So, will the Democrats have a brokered convention?
The idea’s all the rage. Since Wednesday’s debate, which has been widely (and bipartisanly, for the most part) considered a debacle, a host of articles has appeared predicting that the Democratic presidential nominee will be “none of the above” and will selected by the superdelegates and some fancy wheeling and dealing at the convention after the first ballot fails to choose an outright winner.
Here’s a fairly typical article on the subject.
I tend to be hesitant to make predictions. But hey, I sometimes make them anyway. I’m going to go out on a limb and say: I don’t think so. I think the nominee will be one of the present crew, most likely Bernie Sanders but not inevitably and necessarily Bernie Sanders.
I think the Democratic leaders’ calculation is this: they don’t really have a good candidate to draft, or one waiting in the wings. Hillary’s day is over. John Kerry is another old white man; he will be having a 77th birthday prior to inauguration day. And besides, he’s got all the charisma of Michael Bloomberg. Michelle Obama doesn’t want the job. And that leaves: nobody.
Plus, they don’t want to completely alienate Bernie’s supporters, whom they will need in order to win a national election.
I think they will be concentrating on keeping the House and winning the Senate. If they throw all their resources into that and succeed, they will be able to do three things. The first is to stop Trump from nominating more judges and justices of a conservative nature. That’s a big deal. The second is to prevent the passage of any legislation that could help Trump. And the third is to continue to investigate Trump and continue to impeach him.
They hope in that way to drive Trump crazy, drive the right crazy, and have Trump go down in that big book of history they intend to write as the only president to have been repeatedly impeached. And the next time they impeach him, if they also control the Senate in addition to the House, they’ll get a majority of votes for conviction, because this is done strictly by party and not be any principle. They won’t get the requisite two-thirds for removal, but that’s okay by them if they can accomplish all the rest.
The left can wait and is patient. It’s in this thing for the long haul.
It’s really very urgent for Republicans to organize and turn out in November, not only for Trump’s re-election, but to re-take the House and keep the Senate.
There’s a Democrat here in NC running for the Senate who is a decorated war veteran, and when he gets past that resumé, his campaign is about giving stuff to people with public money. Bernie-light.
“I think they will be concentrating on keeping the House and winning the Senate.”
Has any party EVER held one half of Congress and won the other while losing the Presidency?
Mike
And the thing about brokered conventions that everyone forgets is that you’ve got to have at least three people winning delegates along the way to make it possible. People are talking about Bernie going into the convention with 35% of the delegates but if everybody except Bloomberg drops out after Super Tuesday, Bernie and Bloomberg are then splitting the 60% of the delegates that are left between them.
That means Bernie walks into the convention with probably 45% or more of the delegates and wins in the clear majority of primary contests. So any brokered convention would be little more than Bernie cutting a deal with someone like Stacey Abrams for the VP spot and, bingo bango bongo, he’s nominated on the second ballot.
Mike
The 1972 election might be indication of how things go in this election given the similarity of presidential candidate on the D side.
In 1972, 20 R and 14 D seats were up for election in the Senate. In this election the number is 23 & 12 respectively. In 1972 D gained 2 seats.
In the 1972 House election the R gained 12 seats but failed to take control of the House.
Every election cycle the pundits love to trot out this brokered convention nonsense. I was wondering how long it would take. I think they’ll be stupid and try to oust Bernie, probably by more loaded debate questions like in the Warren deal. They’ll probably try to launch more attacks through the media. If they can’y get it done that way, they’ll figure out another. I’m really concerned about the senate. I think they can easily pick up McSally’s seat, and Gardener’s in Colorado. I’m not sure what seats the R’s can pick up.
MBunge:
Just sticking to my lifetime—this may not be exactly what you mean, because in several of these cases the party didn’t take over the Senate because it already controlled both houses of Congress even prior to the election. However, take a look.
Eisenhower’s 2nd term. Democrats had gained the majority in both houses in his first-term midterm elections, and built on their majority during the same election that saw Eisenhower elected to a 2nd term.
Richard Nixon’s and Gerald Ford’s entire presidency. In Nixon’s first term, the Democrats had held enormous majorities prior to the 1968 election and kept those very strong majorities in 1968, although they lost a few seats. In Nixon’s second term, he was re-elected while the makeup of Congress barely changed and the Democrats held on to a large majority in the House and actually gained a few seats in the Senate. And this happened despite Nixon’s enormous 1972 landslide over McGovern.
