The Sid Meier's Pirates! Primaries Game Day Thread

Politics and religion
1

Apologies to any Qt3 folks living in the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico for the goofy thread title. I know I should know better… ;)

Today’s primaries look like the smallest of appetizers, the most amusey amuse-bouche for the main course on Tuesday. But let’s not ignore them, either. This is 67 pledged delegates to Philadelphia, and that’s more than West Virginia or Kentucky. So…it’s a thing.

It’s also very likely to be a big thing for Hillary Clinton’s nomination, and thus also sorta newsworthy.

To look at what’s up here, we need to go back to the math. I realize that no one told you there would be math, but here we are.

More specifically, it’s delegate math. There are likely to be two separate delegate math calculations to make, and it’s only fair to show both in some detail here.

First of all, in deference to Senator Sanders, let’s not consider any superdelegates at all. That puts us at 4,050 pledged delegates on offer throughout the nomination season in either primaries or caucuses. To obtain a majority of these pledged delegates, a candidate needs 2,026. Right now the pledged delegate count stands at Clinton 1,770, Sanders 1,500.

Still here? Great!

The Virgin Islands will offer up 7 delegates today. PR will offer up 60 today/tomorrow. Clinton should do well, but allocation rules here will hurt her a bit. Unless there’s a crazy margin in the VI vote, it’ll split 4-3 for her. Puerto Rico is a little different, but even if she wins by double digits there (which is a strong possibility), the delegate break will probably be something like 34-26.

The end result is that after the weekend primaries in the Caribbean, HRC is likely to still need a little over 200 votes to win a majority of pledged delegates in Tuesday’s contests.

That…seems like a lot, right? Well, it kinda isn’t. On Tuesday, New Jersey will offer up 126 delegates, and Clinton will win 65-70 of them. The Dakotas and Montana will have 59 delegates between the three states, and Sanders will do really well and take 35-40 of them…but Clinton will win 19-20 herself. New Mexico will go with 34 delegates, and though there’s zero polling, demographics there suggest that Sanders at best can hope for a 17-17 split there.

So now let’s reconfigure the math a bit. If Hillary needs, say, 212 delegates to have a majority after this weekend, she’ll get at minimum 65, 19, and 17 from the contests listed above on Tuesday. That’s 101 delegates, leaving her 111 short.

Oh yeah. California. Duh! California has 475 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday too! To keep Clinton from gaining 111 delegates, it would take an 85-15 Sanders landslide. That simply isn’t happening. California looks like a 50/50 contest right now at best for Sanders too, and the weekend results from PR won’t help him.

And there’s other math that Sanders is pushing back against. (Continued, next post.)

2

“Other math? The dickens you say!”

There’s definitely other math involved, and that involves those superdelegates. Officially, the nominee of the Democratic party needs 2,383 delegates to secure the nomination, a total that includes supers. Currently Mrs. Clinton is at 2,313 delegates if supers are included. That means that she actually needs–according to the official rules–just 70 delegates of those remaining to win the nomination.

So now look at this weekend again. What if she takes, say 35 in PR and 4 in the Virgin Islands? That leaves her needing just 31 delegates to secure the nomination. Polls close in New Jersey at 8 pm EDT. The result isn’t likely to be close, either, and Clinton may be declared the winner there fairly quickly.

If that happens, she’ll easily have enough delegates to declare herself the nominee. She very likely will, too. And so will networks.

Sanders is pushing back at this, and hard, because polls close in California three hours after they do in New Jersey. They worry that if Clinton is declared the nominee, it’ll hold down voter turnout late in the day/evening out on the west coast. There’s probably something to that, too.

But there’s also the point that this is a semantic argument, because whether we’re counting to 2,026 or 2,383, Clinton is going to eclipse both totals on Tuesday. You can see Team Sanders’ point about not wanting to declare her the nominee without a majority of pledged delegates (yet) at 8pm EDT on Tuesday…but you can also see why that’s very likely to happen anyway, because it’ll be inevitable.

And really, this is it, the last rodeo. Sanders has painted himself into an impossible corner here. One moment his campaign talks about how unfair the superdelegates are, while a moment later he talks about trying to talk them into reversing their pledge and giving the nomination to him…even though he may be 300 pledged delegates and millions of votes behind.

And so really that’s what the primaries this weekend are about. They’re going to set the stage for Secretary Clinton to be able to (justifiably) claim victory and the nomination even before the polls close in California.

And that takes us to the intermezzo act of this drama. Clinton is sitting on a dragon’s hoard of cash to throw at Trump right now, and she and the DNC have shown signs of being willing to make deals with Team Sanders for his support. The question will be: does Bernie’s ego allow him to do that or not?

3

I sure hope so, it would look better for him and the party if, were this to happen, he took the high road.

4

If Bernie wants a prime speaking spot at the convention, he’ll need to concede soon. As I understand it, the actual roll call is on day three. The big speaking slots are the two nights before. There’s no chance the DNC will let him have one of those slots if he’s still running. They don’t want the keynote speaker calling the all-but-certain nominee a corrupt standardbearer of a rigged system.

Also, if Bernie screws this up, he’ll lose all influence within the party going forward. He’ll be an angry outsider with a ton of twitter followers but no meaningful committee assignments.

