Bernie's In

Hi, snood. All I meant was that these Sanders Facebook group members might withhold their vote for Clinton in the fall election. But you're right. Mischief of this sort is not limited to one side in a political campaign of this sort. "All's fair in love and politics."

No offense intended to anyone.

wmwcjr wrote:

Hi, snood. All I meant was that these Sanders Facebook group members might withhold their vote for Clinton in the fall election. But you're right. Mischief of this sort is not limited to one side in a political campaign of this sort. "All's fair in love and politics."

No offense intended to anyone.

I take you at your word that you meant nothing but what you said above, but it still is a fact that articles like that intentionally try to paint the candidate with the wrongdoings of their supporters. And that's bullshit.

the pro-Clinton page has now also been taken down.

Quote:

the pro-Clinton page has now also been taken down.

Interesting that groups for both sides ended up being taken down but it was all the doing of Clinton.

It could just be that the groups were violating TOS and it had nothing to do with Hillary or Bernie personally.

Nobody's stopping them from voting for their corrupt candidate. They just can't force anyone else to do it.

If you only considered crowd size at rallies for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, you might wonder how Clinton has won so many big states. Sanders draws massive, enthusiastic crowds, while Clinton's rallies often seem tiny and subdued by comparison.

Crowd Size Simply Isn't A Predictor Of Winning

If big crowds meant big wins at the polls, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul would both be president. But election after election, crowd size has been an unreliable predictor of winning.

"The people at the rally are not a random or representative sample of the electorate," says Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science and communication studies at University of California, Los Angeles. "These are strategic and well-planned events. This isn't just happening."

Rallies are designed to look like spontaneous displays of excitement for a candidate, but they are planned right down to picking a venue that will overflow rather than look half-empty.

Howard Dean has endorsed Clinton rather than Sanders. But in 2004, he was the insurgent Democratic presidential candidate getting attention with big crowds. He ultimately came in third place in Iowa and his campaign fizzled.

Dean offers a couple of theories about what causes the disconnect. For one thing, when he was campaigning in Iowa back in 2003, he started to notice the same faces from event to event. He thinks that is happening with Sanders.

"Some of the crowd size is people who come because they love Bernie and they want to hear this message and it invigorates them and they keep doing it and they follow him around just like [fans of] the Grateful Dead or Phish."

'You Have To Build A Coalition'

Dean says there's a deeper issue than numbers. Eventually the insurgent candidate needs to go from playing the role of agitating outsider to someone voters of all stripes can see as president.

"And I couldn't change. And I knew I had to. But the crowd pulls you back," says Dean. "They're dying for you. They're bleeding for you. And it's very hard to do."

Dean says he sees Republican Donald Trump publicly struggling with it. And he says Sanders likely is, too. A speech with applause lines all your supporters can recite back makes for an amazing rally.

"But it's also the thing that isolates you at the end, because you have to build a coalition," adds Dean.

Put another way: big crowds aren't the same thing as a winning coalition.

"We're in this race to win. We're going to be in California in June and we're going to be in Philadelphia back here in July. And my job is to win this nomination," Sanders said. "If I don't win the nomination, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that a Republican does not get elected president of the United States."

On Sunday, when asked about supporting Clinton if she wins the nomination, Sanders suggested that his support would come with conditions.

"That is totally dependent on what the Clinton platform is and how she responds to the needs of millions of Americans who are sick and tired of establishment politics and establishment economics," Sanders said on ABC's "This Week."

Clinton, at a town hall Monday, recalled that her response to losing eight years ago differed, telling MSNBC town hall host Rachel Maddow, "We got to the end in June and I did not put down conditions. I didn't say, 'You know what, if Sen. Obama does W, Y, and Z maybe I'll support him.'"/

I wasn't really impressed by the whole "conditions" thing, but I'm not inclined to be impressed by many politicians.

It would be different if the differences were something concrete, but, I am not sure what she could change to suit him even if she was inclined. I just watched on MSNBC (for today's primaries) and Howard Dean talking about how he got John Kerry to change on the Iraq war. What issue could Hillary change in which she does not already agree?