George H. W. Bush’s presidency: on Bush I’s election the Democrats held onto their strong majorities in both houses of Congress. Not only did the Senate not change in party composition at all (55 D to 45 R), but the House actually showed an increase in Democrats the year Bush was elected.
Bill Clinton: had a Democratic majority for his first election but lost that majority at mid-terms in his first term. Then, while Clinton was elected to his second term, the Republicans actually improved on their majority in the Senate and held onto a strong majority in the House (losing only a few seats).
I did that pretty quickly and relied on that chart.
The most competitive contest to date in the history of the current regime of delegate selection was the Democratic donnybrook in 1984. Walter Mondale took 38% of the sum of popular votes to Gary Hart’s 35%. Mondale still won an outright majority of delegates chosen in these contests. For Hart to have taken the nomination away from Mondale, he’d have had to hold all of his pledged delegates and collared about 98% of the sum of those pledged to Jesse Jetstream and also collared 98% of unpledged ‘superdelegates’.
There is no constituency today which clusters the way the black vote does, so there will be no person to play a role analogous to Jesse Jackson.
I can’t imagine voting for Bernie but stuff like this gets me awfully close:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html
They were telling us again JUST YESTERDAY that Russia wanted Trump to win. Now it’s Bernie? The American elite would at least be tolerable if they weren’t even stupider than they think we are.
Mike
It is imprudent to make such Democratic Legislative takeover forecasts.
More Republicans than ever before have signed up as candidates.
The pro-Trump forces are enormously motivated, and a brokered Dem convention will yield many blacks and latinos sitting at home, beers in hand, without voting.
The Trump team will flood the airways with commercials quoting “A billionaire Democrat” saying what Bloomie is on record as having saying about them: they can’t be taught to work, etc..
And what happens if Bernie wins Super Tuesday? No brokered convention! You think the USA will elect or nearly elect a “democratic socialist” who will fill the House and Senate with his coattails? You must be kidding.
It’s highly likely that there will be “some fancy wheeling and dealing at the convention after the first ballot fails to choose an outright winner.”
I too think the nominee will be one of the present crew; as a compromise candidate I think Buttigieg has the best shot. If Bloomberg becomes convinced that he can’t win the nomination, he may throw his money behind Buttigieg thinking that Buttigieg has the best shot at holding on to Bernie’s supporters and thus beating Trump. Bloomberg may well see Buttigieg as another Bill Clinton with Bloomberg as his ‘advisor’.
On the other hand, the establishment dems may let Bernie take the nomination for two possible reasons; their disagreement with Bernie is over tactics, they share his goal of a fully socialistic society run by the elite. So let him try.
Second, they may be certain of his defeat, which will take the wind out of the young radical’s sails. They’ll get the blame and then be told to shut up and sit down, while their elders continue the Gramscian strategy that has worked so well. They’ll argue that in two more generations there will be far too few on the right to stop them from getting their generations of indoctrinated sheep to vote in a socialistic one party State. That there’s nothing wrong with the radical’s goals, just their impatient tactics.
I agree that the dem leadership “don’t want to completely alienate Bernie’s supporters” but not in a vain hope of winning the Presidency. The dem leadership needs Bernie’s supporters to as neo says, retain the House and gain control of the Senate.
The dem establishment leadership’s ‘5 year goal’ is to hamstring Trump in his second term and to deny Pence election in 2024 to the Presidency by spending 4 years portraying him as a religious fanatic. And, if Pence does win he’ll be another G. Bush sr. a one term President because he’s not the fighter that Trump is and he’s a ‘religious fanatic’.
Their strategy is to turn Trump’s terms into a ‘speed bump’ on the way to their Utopian dream of a one world order run by the elite. With open borders and a multi-cultural society… they’ll end wars, redistribute the wealth of any in opposition, end white privilege, drive Christian religions underground and create “new men” out of future generations.
GB,
I concur with your opinion. However, after reelection Trump (which I think is highly likely) needs to purge the Pentagon of all bho influences and the same goes for the DOJ and the alphabet ‘intelligence agencies’. I hear the weather in the Aleutians is marvelous.
Surely Bernie will win outright?
