Today was a day of numbers, calculations and odds

This Sunday I spent most of the day looking at research on 2008 when Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama. The concept was to determine how the Super Delegates functioned and if there is an opportunity for Bernie Sanders to win the popular vote by the end of the Democratic primary. It does not appear that Bernie can clinch the elected delegates, but Hillary will not be able to clinch the election without the Super Delegates commitment either. Bernie could get the popular vote if he overcomes a 3 million vote deficit with a combination of increased voter participation and a huge win in California, like a 70% to 30% victory. He achieved this in Washington State and is poised for a similar win in Oregon. The largely Hispanic population of Los Angeles can have a large impact in Bernie Sanders ability to reach this milestone and simultaneously argue for the redistribution of Super Delegates at the convention. I don't have time to go into the details, but there are a few important primaries in the next few weeks before California and New Jersey. The other problem is that Bernie Sanders needs to take 9 out of the ten remaining primaries in order to have the upper hand on the count of contest won. He can tie by winning 8 out of 10, but anything less will take some wind out of the sails of the negotiations for Super Delegates.

The Blame Game - Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bernie!

There they go again, blaming Bernie as a Ralph Nader before the primaries are even completed. The Democratic establishment is so full of crap for trying to create an enemy out of Bernie Sanders following their scandalous victory in New York. I don't have any immediate article links, but this is a sign of things to come as the Democratic primary moves towards California. The goal is to turn voters "off" of Bernie Sanders by making him an enemy of the party. The Democratic Party is the enemy and should remain so through the elections and through the convention by any means necessary. A fraudulent candidate should be challenged all the way to the end, which may include the general election and up to the declaration of the oath of office.

Sadly the alternative rationalization may be true,  assuming Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, in that he is the only democratically elected front runner currently. If he can overcome the entrenched Republican establishment then he has every right to become the President by virtue of winning popularly held elections. This cannot be said of Hillary Clinton who is only winning by voter suppression and party manipulations.

Other Issues with voting...Is this F@#KNG RUSSIA? - Votes Matter!

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/19/politics/new-york-primary-voter-problem-polls-sanders-de-blasio/

Sanders campaign, New York officials cry foul after New York voters report issues


Whodathunkit? In 2016 you can't vote if you are a citizen of the country unless you friggin' establish a history of voting, stay in the same location and answer snail mail. Sadly the result of these types of Friggin' in the Riggin' are consistently against the spirit of the law and potentially in violation of the law. I can't even recite the basic nature of allowing people to vote, yet when you hear that in 2016 you have to declare an affiliation more than 6 months in advance of an election, which restricts who you can vote for, then I am dumbfounded that we have a government at all. Voter suppression based on race is a crime, but voter suppression over the entire population is apparently an acceptable way to do business.

Votes Matter!

How many votes does a Super Delegate Respresent?

Whatever happened to one person one vote? This doctrine isn't confirmed in the voting policies of the Democratic party and therefore it is not true for the United States. The parties are the gatekeepers to the government and we are seeing first hand how the Democratic and Republican parties mock this concept.

There are 719 total Super Delegates for the Democratic party. We can divide the total population of the party or just the population of the people who voted by 719 and get an idea of how many votes a SuperDelegate represent.  I am not sure how many voters there are in the party, before the purge. There are  247 popularly decided Delegates for New York's 1.8 million Democratic voters, so each delegate represents 7300 voters in a contest. Roughly 1/5th of the Delegates are Super Delegates. The elected delegates for New York are  44 Super Delegates for New York. All total the 44 SuperDelegates equal 322,000 voters.

If a Super Delegate is counted at the convention like a regular delegate then that means that a Super Delegate from New York represents 7,300 voter in one vote; without debate and by their independent proclamation as a Super Delegates. No accountability, No democractic responsibility.

