i've referred to this in the past as the "princess paradox".

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2018/05/aug-31-2011-so-i-experienced-princess.html

i am an equal opportunity hater - i will hate you the same, regardless of your characteristics.

it is true that i refuse to give women any sort of deference due to their gender, and i am aware that this often rubs them the wrong way.

but, this is a reflection of my base gender egalitarianism - and their reaction is a reflection of their societal expectations, as brought on by years of sexist conditioning. 

and, i simply don't care how they react.

actually, i think that the idea that there's a gender imbalance on this page is empirically wrong.

it's kind of like accusations that i have a specific problem with islam. yes, i have a problem with islam, but it's only more intense than my problems with christianity or judaism in terms of there being a difference of scale. where is there a christian isis? there isn't one. well, there's some awful christian groups in africa, but even they really pale in terms of barbarity. but, i would advocate carpet bombing militant christian fundamentalists, too. you can take my word on that.

with the gender thing, i think you're just cherry-picking the data. i don't deny being pretty vicious towards women, but i'm also pretty vicious towards men, and perhaps you notice one more than the other due to the social conditioning - you're supposed to be more respectful to women, and i thoroughly reject that as sexist. i insist on being just as rude to women as i am to men, and that kind of frames the issue in a skewed manner. but, if you look at the issue closely, you'll see there's no actual bias, and that my attacks are pretty much 50/50. probably the single biggest target of the most vicious criticism on this page has been justin trudeau. 

so, some people may try to lie to you and confuse you and deceive you about that.

don't listen to them. consider the source...

better yet, sort through this writing on your own and see for yourself.

the intercept, huh?

this is very similar to my own analysis, this perception that everybody going back to biden on three second's notice doesn't make any sense. he doesn't mention that warren is a more rational end point. i'm sure he's thinking it.

but, it's an interesting deduction at the end - that they've forgotten why they rejected biden in the first place. ryan and i both give this class of voters a lot of credit for being independent thinkers; maybe ryan pulled something out about the effects of technology on our memories.

it still doesn't explain the totality of what happened. it's hard to even use that argument to get to a plurality, let alone an almost complete absorption of not one but two candidates on mere hours notice.

it also doesn't explain the total switch in direction. both buttigieg and klobuchar were insistent they were going forward, until mere minutes before they dropped out. there must have been a memo from head office....

i would suspect that the position that warren is angling for is education secretary.

"bob dole doesn't think jessica murray is funny."

Warren associates and the camp of former vice president Joe Biden also had talks about a potential endorsement if she drops out, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

the prisoner's dilemma is a model, and it applies in a wide variety of scenarios. i pulled out games being played between warren and klobuchar, warren and buttigieg, buttigieg and klobuchar, buttigieg and biden, biden and bloomberg and ...

i've never described warren and biden as being in this relationship, and i've actually never described warren and sanders as being in this relationship, either. sanders and biden are quite clearly not in a prisoner's dilemma.

so, the usefulness of this model is indeed coming to an end, except for one corollary - which is that, after repeatedly choosing competition over cooperation, anybody would be daft to actually trust elizabeth warren.

warren has previously demonstrated, repeatedly, that her self-interest is more valuable to her than her principles. you will recall that while she applied to be clinton's vp in 2016, she did not actually endorse bernie sanders.

bernie will take her in, because he's a fool.

but, the operative question here is if biden will have her or not; if she ends up endorsing bernie, it's going to be because biden tells her he doesn't want her around.

and, biden probably doesn't need her, at this point - she pissed away all her leverage by waiting too long.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/warren-sanders-allies-scramble-to-find-her-an-exit-ramp/ar-BB10KwF6

completely unjustified, and a ridiculous abuse of power that should be punished severely at the ballot box.

i would hope that the aclu is reacting properly, but they're kind of a misnomer, nowadays.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-declares-coronavirus-emergency-amid-worries-about-cruise-ship-passengers/ar-BB10L3EY

but, just to finish the thought on something i said yesterday.

do you remember, in the debates, when castro accused biden of not remembering what he said five seconds ago, and everybody gasped but kind of realized he was right?

that's what the general is going to be like.

and, trump will not be as gentle as julian castro was.

...but the map is all of sudden looking kind of hostile to bernie sanders.

he has to win michigan. that's not obvious, anymore.

and, he has to win washington, which is not obvious anymore, either - although probably a safer bet.

there are still more delegates to be awarded in states that sanders did well in (california, utah, colorado) than states he split (texas) or states he lost (tennessee).

the partial results currently have him down 65 delegates. he could actually make that up, by the time everything is counted.

it's worth pointing out that the united states has 158 cases and 11 deaths from coronavirus, and canada has much fewer cases, but zero deaths.

germany has 322 cases and zero deaths. switzerland has 93 cases and zero deaths; the uk has 87 cases and zero deaths. spain has 2 deaths out of 228, and france has 4 deaths out of 285. there is one death in san marino. while most countries have seen few cases, the only other country with deaths is italy, which has a very high poverty rate.

if you look at just france, the mortality rate is 1.4%. in spain, it's 0.8%. put together, and it's 6/513=1.1%. add the uk & germany & switzerland, and it's 6/1015 = 0.5%. i'm not cherry-picking countries in western europe - the more countries i add, the lower the death rate gets, because there aren't any more deaths.

while there are probably unreported cases, the official numbers put the death rate in the united states at nearly 7% - 15x as high as western europe.

