2016 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 2

Why The Douchiness, Hillary?

June 7, 2016 by Bitchy

It’s like the Clinton’s can’t stop themselves from being gratuitously douchey.

Seriously, setting up an email server next to the coffee maker in the kitchen. Why? How did you think this was going to turn out for you?

Bill showing up at several polling locations on primary days. Why? Were the few votes you may have ginned up worth making yourself even less trustworthy than you already are?

And now she’s declared victory on the night before the most delegate rich state in the country votes? Why? What’s the fucking point? What does she have to gain by telling California and New Jersey that it’s over and that they don’t get a say in the results. Sorry, thanks for playing! She could have waited twenty-four hours, secured enough pledged delegates and votes to ensure beyond the shadow of a doubt that Bernie didn’t get enough votes or pledged delegates to overtake her, and then announced that she was the near certain presumptive nominee.

She could have proudly pointed out that all the votes were cast, and that if the super delegates voted perfectly in line with either the direct votes or the results in their respective states, she won.

But no, instead she’s acting like (and the media is helping her) she secured enough pledged delegates to win. She hasn’t, and she technically won’t until July 25th.

Twenty-four (okay, maybe closer to twenty-eight) hours is the difference between douchebag and winner.

She’s going to win. That’s a foregone conclusion. So why not fucking wait until all the votes are cast. What has she gained by shitting on Bernie voters in California and New Jersey?

Nothing. Not a damned thing, other than to validate the opinions of people who think she’s shady and not to be trusted.

I don’t know why the Clintons keep doing ridiculous things that offer very little benefit for them, but I do know that anyone who makes the argument that their untrustworthy numbers are entirely a product of republican attacks are slightly more ridiculous than the people they’ve chosen to make themselves stupid to defend.

Stop it Hillary. Just fucking stop it. You still need to win the general election, and banking on the fact that your opponent is a bigger douchebag than you are isn’t what I would call a winning strategy.

Don’t Do It Bernie

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016 by Bitchy

This post probably won’t make my fellow Bernie supporters happy but please hear me out and know that when I say that politics isn’t emotional for me, I’m being earnest.

Bernie might win California tomorrow (that’s a big maybe). He will definitely lose New Jersey. He most definitely will not overtake Hillary in the pledged delegate count. He would have to win two-thirds of all the votes in both New Jersey and California in order to do that. It’s going to be over for him tomorrow. It is my sincere wish that Bernie gracefully exits the race next Tuesday, after the last primary ballot is cast in DC.

I know what my fellow Bernie supporters are thinking right now: It was rigged so he should take the fight to the convention! Yes it was rigged, but not nearly as much as you think. Here’s a little reality check:

Of the nineteen open primaries, Hillary won eleven to Bernie’s eight. Of the twenty-three closed primaries, Hillary has won fourteen to Bernie’s nine. The percentages were roughly the same, although Hillary did a little better in the closed primaries.
Hillary keeps claiming that she’s gotten three million more votes than Bernie. Shaun King made a case that this number is a lie. He’s right. It’s not an accurate number, but it’s not nearly as inaccurate as he claims. If you take the percentage of votes cast in the caucuses for each candidate, and extrapolate those numbers out to the number of voters each caucus goer represents, Bernie doesn’t even pick up three quarters of a million votes because Hillary would also get more votes by doing that.
The voter suppression was real, and the long lines we saw over and over again for the first time in a democratic primary were no accident. We have a systemic voting problem in America, and both parties are guilty of creating the problem. But to assume that every single voter who was turned away, was going to vote for Bernie is absurd. The correct assumption is that the voters who were turned away would have voted in roughly the same proportion as the votes that were cast. You would have to practice some utterly baseless kind of magical thinking to assume that Bernie would have won if all the votes were counted (and cast). Hillary’s lead was just too insurmountable for that to be possible.

I will say this though; Hillary supporters who were fine with what happened in this election with polling locations closing or mysteriously moving without notifying anyone, voter rolls being scrubbed, and the rest of the fuckery that went on here should be ashamed of themselves. I’m ashamed of you. I now know that you were full of shit in 2000 and 2004 when you were screaming, “Voter suppression!” We should all be incredibly offended when any American’s vote is taken away from them. But not you guys. No, you’re the sorriest group of so called liberals I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.

But I digress. My point is that Bernie didn’t win, and no amount of Cirque Du Soleil like acrobatics you try and do on the data will ever change that simple fact.

So back to my point. I emphatically believe that Bernie should not push for a contested convention. He simply has no basis with which to make his case. He didn’t win the popular vote, nor did he didn’t win more pledged delegates. While it’s true that every single poll shows that he’s the strongest candidate to defeat Trump in November, he can’t make that case without being a massive hypocrite. That argument basically tells super delegates that the voters made a mistake, so they should subvert the will of the voters and select him for the sake of the party. Selecting the nominee is not what super delegates should do, and Bernie has been saying that all along. To turn around now and ask them to select him would make him look like just another craven politician who will do anything to get elected and that will disillusion a lot of his voters.

Bernie did something extraordinary here. He inflamed and mobilized liberals who have figured out that the democratic party doesn’t represent us. He shed a bright light on the corporate corruption of our government, and managed to break through the republican framing of the issues that we’ve accepted for thirty years. For thirty excruciating years, we’ve been talking about low taxes, big gubment, and defense, defense, defense! Remember when Bill Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over!”? Well that was the last nail in the liberal coffin, and Bernie is the first politician in thirty years to pull the fucking lid off that coffin. He ran on a platform of raising your taxes in order to provide you with more cost effective health coverage. Could anyone have imagined that running on a platform of raising taxes would garner 46% of the vote in any election in America?

I would hate to see this movement damaged by Bernie angling for a convention fight that will ultimately get him nowhere. He’s not going to be the nominee, and the super delegates aren’t going to select him. He literally has nothing to gain by angling for a contested convention, and Hillary is just going to pummel him and the media with the data I shared with you above. Pushing for a convention fight is a move that includes no gain, and nothing but pain. It would be a terrible idea.

I believe that the best path forward for this movement is for Bernie to leave the race and endorse Hillary on June 14th. He should spend the next five months campaigning for real progressives running for congressional seats all across the country. We should all be focused in giving Hillary a significantly bigger progressive caucus to have to deal with than the one we have now.

Yes, I’m going to advocate for supporting Hillary but I’m not going to share my reasons just yet. Emotions are running too high, but trust that I have reasons that aren’t what you think they are.

This movement didn’t start with Bernie, and it isn’t dependent on Bernie becoming president. The numbers clearly show that we don’t have enough people with us to take the white house yet. But there are certainly enough of us to make a difference in state and congressional races. That’s where our focus should be.

Time is on our side. Hillary’s base is the fifty-five and older demographic. This has never been a particularly liberal demographic. I recently saw a tweet that said, “Hillary is pulling her voters to the right”. Bullshit. Hillary’s voters were once proud Reagan democrats. They were always right of center. That’s who the baby boomers are. But Gen X is clearly to the left of them, and the millennials are even further left of Gen X. We know which direction the electorate is headed. We just need to be smart about plotting a course forward right now.

