Monthly Archives: May 2016

Media and the ‘Horse Race’

Politics

The greatest disaster to befall the Mass Media is the. Unexpected early end to the GOP’s primary.  This was a great show, a ‘Horse Race’ with over 17 starters and a great showman front runner and it ended much to soon.  Almost two months before the GOP convention the last two challengers to Donald Trump not only pulled up before the finish line, they have walked off the track.

What was the Mass Media to do?  Their great political ‘Horse Race’ was over before they were ready.  They had expected this race to go into California, and with any kind of luck, into the GOP convention.  It wasn’t even June yet and they had no show to sell.  They couldn’t attack Trump, or keep playing all his wonderful FooPaws till the start of the General election.  Not only would their audience get bored their corporate masters would not stand for it.  What to do?

Fortunatly for the great reality show that our elections have become had a ready built answer…..the Summer Replacement!  Enter the ‘great’ Sanders vs. Hillary fight.  Sure it’s down card and sure it doesn’t have the pazzas of main event in the GOP.  But it does have the GOP’s and Conservative Movement’s favorite villain “Hillary Clinton”.  If having a great villain will work for the WWW surely it will work for the Mass Media.  Right?

Well, I won’t say ‘wrong’ yet, but it is looking like and awful hard sell to me.  Sure Hillary’s numbers Vs. Trump are dropping.  But as anyone who follows just how our elections work would say….’Duh’.  When you have someone like Hillary running significantly ahead of newbie to politics like Trump and he gets his nomination sewed up this early the numbers of the front runner will go down just as we’ve seen.  As for the ‘revolution’ in the Democratic Party and a possible replay of the 1968 Chicago convention.  Good Luck!  Yes the supporters of Bernie are pushing hard and yes he has a chance of winning the California primary.  But as I said in an earlier blog, it is quite possible for Bernie to win the state and still get fewer delegates.  All quite honestly and by the rules.

What we have here is the Mass Media tiring to whip up a ‘Horse Race’ in sake of a story.  Since the story of winning delegates is ‘boring!’ They need to create a ‘fight of the century’ between Bernie and Hillary when none really exits.  So pleas don’t read too much into what the Mass Media is putting out, they are tiring to sell air time, not report the facts.

The problem of winning

General

One of the more interesting, if esoteric, issues coming to the fore in the continuing Democratic Primary is just what ‘Winning’ the primary means.  Since the start of May, most, if not all, of the primaries for the Democrats have been Non-Open and proportional in one manner or another.

Since I know the California Primary the best, I live in California, I’ll use it.  To be able to vote in the in the Democratic Party State Primary you need to be registered to vote by 23 May 2016 and you have to register as a Democrat or state ‘No Party Preferance’.  You can’t as some people seem to think register in the American Independant Party.

The next thing is that California is a Congresional Proportional allocation of delegates.  This means that the delegates are allotted by Congresional Congresional district.  With the added fun that who ever win’s the over all state vote gets delegates allotted for the two Senators, (I be leave the number of delegates allowed is the same as for Congresaional district time two).

This means that it is possible for Canidate ‘B’ to win the over all state vote, say 50% + 1, but Canidate ‘H’ to win the lions share of state delegates by wining more Congresional districts.  Most of the Non closed primaries in the last few months have been one for or another non-winner take all primaries.  This is how Berinie has ‘Won’ so many state primaries recently but often as not, not by very much or the way the delegates are allotted are more locally focused so that Hillary either did not loose much ground or the states were small.

California has 548 of the 1052 delegates to allot.  Hillary has 1716 non supper delegates so fare and Bernie has 1433.  To get the nomination either needs 2383 delegates.  This means Hillary need 667 and Bernie needs 950 of the non supper debates to win.  So just winning a state is not enough to win the nomination, Bernie need to Win in overwhelming numbers, on the order of 3 to 2 to take the lead.