uawchild
uawchild's JournalWhy is Iowa Important?
A person asked this in another thread and I thought it best to post my viewpoint here.
Ok, sit down. Put on your tin foil hat, I am going to tell you the real reason New Hampshire and later Iowa were always given so much emphasis in presidential politics.
1. They are relatively small states, especially New Hampshire, and that made it easy for the press to cover.
Now hold on for the turbulence...
2. They are overwhelming white and non-immigration states historically and don't have very large cities.
That's right, the national media owned by white male protestants and the entire white male protestant power structure back in the day wanted the narrative about the next President to be set by this overwhelming white protestant states.
They didn't want all those grubby immigrants and minorities crowded into those big cities setting the table, so to speak. And it also excluded all the white trash factory workers. Let me not leave them out.
They wanted Norman Rockwell small business and family farm owners to set the table. In short, their view of "real" America.
Many people, including me, still thinks this is more true than not.
Biden Tells Donors and Lobbyists at Fundraiser That GOP Will 'Know Better' After Trump
Biden Tells Donors and Lobbyists at Fundraiser That GOP Will 'Know Better' After Trump and Wall Street Bankers 'Are All Positive'
"Trying to decide which of 'Wall Street: they're all positive' or 'Republicans know better' would be a more fitting slogan for the Joe Biden campaign."
byJake Johnson, staff writer
Providing more evidence of the fundamental political differences between himself and progressives vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden told lobbyists and donors at a fundraiser Monday night that Republicans in Congress "know better" than to align with President Donald Trump and declared that Wall Street bankers "can be positive influences in the country."
"Wall Street and significant bankers and people, they're all positive, they can be positive influences in the country," Biden told the audience gathered in Washington, D.C. "But they didn't build the country. The middle class built the country."
Observers were quick to note the sharp contrast between Biden's friendly stance toward Wall Street and the positions of top 2020 contenders Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who are both rejecting Wall Street cash as they campaign against the corrosive influence massive banks and corporations have on the American political system.
Biden also doubled down on his view that President Donald Trump is an aberration from the Republican Party rather than a symptom of the corruption and racism at the core of the modern GOP—a statement that has put him at odds with Democratic candidates who believe ousting Trump is necessary but not sufficient to tackle crises that long precede his presidency.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/11/biden-tells-donors-and-lobbyists-fundraiser-gop-will-know-better-after-trump-and
How long will the debates be?
I ask because with 10+ people on the stage at a time, it seems like the first debate will only allow for sound-bite answers.
Say each candidate gets to respond for 1 minute per question, that means in an hour, accounting for the moderators time too, that about 5 questions could be asked.
Allowing 2 minutes per answer would mean roughly 6 questions could be asked in 2 hours.
This is why I feel the early cattle-call debates are just a forum for sound bites and snippets of stump speeches.
Your mileage might vary.
Undecided at 40% leads LATEST Massachusetts Poll
Woah.
When given a choice in an early poll, the overwhelming winner in the latest Massachusetts Poll is Undecided at 40%.
No one else even comes close to Undecided, with the closest actual candidate getting only ~half that in support.
The results:
Biden 22%
Warren 10%
Buttigieg 8%
Sanders 6%
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2019/06/10/biden-leading-warren-among-democratic-voters-mass-poll-finds/GUVxw1pzDjA9Nau9cMAlCP/story.html
This pretty much mirrors what we see here on DU with our Primary Preference poll. The undecided DU-ers also remain at ~40%.
The reason why is simple, I think. Voters want to see and hear more from ALL the candidates. They have not gotten enough feedback yet to settle on a definitive choice because there have been no debates, no primaries, no caucuses and serious campaigning has barely started.
I wish all polls would give voters the chance to choice "undecided", that allows a more accurate picture of voter preference to emerge.
The Morning Consult Poll... The UAWCHILD Analysis!
I know you all have been waiting for this, so here's probably the most insightful analysis of this weeks Morning Consult Poll results you will find on the web, wait, did I just call the internet "the web"?
Good lord, that makes me sound as old as our leading candidates... Never mind, here is the analysis:
The Biden bounce is over, but he's still at 37%.
For the third week in a row he's lost 1%. How low will he go?
When will he start to gain ground again?
Warren's rise seems unstoppable.
She gained again and is at 11% now and is the only person with a consistent trend upwards in the entire poll.
She's creeping up slowly to Join Biden and Sanders in the 15% cutoff for delegates club.
Will she pass Bernie at 19% and head even further up?
Bernie held steady at 19% while Biden lost ground this week.
Many many people will claim pointing this out makes me some sort of stealth Sanders supporter.
Will Bernie close ground or is ~20% his ceiling this year?
The Take-Away:
If these trends hold, I will be able to claim I am some sort of political genius when Biden, Warren and Sanders take it to The Brokered Convention 2020!
Yeah, that's right, I am calling it early! No candidate is going to get a majority on the first ballot this year. The big three and probably Harris with all her California Delegates will be starring at a brokered convention in 2020.
Wooo! Yeah, baby.
https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/
Morbid Primary thought of the Week
Let me start out by saying I am an older person and that I don't intend this to sound ageist.
There have been a lot of posts lately about how progressive or moderate the Democratic Party is and how fast it is changing.
When looking into this, I found that 538 states that the party is growing more liberal by 2% every year. They published this chart to show the trend:
So, yeah, wow, since 2008 the party has gotten 12% more liberal.
Ok. Nice.
Then I started to think WHY that happened and it hit me...
Since 2008, 11 years worth of older and probably on average more conservative voters have passed away. They have been replaced by 11 years worth of younger, probably more liberal, voters.