why is that?

could it have something to do with the health care delivery system in the united states?

this is the best argument for medicare for all that's ever existed....just look at the numbers. if you're an american, you should be embarrassed - your mortality rates are comparable to those of developing countries, not those of the industrialized world.

so, i took a nap, and i'm in for the night.

i decided yesterday that i wanted to get something to eat while i was watching the results come in, so i got most of my grocery shopping done for the month last night (and made some eggs when i got back). i finished that up with a last run this morning, before crashing when i came in.

i need to take a shower, and hopefully the laptop comes out of hibernation nicely...

the weather forecast has taken a turn towards the crappy tomorrow night, and i'm wondering if i want to go out at all. we'll see tomorrow.

i'm sorry to say it, but i watched most of the debates and...

trump is going to rip biden to little pieces. all of those pauses, trail offs, etc - trump will mercilessly annihilate him as a senile nincompoop, and even lifelong democrats will be forced to agree that, while trump's policies may be scary, biden is just not fit for the job.

it's going to be one of those elections.

bob dole is actually still alive, though.

woah.

"bob dole doesn't think he's much like joe biden."

but, with bloomberg gone?

bernie is going to just get smashed in some of these remaining states, like it's 2016 all over again.

and, he's not doing well in the north, like he was then, either.

i do not want warren to drop. clearly, she should drop. but, it's not going to help sanders the way he thinks it will..and it's going to set up this disastrous choice, from a general election perspective.

say terrible things about clinton if you want, i have and will again, but she was a smart, educated, capable woman that had the ability to attract all sections of the upper class. she did well with the nouveau riche, with old money, with educated professionals, etc - she was just awful on actual policy and it freaked out a lot of wonkish types, on the left.

biden is a friendly, apish dunce - a village idiot, more in the style of a gerald ford and, kneejerk reactions aside, he's just not going to maintain the support of these necessary swing demographics, even if he somehow managed to shock and awe them into it for the short term. he can't speak their language. he's really not one of them.

if the party walks down this path, where it forfeits the educated professional in favour of appealing to the low information voter, it's going to lose all of the most important districts in november. it won't even be close.

if warren reminded me of dukakis or adlai stevenson, and ran the risk of being smeared as a liberal egghead, what biden reminds me of is a bob dole or a john mccain, and runs the risk of getting completely shunned by actual smart people.

they need to keep the warrens and the buttigiegs kicking around because they need to have a way to appeal to these people.

bloomberg dropping does not surprise me.

he has better things to do than waste his time talking to voters.

i can imagine there were probably some people that had no idea, and got hit with an unexpected hydro increase, from a government that campaigned on decreasing hydro costs. if they voted for them, that would have been a nice shit sandwich.

but, i actually understood what they did and adjusted.

and, now i should get compensated for that....

so, remember when i was freaking out about the electrical, and how they changed the formula to undo the rebate?

i've mostly avoided the issue by not doing laundry, which has let me kind of balance the usage out to roughly zero. it's been a dollar or two one way or the other.

well, i got a letter in the mail letting me know that this actually wasn't a nefarious ploy but an "honest mistake" (this is the doug ford government and, for all his phony populist rhetoric, the tories are not known for caring much about poor people - it's actually not hard to believe that it never crossed their mind), and they've:

1) fixed the formula to apply the discount before the rebate

2) will recalculate the last several months worth of usage and send me a lump sump credit

given that my electrical has legitimately gone way down, this could be almost enough to wipe out the balance. and, if i understand the change correctly, i should actually now have much more space to consume without it hitting the limit.

which would be great.

as i want to start using some of this gear soon....

now, if i could get a similar letter from the cra about the carbon tax...

so, what's the summary, then?

- the exceedingly compact movement of buttigieg & klobuchar voters to biden in the fourth northern states that voted today raises some serious questions about the sanctity of the results. however, sanders' showing was fairly weak, anyways, after months of neglect - which is kind of exactly why clinton lost there, isn't it? biden may have cheated, but he's only going to get away with it because sanders has lost enough support in his actual base to allow him to.

- while biden won the south, which was widely expected, he did so with much weaker levels of support than clinton did, partly due to bloomberg showing up and splitting the vote. bernie was not able to take advantage of that anywhere within the south. worse, he squandered the opportunity by polling poorly in the north. the dropped candidates are not likely to have performed very strongly in these states, so i didn't look at the consistency of the results very carefully.

- the west does not appear to be suffering from the same anomalies that are appearing in the north, and the results are more or less in line with expectations.

after being beaten in the north, fairly or not, bernie should be crushed and defeated. however, bloomberg has split the vote up enough to prevent biden from putting him away (fairly or not), and this will carry on a while longer.

however, bernie had better win a few of the states that propelled his 2016 run, and by substantive margins, or he's going to run out of states to win in and have to concede.

california would also appear to be roughly in line with the polling, including for the two recently dropped candidates. was there a lot of early voting? or is this actually hiding a last-minute spike for these candidates?

if buttigieg was flirting with viability right before he dropped, then a showing of 7% would be about in line with expectations. and, i guess these voters end up back where they were.

or, the small amount of support he had might have been very dedicated....

but, it doesn't seem like they cheated in california, or, not right now, anyways.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/california-democratic-primary-live-results/

utah is actually...not screwy. how 'bout that.