I strongly believe that our path lies in down ticket candidates. If we can find more progressives to run, and to support, we can take over the democratic party. But damaging this movement with a convention fight is not going to help to advance the cause in the short term.

I hope Bernie is going to be smart about this. He was smart enough to run as a democrat, rather than an independent. He was smart enough to take 46% of the vote away from Hillary, despite all the money she had collected before last summer was even over. I sincerely hope that he’s going to do the smart thing next week.

An Open Letter To David Brock

April 26, 2016 by Bitchy

You’re a media hitman. It’s what you’re good at, so it’s what you’ve dedicated your life to doing. You started off your miserable career by going after Anita Hill and then Bill Clinton by propagating lies and innuendo about them that you knew were lies. And you did it well.

And then you did a mea culpa in your book, “Blinded By The Right”. Good for you! Except that you didn’t change your tactics, you merely switched sides. So now you’re doing what you do on behalf your former target’s wife. This propaganda machine you’ve built for Hillary is impressive. Buying left wing blogs to help push out your lies about Bernie has been very effective. I’m seeing those bullshit links posted all over the place because even now that we all have access to the internet, you know that people don’t bother to fact check anything they just like the sound of. They just share, share, share with no regard for facts.

So bravo for your despicable smear work with Blue Nation Review. You’ve still got as good a game as you had when you were trashing Anita Hill and Bill Clinton.

And now you’ve upped your game by unleashing a battalion of paid trolls to attack Bernie and his supporters. I guess that you weren’t getting enough volunteers who were interested in supporting Hillary to do that, so enter the professionals to shut down Bernie supporters. Yesterday, you orchestrated and coordinated an attack in which your trolls-for-cash descended on at least seven Facebook pages who support Bernie Sanders.

Classy. Nothing says, “I’m supporting the best candidate and I know it” like shutting down anyone who doesn’t agree.

I would like to tell you that you’re making a horrible mistake. See, the people who support Bernie are largely in that self identified “independent” category that have been fleeing both parties in droves over the past decade. These are people who probably aren’t inclined to vote in every election and they’re certainly not inclined to vote along party lines, since they chose to send the parties a message by ending their affiliation with them.

Your mistake lies in not thinking ahead to a short ninety days from now, when you’re going to be begging those people to show up for Hillary in November. Remember, your fabulous candidate isn’t the strongest democrat against any republican who might get the nomination. Bernie is. So you’re desperately going to need to bring his supporters on board with Team Hillary.

Do you really think that your sleazy anti-democratic tactic of shutting down other people’s voices is the way to get the job done? Do you really think that the nearly half a million people whose access to the content they want to see was denied by you are going to forget what you did? Do you really think that this will get them enthused about Hillary, ever?

I’m going to do my best to be the voice of reason in November, by persuading my readers to do what needs to be done, but how effective do you think that I and other Bernie supporters like me are actually going to be?

You’re playing a dangerous and sleazy game here, Mr Brock. Unfortunately, there’s some chance that the whole country is going to pay for your oiliness. You need to retire for the sake of the country. No really, you do. You’ve literally never done anything good to elevate the political discourse in this country.

I would just like to say one thing to Hillary: shame on you. This man smeared your husband eighteen ways to Sunday when he was president. You’re a special kind of scumbag for unleashing this kind of sleaze on someone else, when you know what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

You’re lucky that I’m not emotional about politics. I will advocate that my readers do what needs to be done in November to keep a republican sociopath from becoming president and fucking the Supreme Court for another thirty years. But right now, at this moment, I’m utterly disgusted with you and with your media hitman.

A Deal For Hillary Supporters

April 18, 2016April 18, 2016 by Bitchy

I have a proposition to make to all of the Hillary supporters who follow this blog. To demonstrate that I’m earnest in making this proposal, I’m going to start with a proffer in the form of a decisive statement and then a confession.

First, a decisive statement: Bernie Sanders is not going to be the democratic nominee. It’s just not going to happen, but not for the reasons you think. I know you’ve all been proclaiming he’s done, even as you’ve been watching him win primary after primary over the past month. Your commitment to denying what’s happening before your very eyes is adorable. Bernie isn’t going to be the nominee because neither Bernie nor Hillary are going to get enough pledged delegates to cross the finish line. They’re both going to the convention, and they both have a strong case to make for taking it to the convention.

It is mathematically impossible for Bernie to make up the 244 delegate deficit he has against Hillary at this very moment. He can’t do it. That’s a fact. He would have to win all of the remaining states by a 20 point margin to close that gap. It’s not going to happen. The pledged delegate gap at the end of all of this is going to be between 5% – 7% of the total delegate count, so it’s not going to be a decisive enough win for Hillary to reasonably claim that Bernie shouldn’t go to the convention to fight for the seventeen percent (of the total delegate count) of unpledged (or super) delegates.

Bernie will justifiably go to the convention, and nobody who isn’t completely bias can reasonably claim that he has no right to do so.

Now for my confession: At no point in this election, did I believe that Bernie was going to be the nominee. I’m not going to say that there weren’t a few fleeting moments here and there where I got caught up in the Bernmentum and didn’t think to myself, “he may actually pull this off” but those literally never lasted more than a few minutes at a time. I’m more analytical about politics, than I am emotional. So why have I so fervently supported Bernie? Why didn’t I make this confession to my closest friends until last week? Because getting Bernie as far as possible in this race has been a great thing for all of us. And whether you realize it right at this moment or not, Hillary supporters, you want him to go as far as he can too.

There are some terrible things that Hillary supported, that she can no longer do because of Bernie. She can no longer approve Keystone. She can no longer sign TPP into law. Don’t get too excited though. The fact that Hillary can’t sign TPP into law, probably means that Obama is going to have to do it as he’s walking out the door, like a thief in the night (a la Clinton repealing Glass Steagall). There are just too many corporate interests at stake for TPP not to be inevitable. There are a half a dozen less devastating (to some) bad ideas that Bernie forced Hillary to change her positions on; she no longer supports deporting immigrant kids, she probably won’t be promoting fracking (yes, she toured the world to promote fracking) in the US, she’s will never again claim that a $15 an hour minimum wage is too much to dream of. There are several more policy changes that you can Google for yourself.

My point is that Bernie made Hillary more liberal, and he so effectively cornered her on some issues, that you (Hillary supporter) are happier with her. You are. Don’t lie to yourselves.