The effect of the Super Delegate is exponentially powerful in that they have been counted against Bernie Sanders throughout the election process or whenever Bernie has pulled within striking distance of Hillary Clinton in order to defuse support by making the public think he can't win. In this way I would extrapolate that the 700 delegates represent about 280,000 actual votes and have therefore swayed the Democratic primary as a whole. This process has allowed the potential votes of 719 people to decide the next Presidential contender for the United States, a hardly democratic process.

At what point is the process by which parties choose candidates subject to legal review and control. Should not a party be held to a one vote per person rule in order to legitimately and democratically elect a President?

The Elephant in the Room

The real enemy is not the government, but the parties that control our government. The only way to affect change is by changing the two parties that have access to the White House and Congress. The current political environment is the first time in a long time that the schemes and tricks of the parties have been exposed while the public was paying attention and it's dirty. It's dirty inside and out. There is nothing about the voting policies of the Republican and Democratic parties that give them the right to send our soldiers out into the world to fight for Democracy when democracy at home is just a fanciful illusion.

Less than 5% of the population of New York is responsible for the next President of the United States

In a rigged system you cannot accurately measure the desires of a population through voting. New York reinforces this concept with the utmost absurdity. Bernie Sanders is a candidate that did not appear on the national stage until after the first primaries of 2016. Within a matter of 3 months the Sanders campaign has built a popular movement that captured over 40% of the vote of a major insulated state like New York and the only thing to blame is the restrictive requirements of the voter registration mechanism that suppresses the vote.

The Democratic party is not named after anything other than the concept of the general population participating in electing our leaders through voting. To have suppression of the vote as being an argument against the winner is ironic and disturbing.

Having watched the results on a web page that provided a county by county tally of the winners I was amazed that Bernie Sanders won 34 to 14 the number of counties in New York. That's a 2 to 1 margin and he was only defeated in the heavily populated areas of New York. There is no argument that he did not get the overall popular vote, but he was not humiliated and this state was clearly rigged with a voter registration system that closed before Mr. Sanders was even recognized as a candidate. Do the math and the momentum still exist for Bernie.

What would Hillary do; Should Hillary Clinton Quit if she loses New York?

The question of should Bernie Sanders quit the race if he doesn't win New York keeps coming up. My question is that the real issue is whether or not Hillary should quit the race if she doesn't win by double digits in New York. There is no argument for Hillary to continue in the primaries as she is not growing a movement and there is a clear argument for Bernie to continue as he is growing the democratic base and it will continue towards the summer and California primary.

I am not saying that Hillary still won't have a chance to sway the Super Delegates and squeeze out a win by destroying the movement that has followed Bernie Sanders, but her victory would be hollow, especially if she loses in New York. The reason Clinton is weak is not because of Sanders, but because of her political baggage and these issues will be exploited in November. Bernie cannot expect to win New York based on the polls, so he does not have anything to lose. If he does win or come within single digits, it will be devastating for Hillary. That is how the question should be phrased, What will Hillary do?

Pressure on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in New York - NY Times

An obvious question for New York is whether or not their restrictive voter registration requirements will affect voters that want to vote for Sanders but won't be able to because of the closed party system and early voter registration deadline. The restrictive rules in New York prohibit a late runner from getting new voters into the system. Therefore if Bernie Sanders loses, but comes close he has effectively won New York and should look forward to California.

Hillary Clinton ahead of Bernie Sanders by 100% in the polls of NY and more delegates too!!!

The media may as well write the obituary with the poll data coming out of New York for Bernie Sanders. The funny thing is that poll data like that will cause an opposite effect. Because of the overwhelming suggestions that Hillary will win New York her voters will be more apt to stay home instead of going to the polls. I think the energy of the Bernie supporters will prove the polls wrong, but the polls themselves will cause exaggerate the demise of Hillary Clinton in New York.

This is largely opinion, but as far as the Swindle goes, unless Bernie Sanders can capture the popular vote and continue the momentum he has created, then there is not enough of an argument for him to gain more Super Delegates than Hillary Clinton.

