clinton got ~270,000 votes in 2016 and about 40% of them were black, as per the previous calculation. so, she got ~ 108000 black votes.

with 99% reporting, it looks like biden is going to get less than 260,000 votes and about 35% of them were black. so, that's ~ 91000 black votes.

you need to make up margins of ~20000 to win these states back, not lose them.

biden won categories - like "prefer switching to single payer" - that don't actually make any sense, indicating that it's questionable that some of these voters really even understood what they were voting for, and may have just done what clyburn told them to, perhaps against their economic interests.

this is not how democracy is supposed to work. you're not supposed to ask your congressman who to vote for, you're supposed to look at the issues and work it out yourself.

so, i hope that this is the last election like this in south carolina where one person appears to wield a veto on the outcome, and that south carolinians take the process more seriously, in doing their own research, in future elections. and i hope that, in 2024, a majority of them will know how to fucking read - and will put it on clyburn's footstool or gravestone if they don't.

but, these kinds of absurdities aside, biden's numbers are not impressive. only 56% of the turnout was black, and he only get 61% of it. so, about 35% of the total vote was black and voted biden, and about 13% were white and voted biden - indicating you should expect him to settle somewhere around 48% if the exit polls are close, and that's about right.

clinton and obama got over 80% on higher than 60% turnout. that means over 40% of the electorate was black and voted for them. clinton also did dramatically better with white voters. she got over 70%, indicating she got almost three quarters of them. this cycle, that has split up between buttigieg, sanders, warren and klobuchar, with buttigieg getting the highest share of it.

this is important, because it's the crux of the argument for his electability - he can excite blacks, and get them to turnout, overturning small margins in important states. ignoring the reality that blacks in detroit and milwaukee will probably vote for bernie in larger numbers anyways, he just debunked his own propaganda, by failing to match the numbers of the person that supposedly couldn't get the numbers up enough.

and, what of buttigieg? well, he did sneak over 15% in the exit polls with white voters, which is what i suggested was a possibility. but, it doesn't seem like they were concentrated strongly enough anywhere to get him any delegates.

this results aren't particularly surprising, but they are actually underwhelming for biden.

and, again, sanders needs to be concerned about youth turnout - and may want to ask questions about those closures i pointed out.

i'm not willing to change my narrative yet because i don't think that biden gets much of a bounce from this, or that it changes the trajectory of the race, much. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/exit-polls-2020-south-carolina-primary/

true or false:

communists believe in the abolition of the state.

so, what have i been doing?

i've been sitting in front of this chromebook since i got back on thursday morning, trying to pivot and kind of failing to do it. i guess i got distracted by the need to make some calls, then got lost in the primary....

i also got lost in the need to eat up a lot of fruit before it started rotting, as i overbought a little for the month of february. that means i've eaten a few days ahead...

the weather is going to turn over this week, maybe for good. let's hope so. i'm eager for spring.

i've cleared the show listings out until wednesday at the earliest and probably until next weekend. as i've eaten a few days ahead to clear out the fridge, that also means i won't be getting a start on groceries until mid-week or later.

so, i'm going to get the reimage started, clean up the kitchen a little, take a shower and park myself in front of this thing for the next several days, with the intent to get some actual work done.

one question, though...

obama won razor-thin margins on the back of a total dominance of a specific minority, and historic turnout within it.

that was never sustainable, and anybody trying to recreate it is delusional. 

my point here is not about representation, i believe in democracy, and i think everybody's interests should be heard. my point is that biden's electability argument actually took a major hit, here, if you look at the numbers properly. 

if you have to accept the inevitability of a decrease in black turnout in the post-obama era, and the numbers are in, now - you do - then you're going to need to find some other way to win.

i wish that sanders was winning large numbers of latin voters in states that matter, more.

but, i'd consider the possibility of winning arizona on the back of strong latin-speaking support to be much higher than the possibility of getting black turnout up in milwaukee. if you want to win wisconsin back, you have to grapple with the actual demographics - this trump card of 99% black support across the board for the black candidate is over.

no.