buttigieg got about half of his polling numbers - roughly what you might expect from somebody that just dropped. biden got a small bounce, not 90% of buttigieg voters. and, bernie got a little bounce, too. warren & bloomberg are roughly in line with their polling numbers.

are the mormons the truly independent thinkers, here? 

or did the biden campaign overlook this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/utah-democratic-primary-live-results/

colorado seems to be kind of weird in a lot of ways.

first, the polling was actually pretty accurate, with the caveat that buttigieg and klobuchar are not being tallied, apparently. these were apparently all mail-in ballots...

so, i'm going to withhold analysis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/colorado-democratic-primary-live-results/

all things considered, if sanders had won the important blue and purple states that he was supposed to win - maine, massachusetts, minnesota - then he'd be in a decent position, right now - because bloomberg came through and split the vote in the south.

it shouldn't matter if biden cheated or not, because sanders should have never ceded that much ground to buttigieg in the first place.

sanders didn't lose because of his policies, he lost because of poor tactical planning.

i've had a running commentary on this, and i hope it is useful to future candidates that run into this same problem of trying to find a way around these red states in the south.

what happened to bernie is kind of like what happened to the last romanov - he got involved in a pointless war brought on by his mindless ethnic solidarity for the serbs, and then had to face a revolution at home.

was the czar morally right to stand in solidarity with the serbs? well, you're ignoring the calculation of his own ambitions, as the romanovs had been seeking to swallow the slavic speaking areas of eastern europe for quite some time. standing in solidarity with the serbs over the death of the archduke was really just a cynical ploy. of course.

but, let's hope he keeps his head on for the rest of this and figures out how to get out of it.

i don't think they sing cardi b songs in church very often, bernie.

will biden win these northern states in the general?

no.

regarding the states in the south, this is nowhere near as bad as last time, and it might not be insurmountable for sanders - if he can figure out how to win in states like minnesota.

but, if michigan looks like minnesota, he's fucked....

my skepticism about the sanctity of the results aside, it had been clear for a while now that sanders's decision to focus on the south instead of shoring up support in the north was a major tactical mistake. he was never going to get all of these religious fundamentalists to vote for him, and he should have had the intuition to key in pretty quickly on the centrality of religion in the south. i heard him say things like "we have a big lead in the north and can afford to focus elsewhere", but that's just taking them for granted. you have to tend to your base, or you lose it.

he won all those states by huge margins four years ago. even with fishy results, why was a coalition of centrist candidates able to beat him in these states? why couldn't he get above 35% in states he dominated four years ago?

i've pointed this out before: he's running for commander in chief. that's a tactical mistake that a smart general just doesn't make. it's called "thinning out your troops". it's akin to fighting wars in foreign lands, instead of fixing the problems at home.

so, you can follow my arguments or reject them, but it doesn't change the reality that sanders' decision to put all of his efforts into winning in the south has backfired very, very badly. not only did he not win in the south, but he lost states in the north that he should have won very easily. this should be deeply concerning to him, as it may reflect badly on his ability to compete in a slew of other states he's expected to do well in. we may find out very soon that he's done, and this is over - not because biden cheated, although it seems as though he did, but because he didn't tend to his base, lost their enthusiasm and in the end lost their interest.

he can't win the nomination solely on the strength of hispanics and teenagers, but he ignored everybody else, and they appear to have moved on.

so, there's going to be a narrative about how sanders got beaten badly in the south, and it's inaccurate. he seems to have improved his totals in most places, and biden is not getting numbers anywhere close to the ones that clinton got - mostly due to bloomberg, who is just aimlessly splitting the vote out of vanity. if sanders does turn this around, bloomberg may find himself a rather hated person, because he's prevented biden from really putting him away.

rather, sanders got beat badly in the north - areas he was supposed to be dominant in, and this is a consequence of his tactical error of focusing resources on winning red states in the south.

this should be a lesson for the next northern liberal that tries this - don't make the same mistakes as bernie!

for right now, i want to say "if his campaign does not realize the error and course correct, it's days are numbered", but the truth is that it's probably too late.

he'll probably win arizona, though.

it's a farce. it's theatre.

i knew that.

i'm not sure bernie does...

and, yes - it is the same thing in maine, where there was not much polling done, but you have to scrounge together all of the buttigieg/klobchar/biden voters to even get close to 34%.

buttigieg was polling ahead of biden, who you wouldn't have expected to end up viable if this was done last week.

and, the other three candidates - sanders, warren, bloomberg - were all running in line with their averages. no bumps at all.

so, that's four states, now, on one night, where you have to accept that biden swallowed virtually every single klobuchar voter and virtually every single buttigieg supporter - an event so rare, that you would consider it virtually impossible (not technically impossible.) to happen even once.

what are the chances?

(1/10^6)^4 = 1/10^24.

Yotta is the largest decimal unit prefix in the metric system, denoting a factor of 10^24 (1000000000000000000000000), or one septillion. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/maine-democratic-primary-live-results/

these are the exit polls (conducted by major corporations.) for massachusetts, and tell me what jumps out at you about them.

men: 34% biden
women: 34% biden

white: 36% biden
black: 36% biden

democrats: 34% biden

independents: 32% biden

what do you notice about those numbers?