You, dear Hillary supporter, agree that money is corrupting our political system. I know that you do, because ten years worth of polling data tells me that over 90% of democrats believe it (70% – 80% of republicans agree). You haven’t forgotten what you know, I’m positive that you haven’t. You’re just taking a little break on the issue. That’s fine, but you want this conversation to continue for as long as possible especially since I’m telling you that there’s no chance that Hillary isn’t going to be the nominee. This conversation will definitely quiet down after the election. It’s in all of our interest to keep it going for as long as we can. You, dear Hillary supporter, want single payer health care. I know you do, because I heard you while Obamacare was being hammered out. I know that for this election, you’ve convinced yourselves that single payer is a pipe dream, but it is in your self interest to keep this conversation alive for as long as possible. You, dear Hillary supporter, want tax payer funded higher education. Those of you in New York and California remember when it was available, and you got San Francisco and Manhattan as a direct result investing in education. Silicon Valley didn’t open up shop in California because they didn’t know that there were states in this country with no corporate income taxes. They opened up shop in California because that’s where they had access to a well educated candidate pool. I know you know this, Hillary supporters.

The most important reason why you (hang in with me for 2 more paragraphs) and I need for Bernie to have a strong argument to make at the convention is superdelegates. No one thinks that superdelegates are in any way, shape, or form democratic. Yes, they may be working in your favor sometimes, but you can’t fundamentally believe that the democratic party should have them. We should all be able to agree than when one candidate wins a state by twelve points, their opponent should not walk away with four more delegates in that state. We can all all agree that’s not democracy, right? I get that a fucked up thing seems slightly less fucked up when it’s working in your favor. I totally get that, but you still know that it’s fucked up. And it will continue to be fucked up long after it stops advancing your immediate goal. Seventeen percent of the total number of delegates can do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of how their constituents or former (many of them are no longer serving in office) constituents voted for. Some of them are lobbyists now. Both Dodd and Frank are lobbyists now. They’re both superdelegates, and they both have interests that aren’t yours.

We need to blow up this superdelegate thing once and for all. Getting Bernie to the convention with the closest margin of pledged delegates that we can will help to seriously damage this anti-democratic system. Let me repeat something I said earlier in this post; neither Bernie nor Hillary are going to get enough pledged delegates to cross the finish line. Superdelegates are going to take Hillary over the finish line. The closer we can get the pledged delegate count, the brighter the light that will be shone on this superdelegate system will be. We all want this. Let me repeat something else I said earlier in this post: Bernie Sanders is not going to be the democratic nominee. There is no chance that superdelegates will make Bernie the nominee. You are going to win this primary election, Hillary supporters. Bernie’s chances are as close to zero as is possible, without taking something completely unforseen (like a sudden and severe illness) into account.

It is in all democrats and liberals self interest to vote for Bernie at this point, especially if you’re on the fence. I know that some of you think that I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes at this point. I’m not. We’re voting here in New York tomorrow. Bernie is not likely to win. He’s definitely not going to win by anything resembling enough to close the delegate gap by more than a handful of delegates. If he ties Hillary here, he’s going to have to win Pennsylvania and California by nearly 80% to close that delegate gap. It’s just not going to happen. If he loses to Hillary in New York by 5%, he’s going to have to win CA and PA by 83%. It’s not going to happen. He’s not going to be the nominee. But none of us need for him to leave the public stage before the very end.

Bernie Sanders is the first politician since Reagan started his last (of 3) bids for the white house, to reframe the public conversation in liberal terms. Bill Clinton put the final nail in coffin for liberal framing when he said, “The era of big government is over”. That’s when the left was officially shut out of the conversation. We’ve been operating under the right wing premises that taxes and government are bad ever since. Bernie has struck the only significant blow to that fucked up right wing framing that we’ve seen in thirty years. He has irrevocably changed the conversation in a way that both Hillary and Bernie supporters need. Hillary’s platform was initially based on accepting that fucked up framing, and it still is to a large extent. “We can’t afford to have the nice things that the rest of the first world has”. Bernie is literally the only candidate (on either side) who has been asked how he plans to pay for things. Ted Cruz says he wants to increase our fighter jet production by fifty percent, and no one bothers to ask him how he plans to pay for that? Hillary doesn’t have any sweeping reforms in her platform because she seems to have accepted the premise that all government spending is bad and that “big government” is bad, so she’s not going to do anything major or historic.

I know that you don’t believe that government is bad, Hillary supporters. I know you don’t, because see your non-Hillary posts.

So help me keep Bernie in this until July. You have nothing to risk and everything to gain.

I in turn, will do everything I can to get everyone to coalesce around Hillary in the general. Look, I’ve already pissed off and disappointed all of my Bernie peeps by writing this, so you know that I mean what I say.

We don’t have to wait until July to come together. We can all get what we want, and more of it if we come together now.

The Ironically Named “Democratic” Party

April 5, 2016 by Bitchy

For months now, some of us have noticed how thoroughly rigged the democratic presidential primary process has been. Others are too blinded by the fact that the game is rigged in favor of their candidate to notice. I’m going to ask Hillary supporters to set their emotional attachment to Hillary aside and hear me out for about the next five to ten minutes, because I promise you that I have information and empirical evidence of said rigging that will disturb you.

Let’s start with the obvious debate schedule debacle. Here’s a list of both republican and democratic debates (not to be confused with town halls) for this election cycle.

Republican: Democratic:

Thursday, August 6th

Wednesday, September 16th

Wednesday, October 28th Tuesday, October 13th

Tuesday, November 10th Saturday, November 14th

Tuesday, December 15th Saturday, December 19th (weekend before Christmas)

Thursday, January 14th Sunday, January 17th (MLK holiday weekend)

Saturday, February 6th Thursday, February 4th

Saturday, February 13th Thursday, February 11th

Thursday, February 25th Sunday, March 6th

Thursday, March 10th Wednesday, March 9th

Do you notice anything (other than the fact that republicans got to have the national conversation to themselves for nearly 3 months before a single democratic debate happened)? Democrats have only debated on Five nights when a large number of people would actually be watching versus republicans’ eight. There’s a reason why you can’t get into Shondaland on Saturday nights. Larry Wilmore was spot on when he called them “top secret debates”.

Then there’s all the DNC staffers who are moonlighting on Hillary’s campaign, the fact that a lot of Hillary’s campaign headquarters are actually in DNC field offices, and that time when the DNC finance chair got caught throwing a fundraiser for Hillary (thereby breaking DNC rules), and that time back in August when the DNC helped Hillary shore up a huge number of superdelegates before the election had even started. And then there was the data breach. You know, the one where instead of quietly handling it in house, Little Debbie called a press conference to announce that Bernie was a cheater? You know, the one where she never provided the data logs so that we could all see which staffers on both campaigns accessed the two way breach.

That’s all stuff you know, and that some have managed to dismiss. Now for the new information that should infuriate all democrats who value democracy, and feel that voters should pick the party’s presidential nominee.

So apparently back in August, Hillary made deals with thirty-three state parties to create a joint fundraising entity called “The Hillary Victory Fund”.

At this point I have to step back and have a wonky moment, wherein I recap a disastrous 2014 Supreme Court ruling that decimated the few campaign finance laws that were left after Citizen’s United. The case was McCutcheon v FEC. Before the McCutcheon ruling, individuals had an aggregate limit of $123,200 that they could donate. That means that they could give the maximum $2,600 contribution to a number of candidates or federal offices, but the aggregate total of their donations had to be no more than $123,200. There are different caps for different contributions, but those aren’t relevant to this post so you can click on that link if you want that information. The McCutcheon ruling got rid of that aggregate limit, meaning that a rich donor can give the maximum allowable amount to as many candidates, state, and federal parties they want to. So if someone wants to max out their contributions to (say) thirty-three (or fifty) different state democratic party organizations, as well as the DNC, they can do that.

