Iowa Dems Late

For John, BLUF:  This just adds to the view of Democratic Party incompetence.  Bring Back Ms Donna Brazille.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Iowa Might Have Screwed Up The Whole Nomination Process

Here is the underlying issue:

It is 11:00 AM (Iowa time) the next day and the Iowa Democratic Party has yet to report the results of yesterday's Presidential Caucuses.

From The Five Thity Eight Blog, by Statistician Nate Silver, 4 February 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

In trying to build a forecast model of the Democratic primaries, we literally had to think about the entire process from start (Iowa) to finish (the Virgin Islands on June 6).  Actually, we had to do more than that.  Since the nomination process is sequential — states vote one at a time rather than all at once — we had to determine, empirically, how much the results of one state can affect the rest.

The answer in the case of Iowa is that it matters a lot.  Despite its demographic non-representativeness, and the quirks of the caucuses process, the amount of media coverage the state gets makes it far more valuable a prize than you’d assume from the fact that it only accounts for 41 of the Democrats’ 3,979 pledged delegates.

More specifically, we estimate — based on testing how much the results in various states have historically changed the candidates’ position in national polls — that Iowa was the second most-important date on the calendar this year, trailing only Super Tuesday.  It was worth the equivalent of almost 800 delegates, about 20 times its actual number.

Yes, this looks bad.

Yes, this will raise concerns about the integrity and accuracy of the eventual results.

Yes, this will help Candidate Trump.

Regards  —  Cliff

Hillary in 2020

For John, BLUF:  I know our Democrat neighbor here in Lowell are enamored of Senator E Warren, but I don't think she goes the distance, nor does former Vice President Joe Biden.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Is Hillary running?!

From The Althouse Blog, by Professor Ann Althouse, 24 September 2019.

Professor Althouse talks about an article in The Washington Examiner, "New Hillary listening tour:  ‘I’d like to hear what you're thinking'".  And, she talks about a question, her Son John asked on Facebook.

Here is the key paragraph:

I certainly think Donald Trump is by far the most likely to win the election.  That's easy to say because his party is pretty much adapted to him.  That fight is over.  What Trump did to the GOP has played out and (mostly) resolved.  The Democratic Party is currently going through some kind of crack-up or evolution.  It's fractured and chaotic, and there are — what? — 20 candidates and not one of them is much good.  None seems equipped to go head-to-head with Trump.

Here is the penultimate paragraph, with the question Democrats should be asking themselves.

News from the future:  The Democrats beat Donald Trump in the 2020 election.  It was nothing in particular that he did.  He stayed the same.  And nothing changed in the economy or foreign affairs or domestic violence or anything like that.  It's all about the performance of the Democratic candidate.  Now:  Who was Democratic candidate?

The nomination of Mrs Clinton is not a totally unlikely outcome.  While I may not be quite as harsh as the Professor, each of them is flawed in some way, some more than others.  The best of the lot is Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat from the Great State of Hawaii.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

To be inclusive, my wife thinks the Democratic Convention will deadlock and the compromise candidate will be Ms Donna Brazile, who rescued the DNC in 2016, when it was imploding under the leadership of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Regards  —  Cliff