Y’all are noticing the NYTs, WaPo, and the lap dogs following them now say “Russia Russia Russia” the same way that comic book character says “I am Groot”, yes? They seem to have nothing else, or perhaps are just suffering a coincidentally common mass brain damage. Either way it’s getting to be pretty funny stuff.
Meantime, Erdogan tries to figure out how to deal with Putin’s air supremacy and gets nowhere but “Help me, Donald, help me!” “Gee, sorry, Recep, I can’t just now. Maybe you can get your new S-400s up and running though? Give that a try.”
It’s hilarious that Russia is now supposed to be supporting Sanders. I assume we can look forward to a Mueller investigation as soon as he’s elected, right?
It was only a few years ago, in 2012, when Romney called Russia our main geopolitical foe and Obama mocked him to the delight of Democrats everywhere: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” I wonder if a single one of sdferr’s lapdogs has any memory of that at all while fear-mongering about Russia Russia Russia all the time.
GB – excellent analysis, but it’s a long time to November, and I don’t count out any intervening events including the long-heralded Sweet Meteor of Death landing in the middle of a Democrat debate.
This entire contest has overtones of a modernized War of Roses, complete with kingmakers playing off both sides for their own profit.
I am curious about so many people, left and right, using the southern contraction Y’all. My parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts used that term. Now it seems to be a thing of those who want to be inside the “inside, cool crowd”. Seems Kardashian to me.
Y’all.
As I recall, Art Deco assured us a brokered convention was an impossibility or close enough. He sneered at anyone (such as moi) who suggested it, and he is now sticking to his guns.
I’d hardly claim a brokered convention was a lock, but from early on Dems/2020 has looked crazy enough that almost anything could happen and probably will.
An effin’ socialist currently has top odds by a large margin to be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/betting_odds/democratic_2020_nomination/
We’re in unexplored territory. “No one knows anything,” as William Goldman once said of Hollywood.
Cicero:
Who here made a Democratic legislative takeover forecast? I said that this is their goal, their hope, their plan, not that it would happen. It could happen, but I am not making any predictions on whether it will happen.
My prediction only had to do with whether or not the convention would be brokered and whether the eventual nominee will be among the current declared candidates.
parker
I am curious about so many people, left and right, using the southern contraction Y’all. My parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts used that term. Now it seems to be a thing of those who want to be inside the “inside, cool crowd”. Seems Kardashian to me.
As the product of a North-South marriage who has split time between North and South, it comes naturally to me. As does using some Yiddish words. (The NYT dialect quiz of some years ago nailed my place of origin very well.) I was told that Southerners settled the Illinois town my father hailed from- and both sides of my grandfather’s family came from the Shenandoah valley by covered wagon. But I don’t recall my grandparents or anyone from that town using “y’all.” It wasn’t Southern Illinois.
I am curious about so many people, left and right, using the southern contraction Y’all.
parker: I assume that’s a sorta clever ploy to avoid Wrong Pronouns which will get you attacked and maybe get you fired.
Re: y’all — I am sure it’s not because Southerners have been welcomed into the Grand Diversity Inclusion.
i was smiling when Trump showed up at the Daytona 500. I grew up (largely) in Daytona. When the races ran, you could hear the engines for miles. They sounded like a swarm of angry bees.
If you wanted to stick a pin into MAGA country, the Daytona 500 would be a bullseye.
Weii, y’all I have strong connections to eastern KY and TN. White trash deplorables clinging to our guns because we distrust any form of authority. But I am a little more mellow being the first generation born in Iowa. Plus my youngest DIL is recently confirmed to have twins in her womb. Be fruitful and multiply.
Family is more powerful than tyrants as long as individuals remain faithful to kin. Yes, I am clannish.
AesopFan,
A ‘wild card’ event could indeed change the political dynamics. Sanders and/or Bloomberg could drop dead tomorrow of a heart attack. As they both have issues in that area. As for ‘kingmakers’ who does Soros favor?
parker,
We moved to N. Miami when I was 7 when my Dad contracted a severe case of pleurisy. Enlisted in the Navy at 21 and saw the W. Pacific up close. I’ve never used the contraction y’all… but I can do a fair imitation of a southern accent.
huxley,
While we are in unexplored territory, the election of a President is national in scope. We see the crowds and enthusiasm Trump draws and we see the division on the democrat side. Thus the broad outlines of that contest are evident.
parker,
Eastern Tn is on my list of possible areas to relocate. If Montana, Idaho and Oregon is the western mecca for fly fishing, Tennessee is the eastern mecca for fly fishing. And, though I favor a good scotch, they make a pretty fair whiskey in that part of the country.