& check this one out - in massachusetts:

very liberal: 27%
somewhat liberal: 37%

conservative: 36%

listen, i'm the one that pointed out that sanders' numbers were an illusion, and he'd get leapfrogged once some weaker candidates dropped out.

but, i never thought for a second that you could just sum the totals together. i expected some bleeding, in a few directions - including towards sanders.

the math is too clean, it's without error, and, in the real world, everything is defined by error. when you see an absence of error, you expect human engineering - a designer, a creator. in the real world, there is no designer, no creator.

when you see the error dissipate, there's strong reasons to suspect it's because the results were fabricated - real results would be messy and full of error, not defined by these clean transfers of votes.

while the results of the vermont primary are not surprising, you see the same very curious result that you saw in massachusetts - biden got 90%+ of the buttigieg/klobuchar vote, while warren & sanders got no measurable bump at all.

this kind of groupthink is just overwhelmingly unlikely; there's, like, no split. as though somebody added the numbers up to make sure they made sense...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/vermont-democratic-primary-live-results/

the results are not as extreme in minnesota as they are in massachusetts. you would expect at least some klobuchar supporters in minnesota to move to warren, and she did get a minor bounce. sanders also appears to have gotten a minor bounce.

but, you still have to accept that klobuchar convinced almost all of her voters to vote for biden, who had been polling in single digits here since he announced.

i could run through all of the same arguments, with the caveat that they're all a little weaker - it's 80% rather than 90%, and still very hard to believe, if that little bit less hard to believe. but i won't. i made my case and it's transferable....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/minnesota-democratic-primary-live-results/

i suspect that i'll find a pattern here with this.

what you would expect is to be able to model the movement of voters from buttigieg & klobuchar to biden using a probability distribution. so, you'd end up with some type of curve. and, there's even some artistic license here, there's no specific right answer.

but, when you do the work and realize that the probability distribution that you pull out via empirical analysis is.....uniform? that sets off alarm bells, it raises red flags.

it's not technically impossible, and rare events do happen. but, it's exceedingly unlikely to happen even once, and approaching impossible to see it happen in several states, all on the same night.

i would advise the sanders people to...i don't know what they do. conduct independent local polling. ask for readouts from the machines. i don't know. but, do something.

it's like we're entering the twilight zone of election results with this.

education rankings of states so far, for reference:

iowa - 29.

new hampshire - 8

nevada - 43

south carolina - 44

massachusetts - 1

colorado - 3

vermont - 4

virginia - 6

minnesota - 10

utah - 11

maine - 18

california - 25

north carolina - 31

texas - 39

oklahoma - 40

tennessee - 41

alabama - 46

arkansas - 47

is it possible that he won more by default than due to the endorsement? that is, that a very large percentage of people said "my preferred candidates have dropped, and i have to vote because it's a civic duty, and he's the best option left, so i suppose i'll vote for him. i guess. if i have to."

potentially.

and, you'd have to assign something like that to a few voters, regardless.

it's the margins, though. that's 5% of buttigieg voters, or something. it's not 90% of them....

- sanders appears to have gotten no bounce at all, not even in the rural areas that he carried comfortably in 2016. buttigieg was winning these voters from the start, but it's an anti-establishment vote, and you'd expect them to vote against biden, not for him. sanders actually did fairly poorly in these counties.
- warren did not get a bounce, either - and you'd have expected her to pick up some educated white women, at the least, from klobuchar.
- maybe bloomberg was never going to get a big bounce from buttigieg dropping, but you'd think you'd see some minor uptick. nope. 

biden literally got the entire thing, as though somebody just reproportioned it in a spreadsheet.

....which i suspect is actually the truth.

so much for massachusetts..

The most educated state was Massachusetts, and the least educated was Mississippi, according to the report.

biden will do well in mississippi.....

there's two reasons why the education factor makes it so hard to believe:

1) educated people tend to think for themselves. endorsements don't tend to have the kinds of effect on educated people that they have on uneducated people. they don't tend to follow trends, or be easily peer-pressured. 

2) biden is a complete dunce, which is the reason he had so many problems with them in the first place.

i could believe it if the endorsement pulled 30% or even 50%. but, if you believe this, it was an exercise in groupthink.

so, i can't debunk it, but i don't believe it.

it would seem as though they passed the prisoner's dilemma in massachusetts, at least - quite well. maybe a little too well.

but, this is more of a question for a behavioural psychologist than it is for a nerd with a math degree. i can't debunk this by telling you the numbers don't make sense; i'm more skeptical about the reality that they make too much sense.

let's start with massachusetts, which i find to be the least believable outcome.

biden had been doing well in south carolina for months, so the results were obvious. the recent polling in massachusetts had biden way down the list (behind not just sanders and warren, but bloomberg and buttigeg) at around or below 10%. steyer never registered in this state, and bloomberg roughly matched his polling.

in fact, sanders and warren roughly matched their polling, too.

so, the only possible way to understand massachusetts is to deduce that 90%+ of buttigieg supporters and 90%+ of klobuchar supports both moved, en masse and tout ensemble to biden - which is the kind of thing you see in alberta or quebec, but is almost incomprehensible in what is plausibly the most educated state in the nation.

so, you can pull these numbers out - they're there. but, you have to believe that the mass of eggheads in massachusetts did what they were told, and voted for the village idiot. and, out of what, exactly? fear?

so, if you're naive enough to fall for it, this is, indeed, very easy to understand - just add biden's 10-% to buttigieg's 15+% and klobuchar's ~7% and the number's come out in the wash. easy, right?

but, it's very hard to believe it.

