Feeding The Fish

If you thought I was done with the insane rambling of reddit users, you were wrong! Currently at the No. 2 spot is this classic:

To the nearest percentage point, Hillary won PA by 9%, not 10% - a difference with important psychological ramifications, and one that is being misreported

OMG GUYS SHE WON BY 9% NOT 10%!!!!! THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE!!! WHY IS NO ONE REPORTING THIS!!!!!

To prevent this happening in the future I recommend that we switch to a base 16 maths system so it’s less likely we’ll run into this ‘is it single or double digits’ mess again.

I’ve been poking around dailykos and there seems to be this strange idea that bringing up the popular vote is Clinton changing the rules: this is flat-out untrue. The rules state that a candidate needs 2,025 votes to win the nomination, at this point we know that neither candidate can reach that number without superdelegates and there are no rules on how superdelegates should vote. It’s generally assumed they’ll go with electability tempered by legitimacy (i.e. if a candidate entered with a reasonable lead, they’re unlikely go with the other one because it’s they personally consider them more electable).The reason popular vote is important is because if Obama wins narrowly on pledged delegates and Clinton wins narrowly on popular vote, neither one can claim an overwhelming legitimacy to the superdelegates.

Clinton winning the popular vote doesn’t mean that superdelegates have a moral obligation to vote for her, it means they’re freed from the restraint of having one candidate being the obvious favourite of the electorate and can go with whoever they feel is more likely to succeed in November. These aren’t new rules: these are what the old rules mean when you get two candidates neck and neck going for the finish.

Huh, something interesting happening here. Clinton currently seems ahead in the popular vote. At the end of the day neither candidate can win solely through pledged delegated at this point and raw popular vote is a more democratic measure of support than delegates (mostly due to caucuses which tend to have a far lower turnout, but will still deliver the same amount of delegates meaning a far smaller group decides the outcome). Walking into the convention with a lead in the popular vote would be a major plus for Clinton as it casts doubt on Obama’s legitimacy and allows factors like electability to be brought up without being an override of the democratic process.

If nothing else it drives home something that Obama supporters seem to keep forgetting, the Clinton supporters are not a small minority in the party that can be ignored.The worst that Clinton supporters are doing is saying that Obama is the wrong Democrat, what Obama’s supporters let fly a lot is that Clinton isn’t a real Democrat. Seeing as Clinton isn’t a real Democrat, what does that say about the half of the party that looked at the choice and choose her? Say all you want about Clinton creating a divide at the top of the party, Obama’s supporters seem content to push that divide right down to the bottom.

(h/t Reclusive Leftist)

UPDATE: ABC have since updated the page and now makes it clear that this lead only exists when the voters from Michigan and Florida (where Clinton was the only mainstream candidate on the ballot) are included.

Part of the trouble of relying on sites like reddit for news is you have to wade through the piles of crap and misleading links the Obama Fan base throw up. No smear is too demeaning, no summary so misleading that it won’t get voted up. This, sadly, is my generation.

Story one the day after Clinton wins Pennsylvania: NY Times: It’s time for the superdelegates to end Hillary’s destructive campaign.

Note that’s not exactly what the article says, tt says that to maintain support with superdelegates she might have to tone down the negativity. To my mind the most destructive thing going on is that lots of people keep voting for Clinton, which is crazy really: don’t they know she can’t win and they should vote for Obama so their vote makes a dif- oh hang on a minute.

Honestly to read sites like reddit you’d think that Obama was utterly above all this but corrente makes the case for the divisiveness of the Obama campaign:

But as the primary wore on, a bitter irony appeared: the Obama campaign turned out, itself, to be extremely divisive: It’s the Obama campaign that smeared the Clintons as racist, not the other way round. And it’s the Obama campaign that’s struck a constant theme of misogyny, not the other way round. It’s the Obama campaign, with the “cling to” remark, that dissed Democrat working class voters, by denying them the same “complex” and “nuanced” choices that Obama, and his “creative class” supporters, are all too aware of having themselves. And it’s Obama’s online supporters who don’t consider Hillary a real Democrat. What happened to the Unity? Apparently, “unity” only applies to Obama supporters. Aren’t we all too familiar, already, with what happens when whoever’s in the White House has an attitude of “You’re with us or against us?” And if the Obama campaign and the creative class think they can win in November by dissing half the base, they’re delusional.

Something spot on there is the real problem with the ‘bitterness’ remark, which has given everyone a chance to go out to these rural places and find out that, wow, these people are bitter after all! Obama can do no wrong! Of course, the real problem isn’t ‘bitterness’ (that wasn’t a surprise to anyone) but the ‘cling to’, which says that their culture and beliefs is something they wouldn’t bother with if they were just that bit richer. Thus the most stupid bit of this manufactured controversy that they keep reporting on the uncontroversial part!
Next good one today is: Clinton won by stoking the fires of racism. I will not vote for her. Which is interesting, seeing as the article linked doesn’t even mention Clinton.