Now back to the The Hillary Victory Fund (although most of you can see where this is going at this point in the post). The legal limit in contributions from an individual to a state democratic party is $10,000 a year. Let’s assume that the thirty three states we know about are the only ones who entered the The Hillary Victory Fund agreement. If each of Hillary’s billionaire donors maxed out their contributions and their spouse’s, that would be $660,000 per year that they contributed to Hillary. The deal was made in 2015, so they have two years worth of caps to max out. That would be 1.3 million dollars from each donor over the course of this primary cycle. By the end of 2015 (4 months after the fund was established), the The Hillary Victory Fund had raised 26 million dollars.

This whole thing is a legal money laundering scheme to funnel money into Hillary’s campaign. According to Counterpunch, the fund is administered by Hillary’s campaign’s COO. She has complete control over the fund and decides how much should go back to the state parties. Since she’s facing a stronger primary challenger than she had originally anticipated, I promise you that most of that money is going into her primary campaign rather than flowing back out to the states. But don’t feel too bad for the state parties that made this pact with her, since she’s going to raise a ton of money for them if she becomes the nominee.

Now at this point, the die hard Hillary supporters are going to assert that I’m practicing a lot of conjecture here. Don’t worry, I’m not done. The Montana Democratic Party entered into this fundraising scheme with Hillary in August of last year. Before the year was up, they had received maximum donations from the creme de la creme of democratic big money donors including: Susie Buell of California, Imaad Zuberi of California, Fred Eychaner of Chicago, Donald Sussman hedgefund manager from New York, Chicago real estate mogul J.B Pritzker, gay rights activist Jon Stryker of NY, NRA and Viacom lobbyist Jeffrey Forbes and entertainment mogul Haim Saban. I checked, and there are no records of contributions from any of these people to the Montana Democratic Party prior to 2015. Coincidentally, many of them donated maximum contributions to the parties for the other thirty-two states involved in The Hillary Victory Fund. That Counterpunch link I posted above goes into many more details about shenanigans in several other states and how they’re playing a shell game with the cash. I highly recommend you read it.

So while Hillary claims to be opposed to Citizen’s United, she’s making deals to reap the benefits of both that ruling and the McCutcheon ruling to rig the primary. Now I understand not wanting to show up to the general election gun fight with a pocket knife, but that’s not what’s happening here. The democratic party apparatchik is deciding for you, who the democratic nominee will be.

When Bernie is asked if he will support down ticket democrats, he’s not being asked so that you have more information. He’s being asked in order to remind the superdelegates and sitting members of congress, where their bread is buttered. I don’t imagine that Bernie has any plans to help blue dog, establishment corporate democrats get elected, nor would I want him to. There have been a few endorsement flips from Hillary to Bernie. Not many, but a few. Hillary doesn’t want to allow a domino effect to happen like it did in 2008, so she needs to use the massive purse strings she holds to reign in anyone who might be thinking about jumping ship.

This whole system stinks and you should agree regardless of who you support. Hillary isn’t going to be running for president forever, so her supporters should be very concerned about who is going to be dished out to them next time.

The most disturbing thing to me about this election cycle, has been watching democrats who used to believe that corporate money is the toxin in our political system, suddenly act like all of Hillary’s corporate contributions are swell. I imagine that a lot of those people will resume posting articles and memes about the Koch brothers corruption of our politicians after this election is over, and acting like they’ve been on the right side of this issue all along. Or maybe they’re posting them now, alongside their pro Hillary stories, in the most stunning display of cognitive dissonance I’ve even witnessed. I earnestly don’t understand how that pivot is possible. But honestly, if alarm bells aren’t going off for you over what she’s doing to game the primary, I have no hope for you.

Corporate money in our political system is the number one issue that needs to be addressed. It’s the issue that creates virtually all of the other issues that we have. It’s the reason for climate denial and why we’re so actively participating in the destruction of the planet. It’s the reason for the record breaking income inequality we’re seeing in the US. It’s why we have so many guns with precious little information on who has them. Your kids are literally being gunned down by corporate money in politics. It’s the reason why we have 25% of the world’s prison population. I can go on with a litany of other things, but you get the point. Until we deal with the money issue, we have no hope of dealing with most of the other issues that threaten our lives and livelihoods every single day.

Do I believe a candidate who is exploiting campaign finance laws to legally launder money into her campaign when she says that she wants to get money out of politics? I laugh…… oh how I laugh. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t know why anyone else would be for any candidate. I don’t know what her supporters think they’re going to get from her in exchange for their intelligence, but I hope it’s something good. Maybe a golden unicorn? Make no mistake, you’re going to get what you’ve been getting for decades: guns, prisoners, pollution, and a shrinking paycheck.

If I believed that Hillary was going to make getting corporate money out of politics a top priority, I assure you that I would be supporting her. But that’s simply not the case. Why would you want to fuck with the system that got you in the white house? Especially when you have two generations of your offspring to set up for their time in the white house.

I’m sorry, but I like democracy too much to fall for this shit. I wish that everyone did because other than amending the constitution, Bernie is our last chance to keep the focus on this issue which makes him our last hope of changing it. Fortunately, Bernie has greatly expanded a movement that will outlive him and this election. It is a movement built on the backs of the generation who has been fucked the most by thirty years of corporate rule of government. This is the first, but not the last generation who will make less o money than their parents made. This is a generation whose kids are going to be more fucked than they are, if things don’t change. This is not a generation that’s going to shut up and take it.

The degree to which my generation (Gen X for those who are wondering) got fucked by the corporate takeover of our government is, and should be, the limit of what can be tolerated. The millennials have gotten fucked much harder than even we were. They have every right to fight back, and I’m delighted to see that they’ve correctly identified the problem. They know that Hillary is not a “friendly”.

And after the information contained in this piece, you should too.

The Merrick Garland Disaster

March 17, 2016 by Bitchy

It’s impossible for me to feel more bitchy about this nominee.

I’m not going to take a deep dive into his record because I’m positive that if you’re reading this blog, you’ve already done that. I will say that his record on criminal justice is abysmal, especially if you’re a president who has been talking about criminal justice reform. He’s a former prosecutor so he’s prone to seeing every defendant as a criminal that needs punishing. And he has, in virtually every criminal justice case he’s ruled on. He’s the guy that always dissents from more liberal judges on these issues.

Here’s what ScotusBlog said about him (in 2010) in regard to his rulings on constitutional issues;

“In various other contexts, Judge Garland has in a few cases rejected assertions of constitutional rights, disagreeing with his more-liberal colleagues. I am not aware of counterexamples in which he has staked out a more liberal position.”