and, i don't quite, myself. it seems a little too tidy...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/massachussetts-democratic-primary-live-results/

let's see if i can try to make some sense of these results, one thing at a time.

i need to remind you that i made a guess, based on intuition. but, this site does not exist as a platform for my gut. it has enough work to do in digesting. and i don't give it a lot of energy.

i don't take my gut very seriously, and would suggest that you don't, either.

my official prediction was "anybody trying to tell you they can predict what's going to happen is full of shit."

there was no data...you need data to predict things....

but, i'm pretty skeptical about these "results". so, let's see if i can figure out how they cheated, or debunk claims that they did.

there's some complaints about people who voted early wanting their vote back, and it does seem unfair and undemocratic.

an easy way to deal with this would be to move to preferential voting. that way, if your first candidate drops out, you can move to your second choice.

that is, if they actually count them, anyways.

the senate primary in massachusetts is not until september.

so, the argument that the chance to vote for a kennedy pulled out a lot of older voters doesn't work.

these results are really unbelievable aren't they?

i don't know why i bother. i know better.

biden winning massachusetts is about as believable as trump winning pennsylvania.

there's no polling, no way to check up on them...

my prints have now been officially destroyed.

so, i'm caught up to the end of february and i need a short nap...

the review of the act, dated to april 2011, states that:

Through my consultations with the parties listed in Appendix 2, I heard that while we are not in a time of war, as in 1939 when the PWPA was enacted, we live in an age of international  and  local terrorism  threats.  Our  democratic society  must  be  vigilant in maintaining a proper level  of security while  recognizing  that  democratic  values and security issues can conflict where public order is at issue.  It is important to highlight that provincial legislation exists dealing with both terrorism threats and emergency situations.  I  have  been  informed that  federal and  provincial couunter-terrorism  plans  exist  that address preventing and responding to acts of terrorism.

(http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/docs/ec088595.pdf)

it then cites the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, which i suppose i need to flip through next.

so, we learn here that the act had certainly been contemplated in the context of anti-terrorist legislation, and that it was enacted in 1939, when canada went to war against the nazis as a part of the british empire (and in response to the german invasion of poland, rather than the bombing of pearl harbour). it's intent does appear to be directed at combating terrorism, in the context of the second world war.

i mentioned earlier that i thought the bill was written during the bill davis era, and i do have a very specific recollection of that. the bill that i read in early 2013 was dated to the late 70s - it was davis era, and, notably, pre-charter. i am certain of that.

so, is there a variant of the bill from the 70s that specifically mentions charges of terrorism?

or am i reflecting on some commentary that i read?

i am deciding that this does not matter - the act was repealed, i admit as much, and i do consequently acknowledge that my analysis was out of date, whether i can find this or not....

reading through the pwpa, it's easy enough to figure out what the thing that i read at the time, whatever it was, said: it must have argued that tampering with or trespassing on to what was defined as a "public work" could lead to terrorism charges.

but, given that i'm dealing with what may have been a commentary on legislation that was repealed five years ago, this may be quite hard to find. the author may have even taken the page down.

i am acknowledging that the law i was thinking of was repealed, and it might be best to leave it at that.

iirc, i found a case that cited the act, and i went and looked it up.

and, i was right to point out that it was of questionable constitutional value - it was indeed repealed a few years later.

but, it was the law at the time, nonetheless.

i was mostly concerned about my friends getting searched for marijuana, or magic mushrooms, and having no defense because they were at city hall - and not understanding what the law actually said.

but, let me find that case.

this is the repealed law:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/rso-1990-c-p55/latest/rso-1990-c-p55.html

and, according to canlii, my hunch was correct - it was indeed replaced with this one, as i suspected:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/so-2014-c-15-sch-3/latest/so-2014-c-15-sch-3.html

the new law would not include railways in it's scope. so, what i was citing has been repealed, and i should stop citing it.

but, i still need to find the connection between the public works protection act and the charge of terrorism, which i must have read in a case...

i'm notorious for not keeping track of sources, at this point, aren't i? i'm bad at this, i admit it. but, i'll argue it's more important to remember the content of what you're reading than it's title or author...

on third thought, it must have been the public works protection act that i'm thinking of, or some case that cited it.

in the public works protection act (which was in force over the winter of 2012-2013, but has since been repealed),

1) there is a reference to

any railway, canal, highway, bridge, power works including all property used for the generation, transformation, transmission, distribution or supply of hydraulic or electrical power, gas works, water works, public utility or other work, owned, operated or carried on by the Government of Ontario or by any board or commission thereof, or by any municipal corporation, public utility commission or by private enterprises,

....as being a public work, which is the collection of things i remember.

2) "any provincial and any municipal public building" is covered as a public work, which would include city hall.

3) a guard or peace officer (not even a cop!):

may search, without warrant, any person entering or attempting to enter a public work or a vehicle in the charge or under the control of any such person or which has recently been or is suspected of having been in the charge or under the control of any such person or in which any such person is a passenger;

...which is what i was trying to get across.

4) A guard or peace officer may arrest, without warrant, any person who neglects or refuses to comply with a request or direction of a guard or peace officer, or who is found upon or attempting to enter a public work without lawful authority

============

so, this is the law i cited to the food not bombs kids to try to make them understand the danger they were in serving at city hall, which they naively thought they had special rights at because it was "public property", i'm certain of it.

but there is no reference to terrorism. that must have been case law. let me find that....

so, what's going to happen today?

even the last minute polls appear to have had buttigieg in them. we have no idea. all i can give you is my gut.

