Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Bernie Hits Jackpot in Nevada
The Nevada Caucus precinct results are coming in, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is projected to win big.
“In Nevada, and in New Hampshire and in Iowa — what we showed is that our volunteers are prepared to knock on hundreds and hundreds of thousands of doors,” Sanders said at his victory speech in San Antonio. “That no campaign has a grassroots movement like we do, which is another reason why we’re going to win this election.”
Here’s where the official count stands (updated on Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, 50% of precincts in):
Candidate | % |
---|---|
Sanders | 46.6% |
Biden | 19.2% |
Buttigieg | 15.4% |
Warren | 10.3% |
Klobuchar | 4.5% |
Steyer | 3.8% |
Gabbard | 0.1% |
Mayor Pete Buttigieg blasted Sanders in a post-caucus speech.
“I believe we can defeat Trump and deliver for the American people by empowering the American people to make their own health care choices with Medicare for all who want it,” he said. “Sen. Sanders believes in taking away that choice, removing people from having the option of a private plan and replacing it with a public plan whether you want it or not.”
Meanwhile, Democratic establishment types are not taking it well.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews likens Sanders victory in Nevada to Nazi Germany overrunning France in 1940: “It’s too late to stop him … it’s over” pic.twitter.com/6GJetLoDkq
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 22, 2020
This is all looking very familiar. The RNC establishment lost control of its nomination process in 2016, and it appears the DNC establishment is doing the same in 2020. Regardless of the outcome in November, can the parties somehow restructure? Do they have the will? The desire?
It should be an interesting four years. As for me, I look forward to the “Draft Hillary” movement preceding the Democratic convention.
Published in Elections
Maybe ordinary Democrats will figure out that talking socialism, centralizing and expanding government power, turning schools over to teachers unions, centralizing power has consequences. The Democrat party has been moving left for over a hundred years for self interested demagogic reasons. The far left always breeds among narrow small minded self interested opportunists and powerful people who know how to work the system in their own interest. Clinton was too pragmatic to go to the left of the mainstream of his party, Obama showed you can do it as long as you pretend otherwise. Now they don’t even have to pretend and while they aren’t likely to win this year, if we don’t free schools, dismember the Washington bureaucracy, they will win and destroy the country.
Any word on turnout? Is the amount of Dem voters going to the caucus larger or smaller than 2016?
I see he went a safe distance away from Nevada to declare victory.
The Workers’ Paradise is at hand, comrades!! Everyone will be equal. Everything will be free. Comrade Sanders will take care of us all. I’m verklempt.
I saw a reference to strong turnout. Not more detail than that though.
My fearless prediction- Sanders will have a plurality of delegates at the convention, but fearful establishment Dems will nominate Bloomberg, partly because he will seem more electable after he spends $2 to $4 billion on ads on all media indoctrinating everyone with the idea that he is a philosopher-king. This will divide and demoralize Dem. voters. To counter his ‘stop and frisk’ racist image he’ll pick Kamala Harris as his running mate.
He’ll lose massively to Super Trump
I fear this might be 2016 all the way
You don’t think it may be a 1972 repeat, especially given the economy?
Why is Chris Matthews still around? He is such a bird brain.
Does either party ever really have control? Unless you allow for backroom deals, which no one would support, the party rank and file elects who it think best fits its values, not the elites. It just can be shocking to the elites when they get rejected.
Maybe he’ll get a fourth house out of it. It’s what every commie leader needs.
The Black Swan is the economy going south because coronavirus, or the reaction to it, depresses the global economy. Although that might not have the same effect as the 2008 crash, since it’s a specific thing that is over there, and doesn’t exactly reinforce the idea that we should throw open our borders and give medical care to everyone.
Either is possible, but neither can be ruled out.
Sockdologizing cretinous jut-jawed noble pronouncement of an empty-headed maroon:
Who’s going to break it to him?
The beauty of the Trump Era is that it is revelatory. All the old fictions, mocked; the illusions, dispelled; the myths, debunked; our betters revealed as ordinary mortals.
Here’s how it’s going to go. Bernie will have to be allowed to win the nomination even though the DNC is desperate to prevent it. He’ll be “persuaded” to pick Hillary as his running mate to balance the ticket. Bernie wins in November. A few weeks after the inauguration, Bernie has a major heart attack and resigns for health reasons. Either that or he dies mysteriously in the night, à la Epstein. Hillary is anointed the First Woman President.
Next, Buttigieg is tapped to be vice president. The Senate confirms the appointment on a narrow 51-49 vote with the help of the Romney wing of the GOP. The House votes along strict party lines to confirm. Buttigieg transitions to female and joins Hillary in declaring the 2020’s the Decade of the Woman.
Tragically, the stock market crashes and the United States is plunged into a depression. Because of the economic crisis, the 2024 election is suspended and Hillary is declared First Woman President for Life.