He seems okay on civil rights issues, but we really don’t have very many civil rights rulings from him to look at.

Like Roberts, Garland has never met a corporation he hasn’t agreed with. YAY!

We don’t have really anything from him on the issues of campaign finance (my biggest issue) or women’s reproductive rights.

Here’s the bottom line: there isn’t much evidence to demonstrate that he’s liberal so at best, he’s a complete centrist.

We know that republicans love him. Right wing whackadoodle senator Orrin Hatch said this about Garland;

“Merrick B. Garland is highly qualified to sit on the D.C. circuit. His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questioned… His legal experience is equally impressive… Accordingly, I believe Mr. Garland is a fine nominee. I know him personally, I know of his integrity, I know of his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen, and he belongs on the court. I believe he is not only a fine nominee, but is as good as Republicans can expect from this administration. In fact, I would place him at the top of the list.“

Mega whackadoodle senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions said;

“He has a high position with the Department of Justice and, by all accounts, does a good job there. There will be a number of judgeship vacancies in the D.C. trial judges. He has been a trial lawyer. He would be a good person to fill one of those. I would feel comfortable supporting him for another judgeship.”

Former republican senator from Arizona, Jon Kyle said;

“I believe Mr. Garland is well qualified for the court of appeals. He earned degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Brennan on the Supreme Court and, since 1993, he has worked for the Department of Justice. So there is no question, he is qualified to serve on the court.”

Remember, Jon Kyle is the lunatic who proclaimed (on the senate floor) that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. When he was called on it, his office released a statement saying, “that was not intended to be a factual statement”. Wow, you must be awesome to get that guy’s praise.

It gets better. Here are Strom Thurmond’s thoughts on Garland;

“I have no reservations about Mr. Garland’s qualifications or character to serve in this capacity. He had an excellent academic record at both Harvard College and Harvard Law School before serving as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Also, he has served in distinguished positions in private law practice and with the Department of Justice. Moreover, I have no doubt that Mr. Garland is a man of character and integrity.”

This is not a person that a “liberal” president should be nominating to the Supreme Court. Wanna know how I can tell? Because when republicans get their turn, they nominate and fight for people like Clarence fucking Thomas, Sam Alito, and Antonin Scalia.

I love it when republicans talk about preserving the balance of the court. You mean like when you guys replaced Thurgood Marshall with pervy, right wing mute, Clarence Thomas? Preserve the balance like that?

“Preserving the balance” of the court is only an issue when a democrat occupies the white house. When a republican occupies the white house, they get to go for the fringiest of the right wing fringe nominee they can find. But democrats don’t ever get their turn at nominating anyone who is anything resembling left of center. Or left of center right. And democratic voters are happy with this. It’s like they suffer from some kind of fucked up Stockholm Syndrome, where they can’t even conceive of going for a nominee in the model of Earl Warren.

So to recap; republicans get to assemble their right wing dream team when given the opportunity, but democrats are perfectly content with someone who “isn’t as bad as Scalia”. I have some news for you; comparing a nominee to the worst of the worst isn’t a good calibration of your good nominee barometer. That’s like comparing a president to George W Bush. Why not aim a little higher with your comparisons?

Now let me get to the heart of the Stockholm sufferers’ argument. Obama is actually playing three dimensional chess by nominating someone republicans like, and forcing their hand on a nomination. And by refusing to hold hearings on a “friendly” nominee, he’s exposing republican obstructionism.

Let me pick this argument apart. First off, republicans have already done that when they proclaimed that they wouldn’t consider anyone Obama nominates. That already happened. Republicans have already exposed their own obstructionism. Check. Polls taken days after that announcement show that republican senators prospects for reelection had been damaged by that stance. Three republican senators are in big trouble in terms of their prospects of being reelected if the republicans refuse to confirm anyone. That’s without knowing who the nominee even is. Americans are fundamentally fair. Yes, there are partisan hacks on both sides but that’s not the majority of Americans who approved of Bill Clinton to the tune of 68% after republicans tried to impeach him over a private affair. You don’t get to 68% without the support of a significant number of people who call themselves republicans.

The idea that Obama is forcing their hand by nominating someone they like, and thereby furthering that perception of their obstructionism is predicated on the idea that the American people pay attention to the background of a Supreme Court nominee. That’s nonsense, and there isn’t a shred of evidence that’s true. In fact, the evidence points the other way. Two thirds of Americans can’t name a single sitting Supreme Court justice. That’s right, two thirds of Americans can’t come up with a single name. A whopping 20% can manage to come up with the Chief Justice’s name. Wow, that’s impressive. The percentages go down after naming Roberts:

John Roberts — 20%
Antonin Scalia — 16%
Clarence Thomas — 16%
Ruth Bader Ginsburg — 13%
Sonia Sotomayor — 13%
Anthony Kennedy — 10%
Samuel Alito — 5%
Elena Kagan — 4%
Stephen Breyer — 3%

Trust me when I tell you that Americans give almost no shits about the background of a Supreme Court nominee. Not only is there no upside in nominating a centrist, but the huge downside is that it perpetuates the current reality that democrats can’t ever nominate a liberal. This is a terrible long term strategy. Obama should have nominated Thom Hartmann or the ghost of George Carlin. The further left, the better. Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would also be excellent choices.

There’s another factor that hasn’t been considered by democrats who think that Obama is being “brilliant” with this move: Trump. Democrats are convincing themselves that this is a brilliant move because republicans are never going to confirm this guy. I believe they’re wrong. Right now, republican operatives are trying to figure out what to do about the Trump problem. They really only have two choices:

Let him be the nominee, which jeopardize all of the down ticket candidates. They’re justifiably afraid that an anti-establishment nominee hurts down ticket establishment senators and congress candidates. In order to save the senate, they’re effectively going to have to run against their own presidential nominee. They’re already talking about sacrificing the presidency to save the senate.
Pull a fast one at the convention and pick another nominee. This poses a risk of revolution within the republican party and also hurts down ticket candidates, since it makes the establishment look even slimier than they look now.

That’s it. There are no other options for the GOP. Trust me when I tell you that, given these two options republicans are going to try and save the senate seats. Saving the senate means not doing anything to jeopardize a single senator who’s up for reelection.

The three dimensional chess theory is dependent on republicans refusing to confirm this guy. I think that the odds are that they will because they have to. Certainly given the Trump factor, the odds are better than they will confirm, than they won’t.

As I said, I don’t see anything good about this nomination. For a democrat to think this is a good thing, you would have to employ some magical thinking that combines the acceptance that we’re in a perpetual hostage situation, blind ignorance to the position that republicans are in with their inevitable nominee, and assumptions that are completely supported by a shred of evidence.

I don’t suffer from Stockholm Syndrome so I’m experiencing some acute bitchiness this morning.

Hillary’s Bubble

March 13, 2016 by Bitchy

By now you know that Hillary spectacularly stepped in it a couple of days ago when she praised Nancy Reagan for “starting a national conversation” about AIDS. Here are her exact words,

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation. When before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective, low key advocacy but it penetrated the public conscious and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.'”