stop.

the argument was that clinton lost because she couldn't get enough black voters out, right? i'm not sure how actually right that argument was - you might have been able to make a numerical case for it, but a decrease in black voters was inevitable, and it was never realistic that you'd get the same kind of turnout that obama got in 2008. iirc, obama himself saw a decrease in black turnout in 2012.

you might remember that something kind of historic happened in 2008.

but, nonetheless, if that was the argument, then biden just eliminated himself, because not only has he seen black turnout come in less than clinton had, but it's a great distance from where obama was.

i know he won. but, that numerical argument that you can beat trump if you just increase black turnout fails when your candidate is actually decreasing black turnout.

is that clear?

we knew biden was going to do well with black voters.

but, it seems like biden didn't do nearly as well as clinton did, let alone as well as obama did. it's not yet clear if he got over some imaginary line or not.

- black turnout seems to be down, overall

- biden's percentage of that reduced black vote is much lower than clinton's, more than 20 points lower

- youth turnout appears to be down

sanders has every right to be crushed, and he sounds crushed. he just spent five years campaigning here, and might not crack 20%. but - and i'm sorry - he only ever had one tactic, which was to split the vote, and he refused to take it, instead insisting that he could win the votes of people that have made it clear for his whole life that they don't like him.

if black turnout ends up down across the board, that pulls biden's argument out from under the rug. i never thought this was a good argument in the first place. but if your argument is that biden is required to maximize black turnout, and he comes in with decreased black turnout, he's clearly a losing candidate in the general. so, i'd like to see a breakdown of white voters, who the numbers state are the more important demographic in the general.

the most important takeaway here is that biden wasn't able to get black voters out in high numbers.

if these numbers hold, biden will get a lot of delegates, but i don't think it will give him much of a bounce, and i'd still expect him to finish fairly far down the list in most states on tuesday.

let's see if we get any polling...

the actual reality is that there was actually a very large number of north americans of german descent that supported the nazis in world war two, and we had to go through a kind of denazification program to try and integrate them, a process that was only partially effective. it's shocking to say it now, but the nazis were actually quite popular here, within certain ethnic groups. while this denazification was happening, these people claimed they were being discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens - a claim that was no doubt sometimes actually true. yet, today we recognize that their sympathies were wrong, even as we question how they were treated, and wonder if mistakes may have been avoided. we realize that it was necessary to do something to stamp out this ideology as best we could.

i wasn't alive back then, but i would suspect that the contemporary support for islamicists in the middle east amongst arab-americans draws a very strong comparison to the support that german-americans had for the nazis in the 30s and 40s, and that a similar program of deislamification is going to be required. this may not always result in savory policies, they will no doubt cry discrimination and they will often be right. but, we will look back at the process as necessary to eliminate or at least drastically reduce the prevalence of a particularly vile strain of thinking from civilized society. it's going to take some people that are willing to take tough and potentially unpopular choices, and they are likely to be reversed by the courts, but you can't just let this run rampant, you have to combat it. and, with the right types of campaigns, we can win this struggle.

if you sort through this, i am consistent on this point - i have strenuously rejected the false dichotomy that the media and certain politicians (funded by specific agents.) wants to set up between islamism and nazism, and have rather gone out of my way to draw parallels between these two systems of thinking. if you condemn one, you must condemn the other - and you should treat proponents of these ideologies more or less interchangeably, because they are basically the same.

so, you can put my comments into that kind of perspective.

i think these islamicists need to be wiped out, and i think you're on the wrong side of history if you're in disagreement with me.

i don't fear the russians. really.

i like to poke fun at them, though.

i'm going to get hit by a tornado from their weather modification systems....

vodka best medicine, sterilize digestive system.

why russia not have case? let me tell you why, it's because russia is strong! when americans get stuffy nose, they go cry to doctor, hand out week's pay for silly medicine that not work, maybe die of irony. ha! in russia, we just give the kids vodka, drink borscht and get rest.

no, really.

i'd suspect there are cases in russia, they're just too stubborn to get treated. and, they might be right, too.

if i catch this, i'll probably shrug it off, too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/russia-hasn-t-had-any-new-coronavirus-cases-why-is-that-1.5479374

"you should believe men!"

