The Bern Identity

The best explanation and historical context for SuperDelegates. In short, it is not what the American people want, but what the __ESTABLISHMENT__ Democratic Party wants. Insanity.

A wrinkle in the nomination process

"Bernie Sanders supporters are an excitable group of people, and nothing raised their hackles more than the news that despite his landslide victory in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton will likely go to the Democratic Convention with more New Hampshirite delegates than the Vermont Senator.

That’s because of a wrinkle in the Democratic nomination process called “superdelegates.” There are 712 superdelegates, about 30% of the 2,382 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. They are made up of every Democratic congressperson, sitting governor, and the President and Vice President. They also include members of the Democratic National Committee, like elected Democratic mayors and county executives, and other party officials. And they are allowed to back any candidate they want, regardless of the election results in their state.

Why does the Democratic nomination process work this way? Who better to describe the reasons than the late Geraldine Ferraro, former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee and co-architect of the superdelegate system. As she wrote back in 2008, the party invented the superdelegate following the 1980 election, after a bitter primary fight divided the party and helped contribute to Ronald Reagan’s victory. Superdelegates were created in order to give a bigger voice to the establishment who could better “figure out a way to unify our party.” She continued:..."

http://fortune.com/2016/02/19/what-is-a-superdelegate/
 
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nitro said:
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Thank you nitro for posting this critically important interview with Chomsky. As a real Libertarian, perhaps the only one here -- hardly anyone knows what that is nowadays, as the label has been so hideously distorted-- I was delighted to hear him point out that those calling themselves "libertarian" today have no relation to traditional Libertarianism. A point I have enjoyed making many times. This occurs about 12:00 in the video.

Chomsky mentions the radical nature of American right wing politics. But he does not address the whys. E.O. Wilson, in "The Social Conquest of Earth," has offered an explanation for the worst features of radical thinking on the right. But how has roughly 50% of the voting, U.S. public been able to escape the worst of their primal instincts and shown up at the polls as independents, and Democrats? And where do moderate Republicans go, assuming some remain. To the Democrats I guess.

And there is a second layer. On top of of everything is the anti-establishment movement.
 
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piezoe said:
Thank you nitro for posting this critically important interview with Chomsky. As a real Libertarian, perhaps the only one here -- hardly anyone knows what that is nowadays, as the label has been so hideously distorted-- I was delighted to hear him point out that those calling themselves "libertarian" today have no relation to traditional Libertarianism. A point I have enjoyed making many times. This occurs about 12:00 in the video.

Chomsky mentions the radical nature of American right wing politics. But he does not address the whys. E.O. Wilson, in "The Social Conquest of Earth," has offered an explanation for the worst features of radical thinking on the right. But how has roughly 50% of the voting, U.S. public been able to escape the worst of their primal instincts and shown up at the polls as independents, and Democrats? And where do moderate Republicans go, assuming some remain. To the Democrats I guess.

And there is a second layer. On top of of everything is the anti-establishment movement.
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You are welcome. Noam is one of the very few people, intellectual or otherwise, that sees behind the powers-that-be endless obfuscation and enlightens by putting historical rational perspective on world events.
 
Its one thing to banter on a message board like this.
But when you are being held out as an intellectual you are supposed to have worthwhile insight...
You know you are not dealing with real intellect when within 2 minutes he starts with political NUspeak...

Nativists who are worried america is being taken away form them
People who are so scared they have to bring a gun into a coffee shop.

This is red meat for lefties who want to perceive themselves as smart.
Its not useful thought or persuasive argumentation. Its an obama stump speech.









nitro said:
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Democratic Party superdelegates are undemocratic

"(CNN)You might think, from their title, that superdelegates are better than regular delegates.

Actually, they're worse.

The process for presidential elections in the United States is governed by the Constitution. Primary elections, however, are not. They are controlled by the political parties themselves. In fact, until the 1820s, members of Congress chose the presidential nominee for each party. That elitist system started to buckle with the advent of national conventions, though delegates were still selected through state and local convention processes controlled by the parties.

It wasn't until the mid-1900s that parties embraced primary elections as part of the process for deciding on presidential candidates. But to ensure that the voters themselves didn't have all the power, in 1982 the Democratic Party adopted what are called superdelegates, who today control 15% of the final nomination process.

The Republican Party has superdelegates, too, but they have a lot less power. GOP superdelegates are only about 7% of the nominating vote, and according to Republican convention rules, superdelegates must vote in accordance with their state primary outcomes.

It's in the Democratic Party that the outsized power and lack of accountability of superdelegates is supremely, well, undemocratic.