That really had me thrown when that hit home.
Once you pass age 65, let alone 75, you don't have that many decades left to play with.
This is why I feel we should embrace a younger generation of leadership going forward to 2020,
Time is relentlessly moving on and our party needs to change with it.
Sorry about the wrong sneak peak!
Sorry, I signed up for a sneak peak of the Morning Consult Poll and posted what I thought were today's numbers. But they were actually for last week.
An astute DU-er caught my mistake.
My apologies, the date was in the info they sent me, but, in my defense, it was small print.
Sooo, what good is signing up for a sneak peak at new numbers if they send you last week's numbers on the day they are releasing new ones ?!?
Teaches me to be so trusting, eh? lol
How Old Should a President Be? With So Many Choices, Democrats Are Sharply Divided
HAMPTON, N.H. — As a young adult, Ronnie Werner protested the war in Vietnam, fought for civil rights and supported a 42-year-old Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy, in her first election in 1968. Forty years later, her home served as the local headquarters for then-Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, as she urged her fellow Democrats to embrace new leadership.
That was then. Now, as Democrats grapple with the possibility that President Trump could win four more years in the White House, Ms. Werner feels that betting on the next generation is a risk she can’t afford to take.
“We’re in such terrible straits that everything I’ve worked for my entire professional, personal life is about to go down the toilet,” said Ms. Werner, 72, as she waited to see former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at a pizza parlor in Hampton, N.H. “Young people, I think they are hungry for change and they deserve change, but they don’t know how scary this is.”
...
Meanwhile, younger candidates have made their age a central part of their primary message, arguing they’re better prepared to embrace the new solutions needed to tackle issues like climate change, health care and the changing economy. A survey released by the Pew Research Center this month found that just 3 percent of Americans say candidates in their 70s are ideal for the office.
“The world has changed so rapidly and we need what comes with a generational shift — new ideas, new approaches, new ways of doing things,” said Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, 45, who describes his age as one of his strongest assets.
Mr. Buttigieg has made “intergenerational justice” the central theme of his candidacy, often saying he worries about what the United States will be like in 2054 — the year he will be Mr. Trump’s current age.
In an interview, Mr. Buttigieg said he references that year to try to encourage Democrats to look beyond defeating the president.
“What’s helpful, I think, with the generational energy that a young candidate can bring, is being able to put a very quick face on the urgency of dealing with things for the future,” he said. “When we’re trying to design that world, substantively, it points you to a place that’s more favorable turf for Democrats.”
Historically, Democratic nominees and presidents have been younger than their Republican counterparts. The two Democratic nominees who have won the White House since 1992 — Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama — cast themselves as agents of generational change.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/09/us/politics/2020-democractic-candidates-ages.html
This is a detailed and balanced article on the age issue. It's an honest depiction of the difficult choices facing all Democrats this primary season.
Well worth the read.
Democratic Convention Rules
The 2020 Democratic presidential nominee will be selected by delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which will be held July 13-16, 2020, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The national nominating convention is the formal ceremony during which the party officially selects its nominee. The delegates are individuals chosen to represent their state or territory at the convention.
In 2020, there will be an estimated 4,532 delegates: 3,768 pledged delegates and 764 automatic delegates—more commonly known as superdelegates.[1]
To win the Democratic nomination, a presidential candidate must receive support from a majority of the pledged delegates on the first ballot—an estimated 1,885 pledged delegates. If the convention is contested and goes to a second ballot or more, automatic delegates will be able to vote and a candidate must receive majority support from all delegates—an estimated 2,267 delegates.[2] Roughly two-thirds of the delegates will have been allocated by the end of March 2020.
This page provides an overview of the types of delegates to the convention and a summary of delegates by state. Election dates, delegate counts, delegate allocation rules are subject to change as each state finalizes its delegation selection process.
https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_delegate_rules,_2020
Let me make sure I understand this correctly....
On the FIRST BALLOT the delegates are pledged to vote initially for a specific candidate OR had to explicitly be pledge to be uncommitted before hand. If someone has a majority, they are the nominee.
On subsequent ballots the previously pledged delegates are free to change who they vote for. So supporters of different candidates can change their votes and give a majority to another candidate.
I know it's a simplistic question, but I really want to be absolutely clear on how the process works.
It might very well turn out that this year, with so many good people in the race, that no candidate will win the nomination on the first ballot. So, it could turn out that a candidate with the single most number of delegates on the first ballot (say 35% for example) might not end up winning the nomination if the remaining delegates get behind another single candidate.
Woah. This could get very interesting.
Thanks!
Warren moves up AGAIN in DU Primary Ticker!
Congratulations to Warren and her supporters here on DU, Liz is now at 13% in the DU Primary Preference Poll!
The Iowa Poll results released just yesterday give an indication why Warren's support is steadily increasing:
"Warren is on a growth trajectory
Selzer is considered one of the most skilled pollsters when it comes to surveying Iowa's electorate. What makes her especially effective is that her surveys consistently illustrate who's on the move, up or down.
And though it is eight months before the caucuses, Warren is the candidate on the move. She has a higher net favorable rating than any other candidate in the field; 71 percent see her favorably, while just 17 percent see her unfavorably. That's a better ratio than Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg.
An equal number of Democratic voters, 61 percent, say they are actively considering or backing Warren and Biden, the highest rates in the field. That's 5 points higher than those who say Sanders is on their ticket and 9 points higher than both Buttigieg and Harris."
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/447608-biden-slumps-buttigieg-soars-6-takeaways-from-benchmark-iowa-poll
Again, congratulations to Warren and her supporters and, actually, to all of us Democrats since Warren would make a stellar nominee in 2020!
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