IOWA!

I wonder why some people hate polling data? LOL

Everyone wants to see their candidate get more coverage by the media, unless it's negative, in which case they complain about that.

Coverage of Sanders has increased because he's shown himself as being competitive, not because any of the network heads listened to the complaining of his supporters.

By now we should all realize that the media doesn't believe their job is to assist the voters in assessing the qualifications of the candidates, and to the extent any of its members do, they're not trying to do it with objectivity. They're trying to "assist" the voters in seeing why the candidate they prefer is the one to vote for and understand why all the others are incompetent or evil.

As long as the race for the nomination is close, Sanders will continue to get a lot more coverage, but it probably won't be enough for his supporters who want to see film of him dishing out soup to homeless people on the screen all day long.

He would get even more coverage if he would attack HRC on her e-mail problem...or anything else for that matter.

The media is prepared to tell anyone who listens that inciting, fanning and reporting on the fights between candidates is in the interest of the voters, but it's all about generating the sort of interest relied upon by TMZ and which increases ratings.

We're of the same opinion on all that.

Clinton win shrinks with new Iowa Democratic Party results

Not to criticize, but with such tiny margins how much does it matter who "won" Iowa? The vote is not "winner take all" like the Electoral College, each side gets almost the same votes toward the nomination, why all this attention to Iowa? If either side won convincingly it would be a different story.

It appears to have mattered a great deal to the contending candidates.

It would have been big news to many people if they turned around and said Bernie Sander's won after all. Moreover, Sander's must think it is important because he is conducting his own review. (as though that will be official)

I suppose the right to claim victory in Iowa, by however small a margin, might give somebody bragging rights but there has been so much attention to the closeness of the vote, and the votes toward the nomination are proportional, not winner-take-all, that it seems hardly worth the trouble. I think Sanders put it well when he said that he was in a "virtual tie" with Mrs. Clinton, which is true, and that in itself is a great victory since he was counted out as not realistic a short time ago.

Quote Finn:


Oh the evil mainstream media. Thank God for talk radio and conservative media, or we would never hear the real story.

It is true a year ago Clinton was way up in polls in Iowa. However, a few weeks before the Iowa vote, Bernie Sanders was pulling even and passed her a couple of times, then the poll numbers pulled back again. I personally give credit to all the hype over the emails. So on the night of the vote, no one really knew who was going to win, it was real nail bitten of a night with a lot of people watching. I am pretty sure Bernie will win in NH, but the other states without a white majority, I am not so sure.

Fivethirtyeight has been successful at forecasting, apparently they go by a lot of polls, the following forecast is based on 535 polls.

Nationally
Clinton 52.4% Sanders 35.0%

They have Sander with a better than 99% chance of winning NH.

source

Much thanks for the links. I don't think Mrs. Clinton needs a black majority to win a state, just a higher percentage of black votes than Iowa or New Hampshire.

Just as an aside, may I ask, how you write the link so that it appears as "source" in the post? I seem to have forgotten.

I agree she doesn't need a black majority, however, she doesn't poll well with white blue color workers or college age kids or young adults or even some independents. Bernie polls well with all of those, but not so much with non white voters.

Click the URL block on the BBCode. Inside the first bracket put an = sign. After the equal sign copy and paste the address you need in the same bracket. In between the next bracket type source or whatever title you want there.

I am not good at explaining, ehbeth is.

I agree that with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, Sanders has no chance of getting his agenda through; but the same could be said of Hillary Clinton.

If it is a matter of a principled Democratic president standing up to a Congress of Republicans, I trust Sanders over Clinton. This is particularly true in foreign policy, where I fear that Hillary's neo-con propensities will allow her to come to an understanding with Republicans on the need for foreign wars. It is to some degree true in domestic policy, as regards the regulation of the financial sector, and on the issue of "entitlement reform". I also doubt her positions on foreign trade agreements (which she seems to change according to the direction of the winds of politics).

I can't help but remember the "compromises" her husband made with a Republican controlled Congress in the second half of the 1990s. That resulted in deregulation of the financial sector which allowed the financial crisis of the Great Recession to occur; changes to the tax code which enxouraged house-flipping as a get rich quick scheme and contributed to the real-estate bubble which triggered it all; and "welfare reform" which gave states like Texas the ability to set the eligibility cut-off point for Medicaid at the absurdly low ceiling of a few thousand dollars, leaving the working poor with no health insurance.

Sanders cannot pass his grand schemes by executive order; but he can influence federal regulatory structure. If by chance Congress is retaken by the Democrats during his time as president, any legislation proposed by him will have to be introduced by the legislature, which will also scrutinize, debate, and ultimately amend and pass it, or reject it. It is not as though he has the powers of a king to ordain by proclamation his every fancy.

The fall in the labor force participation rate (which was in decline well before Obama took office) can in large part be ascribed to two factors:

(1) The aging and retirement of the Baby Boom generation. The first members of that generation were born at the end of the Second World War and the last were born in 1964. From 1945 to 2010 is 65 years. Of course, not everyone waits until 65 to retire.