Specifically, after the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, CNN estimated that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were almost tied for pledged delegates, with 52 and 51 of them, respectively. And yet Clinton was leading by a much wider margin in the total delegate count because a whopping 445 superdelegates -- out of a total of 712 -- pledged to support her. By comparison, just 18 superdelegates pledged to support Sanders..."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/opinions/superdelegates-democratic-party-kohn/index.html
 
More billionaires trying to buy elections.

"A key player in the Koch brothers' inner political circle will work directly on Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, bringing deep connections to the brothers' vast network of donors and experience helping oversee their sophisticated political operation.

Republican power brokers Charles and David Koch haven't endorsed a GOP primary candidate, but Marc Short's decision to move to the Rubio camp, first reported by Politico, comes as the party’s top figures grow increasingly alarmed by Donald Trump’s rise and looks for ways to stop his momentum.

Short has been highly respected for running Freedom Partners, the Kochs' political organization, for the past five years.

"Marc leaves behind a strong leadership team at Freedom Partners and working with them, we will continue to work to further our goal of a free and prosperous society for all Americans," Mark Holden, Freedom Partners' chairman of the board, said in a statement Tuesday. "We look forward to continuing our work with our partners to further these goals in 2016 and beyond."..."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...n-marco-rubios-campaign/ar-BBpSaup?li=BBnb7Kz
 
Below is an open letter to Bernie from former economic advisors to Clinton and Obama . To paraphrase, Sanders is a complete moron and so is his economic advisor. Apparently, they are so fucking stupid that they are incapable of even doing simple math. The math is so fucking bad and grandiose economic claims so false that it is putting the entire reputation of the Democratic party on the line.

Bold and underline mine below.


https://lettertosanders.wordpress.c...ofessor-gerald-friedman-from-past-cea-chairs/

An Open Letter from Past CEA Chairs to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman
Posted on February 17, 2016 by lettertosanders


Dear Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman,

We are former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. For many years, we have worked to make the Democratic Party the party of evidence-based economic policy. When Republicans have proposed large tax cuts for the wealthy and asserted that those tax cuts would pay for themselves, for example, we have shown that the economic facts do not support these fantastical claims. We have applied the same rigor to proposals by Democrats, and worked to ensure that forecasts of the effects of proposed economic policies, from investment in infrastructure, to education and training, to health care reforms, are grounded in economic evidence. Largely as a result of efforts like these, the Democratic party has rightfully earned a reputation for responsibly estimating the effects of economic policies.

We are concerned to see the Sanders campaign citing extreme claims by Gerald Friedman about the effect of Senator Sanders’s economic plan—claims that cannot be supported by the economic evidence. Friedman asserts that your plan will have huge beneficial impacts on growth rates, income and employment that exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans about the impact of their tax cut proposals.

As much as we wish it were so, no credible economic research supports economic impacts of these magnitudes. Making such promises runs against our party’s best traditions of evidence-based policy making and undermines our reputation as the party of responsible arithmetic. These claims undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda and make it that much more difficult to challenge the unrealistic claims made by Republican candidates.

Sincerely,

Alan Krueger, Princeton University

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2011-2013

Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago Booth School

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2010-2011

Christina Romer, University of California at Berkeley

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2009-2010

Laura D’Andrea Tyson, University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 1993-1995
 
Dark Money

"Politically active nonprofits – principally 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s – have become a major force in federal elections over the last three cycles. The term "dark money" is often applied to this category of political spender because these groups do not have to disclose the sources of their funding – though a minority do disclose some or all of their donors, by choice or in response to specific circumstances.

These organizations can receive unlimited corporate, individual, or union contributions that they do not have to make public, and though their political activity is supposed to be limited, the IRS – which has jurisdiction over these groups – by and large has done littleto enforce those limits. Partly as a result, spending by organizations that do not disclose their donors has increased from less than $5.2 million in 2006 to well over $300 million in the 2012 presidential cycle and more than $174 million in the 2014 midterms....

https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/nonprof_summ.php
 
"...Who will Sanders appoint as Treasury secretary or SEC chairman when he is president in order to implement his heralded political revolution? Maybe he will pull an Obama and appoint the usual Democratic Party suspects. Perhaps, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt with his New Deal brains trust, Sanders will elevate a cadre of relatively unknown academics and lawyers to implement big reforms. But FDR’s advisers were already part of a progressive movement that urged the government to use science and economics to better the lives of its citizens. If Sanders has a brains trust, we haven’t met them yet..."

http://qz.com/610963/bernie-sanders-refusal-to-reveal-his-economic-advisers-is-an-ominous-sign/
 
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