5

Elizabeth Warren in a story appearing today: “I don’t believe in superdelegates.”

Would be shrewd like Obama for Team Clinton to call for their abolishment. Just sayin’.

6

So, worst case scenario, he’s right where he started, but with a bunch more twitter followers?

I agree with triggercut that the key now is Bernie’s ego. It’s also the big unknown. I seriously think he’s been drinking so much of the Kool Aid that he might think he could actually be the nominee. Maybe he’s holding out hope for an indictment before the convention?

7

It’s wise to keep Bernie around until the convention in case of an indictment, but he can tone down anti-Hillary stuff- that said, I don’t think it will work- his supporters might even turn on him if he endorses Hillary. The question is will those supporters just want to burn things, or do they want to build a revolution Goldwater-style.

8

The caucuses in the Virgin Islands are done.

Expect results some time before Half Life 3 comes out.

9

You obviously don’t know VI politics. I’m pretty sure they knew the caucus results at least a month ago.

EDIT: ;) (just in case the snark wasn’t clear)

10

Ha! After the debacle in the VI with the Trump delegates, who knows, right?

At any rate, multiple reports that Sanders has won St. John’s.

Multiple less confirmed reports that Hillary has won St. Thomas, which has a higher population.

Waiting to see how that shakes out, but it sounds like a 4-3 delegate split at any rate, just a matter of who gets the 4 and who gets the 3.

11

VI Democrats announce that Hillary has won the caucuses there. Margin still to come, but figure a 4-3 break. Whatevs.

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HAHAHAHA! I love the 2016 election season. Just when you think “Yada yada yada,” something happens to change the calculus.

@benchmarkpol

Wow - Sanders may have trouble with viability in the VI… From the VI dem Party:

STX total
681 HC
50 BS
8 uncom

STX is St. Croix (St. John’s and St. Thomas are the other two big islands in the chain), the biggest of the three major islands in the USVI.

Need to see those other two margins, but if Sanders is unviable there, (below the threshold…which is, I guess 15 or 20%), Clinton takes all 7 pledged delegates there.

EDIT: corrected because STX is St. Croix. Which makes sense.

13

Confirmed that Clinton wins 92% of the caucus vote in St. Croix. That’s all three delegates for that district to her.

Looks like a 6-1 or 7-0 is possible. St. Thomas is the biggest island, similar demos.

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@benchmarkpol 2m2 minutes ago

Clinton wins 87% to Sanders 12%

Those are full results…

BUT–Sanders does salvage a delegate by winning St. John’s, so it’s a 6-1 split in the USVI vote.

Tomorrow will be an interesting referendum in PR on the concepts of “Better” vs. “Perfect”.

15

The little races still matter for the “who won how many primaries” narrative, even when the delegate difference is minimal. Right now, it’s all about competing narratives.

16

Someday Hillary will be President and triggercut will be complete.

17

I can absolutely assure you that if Sanders had a 300 delegate lead that I would be in full voice for getting him elected and wondering why the hell Hillary was still hanging around in the race.

And I would be wondering why Hillary fans were responding to numbers and outcomes with sore loser bitchiness, too. Just like now, but the other way around.

18

I kid, I kid.

But yeah, I mean, she’s effectively the nominee. It’s weird that people* have such issues with it.

  • nerds
19

I’m voting for Hillary mostly because the Bernie-bros have ruined r/politics. Their constant, relentless attacks on Hillary and her fucking charitable foundation enrage me and only serve to ensure a President Trump.

Fuck those guys.

20

The reason the Bernie supporters have such issues is that they see Hillary, with her corporate donations and lobbyists- as everything they think a Democrat shouldn’t be- and that she’s the status quo. The only difference between the Republican and Dem primaries, as that the Dem primaries didn’t have a ton of candidates splitting the anti-establishment vote. A good 40% of America is ready to burn the system down no matter what- the thing keeping them from gaining more influence is that it’s evenly split on social issues.

In 2008, it was a personal difference largely between Obama and Hillary. In 2016, the difference isn’t just personal, it’s more the soul of the Democratic.

I just hope the Bernie supporters decide the best long-term goal is to hijack the Dems later Trump-style instead of staying home.

You can say that there’s not much difference between Bernie and Hillary policy planks- and there’s truth in that- but here’s where Hillary’s ethics issues come into play- it allows the Bernie supporters to believe that Hillary will sell them out the first chance she gets in the name of expediency or self-interest. They might even be right. I think many Bernie supporters are actually more afraid of what a Hillary presidency will do for what they wish for long-term over what a Trump presidency will do- and they’re young enough that punting 4 years doesn’t feel like the end of the world for them- especially since many of them feel like don’t have much to lose to begin with.

For every bit of “fuck those guys” Hillary supporters have towards bernie-bros, Bernie supporters have that towards the Hillary-types. I think Hillary is going to underperform the downballot Dems by 5%. Every bit of condescension and frustration shown by the Hillary-types just reinforces the Bernie of Bust mentality. Hillary’s best play right now would be to give Bernie whatever he wants, he has the power to guarantee a Trump win at this point. Playing to the center ,despite being good most years, would be the worst thing Hillary could do right now- the center is going to support Hillary because she isn’t Trump or stay home, it’s the left she has to worry about this time.