- i think that sanders will be competitive everywhere, except alabama.
- i think that both buttigieg and klobuchar will see their voters mostly move to warren, and sanders will get a bigger bump than biden, mostly in rural counties. this could be a 10+ point bump for warren in some places.
- steyer, on the other hand, will see almost all of his voters go back to biden, and this will be a 10 point bump in some places.
- however, i do not expect warren to win any states; that 10+ point bump will be lucky to get her to 20%, in her best states.
- i do not expect bloomberg to win any states, either. however, i do expect him to cut deeply into biden's totals.
- i do not expect biden to be competitive in the west or the north. he will be competitive in the south, and he will win some states, but his delegate total will be severely hampered by bloomberg, and sanders may come up the middle in a few places.

anybody trying to be more specific than this is full of shit.

and, it's a problem because we can't independently verify the results. they could cheat very badly, and we wouldn't know.

but i still need to stress the importance of not trying too hard to push her out.

it was a mistake to push these other candidates out, and now the party needs her in to appeal to the demographics that they need to win.

a better strategy is just ignoring her.

so, what happens when a player repeatedly defects, as warren has done?

the other players take note, and learn to defect against her, too.

which is what should happen, now.

so, warren may win the game against klobuchar by defecting, and, likewise, she may win the game against buttigeg by defecting, but these victories should be pyrrhic, because it should broadcast to the other players that she's a defector.

or, as she put - a capitalist to her bones.

i know that warren doesn't think this is a game, but that's really an unfortunate comment from somebody that should, and i'm sure does, know better.

the subgame between buttigieg and biden was one thing. even with the endorsement, i suspect it works out to a D,D because there's not enough time to really meaningfully co-operate. i may be abusing the notation, a little.

but, there wasn't really a game being played between biden and klobuchar - the subgame was between between klobuchar and warren.

i stated a little earlier this evening that the system would award warren's bad behaviour. another way to state this is to point out that this is the situation where klobuchar cooperates, and warren defects. in that situation, warren gets a big pot and klobuchar gets nothing.

you can call klobuchar stupid, if you'd like.

but, warren's the one that keeps arguing this is about character.

so, i got a little sleep, there.

let me get back to this...

biden is going to have to pick a running mate that will appeal to educated voters (and they liked obama because he was one of them), and he's probably best to do it right now, to stop them from wandering off.

he won't carry the demographics he needs to win by himself.

sanders essentially has the same problem.

what happens if warren drops?

well, what happens in strictly literal, blunt terms is that the key swing demographic that won them the 2018 midterms ends up disenfranchised. they're not going to like any of these options, and they may end up staying home or voting republican.

i can't imagine many of these people voting for joe biden, who they're mostly likely to interpret as a dunce. and, they're afraid of sanders...partly from the propaganda, but nonetheless...

warren was the weakest candidate in the field, but she's also proven the most stubborn, and the system is likely going to reward her bad behaviour.

but, at this point, does it help sanders or biden if she drops? it probably helps trump. i know i just flipflopped, but the options just changed. and, you want her on the ballot to give these swing demographics somebody they can vote for so they can be dragged along, even if she doesn't have an actual chance.

if she drops early, and the voting pool ends up restricted to leftist revolutionaries in the sanders camp and low information voters in the biden camp, if educated voters don't have anybody to support and tune out, it's going to undo the results of the 2018 election.

so, what are the battle lines, here?

- biden is the candidate of uneducated & low information voters, the rank and file which make up a substantive part of the base and include a certain type of union worker and a large percentage of churchgoing southern blacks.
- bloomberg is basically splitting biden's vote in half.
- warren is emerging as the elitist candidate of educated whites (and perhaps of educated non-whites, too) - even if she was actually their third or fourth choice, initially. she's...just....still....there...
- sanders is the candidate of change, even if he's not that radical, and he really isn't. so, he's doing well with young voters, with latin speaking voters, with northern blacks and with what's left of the party's traditional left.

the best thing we can do for tomorrow is try to extrapolate results from these demographics.

and, i think it means that sanders does very well, that bloomberg stops biden from running up the score in the south (sanders may steal some states, even) and that warren does well enough with educated whites (the most important demographic.) that she ends up with enough delegates to piss everybody off.

only sanders and biden have realistic chances of actually winning states.

it's just an error in understanding the demographics.

biden's team doesn't seem to realize how badly it did in the first two states amongst the most important voters, or what that means about how appealing he's going to be to them in the upcoming contests.

they bizarrely seem to think that the opinions of illiterate south carolina voters who were told what to do by their congressman is going to overturn the empirical analysis of educated northerners, who are the key swing demographic. it's delusional. but, it's why this party loses over and over again - it's swallowed some kind of kool-aid about race and can't interpret anything rationally any more.

as badly as sanders has fucked up, everybody else fucked up more, in the end. and, he's going to stumble in and save them from their own stupidity....

i'm going to wait until the morning, but sanders should win a strong majority of delegates tomorrow.

i think they picked the wrong candidate. but, if they're going with biden, the guy that he needs to drop is bloomberg - like steyer, and unlike buttigieg and klobuchar, bloomberg is pulling directly from biden. that's where his support went, and where the split is and what he needs to fix to leapfrog.

i suspect the big winner here is warren, who may end up exceeding expectations and ending tomorrow in third place. frustratingly....