(2) Increased high-school graduation rates among minorities, particularly among the growing (and much younger on average) Hispanic population. Kids who stay in school don't necessarily join the labor force.

We can ask about "discouraged" workers, but with limited unemployment insurance they can only stay discouraged for so long, unless they are old enough to take early retirement on a pension or on Social Security; which means that discouraged workers can't account for long-term trends of decline in the labor force, except on the margins. (I'm willing to entertain counterarguments, however.)

I suspect that many public sector workers, such as schoolteachers, took early retirement options offered by the states during the Great Recession.

Incidentally, unlike either liberals or conservatives, I ascribe the long decrease in national crime rates (both violent and property crimes) since the early 1990s, to the same demographic change (the aging of the Baby Boom generation).

The first boomers reached adulthood in 1963, which was about when the long increase in the national crime rate began. By 1993 when crime rates began their long decline, the first boomers were nearly 50 years old and the last boomers were about to turn 30. Most crime is committed by the young.

georgeob1 wrote: "Most economists agree that we are in an economic recovery that is detectably better than those in the sclerotic economies of our European partners, but relatively slow compared to our historical norms."

That may be true: but note that the structural changes which contributed to this occurred well before the Obama administration.

The peak median household income in the United States, adjusted for inflation, was in 1999.

Manufacturing employment (generally unionized and comparatively high paying in the United States) began declining very slowly in 1998 then accelerated greatly beginning in 2001, the year China joined the World Trade Organization and Congress accorded China permanent Most Favored Nation trading status.

Thereafter, a large shift to (generally lower paying) service sector employment occurred, as displaced manufacturing workers took what they could get. The consequent decline in median household income was camouflaged by the easy consumer credit and housing-boom related income (capital gains, cash out refinancing, home loans and lines of credit) that characterized the 2000s, which is why household debt levels skyrocketed until the Great Recession brought all that to an end -- or at least to a long pause and a slow restart as the housing market takes time to recover and banks take time to ease lending standards and credit card rates again.

As for Europe, I have a sneaking suspicion that VAT taxes are implicated. Conservative economists traditionally point out that if you increase taxes on something you tend to decrease demand for it; but the VAT is a tax on consumption itself.

Actually Sanders not having a chance of passing his bills is to me not the problem. His bills are the problem. I have looked at his Health care plan, it is impracticable, risky and costly. He seems to be a one horse show, he fumbles on matter of foreign policies and seems to be almost against people being successful. I agree we need to work on things being more fair like Elizabeth Warren talks about, but he seems to almost want to punish once they reach being successful. I can't explain what I mean because it is more of a feeling than anything that I can really point to and it could be wrong.

I generally agree with you on these issues. The structural changes to which you refer (including the ageing of the baby boom generation) are undoubtedly real, but their relative quantitative effects on the various measures of our economic performance are likely not acurately known by any of us. I believe it is certainly true that changing patterns of employment and jobs available have indeed also contributed to the declines we have seen in the work force participation rates, more or less as you described it.

We are indeed in an economic recovery, and are doing better than our European friends most of whom operate highly sclerotic social welfare economies. However, compared to our past economic recoveries, this one is relatively weak, and our GDP growth rate is now declining, partly due to external factors among trading partners..

We have lost a large numbers of manufacturing jobs, as you said, mostly due to foreign competition based on lower wage scales and looser environmental regulation. I don't know how this could have been prevented, as other nations abanded socialism and worked to end the poverty it produced. We do live in a competitive world economy. The rigid behavior of our Labor unions also accelerated this loss (note that all the auto manufacturing plants built by foreign manufacturers in the last few decades have been in non-union states).

All that said the creation of new economic enterprises and the jobs that go with it has been slowed by an explosion of government regulations and attendant requirements. The chicken **** factor involved in starting any small business now is quite enormous. That's not good for anyone but bureaucrats.

Quote georgeob1:

The workforce participation rate is not nearly a good gauge of employment as related to population as the Employment-Population Ratio. Especially the Employment-Population Ratio in the heart of a person's working life, age 25-54. Those are not declining a bit, in fact they are rising quite dramatically:



Sorry top break up your analysis of the economic decline of America, but it doesn't look like we're actually declining, what with more kids in college, extended lifespans, more cars, etc.

You haven't broken up anything and have nothing to regret except perhaps your stubborn insistence that your speculations are indeed facts.

I have no reason to believe that your knowledge of economics is sufficient to tell us all which of the many labor force statistics ius indeed the best gauge of economic activity here.

If you will look again at the chart you have pasted here multiple times you will see that the 15-55 rate is rising slowly, not dramatically. Indeed it has not yet recovered to its 2007 rate despite all the glorious features of our currently recovering economy. It is high only by standards for the Obama economy and that's nothing to brag about.