"no, you should believe women!"

fuck. i don't believe either of you. i want you to prove your fucking case.

see, this actually strikes me as facile bickering.

which one do i believe? no - that's the wrong question.

which one can produce credible evidence is the right question.

i haven't looked into the case and have no opinion on the matter, other than that i think this debate is stupid, from both directions.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/chris-matthews-hardball-sexist-comments_n_5e597097c5b6beedb4eae952?ri18n=true

who is to blame for this shit, though?

her name is hillary clinton.

this is right from the un:

The humanitarian crisis still unfolding in Syria will probably deteriorate in a catastrophic manner unless the global community swiftly unites and mobilizes all tools to end the nine-year-long conflict in that country, senior United Nations officials told the Security Council today.

translation: the nato-backed islamic terrorists on the ground in idlib are on the cusp of defeat by a russian-led coalition of secular nationalists, and intervention in the guise of humanitarian aid is required to prevent total defeat.

it's a last ditch, desperate strategy, and it means they're almost done.

they even tried this with isis at the very end...which i found enraging....

any support toward the nazis on the ground in idlib will just result in an extension of this war.

if you want this war to end, which is what the syrian people want, then you should stand with the syrian government as they carry out their final anti-terrorist operations, and clear the area of the remaining nazi forces.

and, as westerners, we should all be embarrassed about where our government and press have stood and continue to stand on this.

so, i want to kind of translate this because the mainstream press, which now includes many of the sources i used to rely on, is just going to lie to you about what's going on.

idlib is essentially a terrorist safe haven - it's not isis, not by a long shot, but it is the closest thing remaining to it. in my perspective, wiping out what's left of these islamo-fascist nazi militants is just the last step in eliminating isis - so i support carpet bombing the region, with the intent to inflict a maximum death toll. if they're still there, they're not civilians, they're active participants, and i don't support taking nazis hostage, i support killing them on the spot. they need to be wiped right off the face of the earth.

the thing is that these nazis that are left in idlib are also the ones that we supported, in the west, via aid, mostly via turkey.

what the west, and this was under clinton's direction when she was secretary of state, tried to do in syria was essentially a replay of reagan's attempt to drive the soviets out of afghanistan, and while the end outcome appears to be essentially the same, it had a higher likelihood of success. nobody should have supported these groups, in contrast to assad - assad has some issues, sure, but he's at least a secularist. there's no justification to support islamicists over secularists, ever, under any circumstance  - that's just reactionary, plain and simple. but, had these groups not broken into pro-turkish and pro-saudi factions and started fighting each other, it probably would have worked.

what ended up happening was that the pro-saudi faction turned into isis, and the pro-turkish faction got sort of stranded. the syrians & russians focused most of their attention on isis, initially, and eventually managed to defeat them (although the western press gives the credit to the kurds, who will be utterly destroyed if the saudis ever get their way in the area). now, they're turning their attention to the turkish-backed forces in idlib, in an attempt to actually end this war and reassert syrian territorial integrity.

i've been clear that i am hoping that the russians will insist upon a shift to civilian power in syria, when the time is appropriate for it, and i do believe that they probably will.

in the mean time, we've had a kind of shift of american policy. the amount of support that the saudis were providing to isis was always this shady issue, with conflicting reports and even some straight-up propaganda about them helping to fight them. the turks have not felt the need to hide their support for the rebels in idlib, which are ideologically essentially the same, and have even tried to resort to manipulating public opinion by framing the issue as a humanitarian crisis. this has accompanied a shift in american policy - withdrawal from syria - that i was initially cautiously optimistic about, but i now see is a realignment with the terrorist forces to try to destabilize the russians.

so, what these nato voices are doing here is standing up for their assets, and they're doing it by using a variety of methods: propaganda about humanitarian catastrophes, cynical ploys at the united nations, appeals to temporary ceasefires, etc.

