Hear the roar get louder in your ears

[rain_gryphon]

Fox keeps running editorials from these fossilized old neocons who're convinced that now is the best chance ever to destabilize the Chinese government, so we can spread democracy. While they're tactically correct, undermining Peking's control right now is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Considering how smoothly China's last attempt at a western-style democracy went, I tend to doubt whether it's even a good long-term goal. Democracy's evangelists always tend to skip over what happened when we freed the Germans from that nasty old Kaiser's oppression as well.

*****

538's election model now shows a 37% chance of a contested convention. While I hesitate to measure myself against Nathan Silver, I still think that Warren, my initial favourite to win the nomination, still has a chance. She won't win it on delegates. I can't imagine the Democrats letting Sanders win. He'd lose POTUS, and he'd wipe out their downticket as well. Joe Biden's going to be either under indictment, or scrambling hard to avoid it, by July. Warren, IMHO, is a compromise candidate who could get Bernie's voters to turn out, without killing the downstream candidates. It would be like the second coming of McGovern for the POTUS race, but they might be able to salvage the House that way.

Comments

[pyesetz]

Last fall I too expected that Warren would be the compromise candidate, acceptable to both the rank&file voters and also the big-money donors.  But it looks like Buttiġieġ is the compromise candidate, despite the fact that he (literally?) cannot see poor people.

A Sanders win would be like the Brexit referendum back in 2016: "No way the gov'ment will ever let that pass.  Fuck, it bloody passed! Now what?"

I'm still waiting for the Democratic Party to split into Team Hillary (Eisenhower Republicans) and Team Bernie (Kennedy liberals plus former-middle-class socialists).  Maybe after Bernie's election, when a great many Clintonistas (some of whom, to this day, still praise Eisenhower's platform for how "progressive" it was) decide they cannot share a party with dirty fucking socialists even though it's the socialists who have the youth vote.  We shall see.

[rain_gryphon]

Aaaaand, day after SC, and 538 today shows a 59% chance of a brokered convention. Super Tuesday looks as though it will come close to splitting down the middle. We shall see.

[whitetail.livejournal.com]

Warren's fatal mistake (IMHO) was going full woke instead of running as the sincere moderate voice she was when she first started her political career. The party's complete lack of any semblance of centrism this time around is precisely why they are doomed.

Am also going out on a limb and predicting that Bernie Sanders will collapse and die of a heart attack sometime between now and November; maybe even while he is giving a speech. He is actually a very sick old man, and has one foot in the grave already. I think that alone should disqualifying for POTUS. But if he does manage to stay alive and win the nom, pay close attention to whomever gets the nod for VP. If the Dems under Bernie do manage to squeak out an upset win in the General, his VP has a chance of occupying the Oval Office for 11-12 years.