and, sanders?

he should stay in massachusetts; he must have sat on a four-leaf clover or something, because he's pulling a lot of good luck out of his ass, after doing this explicitly all wrong for months.

are they reading this?

it's not just minnesota. we're going into super tuesday with a lot of unknowns, now, but klobuchar was probably sanders' strongest challenger through the three northeastern states and a swath of the midwest.

presuming that buttigieg and klobuchar supporters even realize they've dropped, or haven't already voted, this opens up opportunities for sanders to take the pot in states where biden still probably won't end up viable.

i don't think there's been enough time to convert buttigieg supporters into klobuchar supporters, so these are two different groups of voters. and, we just don't have any polling. we're stuck with our intuition.

but, i'm exceedingly skeptical.

i know i've talked about sanders' position being shaky and predicted he'd get leapfrogged, but it was with the assumption that biden was about to drop out. these statements were really implicitly explicitly about buttigieg, who was the only one of the three that could create a common front where it matters. it really seemed obvious to me that he was the candidate that got out of this...

i might have said something differently a few weeks ago, but, after watching the debates and seeing the numbers come in, i just don't think that there's much of anything that biden can do to convince more educated voters that they should vote for him. he's going to have a brick wall, there. they just won't do it; he's just not remotely appealing to smart people, and that's why they picked these other candidates in the first place.

there's no question that they had to consolidate, but they've picked the wrong demographic groups to consolidate around, and i think it's going to blow up in their faces.

steyer is a different question, as he was pulling voters directly from biden. and, biden has gotten a bump from steyer dropping, no question.

i wonder, though, if these buttigieg and klobuchar voters take a last stand with warren, though.

we might get some tracking polls tomorrow morning and we might have to make bad guesses based on them. but, anybody telling you that they can predict this is full of shit. the changes are too dramatic.

have they passed the prisoner's dilemma? they're trying. but, i might have to give them an E for effort, in the end. they picked the wrong candidate to rally around....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/us/politics/amy-klobuchar-drops-out.html

what, you didn't think the molotov-ribbentrop drop was comical?

meh.

in 2016, cruz and kasich actually made a deal to tell each other's voters to vote for the other one in states they weren't strong in. i don't remember exactly where it was, but they were down to the three of them. kasich could have maybe won some northern state, and cruz could have maybe won some western state. so, the deal was that cruz voters would vote for kasich in the northern state, and kasich voters would vote for cruz in the western state.

this fell apart, partly because the deal didn't really make a lot of sense - i would actually expect most kasich voters to prefer trump over cruz.

but, it was the closest thing i've seen yet to candidates figuring this out, in the context of american politics.

in canada, we actually have vote swapping exchanges, and we have what we call "strategic voting". it's efficacy is questionable, and it sometimes leads to unexpected outcomes (like trudeau's majority in 2015, which was built on strategic voting....the polls all showed minorities) but it's the right approach to solve the problem, at least.

i want to clarify a little bit of a misconception.

when you set up a prisoner's dilemma, you have a choice between competing and cooperating. you fail when you both choose competition over cooperation, and you win when you both choose cooperation over competition.

cooperating, in context, doesn't usually mean just dropping out - there's going to be more to it than that.

with buttigieg and biden, some kind of deal where they split the map up, molotov-ribbentrop style, would have been a better way to cooperate.

as it is, taking buttigieg out doesn't help biden much with the rank and file that make up his base, who are largely low information and uneducated voters, and the types of educated voters that buttigieg did attract are just likely to look elsewhere, as they have biden pretty low on their list. there's no actual co-operation, here.

so, and i know this is somewhat counter-intuitive, but this is actually less like the option of mutual co-operation and more like the option where they both defect, even if it looks otherwise at first glance.

the counter-intuitive twist is that, in the context of this specific two-person subgame, dropping out is actually defecting. co-operation would mean a deal where they split the map up, some kind of strong endorsement or maybe even announcing a shared ticket. as it is, i don't think there's much that buttigieg can do to deliver his voters to biden on such short notice, so dropping out is functionally just releasing them to the other candidates - and that's defection. unless there is cooperation, it doesn't undo the relation of competition, which is what defines the defection, and the players have still failed.

does that make sense?

ok, so i've doubled back several times now, but i'm sure i've cleaned up the three blogs until the end of january, now.

it's time to take that shower before i start focusing on february.

this is perhaps an underlooked factor regarding turnout in massachusetts, as kennedy is likely to generate an older and more conservative crowd, in contrast to the far more liberal ed markey.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485397-kennedy-holds-6-point-lead-over-markey-in-massachusetts-senate-primary-poll

and, what can joe biden do for me?

diddly fucking squat, that's what.

i had a facebook page a few years ago called "uninspiring kennedy quotes", where i just tossed their own words back out and let them stand on their own, sometimes with a sardonic quip attached to it.

i loved doing it, but i didn't keep up with it.

i think we all need to stop asking what we can do for our country, and get back to asking what our country can do for us.

i'll tear down jfk all day some other time, but i want to catch up to what i'm doing tonight.

