Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

How the Media Is Misleading Voters Into Believing Clinton Is ‘Inevitable’
By Adam Johnson, AlterNet
February 24, 2016

After three primary battles, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are tied in pledged delegates, or delegates that are decided by the voters, 51-51, and due to New Hampshire’s open primary that Sanders won overwhelmingly, he leads the “popular vote” 60% to 40%. But one wouldn’t know that after a cursory glance at the delegate count of media sources including ABC News, NPR, Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.
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The reason for this is because most media, though certainly not all, are including what are called “superdelegates” or delegates awarded to party insiders who have thus far pledged their delegates to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Given Clinton’s early “front-runner” status and deep connections within the party, it’s entirely logical why she would have such a considerable lead among the party elite, but it’s a precarious lead that, when presented without qualification, only serves to prejudice the voter into thinking Clinton’s lead is insurmountable.

The reality, as the Times’ own report makes clear, is that these delegate totals are far from set in stone: “But superdelegates could switch candidates if Mr. Sanders is the overwhelming choice of regular voters.”

Indeed, in 2008, a great number of superdelegates, having initially supported Clinton, flooded to Obama once he started to rack up major victories in the primary states. While such a scenario has yet to play out in 2016, why the media would present such an historically provisional total as something final is misleading. As several political pundits have pointed out, if Sanders were to begin racking up voter-allocated delegates, it would create a crisis in the party if the superdelegates usurped their wishes and selected Clinton in spite of her getting fewer votes. Absent a tie, as Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg notes, the superdelegates won’t decide the primary, and are thus far more psychological than material. All this essential context is lost in these simplistic graphs.

Big-name Sanders booster Mark Ruffalo cried foul Tuesday morning, tweeting, “Please set the record straight, 51 to 51 and not 502 to 70.” Other big-name Bernie supporters Michael Moore and Robert Reich also objected to the framing. Despite their partisan tone, they’re entirely right. How the media frames the horse race matters and how they’re doing so now is very misleading.

Bernie Sanders has led Hillary Clinton in this major national poll nearly all month
by Sophia Tesfaye, Salon
Wednesday, Feb 24, 2016 10:40 AM EST

According to the poll of 998 voters from across the country over five days released on Tuesday, Sanders has the support of 41.7 percent of Democrats compared to Clinton’s 35.5 percent. A Reuters/ISPOS poll conducted earlier this month, immediately following the Iowa caucus, found Sanders had jumped from 30 percent support at the beginning of the year to 43 percent support, all but vanquishing Clinton’s commanding lead. Reuters also features a daily tracking feature which illustrates that Sanders has led Clinton nationally for a majority of days in February.

And it isn’t just Reuters that shows Sanders with a national edge over Clinton. A Quinnipiac national poll released last week showed Sanders two points ahead of Clinton, as did a Fox News poll released on Friday. In fact, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages, Sanders is gaining ground on Clinton at roughly the same pace Barack Obama did in 2008 as the then Illinois senator was leading Clinton nationally by only 3 points between February 22 and February 24, 2008.

Although the next Democratic showdown does not look promising for the Sanders campaign, the Vermont senator looks to blunt any sense of momentum Clinton may have after a win in both Nevada and South Carolina by picking off crucial Super Tuesday states. Sanders has been steadily gaining ground in Georgia and Texas, which award approximately 20 percent of total delegates between the two of them.

In the critical swing state of Colorado, where Sanders once trailed Hillary Clinton by as much as 28 points prior to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Sanders is now ahead of Clinton by 6 points, according to one poll. In Massachusetts, Sanders is leading Clinton by 7 points, according to a Public Policy Poll poll conducted between February 14 and February 16. And the same PPP poll that had Sanders ahead in Massachusetts also shows Sanders with an insurmountable 76-point lead in his home state of Vermont.

With Donald Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton?
by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
Feb. 24 2016, 2:17 p.m.