My favourite one which was a few weeks ago (I can’t find the link) was a story about how Clinton supporters on reddit were voting down anti-clinton stories. First off, you’re doing an awful job with that guys! Second: That’s…exactly the point of sites like reddit, people vote up and down stories, that’s how it works. The best bit was when a commenter called ‘censorship’ on people using the site the way it’s designed to be used.

I’d find the Obama campaign much more attractive if my main interaction with his supporters wasn’t with the glazed eyed denizens of the internet. Now to be fair, there are commenters who call bullshit on the more dubious stories, but they tend to be in the minority. Occasionally you even get someone skeptical about ‘change’ and ‘hope’! HOPE HATERS!

As mentioned before McCain believes in the much debunked connection between autism and vaccines,  now it turns out both Obama and Clinton do as well. I can just feel the hope filling me.

Are you having trouble working out exactly what all those statistics on who voted for who actually mean? Here’s a handy guide for working out what Republican voters in open Democratic primaries mean:

No. 1: If Republicans vote for Obama, it’s a sign he’ll bring unity to the fragile and divided country.

No.2: If Republicans vote for Clinton, it’s confirmation that she’s the reincarnation of Hitler.

There, isn’t that simple?

Micheal White:

Yet the same church leads the charge against abortion and contraception, gay marriage and gay adoption, campaigns which are often the cause of dreadful misery and unhappiness, especially among the world’s poor.

No one denies that Rome remains the market leader, the Tesco of Christianity, so lesser churches follow suit. Protestant fundamentalists and born-agains across the American south take a similar line. So do Muslims and the Methodist George W Bush.

It’s all part of the revival of faith and I’m not knocking it since secular fundamentalism managed to do even more harm in the 20th century.

There ya go, no sense bashing harmful religious practices because as we all know, atheism is far far worse. Well, maybe it was one atheist, but Stalin was so bad we can’t take the risk. Just like Hitler’s catholicism completely invalidates anything any other Catholic has said or done, right?  Right?

Bonus points for ’secular fundamentalism’, I’m not quite sure what it means (someone who takes it as a fundamental that mixing church and state is a bad idea?) but it sounds pretty scary.

Obama talking about AIDS treatment (Via Shakespeare’s Sister):

But I also think that — keep in mind, women are far more likely to be infected now between the ages of 18 and 25 than are men. And that’s why focusing, for example, on the status of women, empowering women, giving them microbicides, or other strategies that would allow them to protect themselves when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex, all those things are going to be just as important, as well.

Ah! Exactly how I want a potential leader of the free world to talk what UNICEF call a rape epidemic - with clumsy euphemisms!

Given that he’s supposed to be the greatest orator ever to grace this world I sometimes in certain situations find myself not unable to be concerned with the number of times he’s sprouting ass-backward stuff like this.

Here’s a comment from Unity on Liberal Conspiracy:

2. You evidence for a misogynistic ‘campaign’ against Clinton is what? A bit of blog chatter from the kind of people who consider NASCAR to be their national sport?

Look, the American right loathes Clinton because she’s a Clinton and not because she’s a woman - gender doesn’t really come into it and I’d be willing to bet that if Bill were running for elected office then some bright spark would still have come up the ‘CUNT’ acronym…

Look, I love Unity as much as anyone, but anyone who says the media and other groups aren’t guilty of frequently throwing misogyny against the Clinton campaign really hasn’t been paying attention. Evidence? I don’t even have to dig that hard, Melissa McEwan has a nice sum up:

In the same world in which that woman turning sexism on its head is framed as Odd News, and in which that woman is called a bitch to the amusement of the other party’s nominee, and is called a she-devil and depicted with horns, and is heckled by jerks demanding she iron their shirts, and is reduced to tea parties and her response to that demeaned as “really be[ing] on edge,” and in which she is cast as a feminazi monster, and has her ability to withstand the rigors of the presidency questioned with an unflattering image, and has a nutcracker designed in her image, and finds her moment of candidly expressed emotion turned into a national story using dog-whistles once removed from “hysterical,” and is routinely accused of playing a victim and of playing the gender card, often erroneously, and is said to need a copy of The Rules, and is accused of having a career only because her husband cheated on her, and is subjected to the swill of online hate groups with names like “Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich” and “Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Run for President, She Should Just Run the Dishes,” and is regularly featured in sexist political cartoons, and is challenged by a 527 calling itself C.U.N.T., and is called the Crybaby-in-Chief if she shows emotion, and can’t bloody win no matter what she does, but only in the eyes of misogynist wankers because SHE’S. STILL. HERE.

And so I’m actually contributing something myself here, an Obama quote: “I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.” Yes sir, no hidden meaning to pick out there. Perhaps this sheds some light on why people find it easy to see the sexism in a picture of Clinton with ‘CUNT’ spelled out behind her.