Actually, I've ignored the superdelegates in my math because I've basically assumed that they will go with whoever has the popular vote at the convention, but since you brought them up....

There's one scenario no-one has considered yet; probably because it's extremely unlikely, but just for fun, let's say Bernie continues as projected and arrives at the convention trailing Hillary by about 200 delegates. Meanwhile, Trump has been attacking the ever-loving hell out of Hillary and her poll numbers in the general election are starting to look REALLY bad, as in Trump might/could/probably will/almost certainly will win.

So far, this is all pretty much what's going to happen.

But in this strange alternate dimension, the DNC pulls its head out of its collective arse and realises "holy shit, we could lose the white house! Hang on, Bernie polls much better against Trump!". Unable to convince Hillary to drop out, the superdelegates swing en masse to Bernie handing him the nomination AGAINST the popular vote.

How do you feel about this? On one hand, yay, #FeelTheBern, #FuckYouTrump and on to the white house and potentially the most significant change in US politics in decades (or not, who knows how much one president can actually do).

On the other hand.... there's no way around the fact that the DNC will have subverted the will of the people. If the situation was reversed, and the superdelegates gave the nomination to Hillary where Bernie (hypothetically) had more pledged delegates, well, there would be riots.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this scenario (unlikely as it is).

BTW, the fact that your vote is essentially meaningless (luckily for you, it happens to be meaningless in your favour) in your state is yet another symptom of just how very fucked the electoral college is.

It's interesting that Trump made it past the "post" first, so he's presumptive, and everyone else quit, yet Bernie can campaign right up to the convention because the Superdelegates may change their minds... almost seems like cheating. Not sure who's cheating mind you, but doesn't seem purely democratic (small D).

Looks more like a leftest wet dream.


The real show will be the Democratic Convention. The Clinton's have a scorch earth policy towards the Bernsters and it will be payback time at the convention.

But V.P. for whom? At this point, Clinton has said more disparaging, disrespectful, dismissive things about him than Trump has. In fact, Trump has actually said a few nice things about Bernie (and called him Crazy Bernie). That said...a Trump Sanders ticket might just kill a Trump candidacy, so I could support that...it won't happen though.

What I really hope for at this point is that he'll run as an independent after he gets hosed at the convention, and with Warren as his V.P. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels to me that she has such credibility with all but staunch Republicans that they might have a chance of winning....and then we would have at least one branch of government not under either party's thumb. I get that it's a pipe dream, but a newt can dream, can't he? It does seem like both parties are doing their best to push the nation into electing a third party into power....or better, no party.

I have to strongly disagree with the suggestion that animals are killed and tortured for my "taste preferences" and "pleasure".

It gives me no pleasure that an animal has to die for me to eat. My pleasure in the consumption of that animal is a fleeting, automatic chemical reaction triggered in my body. In an evolutionary sense, i only receive this pleasure because it prolongs the survival of my species to feel it.

Most of these arguments reek of over simplification and ignorance to the reality of the society westerners live in.

In ideal conditions, i would eat meat from animals that i tended, who died of natural causes (mostly old age i assume) which i would personally butcher. In reality, it is not possible and even if it were possible for one person, it would not be possible for every person - we have limited space, limited resources, limits placed by law, limits on our time. As well as the cost of the land, I would have to hope enough animals died naturally to sell enough humane meat to pay taxes on the land and maintain my farming equipment, buy grain for the animals and so on. Or maybe i could grow my own grain and use primitive DIY tools, but then i'd probably need help for all the farming i'd have to do every day and now i'd need enough animals to die to feed three, so more land, more grain... Oops, it looks like this is getting complicated doesn't it. Shall we keep going until we reach a society of 70 odd million people, or should we consider that the problem is far more complicated than comments here would care to acknowledge?

Furthermore gluten is often the primary protein source for vegans, but i have a disease that requires me to avoid that protein in entirety. The smug, holier-than-thou field radiating from certain commenters here will i'm sure extend far enough to condescendingly say "ah, but you can be a vegan and avoid gluten, you poor, uneducated, smiling murderer!" Yes, and you could live your life without ever being touched by the sun's rays, or sail a small sailboat without ever getting wet, not even a droplet. And how can we know what effect gluten-free-veganism may have on public health when it is extended to a population of 7 billion? What a dangerous experiment to salivate over - reckless and potentially harmful in a way that a butcher could never hope to be.

