so, i got distracted and was slow to get going, but i'm reinstalling now.

(edit - this post seems truncated, but i have no recollection of anything else i might have put into it)

with a stalemate like this, and an inevitable outcome that most people don't want, i think the situation is ripe for a consensus candidate to appear out of nowhere and run on hope and unicorns. they wouldn't even need to have good policies, they'd just have to float above the fray. they'd just have to give people a way out of the trenches.

again: i'm not actually a voter in the united states, but what i want to see is somebody run on a positive socialist vision, without all the populist fear mongering and scapegoating. i want less blaming and more analysis. and, i want a zero tolerance policy on social conservatism.

this ought to be the status quo, but there is no candidate right now that is just a basic, textbook leftist - they all have some asterisk of some sort.

it shouldn't be hard to find a candidate that both supports universal health care and isn't opposed to technological determinism.

the deep democratic south is where northern white liberals go to die.

he should have just bought a house down there and retired.

so, i'm listening to minibeast (i'm not going, but i'm going to formulate a review) and waiting for the clock to get to 19:00. and, i'm going to post a polling analysis update.

as mentioned previously, i've withdrawn my support for bernie sanders under concerns that he's aligning with social conservatives around issues of religious identity and a general perception that he's basically a fraud. he's made it clear enough to me that he's just looking to demonize whomever it is that he thinks will help him, in the end - that he's essentially the worst kind of cynical politician, and that he fully intends to run a campaign of scapegoating and bigotry based on fear and identity politics. he wants to run on hate. so, he's really not that different from trump, and you should even expect him to use a lot of the same tactics. he's not running a meaningful socialist campaign, he's running a populist campaign that seeks to demonize a class of minorities that includes bankers, tech sector workers and queer people. frankly, i have more in common with tech sector workers and queer people than i do with mexicans or muslims, but the point i'm making is that he's using the same tactic, he's just changing the target. then, he calls other people bigots when they stand up against his own bigotry. it's a perverse farce.

so, he's a cynical reactionary, and i'm done with him. but, i'm not supporting another candidate in his place - i'm not sure what the best third party option is right now, but you can expect me to put my support behind the communist party or the green party. bernie's a fraud....

so, any sporadic polling analysis i do is going to be from a distance.

and, i have to remind everybody that there is still no real evidence that biden is fading. there is, however, some evidence that warren has peaked.

in poll after poll of state after state, there are only two people that end up on top - warren and biden. but, biden's support is stable. he has a base. warren's is wobbly and perhaps fleeting, and she's already seen her numbers start to come down quite a lot.

at this point in time, i don't see any reason to think that biden will not win the south, and i'm putting it in those terms on purpose. warren's spike has not registered south of the mason-dixon line, sanders is at best running a strong second and harris has completely caved. if he sweeps these states, he's got a clear path. we've learned this over the last several cycles.

warren and buttigieg's support are both spiking in the north, but the real story is that sanders does not appear to be winning anywhere at all. the fact that the numbers are floating around while avoiding him suggests that he's not even really a serious candidate in places like new hampshire - he has his 20% and that's it. if somebody emerges as a clear winner in the end, it won't be him. and, if the vote splits three or four ways, as it appears that it is going to, that hands biden the win.

as i mentioned months ago, the way to beat biden was to run strong in the north and overpower his southern strategy with sheer numbers. i know that people didn't like the racial implications of it, but it was the damned truth, and it is still the damned truth, today - all that sanders' attempt to outreach to blacks in the south has done is lose him support in the north, making a split more likely and a biden win more plausible. somebody still has to win the north by huge margins, and right now that seems to be impossible.

so, biden remains the clear favourite.

how can that change? the answer is that the north needs to pick a single candidate and run with it.

