even if that e-mail server had the blueprints for the Death Star on it and the Chinese now have a copy, if that's the standard of (for lack of a better term) impeachment, then they likely have far more to worry about on every level from federal to state. I don't mean they have similar setups (they might, who knows?), but compared to the shit the previous administration got up to, it's small potatoes.

The establishment GOP have all but conceded this election to Hillary, but that doesn't mean they don't want to indict her on this or anything else they can dig up. Basically they're already planning their 2020 campaign.

But they won't. They prefer a go-to shorthand for "don't support this person" rather than an actual legal case.

The only GOPers that do want to see her on charges are the ones that chant "war criminal" and bring up Benghazi over and over. That won't ever stick thanks to the circus that the hearings were. Chiefly, the facts that "Clinton" appears in the report about twice as often as "Benghazi" does and that several Republican members of the committee have admitted it was a witch hunt.

It also gets embarrassing to point out how many people in the diplomatic corps died under Bush with nary an eye blink, let alone an investigation.

Unfortunately for Hillary, Bernie does have a path to the nomination right now. That said, the window of opportunity is closing. Hillary has two more states (Florida and North Carolina) in which to run up her score of pledged delegates. After those two states, the population demographics are less favorable to her. But if Bernie doesn't do well on March 15, especially in Ohio, Florida, and Illinois, he won't be able to make up the deficit in pledged delegates. And he will have to do better than tie in those states. A tie keeps him alive on March 15, but not much more.

As for Elizabeth Warren, there have been many people suggesting her as a VP choice, but I see two problems with it. First, she hasn't expressed any interest in the job of VP. Second, it takes her out of the Senate, where she has been influential, she has been consequential, and puts her in a position where's she's not essential. Lastly, I'll just observe that Hillary hasn't supported a number of Warren's proposal, like a return to Glass-Steagal. Hillary would have a lot to gain from Warren as VP, but I'm not sure that Warren would gain much at all.

In order to catch up he has to not tie but win pretty much every remaining state- including FL & NC.
As for Hillary's VP pick, keep in mind above all she's a craven opportunist. She'll pick whoever she thinks will win over the most votes from the progressive base that right now pretty much despises her. Yeah, Warren may not be interested, but it's still a greater possibility than Bernie somehow getting the nomination.

Indeed, to catch up he will have to win pretty much every remaining state. Which is much more likely now that most of the Southern states have voted, but still very difficult.

And while I agree that Hillary is a craven opportunist, I'm not sure that she'll think she needs to win over the votes from the progressive base. Who else is the progressive base going to vote for if Hillary is the nominee of the Democratic party? Certainly not the Republican candidate. Warren is a good choice if Clinton wants to shore up the progressive base, bring a sense of unity to the party, and add some excitement. The only downside to Warren is that with Clinton as the candidate, she may want to shore up a different regional base instead, rather than picking someone from an area she will win anyway.

But my bigger point was that I just don't see how it helps Warren in any way. In the past 40 years, the VP has gone from being a largely inconsequential position to that of being the President's consigliere, confidant, and right-hand man. With one notable exception to that change (Dan Quayle), such relationships between President and VP were between contemporaries/competitors (Carter/Mondale, Reagan/Bush, Clinton/Gore) or between younger and elder statesmen (Bush/Cheney, Obama/Biden). While Warren and Sanders are kindred spirits, I'm not sure the same is true for Warren and Clinton. My worry, if I was Warren, would be getting marginalized within a Clinton administration.

There's the very real possibility that the progressives simply won't vote. I know my hatred of Hillary is pretty damned close to that point.

I might go write in "NONE OF THE ABOVE" if the weather's not too bad.

Ah, the Brewster's Millions strategy.

You could go with Ralph Nader.

I wish None of the above was a viable strategy....these candidates all suck get others one re run the election the first ones are not eligible in second. If now inner in the third candidates elect themselves not being able to vote for your self first one past 50% wins.

OK, fine, even if Bernie loses both Florida and Ohio, as the polls project, his most devoted supporters will still be using tortured math to argue that somehow he can still beat Hillary. And while I admire this kind of loyalty in the face of hopelessness, it's kind of pointless, and it's pointless to argue with, like arguing with the devoutly religious.

If Bernie loses Florida AND Ohio, he doesn't have a real shot. I expect that Bernie will lose Florida. The demographics do not favor him, and the polls show him consistently behind.

Ohio is another matter. I do wonder whether the same likely voter model used in polls in Michigan was used there. There have been three polls in the last week, half as many as have been done in Florida. The same issues that were in play in Michigan are in play in Ohio.

And I agree with you, the most devout will still be arguing that Sanders can win regardless of the results. I'm not one of those people. The victory in Michigan gave the Sanders campaign new life, but March 15 could just as easily take it all away. Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois are must win states for Sanders, because he will lose Florida and North Carolina. Anything less than that fails to change the dynamics of the race, which is an eventual march to victory by Clinton.

Bernie's math problem explained-
To even have a shot he needs to not just win, but win by a lot.

How do they even conduct polls now? Hardly anyone I know has a landline anymore, and the ones who do generally let them go to voicemail.

That's one of the many problems with polling nowadays. They still poll landlines, which largely hasn't changed from previous practice. The more expensive polls will also poll cell phones as well, though it takes longer to do so, both because you can't use automatic dialers, and sometimes pollsters compensate people for their lost minutes.

The bigger problem is that people don't want to answer pollsters. Response rate has plummeted from 80% in the 1970s to 8% today. That means that you're less likely to get a representative sample over the phone.

Internet polling has additional problems, lack of representation of older age groups, overrepresentation by younger age groups, and problems figuring out all of that.

Add in the question of whether the individual is likely to vote, and you have a real problem. People overestimate their likelihood of voting, and the real probability of whether someone will vote in an election is their past voting behavior. Political Data/Intelligence firms have that granular sort of information, but few pollsters do, in my experience. The pollsters create a statistical model of who is likely to vote based on aggregate past voting trends, instead of creating the model based off individuals who are likely to vote the election, then using that information and demographic data to weigh responses.

There was a good opinion piece in the New York Times about polling issues here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/whats-the-matter-with-polling.html

In the past 40 years, the VP has gone from being a largely inconsequential position to that of being the President's consigliere, confidant, and right-hand man.

I disagree. I found Vice President Bush to be just a stool pigeon for President Cheney.

I could be wrong, but I swear I read that Warren expressly stated she was not interested in being VP.

I know people say the friendzone doesn't exist, but I feel like Bernie is way friendzoned by Hilary. "Friendzone" isn't quite the word I'm looking for but I think it gets to the gist of it.

Like this feels like they had a group assignment and Bernie did all the work and Hilary submitted it but moved her name to the top.

It may feel that way, but the actual record may be more nuanced.

Man, that 90s fashion. Better than the 80s, but I can't believe we ever thought business turtlenecks could work.

I kinda wish dudes had some options other than "suit" or "better-fitting suit," though.

Do men still have the option of collarless shirts? I liked those. They sort of reminded me of Shatner's shirt in Star Trek III and IV:

Ugg - Lee top. I hope she fired whoever told her the "Yertle the Turtle" look was in.