It would be wonderful if the world was ideal. I wouldn't have this disease, and all people of the world could enjoy their own 10 acre farm and eat only those animals whose time had come. Unfortunately when i am abroad, away from home, the only source of protein that i can entirely trust might perhaps be a roast chicken. And i will eat it, the only true pleasure from which i take is that i will not spend the next three days doubled up in bed.

There are people worse off than me, but i don't know enough about their situation to use it as a point in this discussion. To people like me, the language used by some people here makes me think of someone dancing around at a diabetics convention shouting "I can't believe you losers have to use insulin! I hope you all realise that drug addicts use needles!"

I reject any notion that these people have a moral advantage over me. Have any of them ever heard of walking a mile in another man's shoes, or does their narrow mind only reach as far as "ME"?

By the way, plants are also alive. Or is this about sentient life? Shall we move on to abortion then, if non-sentient life is ok to end? Shall we have the philosophical discussion about degrees of sentience and types of sentience and whether we can even know if a plant has its own brand of sentience? If yes, let's try to at least do it without you being smug and in return without me being sarcastic.

Worrying about how people treat vegans? How about the language used to describe people who have no choice in the matter, lest that choice be never leave your own house and eat only this very small list of things which you may or may not find too disgusting to stomach? Am i to live in misery and squander my life so that a chicken could have an extra 2 years to run in circles? This issue is not fucking black and white despite the attempts to paint it so.

Your video, DNC Nevada convention election fraud., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Tangentially, in Nevada, Sanders was set to scoop a majority of the remaining 12 delegates today through better mobilization of his delegates (even though Clinton took the state, he managed to get more state delegates to the state convention).

When the state chair saw that Sanders was going to scoop more of the leftover delegates, they changed the rules at the last minute to give 7 of the 12 to Hillary.

More on the Nevada debacle http://heavy.com/news/2016/05/nevada-democratic-convention-what-happened-roberta-lange-delegates-election-fraud-videos-recount-denied/

At about 9:54, the dude on the right asks:
"But why are you assuming that we would find out about it [something / anything shady] then [just before the general election]?"

Because that is when it would cause the most damage, duh. It is well possible that some parties on the right already have something, considering that Guccifer probably DID hack into her server. If any such people DO have anything (or if they get anything new), they are well motivated to hold their cards until revealing them would have the most impact -- ie., AFTER she's locked up the nomination, but just BEFORE the general election.

Cenk and other democrats are 100% right to be absolutely terrified by this. I don't know that I think it is *likely*, but the democrat establishment just glossing over it seems bizarre and shortsighted.

Also, I seriously doubt that Biden would ever attempt to pick up Clinton's hypothetical fumble and run away after the DNC. I figure the GOP bigwigs that are suggesting it just want to make it look like the democrat side is in just as much disarray as the republican side.

But if either party actually does any "contested convention" shenanigans, all they will accomplish is to bring up serious and legitimate questions about their legitimacy within their core base of supporters. This election is proving that large segments of BOTH parties are NOT going to be blindly loyal to their party line and the status quo. In that environment, pushing their luck by inserting some handpicked golden child as their candidate would be suicidally stupid for either party.

I'd love to see him announce Warren as VP immediately. Hell, Cruz jumped the gun on the VP call, so apparently that's no longer something that we need to wait on until after the convention.

While it wouldn't necessarily be the best possible scenario, I can't help but fantasize about a post-convention outcome of Clinton vs someone other than Trump (due to a contested republican convention), and then having both Trump and Sanders run as independents. It would keep a single third-party candidate from "spoiling" either side, and could really knock both parties down a peg.

That was good, and pretty funny.

I think a bunch of the GOP elites want him to run, but he's smart enough to stay out of it. Whoever gets installed in the event of a contested convention is going to be damaged goods.

I think that the GOP is in full-on panic mode, and doesn't care about legitimacy / shot at winning for this election.

They (the party elites) will do absolutely everything they can to prevent Trump from getting enough delegates to lock up the nomination. Hence Colorado and Wyoming. Those actions make it seem like they prefer Cruz, but actually they dislike him close to as much as they hate Trump.

Although it is still mathematically possible for Cruz (559 delegates) to get enough delegates to lock up the nomination (1237 needed), realistically it is out of reach (826 still available). Trump (756 delegates), on the other hand, could well manage it. So, the GOP strategy is to avoid that at all costs by encouraging people to vote for Cruz or Kasich in primaries, or even better to encourage more state GOP offices to hold a smoke-filled room convention that grants all the delegates to #NeverTrump instead of even bothering to let people vote.