warren seems to have peaked, given the current field. it seems like she'll need somebody to drop to grow further. on the other hand, if she completely crashes, that will open up a space for somebody else, but the only serious alternative left is buttigieg, and that's not a rational swing. if i understand the situation correctly, those voters may prefer klobuchar, gabbard or harris over buttigieg, sanders or biden; i think what's coming out is that there is clearly a preferable female identity candidate. but, that means that her numbers may be stubborn. if she's neither likely to grow or fall, we could be in for a long and frustrating run.

buttigieg is basically running as a log cabin republican, so if his support crashes then about the only place it's going to go is to sanders, but he may have put his foot in his mouth on that point. i mentioned previously that his spike is probably a solidarity vote, but it's also potentially a frustration vote. these kinds of things are unpredictable. so, he can kill sanders by existing, but he can't win unless biden drops as that's his only source of serious new voters. i expect the numbers to scatter, eventually.

and, sanders is just flat, and is doing his best to keep himself that way, running like he's taking on the world, attacking potential allies, aligning with questionable groups, etc. the numbers are clear enough that he has little potential for growth. the question is how many people he can alienate with his bumbling incompetence, and where they end up going - which is also likely going to scatter. as mentioned, i'm likely to look outside the party altogether....

so, of the three candidates that are splitting the vote in the north, none of them seems to have potential for growth, and there's reasons to think two of them could completely collapse.

nor is there a potential consensus candidate sitting in the margins. o'rourke just dropped. yang isn't serious. etc.

so, it's hard to see what could happen that would prevent the split, short of candidates giving up and walking out. further, it's not clear that it is in the interests of a warren or a buttigieg to prevent the split - they might both be better off blocking sanders and running for vp.

so, despite all kinds of movement over the last few months, the basic picture remains the same - biden is going to sweep the south and then win on the split in the north.

i'm basically stuck for the day.

i didn't get the reinstall started last night, but it's ready to go after 19:00, which is not so far into the future, anymore. i fully expect to be booting back into the os by the morning.

for the afternoon, i'd like to be writing reviews, but i can't get into the machine, so i'm going to type a few things up here and move them over to the other blog later.

read some marx, neil.

or the history of the catholic church.

you present this as some kind of aberration. but, it's what christianity has been since the day that constantine saw jesus in the sky, and used it as inspiration to  slaughter his enemies with.

this is all that christianity has ever been - you need to see yourself in the mirror here, neil, and come to terms with it, not look away in disgust.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-neil-macdonald-trump-white-evangelicals-1.5346659

it's not clear, in the end, if people are going to interpret her as a force that built a movement or as a force that slowed one down. her numbers in the most recent election were not that different than the ones in 2008.

she did, however, get into parliament. and, her party has elected two more representatives, since.

i may have been more likely to vote green in this election if it meant voting for a different leader. but, a vote for the greens in this riding wouldn't have helped anybody much, except the ndp, who won anyway.

this opens up a struggle for the future of the party, and it's one i may find myself rather interested in - my vote is that the party moves in a direction of secular liberalism/humanism and really stresses the importance of science as a policy making tool, thereby distancing itself from the "progressive", aka the religious, left.

if the greens are to set up a clear division between themselves and the ndp, that should be the point. yes, the greens are actually serious about the climate, and the ndp aren't. but, that stems from a fundamentally different epistemology. the ndp are a part of the religious left, with historical ties in the prairie gospel and a fundamentalist sikh at the helm, today - that is their identity, it is who they are. i want an actual socialist party that roots itself in the enlightenment and the revolutions in france and spain (both failed.), and belongs strictly to the secular left, and if i have a hand in building something, that's what i'll want to be building - not a party with "progressive" values that comes out of the traditions of the christian left.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/elizabeth-may-green-party-2019-election-1.5346737

so, the copying process appears to be done, and i've made a lot of process in scratching out potential november shows.

as mentioned, the weather makes it unlikely that i'm going much of anywhere, but we'll see how i feel as time unfolds.

the next thing to do is wipe the partition out and reinstall....