but, the reality on the ground is that the turks are in a stupid position and need to get out - it's a matter of time, and they're playing a dangerous game that they can't win.

i don't think that these people can be reformed; it's an ideology at the root of the problem, a belief system that needs to be eradicated. the entire civilized world needs to be united against this. it's a shame that we're on the wrong side of it.

so, expect this to continue for a while, but realize that the syrians are on the cusp of victory, and the americans would be best to encourage the turks to just get the fuck out.

https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/un-security-council-to-hold-meeting-on-syria/news

i guess the other explanation regarding the poll closures is that bloomberg paid somebody off to stop biden from running up the score.

the major beneficiary of this would of course be sanders. 

something else to keep in mind is that it is sometimes hard to vote in the united states if you're black, and, contrary to public perception, those concerns continue to be real in the democratic primary, as well.

in past years, i would have suggested that this would benefit biden at the expense of sanders, as they'd have done the research. this year, i'm not convinced that this is where the establishment has it's thumbs. it's a good experiment, actually. if biden ends up with 60% of the vote, you'll know why; conversely, if sanders pulls out a surprise upset, you may want to start asking some questions about voter suppression.

but, if there are accessibility issues, it will certainly help the candidates that do better with white voters, regardless of which class of black voters gets targeted.

https://prospect.org/politics/south-carolina-closing-poll-stations-without-notice/

clinton didn't just need to win in the south, she needed to run up the score.

biden may end up winning most of these states, but i think it exceedingly unlikely that he's going to run up the score. and, that consequently won't be enough - i don't even think it will be enough to beat buttigieg.

why am i doing this?

because there's a misconception about what happened in 2016. it is absolutely true that clinton did very well amongst southern blacks, but she also did extremely well amongst southern whites, and she wouldn't have run up these huge margins in the south, otherwise - it was a broad base of support in the south that aided her, not just specifically black voters.

biden is doing well with southern blacks - i do not dispute that - but he does not appear to have that broad base of support. he is not doing well with any white voters at all, and his support amongst latin speakers appears to be both middling and extremely tenuous.

south carolina is overwhelmingly black in it's democratic primary because it is overwhelmingly republican in it's general disposition, and that's where all the white voters end up. i'll remind you that they can vote tomorrow if they want, but most of them won't. so, biden's dominant support in the black community will likely be decisive; everybody realizes this, i offer no dissent.

but, almost all of these other states are not majority black, and that opens up very large spaces for some of these other candidates that are polling much better than biden is amongst southern white democrats - buttigieg particularly, and potentially klobuchar.

so, this mistake that is being made is that clinton relied on blacks, and it's wrong - she relied on the south more generally, and if you were to pull the whites out of her southern coalition, she'd have faltered, just as she would have if you had pulled the blacks out. she needed both, and she got both.

the evidence seems to suggest that biden will not be able to reproduce that cross-racial southern coalition, and people are going to be surprised by what happens in some of these states like virginia and tennessee.

biden could still win these states, but he's going to be scraping for votes, and it could split enough to give sanders some wins in places he otherwise had no reasonable expectation to win in.

i had to nap a little.

these are the existing popular vote numbers:

sanders - 28.49%, 163082
buttigieg - 23.28%, 133252 
klobuchar - 15.24%, 87250

warren - 12.94%, 74040

biden - 11.83%, 67695

i know that it's the delegates that matter, but this is maybe a better metric, to understand what's going to happen in these states on tuesday that have barely been polled at all.

south carolina is the biggest state so far, it is true. and, a very, very strong showing could potentially pull him up into second place.

but, if he polls in the low 30s, he could very well win south carolina and still find himself in third in the popular vote, even if he catches buttigieg in delegates.

i don't think he's going to get a bounce, anyways. apparently, the dominant factor in the polling reversal is the endorsement of jim clyburn (who is 79 years old.), which is very specific to the state, itself.

but, he's going to have to win by a convincing number to even catch up to second, going in to super tuesday - and then he has to face a broader, non-black electorate that he has tended to poll 4th or 5th in.