If you already didn’t know it, you know now that what Hillary said is literally the opposite of the truth. Not only did the Reagans ignore the suffering and death of the nameless, faceless masses who were dying, but their cruelty also extended to their personal circle of friends. Rock Hudson, who was a personal friend sent a plea for help to Nancy in his final days. She refused him. The Reagans were not nice people. They were not compassionate people, and they were not intelligent people. No intelligent person would assume that this disease that’s plaguing the dreaded gays who are “getting what they deserve”, would think that the spread would be limited to those they deem to be the dregs of society. They were stupid, stupid, loathsome people.

So why did Hillary say what she said? Before I get to that, I want to share a statement she put out last night,

Yesterday, at Nancy Reagan’s funeral, I said something inaccurate when speaking about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS. Since then, I’ve heard from countless people who were devastated by the loss of friends and loved ones, and hurt and disappointed by what I said. As someone who has also lost friends and loved ones to AIDS, I understand why. I made a mistake, plain and simple.

I want to use this opportunity to talk not only about where we’ve come from, but where we must go in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

To be clear, the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. That distinction belongs to generations of brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies, who started not just a conversation but a movement that continues to this day.

The AIDS crisis in America began as a quiet, deadly epidemic. Because of discrimination and disregard, it remained that way for far too long. When many in positions of power turned a blind eye, it was groups like ACT UP, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and others that came forward to shatter the silence — because as they reminded us again and again, Silence = Death. They organized and marched, held die-ins on the steps of city halls and vigils in the streets. They fought alongside a few courageous voices in Washington, like U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, who spoke out from the floor of Congress.

Then there were all the people whose names we don’t often hear today — the unsung heroes who fought on the front lines of the crisis, from hospital wards and bedsides, some with their last breath. Slowly, too slowly, ignorance was crowded out by information. People who had once closed their eyes opened their hearts.

If not for those advocates, activists, and ordinary, heroic people, we would not be where we are in preventing and treating HIV and AIDS. Their courage — and their refusal to accept silence as the status quo — saved lives.

We’ve come a long way. But we still have work to do to eradicate this disease for good and to erase the stigma that is an echo of a shameful and painful period in our country’s history.
This issue matters to me deeply. And I’ve always tried to do my part in the fight against this disease, and the stigma and pain that accompanies it. At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when my husband accepted the nomination for president, we marked a break with the past by having two HIV-positive speakers — the first time that ever happened at a national convention. As First Lady, I brought together world leaders to strategize and coordinate efforts to take on HIV and AIDS around the world. In the Senate, I put forward legislation to expand global AIDS research and assistance and to increase prevention and education, and I proudly voted for the creation of PEPFAR and to defend and protect the Ryan White Act. And as secretary of state, I launched a campaign to usher in an AIDS-free generation through prevention and treatment, targeting the populations at greatest risk of contracting HIV.

The AIDS crisis looks very different today. There are more options for treatment and prevention than ever before. More people with HIV are leading full and happy lives. But HIV and AIDS are still with us. They continue to disproportionately impact communities of color, transgender people, young people and gay and bisexual men. There are still 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States today, with about 50,000 people newly diagnosed each year. In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost 60 percent of people with HIV are women and girls. Even though the tools exist to end this epidemic once and for all, there are still far too many people dying today.

That is absolutely inexcusable.

I believe there’s even more we can — and must — do together. For starters, let’s continue to increase HIV and AIDS research and invest in the promising innovations that research is producing. Medications like PrEP are proving effective in preventing HIV infection; we should expand access to that drug for everyone, including at-risk populations. We should call on Republican governors to put people’s health and well-being ahead of politics and extend Medicaid, which would provide health care to those with HIV and AIDS.

We should call on states to reform outdated and stigmatizing HIV criminalization laws. We should increase global funding for HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment. And we should cap out-of-pocket expenses and drug costs—and hold companies like Turing and Valeant accountable when they attempt to gouge patients by jacking up the price of lifesaving medications.

We’re still surrounded by memories of loved ones lost and lives cut short. But we’re also surrounded by survivors who are fighting harder than ever. We owe it to them and to future generations to continue that fight together. For the first time, an AIDS-free generation is in sight. As president, I promise you that I will not let up until we reach that goal. We will not leave anyone behind.

That was a good apology. She unequivocally took responsibility for fucking up. “I made a mistake, plain and simple” is the kind of apology that we need to hear more often. I’m of the opinion that when someone apologizes for something in earnest, you accept the apology and move on. Not accepting this type of apology discourages people from making honest apologies. If you want good behavior from people, you have to applaud it when it happens. If there’s no positive reinforcement for good behavior, you’re just encouraging bad behavior. Moving on entails not holding this against her anymore, but it does not entail forgetting about it.

So why did she say it? She’s running for president against an insurgent candidate who is turning out to be a much bigger threat than she had ever anticipated, so why would she say something so stupid and blatantly untrue? Because she believed it when she said it. I read once that our memories are 78% inaccurate or flat out lies. You can see that’s probably true when you read multiple witness statements to a crime. People don’t see the same thing while something is happening. And then our memories take over to further embellish and rewrite what we saw differently from the guy next to us in the first place. That 78% statistic doesn’t seem unbelievable to me.

Hillary believes that Nancy Reagan was a better person than she really was because everyone who knows a terrible person believes they’re better than they really are. We’re all guilty of this. All of us. No, you’re not exempt. Trust me, you’ve done it too and so have I. These are bubbles we all live in. Hillary’s bubble is made up of politicos, lobbyists, and corporate executives so she definitely knows more terrible people than the average bear.

This bubble is what made Hillary think that bringing up Henry Kissinger at a democratic debate was a good idea. Do some of you think that Bernie brought it up first? Well, that memory would fall into that 78% statistic I cited earlier. Hillary was the first to mention Kissinger,

“I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea about what it’s going to take to make our government work more efficiently.”

Bernie didn’t actually throw that back in her face until the next debate. Being flattered at Henry Kissinger’s high opinion of you and then bragging about it to a democratic debate audience is as bubblicious as it gets. In her mind, Kissinger is beloved and respected because he’s someone she knows well. She and Bill used to spend winter vacations with the Kissingers and Oscar de la Renta.

Her opinion of Henry Kissinger, and the magnitude to which that opinion is divorced from reality is a function of the bubble. You can’t despise very many people that you routinely socialize with, and that run in your circles. Again, this isn’t a Hillary issue. This is something we all do. Just talk to the family members of any cop who shot an unarmed person. They’re all really good people who made one mistake or worse yet, didn’t make a mistake at all because they’re just that righteous. I digress.

Hillary’s bubble is full of people who have done terrible things to the middle class and the poor. That’s just par for the course when you’ve lived Hillary Clinton’s life. She didn’t choose to surround herself with terrible people. They chose her because of her position. Lloyd Blankfein, Henry Kissinger, and Nancy Reagan just come with the job. Respecting, admiring, supporting, and sharing the values of those people is just a function of human nature. It’s not a failing on Hillary’s part and I don’t blame her for it.