Many Democrats will tell you that there has rarely, if ever, been a more menacing or evil presidential candidate than Donald Trump. “Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory,” pronounced Vox‘s Ezra Klein two weeks ago. With a consensus now emerging that the real estate mogul is the likely GOP nominee, it would stand to reason that the most important factor for many Democrats in choosing their own nominee is electability: meaning, who has the best chance of defeating the GOP Satan in the general election? In light of that, can Democrats really afford to take such a risky gamble by nominating Hillary Clinton?

In virtually every poll, her rival, Bernie Sanders, does better, often much better, in head-to-head match-ups against every possible GOP candidate. Here, for instance, is a compilation of how Clinton does against Ted Cruz in recent polls: she trails the Texas Senator in all but one poll, and in the one poll she leads, it is by a paltry 2 points.
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By stark contrast, Sanders leads Cruz in every poll, including by substantial margins in some.
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A similar story is seen in their match-ups against Trump. Although they both end up ahead in most polls, Sanders’ margin over Trump is generally very comfortable, while Clinton’s is smaller. Clinton’s average lead over Trump is just 2.8%, while Sanders’ lead is a full 6 points.
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Then there’s the data about how each candidate is perceived. Put simply, Hillary Clinton is an extremely unpopular political figure. By contrast, even after enduring months of attacks from the Clinton camp and its large number of media surrogates, Sanders remains a popular figure.

A Gallup poll released this week reported that “29% of Americans offer a positive observation about Clinton while 51% express something negative.” As Gallup rather starkly put it: “Unfortunately for Clinton, the negative associations currently outnumber the positive ones by a sizable margin, and even among Democrats, the negatives are fairly high.” Sanders is, of course, a more unknown quantity, but “the public’s comments about Sanders can be summarized as 26% positive and 20% negative, with the rest categorized as neutral, other or no opinion.”

In fact, the more the public gets to see of both candidates, the more popular Sanders becomes, and the more unpopular Clinton becomes. Here’s Quinnipiac explaining that dynamic in one graph just a few days ago.

This Huffington Post chart, compiling recent polls, shows not only that Clinton is deeply unpopular among the electorate, but becomes increasingly unpopular the more the public is exposed to her during this campaign.
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Or look at the same metric for critical states. In Ohio, for example, Sanders’ favorability rating is +3 (44-41%), while Clinton’s is negative 20 (37-57%).

Then there’s the particular climate of the electorate. While it’s undoubtedly true that racism and ethno-nationalism are significant factors in Trump’s appeal, also quite significant is a pervasive, long-standing contempt for the political establishment, combined with enduring rage at Wall Street and corporate America which – along with the bipartisan agenda of globalization and free trade – has spawned intense economic suffering and deprivation among a huge number of Americans. This article by the conservative writer Michael Brendan Dougherty is the best I’ve read explaining the sustained success of Trump’s candidacy, and it very convincingly documents those factors: “There are a number of Americans who are losers from a process of economic globalization that enriches a transnational global elite.”

In this type of climate, why would anyone assume that a candidate who is the very embodiment of Globalist Establishment Power (see her new, shiny endorsement from Tony Blair), who is virtually drowning both personally and politically in Wall Street cash, has “electability” in her favor? Maybe one can find reasons to support a candidate like that. But in this environment, “electability” is most certainly not one of them. Has anyone made a convincing case why someone with those attributes would be a strong candidate in 2016?

Despite this mountain of data, the pundit consensus – which has been wrong about essentially everything – is that Hillary Clinton is electable and Bernie Sanders is not. There’s virtually no data to support this assertion. All of the relevant data compels the opposite conclusion. Rather than data, the assertion relies on highly speculative, evidence-free claims: Sanders will also become unpopular once he’s the target of GOP attacks; nobody who self-identifies as a “socialist” can win a national election; he’s too old or too ethnic to win, etc. The very same supporters of Hillary Clinton were saying very similar things just eight years ago about an unknown African-American first-term Senator with the name Barack Hussein Obama.

Perhaps those claims are true this time. But given the stakes we’re being told are at play if Trump is nominated, wouldn’t one want to base one’s assessment in empirical evidence rather than pundit assertions no matter how authoritative the tone used to express them?

More on “authoritative toned pundit assertions” later.