If they manage that, the contested national convention will get ugly. They (GOP elites) would turn on Cruz instantly -- cast aside. In any other election cycle they would have turned on him already, but with juggernaut Trump, they have to use him to get to the contested convention.

So the question becomes who if not Trump or Cruz? Who will the GOP try to push in? I think that right now, they aren't as worried about answering that question as they are about trying to get there. That being said, they have some options:

Mitt Romney was their first thought. He took some tentative steps towards playing along with the GOP plans, failed to generate any excitement, and has since faded back into relative obscurity. But he remains an option.

Next up was Paul Ryan. A lot of the GOP see him as the future of the party; the "great white hope". There was a flurry of activity making it seem like he was going to take up the flag, but has since denied that he would be interested in or even accept getting the nod. However, he was cagey and close to as vocal against getting the nod to be speaker of the house, and then accepted that. You never know.

Kasich would be another option. He's relatively benign, and wouldn't offend many more of the republican base than the GOP is already ready and willing to offend in order to prevent Trump (and to a lesser extent Cruz).


Of those, I tend to think that Romney is the most likely choice for the GOP in the end. I think it would be extremely stupid to foist "future of the party" Ryan into this election, which would certainly taint his political future. Kasich makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, "in for a penny, in for a pound" -- as long as the GOP is willing to go to these great lengths to keep Trump out they might as well just own the illegitimacy of it, shoot the moon, and hand pick someone that a) they have complete control over, and b) has nothing to lose in terms of political future. Voila, Mitt Romney.


I also don't think that the GOP will just throw in the towel if Trump locks down the number of delegates needed for the nomination. I'm sure they already have some last-ditch, scorched earth preliminary plans in place for that contingency.

However, I think that they essentially already have thrown in the towel with regards to the election in general. At least to a sufficient degree that they don't give a rats ass about the chances for whoever is the republican nominee winning. That's a *distant* priority behind NOT TRUMP, among other things. Which is pretty stupid, because the likely nomination of Hillary on the democrat side gives them what should be a *golden* opportunity to steal the election. IF they could come up with a vaguely tolerable candidate ... which they won't.

I think Cenk is getting a little bit overexcited at around the 5:30 mark, when he thinks that these polls show that America is center-left, as opposed to the long-standing belief of Fox News that America is center-right.

What I think they show is that America is much more radically anti-"sleazy politician" than ever before.

Trump has the biggest portion of the republican side of things, because he is clearly NOT a normal politician, and however you feel about him you must admit that he is not an "establishment" kind of figure. Sleazy? Sure. But not "sleazy politician". Cruz doesn't appeal to the republicans that like Trump, because he is closer to being a "sleazy politician".

On the Democrat side of things, it is a similar picture if you just go by opinion polls rather than delegate count. Hillary is another "sleazy politician". Even among Democrat-leaning respondents, a high percentage of people polled prefer straight-shooter NOT establishment-friendly Sanders to Hillary, precisely because of that. Democrats are tired of sleazy politicians too.

To be fair, the Democrat side is less divided, because a lot (possibly most) of the real pro-Sanders people will hold their nose and vote for Hillary over any of the opposition, if she is the nominee, even though they would (greatly) prefer Sanders.

Trump supporters will *never* vote for Cruz, especially now that Colorado and Wyoming just gave all their delegates to Cruz without even bothering to allow their residents to vote. Cruz doesn't actually *have* any supporters -- the GOP is only trying to persuade Republicans to vote for him so they can deny Trump the delegates needed to lock up the nomination and go to a contested convention -- at which point the GOP will have no further need for Cruz and ditch him like a used condom. The few registered Republicans that want Kasich are very likely to NOT vote for Trump if he is the nominee, and will likely be similarly displeased with whichever asshole the GOP tries to shoehorn in in the event of a contested convention.

So yeah, the Republican side of things is a real clusterfuck. But the likely nomination of Hillary for the Democrats seems like a very big mistake to me, mitigated only slightly by the dog and pony show that is their opposition in the GOP.

I do tend to believe Sanders has been boosted by a lack of negative attacks with Hilary believed to be the presumed nominee due to her influence over super delegates regardless of how the remaining states vote (and Hilary's lead overall).

If the Democratic primary were still in serious dispute I think you would see a lot more socialist labels from the right to try to discredit him which would dent his approval with independents and swing voters.

Polling this late in the primary might usually be pretty reliable but this year is exceptional because (1) most primaries are settled, nominees 'crowned' and challengers stepping to the wayside much earlier before the convention, (2) usually candidates who make it this far are much more 'establishment' material which makes them all a much more known quantity.

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