Alternatively, COVID-19 decimates the world population before November and Trump is swept to victory on a wave of fear.
No. Plenty of people don’t believe it’s a good economy. Plus Trump can’t shut up when things are great because that’s when it’s time to settle an old grudge.
How can anyone think things are great when the ruling elites are openly disrespected?
It’s amusing that the standard-bearer for the eventual progressive goals isn’t a young bright charismatic person who ladles out the old borsch in new cups, but a 70s-style malcontent who regards the defeat of the Soviet bloc as a historical tragedy. This socialism crap might play with someone who had the media savvy to present it as a new idea, but no: they had to go with the angry loser everyone remembers from college as a humorless, grinding bore, ranting about the masses.
I can’t wait for my union to endorse him and applaud his forced invalidation of our contract. I mean, I can’t wait.
Or the Democrats “harvest” the votes of the recently deceased to ensure both a Bernie victory and super majorities in the House and Senate.
I predict by late spring it will “be over here”too. There’s no way to avoid it at this point. How bad is the question.
Besides, with the supply chain disruptions and lack of economic activity in China the entire worlds economy is going to take a big hit.
The Democratic base is confirming this graph as a good representation of their march to the Left.
In the recent flagship Ricochet podcast, it was mentioned a couple of times the Democrat primary is over, Sanders is the winner, and the usual “it’s too early to say it’s over” doesn’t apply.
Sorry, but it does apply. Bloomberg may play the “Hillary as Veep” card as rumored. Naming a female Veep pick early could change the dynamics of the race. Bernie might try to counter by suggesting Kamala Harris would make a wonderful running mate (or even picking her). Amy might pick Petey as Veep. Who knows?
I believe the Democrats in the smoke-filled rooms know Sanders is a guaranteed loser as well as the rest of their candidates. They may go ahead and let Bernie go down in flames so the party can regroup for 2024 . . .
They’re not liberal. We should stop using the word. They’re socialists, marxists, statists, but they are not liberal.
It is going to be 1972. Take that to the bank. Not as large a popular vote margin, and fewer electoral votes, but it will be a thumping for the Democrats.
There are far too many people taking council of their fears. We have the same electoral college distribution as in 2016. Trump will peel away 10-15% of the black vote. Private sector union employees will vote for Trump in larger percentages than in 2016. A lot of Republicans who sat on their hands and did not vote for Trump will vote for him this time. No one who did vote for him in 2016 will not vote for him in 2020. Plus a lot of moderate Democrats are scared by the Marxist lurch of the party.
Given all that? The states Trump carried narrowly in 2016 will be carried by a larger margin this time. States he lost narrowly in 2016 will be carried by Trump in 2020. And by spitting on the mainstream voters, the Democrats will shift the percentages in states they carried widely in 2016 to much narrower victories this year.
Unless something happens to screw up the economy, Trump is going to walk away with the election.
I do. I have been thinking McGovern v. Nixon ever since I saw the “Bernie takes Nevada” headline. I hope I’m right.
I’ve been telling people this for years. Call them leftists or regressives. “Liberal” does not describe their mindset or their values.
Looking at these numbers, the solution seems simple for them. 5 candidates need to drop out of that 2 through 7 category, and all of their people need to consolidate behind one of them (Buttigieg? Warren?) They would then have more than enough to stop Bernie. But they won’t do it, because of ego. And we’re really going to have an insane Bolshevik as a major party candidate. Perez is incompetent.
I eagerly await the fall debate between #NeverTrumpers Jen Rubin and Bill Kristol and #NeverBernites Chris Matthews and James Carville. Though be honest, I expect the Borg hive-mind effect to step in on the left and let those in the latter group know if they like their careers they’ll get with the program, if we get to the point Sanders’ nomination is a fait-accompli.
It will help if the Sanders people follow the McGovern playbook and go to the DNC Convention already hell-bent on not simply celebrating their candidate’s nomination, but crushing anyone they saw within their own party as standing in the way. The far left in ’72 therefore not only wrote the Dixiecrats out of the convention in Miami, they also shut out Richard Dailey and his Chicago machine out of any voice in the convention or party platform efforts, as payback for the Chicago police actions against protestors during the ’68 DNC Convention in Chicago.
As motivated as the Bernie Bros are, they’re still going to need the help of the party’s apparatus, especially in swing states against Trump, unless the economy goes to hell in a handbasket by November. Winning the nomination, going to Milwaukee and letting their full freak-flag fly on everything from socialized medicine to Israel would be one way to get the crony-capitalist/establishment wing of the Democratic Party to do what a lot of Dems did in ’72 and decide simply to sit things out and try to get the president in a different way (though the difference here is the current Dems didn’t wait until the midterms were over before ramping up impeachment efforts).
In their defense, they’re pretty sure they how they would have voted.