The big question is whether or not the constant barrage of data regarding the Super Delegates and polls damages the enthusiasm of the potential supporters of Bernie Sanders. People want to be a part of a movement, but not a movement that has not chance of success. I have confidence in the potential success of the Bernie magic, but it's takes believing in the magic to overcome the bias and projections of eminent defeat.

Articles on Scam Nominating process

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-nomination-odds-right-2016-4

Donald Trump is right — the Republican nominating process is a scam

If Donald Trump arrives at the Republican National Convention with less than a majority of delegates bound to him, his message will be simple: I got way more votes than anyone else, and party insiders are conspiring against me to give the nomination to somebody else.
This complaint will be true, it will be valid, and anti-Trump Republicans will dismiss it at their peril.
There has been a weird epidemic of short-sighted schadenfreude among Republican insiders over the last week, as they have watched Trump's campaign blunder through the intricacies of delegate selection.
It is true that Trump's campaign is doing badly at the small stuff, and it's costing him delegates.

Articles about the delegate process

Blurbs from articles. In order to expand my arguments about the delegate swindle I need to add some documentation from articles. I am going to use this blog as a notebook to copy and paste articles before they disappear from the internet. I'll make a note identifying these post and put up a link, but I won't have time to elaborate or discuss the articles in detail until later.

Can we (calmly) talk about this delegate selection process?

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/04/13/can-we-talk-about-this-delegate-selection-process/

The argument which has sprouted from this delegate curation process has been dismaying to observe, though not because of the first argument put forth by all of Trump’s attackers. The typical response to complaints from Trump supporters who claim that the nomination is being “stolen” is to say that these are the rules, and if Trump wanted to play the game he should have known them. Let’s set a baseline here by saying that I agree with that simple statement of fact. Ted Cruz is not “cheating” in any way shape or form. He’s playing to win and doing so within the constructs of system as it exists today.
But having said that, I have a favor to ask of all my friends currently doing (potentially premature) end zone dances on the grave of Trump’s nomination prospects. Even as we agree that the rules are what they are, can we at least set aside the specifics of this election cycle and your distaste for the Manhattan businessman and be honest enough to also agree that many of those rules suck?

The Cheese Stands Alone

"The Cheese Stands Alone". It's relevance here is not confirmed; I love the line and have been looking for a way to find significance with it. It's the end line of the nursery song Farmer and the Dell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_in_the_Dell

Each character in the rhyme takes something symbolically less powerful in stature than itself as the song progresses, "The farmer takes a wife", "The wife takes a child" "The cat takes a mouse" and so on. The references appear to make each separate character whole by taking something it needs or wants. The taking is a vague reference to owning and in the end the mouse takes the cheese, but then the rhyme ends with "The Cheese Stands Alone". I think of Donald Trump with his yellow hair standing and yelling some nonsense as "The Cheese", as a funny visual reference, but does this song fit into the Democracy Swindle that is currently going on.

As a child this rhyme was harmless and I don't even remember ever thinking of it's meaning. Now I interpret the "taking" as it relates to the primary states with each state individually being owned by some candidate after the primary as how the primary system works. Then each time a candidate in the election wins a primary he/she "takes" that state and owns it. They become whole and the goal of the primaries is to make the Republican and Democratic parties complete, then make the entire country complete through the general election, so that we can be one big happy farm. The "taking" part of the rhyme is relevant because the primary system is designed to somehow encourage the smaller states to be a part of the election process and by emphasizing each state or a few states at a time the broader electorate is able to gain information about the candidates and the other people who support him/her.

This may make me a supporter of the primary system and I may be, but the way the primaries are operated through the parties are not in the spirit of democracy. Specifically the insider control of the primary system is flawed due to the lack of participation by the broader public. If you leave your kid in a room full of candy, then most likely they will eat some of the candy. The Republican and Democratic Party are like kids in a candy store.

Where's the Vote?