Parker, Gringo, Huxley on this interesting side topic: I did my graduate work at UGA. During that time of 5 years, without trying, I picked a bit of a Georgia accent just by osmosis. In that period (late 70s) the southern accent was strong, and I could even tell the Alabama, MS, SC and NC accents apart.
We spent this past xmas in Atlanta where our older daughter lives. It’s the first time I’ve been back to Georgia since 1981 except for passing through the airport. After 5 days there and being out in public, I remarked to my wife that I was shocked that I had YET to hear a Georgia, or even a southern accent. If I was blind I could swear we were visiting some northern midwest city. Now I know Atlanta is not what it once was, but wow…is there any native Georgians there? I didn’t hear a single “y’all”. I’d have to go to Macon, I suppose to hear an accent again.
GB,
Eastern Tennessee is beautiful. Plus it is live free or die country with excellent barbecue.
Tinnitus has kept me awake for 28 hours, now fatigue will allow me to slip into darkness. I want to say I enjoy our hostness’s acumen and the comments of at least 90% of the commentators.
physicguy,
I’m a little younger than you and had a similar experience, living in the south in my early 20s. Most folks had strong accents and I picked it up, a bit. When I first arrived the locals made tremendous sport of my very thick, Chicago accent.
Like you I’ve noticed fewer and fewer strong accents in the U.S., especially among the young. My theory is cable television and the ubiquity of media, YouTube, satellite radio…
I’m now mostly accent free, although if I’m in Chicago for more than a day I unconsciously start slipping back into my original speech patterns and dialect.
On “y’all” . . . while both a colloquial commonplace of my youth and a current part of speech of the native Crackers of SwFl (and a few Cajun inmigrants here of my acquaintance) amidst whom I live, in this particular instance the proximate cause of its use was contractive convenience fit to phone screen typing. As to the odd users parker has heard, I’m not aware. Yes, the occasional politician (like an Obama or ClintonMrs) taking on an affect, I’ve heard that, but not any wider general disposition. So, I’m curious on that score. Too, who be the cool crowd these days, since I’m clueless about them — despite recognizing the name of one of OJ’s lawyers and, I suppose, his offspring?
As I recall, Art Deco assured us a brokered convention was an impossibility or close enough. He sneered at anyone (such as moi) who suggested it, and he is now sticking to his guns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EEVMxdFxh8
This may be just wishful thinking, but I think that the Dems are going to get a shellacking in the Congressional elections this year. Unlike the last election, I think Trump has coattails.
Roy,
From your lips to God’s ears.
huxley
Re: y’all — I am sure it’s not because Southerners have been welcomed into the Grand Diversity Inclusion.
Good one!
Rufus T. Firefly on February 22, 2020 at 8:32 am said:
physicguy,
…
Like you I’ve noticed fewer and fewer strong accents in the U.S., especially among the young. My theory is cable television and the ubiquity of media, YouTube, satellite radio…
* * *
People speak with the accent they hear growing up, and I think broadcast media have certainly contributed to that narrowing of the varieties of spoken discourse.
However, the larger Southern cities have all seen a steady increase in the number of residents NOT born in the local area, or even state & region.
It was noticeable in Texas as far back as in the 1970s, especially after Houston became a megalopolis, but I recall people even before that referring to Dallas as being full of Damyankees.
As to parker’s question: English is one of the few languages lacking a proper second-person plural, and “y’all” fills the niche.
Thanks for spelling it correctly, by the way.
PS to sdferr: the correct Texan grammar would be “all y’all are noticing the NYTs, WaPo, and the lap dogs following them” but I have no quarrel with your assertions.
If you want to acquire a reasonably authentic Texas accent, you can pick on up rat cheer.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6802184-illustrated-texas-dictionary-of-the-english-language
“If you want to acquire…”
I had one from first speech to age 7 plus a bit as we’d moved from Dallas-Ft.W to DC (Va), AesopFan, whereupon Tx faded away gradually (save for brief returns to visit G’parents those next couple of years). Va accent was acquired just as gradually as Tx faded I’d guess.