But I don’t like it, and I don’t like what it means for a Hillary Clinton presidency. That’s just me. When “democrats” like Diane Feinstein, Claire McCaskill, and Chris Dodd endorse Hillary, I’m moved in the opposite direction because that’s the bubble that has kept wages flat for the past 30 years. This is not a bubble that I revere or respect. This is the bubble I’m very much interested in bursting.

To be fair, Bernie doesn’t have a bubble but he does sometimes suffer from tunnel vision. He’s so focused on the macro issue of government corruption and the income inequality it’s caused, that he missed a lot of the micro (they’re not micro, but you get what I’m trying to say) issues like the concerns of black lives matter and the issues that are important to the families of mass murder victims. He understands that the corporate corruption of our politicians is the cause of the vast majority of our issues (military spending, climate change, guns, corporate tax evasion, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc), but he’s so focused on that, that he forgets that these issues need to be addressed not just from the top, but all way down to the actual victims. He gets that taking money out of politics will help to level out income inequality, which will greatly help the black community, but he can’t see the immediate issues that need addressing for that community. In his defense, he does seem to be listening and learning.

I’m much more comfortable with Bernie’s tunnel vision than I am with Hillary’s bubble. That’s just me.

Anyway, that was my very long way to say, don’t demonize Hillary for the Reagan comment. It wasn’t malicious and it wasn’t an attempt to propagandize. It was purely a product of the bubble. And she apologized, so let’s move on from attacking her for it.

Bernie’s Healthcare Plan By The Numbers

March 11, 2016 by Bitchy

I keep hearing a couple of things about Bernie’s single payer healthcare plan that I need to address. The Hillary supporting left likes to say that he doesn’t actually have a plan to pay for it. WRONG. The right prefers to proclaim that he’s going to massively raise your taxes to pay for it. Not totally wrong, but not even remotely the whole story.

So I’m going to break this down, so that I never have to hear these bullshit talking points again. So here it is, point by point.

Right now, we pay twenty trillion dollars for healthcare (all of my numbers represent 10 years of spending). That breaks down to about fifteen trillion dollars in premium costs, and another five trillion dollars in copays.

Of that twenty trillion dollars, six trillion is currently guaranteed profits and administrative costs. Remember that the ACA capped these costs at twenty percent. To give you some context here, medicare’s administrative costs are four percent. There are obviously no profits, so four percent is the whole number. That’s four percent for medicare, vs twenty percent for private insurance so that six trillion dollars in costs would all but evaporate.

We pay 3.1 trillion taxpayer dollars out to employers in the form of tax incentives to provide their employees with health insurance. So you’re actually paying for some of that employer subsidized health insurance through your taxes in addition to your monthly premium contributions. That 3.1 trillion dollars evaporates under Bernie’s single payer system.

If you’re keeping track, we’re already at over nine trillion dollars in savings, and we haven’t even gotten to your premium contributions yet.

We’re left with a balance of eleven trillion dollars. That’s where Bernie’s tax plan comes into play. Yes, we will be paying 100% of that eleven trillion dollars through our tax dollars, rather than premium contributions.

Bernie’s plan is to raise your taxes by 8.4% (6.2% if your income is under 28,000) so that’s where the republican talking point is true. But remember that you will no longer be paying those insurance premiums. So ask yourself, are you currently paying more than 8.4% of your income for healthcare? Actually, don’t. I have the numbers. The median single person household spends 21% of their income on health insurance. The median family household spends 23% of their income on health insurance. That’s the part that republicans leave out. You will be saving around 11% – 15% of your total income overall. Bernie also creates new tax brackets. Right now, the highest tax bracket kicks in at an income of $415,000. So we don’t treat anyone who makes $10 million dollars, or $1 billion dollars a year any differently than we do someone making $415,000. That top tax rate is currently 39.6%. What Bernie is proposing is the following:

37 percent on income between $250,000 and $500,000.
43 percent on income between $500,000 and $2 million.
48 percent on income between $2 million and $10 million. (In 2013, only 113,000 households, the top 0.08 percent of taxpayers, had income between $2 million and $10 million.)
52 percent on income above $10 million. (In 2013, only 13,000 households, just 0.01 percent of taxpayers, had income exceeding $10 million.)

I literally copied and pasted those last four lines from Bernie’s official campaign website, so sorry Hillary supporters. Your ambiguity argument, just demonstrates that you didn’t bother to look at Bernie at all. There are several other tax increases he proposes aimed at the filthy rich. You should go to his website and familiarize yourself with that tax plan.

Bernie’s plan saves us five trillion dollars in healthcare costs every decade, according to the critics of his plan. The best estimates have us saving nine trillion dollars every decade.

That’s how he pays for it. It’s not an ambiguous plan, nor is it a plan that is going to hit the middle class and the poor. They come out way ahead under Bernie’s plan. I’m sincerely hoping that at least democrats, stop peddling these falsehoods I’ve been hearing. I know that truth has never gotten in the way of a good republican talking point, but I hope this will end some of the bullshit I’ve been hearing.

Michigan Berned

March 9, 2016 by Bitchy

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’ve been looking at the primaries in the context of what the results mean for the general election. My concern has been what every democratic voter’s concern should be: Which democratic candidate has the best chances to beat Trump in the primary?

If you need a recap, I laid most of it out here. I laid out my thoughts on the relevance of Michigan here (you’re going to want to read those for context to understand this post). Well, the massive upset that Bernie pulled off in Michigan has seriously amped up my anxiety level over the thought of Hillary becoming the nominee.

Hillary’s general election prospects are not looking awesome. That’s just a fact. When I posted my March 1st blog, with the mountain of evidence to support my thoughts, one Facebook commenter (a Hillary supporter) actually told me to “have faith”. Why? Why the hell would I rely on faith when I have freaking numbers? Should I have faith that the climate isn’t changing too?

I don’t want to ever have to utter the words “President Trump”. That is my primary objective here. Supporting my candidate at all cost is not. I earnestly don’t understand people who don’t share that objective. I’m completely flummoxed by this thinking, and I sincerely need someone to help me out by explaining this to me.

My concerns aren’t based on subjective flaws of Hillary. My concerns aren’t even based on bullshit fortune telling like, “she could be indicted by the FBI any minute now”, or “Ted Cruz’s wife is definitely in the position to leak Hillary’s speeches to Goldman Sachs when the time comes” (she actually is, and I would be a fool not to think they’re coming when it’s the right time). I haven’t done any of that.

My concerns are based on the data that is available to me today. There isn’t a single poll that shows Hillary beating Trump by a higher margin than Bernie does. Not one. The aggregate of all the polls puts Hillary at a 2.8 point margin of victory, while Bernie’s is a 6 point margin. Wanna know what another Hillary supporter said in response to this? He posted a poll that has Hillary beating Trump by 8 points. One poll against my aggregate of polls. Wanna know what that same poll, in that same article he posted said? That Bernie beats Trump by a twelve point margin. Wow, that was some clear headed thinking on that commenter’s part. I do not understand emotional voting. Emotional voting results in people turning stupid and doing what that commenter did: made an ass of himself.