In the primary system we may find ourselves asking does my vote matter? Because the primary system for the Republican and Democratic parties are managed on a state by state basis, with different voting dates, there is a natural progressiveness to the system. If a candidate wins an early state's election or caucus, then there is a presumption that the candidate will win the following state and every state thereafter. Some primary elections have been decided very early in this way as with Lyndon Johnson who dropped out after not doing well in the New Hampshire primary in 1968. As a result the media and political insiders consider the early going as being the biggest edge a Presidential candidate may have and as a result a disproportionate amount of emphasis is given to a few small states that are the early primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The progressive nature of the primary season inflates the value of small states that vote early and often deflate the value of larger states that may be later in the campaign. Rarely does California have any influence on the chosen candidate of either the Republican or Democratic party since it's primary is usually held towards the end of the primary political cycle. California has the largest number of delegates than any state, but it's like having a losing lottery ticket the day after the lottery, the residents of California don't even get to hope for a chance of having a winning ticket. It's just a procedure that they go through to finalize the outcome of the other states.

Each party struggles with the problems of holding primaries with different rules to elect delegates that will get to travel to the "Party" convention later in the summer in order to help choose the winner of their primary through a roll-call type of atmosphere that mocks voting and imitates a carnival. The real purpose of the primary is to get representative delegates for candidates and real people who can afford to travel and represent the chosen candidates at the coronation. There is not a lot of consistency between the states for how this process is accomplished, but some lip service is allowed in terms of  "voting" by the public as each state chooses their delegation in a controlled way.

Usually the public tires of the primary game once a presumptive nominee is apparent, but this year there have been challenges in the two dominant party's primaries that have forced the process into the open and what we have seen so far isn't pretty. In the Democratic Party delegates are distributed by Super Delegates, or individuals who have be chosen to be Super-Voters, thereby having the power of entire regions at the whim to allocate in a god-like way, as they wish, much like feudal lords issuing decrees. The Republican Party has other techniques for controlling the outcome of it's selected delegates, which I am not well-versed on, but in the case of Colorado all of the delegates were awarded to one candidate without an election of any sort, even though there are multiple candidates in the election.

If this is the underbelly of our Democracy then we must take a closer look at what Democracy is supposed to represent or achieve. The conundrum here is that votes do not exactly equal delegates but delegates equal success, therefore making voting in the primary has become an incidental symbolic public game for the masses while the Party elites select their nominee. These ordained nominees can then be official Presidential candidates to represent their Party in a direct popular election in the fall.

Are We Not Voters?

We are voters, but we may not get to vote. Today I was alerted of news from Colorado about a Republican burning his voter registration form from the Republican Party. One person, one vote, one party. What would bring a presumed loyalist to take such an extreme step except for the fact that this voter feels ripped off, or swindled by the democratic process. I haven't reviewed the details beyond hearsay but the symbolism is very specific and that is the precipice upon which we now stand. A detail orientated public is now aware of the chicanery that will help choose the next POTUS. Desperate times require specific action and burning a registration card is a drastic action, albeit not as inflammatory as burning a flag. The crux of our democracy is in the hands of two parties that have a heavy hand in controlling who represents their interest through the primary process and at this stage in the presidential primary process for 2016 it appears to be a shell game.


Full disclosure, I am not a Donald Trump supporter, but I support the essence of his campaign in that he is providing a challenge to the Republican Party by stirring the actual voters of the Republican Party to take action in the primary instead of letting the institutionalized representatives control the process through and through. The same can be said of Bernie Sanders, who I do support, but who is likely to hit the same headwinds that Donald Trump is dealing with, but in a different way. These two people are from completely opposite paradigms, nonetheless, are entangled in the same exact quandary of having popular support and not the establishment support from the party in which they are running in.

I have often thought that only 5-10% of the population may control our democracy and concluded early on this was accomplished through the primary process. However, I have never witnessed the direct effect of a challenge to the established political machines that reside in the Republican and Democratic parties.