In that earlier post, I placed a lot of importance in Michigan because it’s a swing state. Hillary isn’t winning swing states. She’s winning southern states that she can’t win in the general. When I was positive that Hillary was going to win Michigan, I said that winning it by 20 points would allay some of my fears about her chances against Trump in the general. Well not only did she not win by 20 points, but the polls were turned on their heads when Bernie took it by nearly 2 points.

This is a disastrous sign for Hillary’s viability against Trump in the general. My concerns are compounded by the fact that Michigan had the highest voter turnout in a primary election since 1972. People were turning out in huge numbers to vote in both the republican and the democratic elections. Trump is getting people out to vote in swing states. That should put the fear of God into anyone who also vomits at the thought of a President Trump scenario. Since Michigan is an open primary and they had record turnout and Bernie won instead of losing by the 20 points he was supposed to lose by, we can reasonably conclude that he’s also bringing voters out.

Remember, 42% of voters self identify as independents. 26% self identify as democrats, and 23% self identify as republicans. Bernie will always do better in open primaries. 77% of independents voted for Bernie. Wanna know who can vote in the general with no restrictions? Independents.

If Trump is bringing out right wing independents and first time voters, democrats better be damned well sure to select the candidate who is doing really well with independents. That’s clearly not Hillary.

I’m sorry Hillary supporters, but it’s time to care about who controls the white house next year and to leave your emotional attachment to your candidate behind. The numbers here aren’t ambiguous about the general. And so far, every primary that has already happened should have you as concerned as I am.

The next two states to keep an eye on are Florida and Ohio – both swing states. Hillary is currently leading by a large margin in both states. Florida has a closed primary, meaning that registered independents can’t vote in the democratic primary. Ohio has an open primary. I’m going to say this to Hillary supporters: winning Florida and losing Ohio would completely support my assertion that Hillary isn’t our best chance in the general.

I know that no other media outlet is going to lay this out for you the way I have, so it’s easy to dismiss what I have to say but look at past posts for accuracy before dismissing my analysis. I left the door wide open for myself make the case that Hillary is viable by spelling out exactly what would have made her viable in Michigan. She didn’t make the threshold that would have had me writing a very different post today. Let me be very clear on this: if Hillary loses Ohio, you would be a fool to vote for her in any primary moving forward.

Yes, Florida matters. Yes, Florida is a swing state. But Florida won’t help you make any sort of reasonable calculation about the general since Bernie’s strongest voting block is independents who can’t vote in the Florida primary. Let me repeat: those independents will be voting in November. Ohio and its open primary is where you should be looking to decide if a Hillary nomination could lead to a President Trump.

Hillary needs to win Ohio to demonstrate her viability in the general. Once again Hillary supporters, I am laying out the parameters upon which her general election viability looks better. I’m not making a “Bernie is awesome sauce in all scenarios” argument. I’m telling you how you and I can tell if voting for her is a good idea in the long term. I’m also telling you that if she loses Ohio, any Florida victory she may (or may not) have means significantly less.

Independents are the key in this election cycle. It’s not millenials, it’s not all about the older black vote, it’s about the independents because that’s who Trump is bringing into this election. Hillary can’t win the general if independents are so apathetic that they can’t be fucked to go out and vote in November.

Six more days. That’s when the next test of whether I’m an idiot or not will happen. And believe me, my hands are yuuuuuge….oh wait…….I got confused…. I meant to say believe me, I will not be back peddling on anything I’ve said here today if Hillary wins both Ohio and Florida. If that happens, I will be doing what any critical thinker should be doing: reassessing.

Super Tuesday 2016 Edition

March 2, 2016 by Bitchy

I’ll admit that there were a couple of surprises for me last night, but nothing too significant in terms of delegates.

Let me start with the republican primaries. There were almost no surprises there. Minnesota was a surprise, but there was very little data to rely on since it’s a caucus state. Caucus states are always going to be difficult to pin down because they’re hard to poll so most polling firms won’t try. We had one poll this year (conducted 2 weeks ago), showing Rubio up by 2 points. So: a) that’s one poll (we all know how I feel about putting much weight into a single poll) and b) the spread was within the margin of error. So I was surprised that he won, but I was not at all surprised that he was Mr. Third Place in most of the rest of the primaries.

Trump remains the inevitable nominee.

In any other election, Rubio would be announcing that he’s suspending his campaign today. But he’s not going to do it because he won a whole state!

There were more surprises for me on the democratic side. They weren’t so much surprises for me, as they were interesting since they mostly happened in states I deemed to be toss ups.

I’m not going to lie: not winning Massachusetts hurt Bernie. His path to the nomination did narrow last night. It wasn’t a resounding loss, so there’s that, but he should have won. The fact that Hillary eked it it out isn’t good for Bernie. The fact that Bill pulled this slightly desperate move in order to help his wife, isn’t awesome for Hillary, but she won nonetheless. By “won”, I mean purely from a numbers perspective. Every time Bill and Hillary pull moves like this, they become a little more untrustworthy so I’m not sure this is really a “win”.

On the upside for Bernie, he took every other state that was in play. Yesterday morning, I said that if Bernie pulls off MA, plus CO and MN, he would have pulled off an epic ass kicking. He lost MA, but he won both CO and MN which appeared too close to predict. Neither were even a little close. That fact does mitigate the loss in MA, but not entirely. Oklahoma was too close to call for me because there was only one poll. That poll had Bernie up by 5 points but again, I don’t put too much weight in one poll so I didn’t expect that he would win. He took it by 10 points. Again, not even a little close.

Here’s the thing: remember my post from yesterday regarding my anxiety over the general election? Well, that anxiety has grown slightly. With the exception of MA and VA, Hillary only won states that Trump will resoundingly win in the general. Virginia is a swing state, so that’s the only glimmer of hope. MA will always go blue in the general so that victory does nothing to calm my anxiety. I would feel better about the Virginia win if so many Virginia voters didn’t work in DC. But she did win, and and that does give me a little hope for her in the general. No other state that she won last night gives me any more hope about her chances in the general.

Bernie kicked major ass in Colorado, which is another swing state. Every swing state that Hillary doesn’t win (decisively), makes me more and more concerned about the general, especially since Trump is the only candidate who seems to be bringing in new voters.

The next measure of my anxiety over the general will be next Tuesday in Michigan, which is another swing state. The aggregate of eleven polls has Hillary winning by a nineteen point margin but, those polls were taken over a seven month period. She needs to beat Bernie by a twenty point margin in Michigan for me to feel a little better about her prospects against Trump in the general.

After Michigan, the next two tests for general election viability happen in Florida and North Carolina (also swing states) on the 15th.

It’s going to be an anxiety riddled couple of weeks for me, but I’m going to keep my eye on the general election prize.