"ask not what your country can do for you..."

is that inspiring?

or is it truly a bunch of bourgeois bullshit that is at the core of why you don't have universal health coverage, 20 years into the twenty-first century?

sanders needs to be worried about how to win over educated white women in swing districts, not how to convince deeply religious, illiterate blacks in deep red states to vote for a jew.

if you want to rally the base, sanders is the guy. whether it works or not...

but, if you're concerned about these tactical swing demographics, the best candidates were buttigieg and klobuchar, not biden.

biden's argument was that he could increase black turnout to obama levels, and he failed to do that.

a sanders/klobuchar ticket would probably be unstoppable, and they do at least know each other well.

but i want to....

should they rally the base or win over swing voters? false dichotomy - think in dialectics, instead. they need to do both.

but, that's not the debate at hand.

biden won't be able to do either, and he's proven that. he will prove that again on tuesday, as he struggles for viability across the country.

but, the party just drove off a superior candidate who had a better chance of winning the general in order to appease a base of arguably homophobic and arguably antisemitic voters that is largely irrelevant in national polling.

and, they wonder why they're the country's natural opposition party.

this is why.

because they continually make bad decisions, like this.

i'll repeat the point: there was always an exactly 0% chance that i'd support a joe biden candidacy, in any way. he doesn't even get an epsilon. and, i basically live in michigan - i'm the type of voter you need to get to vote for you.

he offers me absolutely nothing of value at all.

maybe the best way to state what i'm saying is this - biden voters would probably support buttigieg pretty readily, but buttigieg supporters are going to have biden pretty far down the list of candidates. this isn't a commutative relation.

so, if biden were to drop, buttigieg would have likely gotten a huge immediate spike. i've made that point repeatedly.

but, buttigieg dropping will likely give these other candidates, mostly klobuchar, a bump, first. biden will need them to drop, too, in order to salvage any kind of bump. they may grudgingly end up at biden in the end, but you have to understand that voting against the frontrunner is not an accident, it's an act of protest. growing up near quebec, i understand this mentality quite well.

as buttigieg was stronger across the board, klobuchar dropping would have probably produced the more competitive single candidate. and there are some states where i wonder about the gender issue; i would suspect those anti-establishment protest votes will end up back with sanders, or that they won't vote at all. so, it could actually give sanders that extra bump in states like colorado or utah. but, she's the likely primary benefactor nonetheless.

will it be enough to predict some upsets in states like maine? i'd like to see some polling before i do that...

i will accept comparisons between the ira and the plo, but not between the ira and isis. the former has some vague value in the form of case studies; the latter is offensively stupid.

but, you'll notice that i'm broadly sympathetic towards the idea that the palestinian people deserve basic rights, even if i think they make a lot of bad tactical choices in trying to figure out how to get them. like the broader syrian people, the mass of palestinians are secular and want secular governance. i don't have any problem separating these things from each other. but, that's just the point i'm making.

he made a lot of errors, and i guess this is the last one. i insist that he would have beaten biden overall, who has shown no ability at all to do well in states that actually matter. now, we can't know what would have happened.

but, it's reflective of the pathological stupidity within the party, on their insistence in following losing strategies and their inability to understand their own voting base. these idiots legitimately seem to think that the vote in south carolina is more predictive than the vote in iowa. because they're idiots....

i don't actually think this helps biden much of anywhere. buttigieg was mostly poling well in the rural areas, and biden gets most of his support from the rank and file in the cities. it probably helps klobuchar mostly, and sanders a little bit as he did well with these same voters in 2016. it may even help warren in a few places.

these voters made a conscious choice to vote against joe biden because they didn't think he could win, and the meaningless outcome in an uncompetitive conservative red state like south carolina shouldn't affect that - they will still vote against him because they will still think he can't win.

and, they're right.

jim clyburn & the illiterate voters of south carolina are wrong.

but, i can tell you who's smart and who's stupid, i can't control what they do. this was a mistake, but it's happened, and so be it.

expect klobuchar to see a spike in polling amongst literate suburban white women, who are probably the key to winning the general election.

and, i'll remind you that i used to be a bernie-or-bust sanders supporter but am now supporting the greens. i am not a party-first democratic voter; i'm not a democratic voter at all. i have rarely supported the democrats in past cycles; i have usually supported the greens. i'm an independent voice trying to analyze the problem objectively. so, i'm not a buttigieg supporter, or a klobuchar support, or a biden support or even a sanders supporter any more. there is a 0% chance i'd vote for any of these candidates, with the sole exception of bernie sanders, who i've stepped distinctly away from due to his decision to deprioritize the concerns of queer voters - a decision that has blown up in his face.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/01/pete-buttigieg-drops-out-of-2020-presidential-race.html

comparing the nazis in idlib to the ira, or the situation in ireland to syria in general, is truly offensively stupid.

the situations have essentially nothing in common with each other; the ira believed in segregation, and that was wrong, but they never tried to eliminate any ethnic groups, they never set up concentration camps, they never tried to conquer the surrounding areas, etc.

it's an utterly ignorant comparison, and the people that are making it are utterly ignorant people.

you know who really needs to step down, after this fiasco?

jim clyburn.

biden is going to lose to trump.

the early results in these white states made it clear that he's not going to be competitive in the most important swing demographics, and his inability to excite black voters in the south at levels that obama did cemented it.

he's a loser; south carolina fucked up, and that will be obvious on wednesday morning.

i'm fucking sick of letting red states pick the nominee.

the midwest needs to hold it's ground and push back and beat the south this time.

i actually think the results in south carolina suggest that biden should drop, as he didn't demonstrate the kind of dominance that he needed to.

but, i also think this regional showdown is necessary - i think it's imperative that biden get smacked around a little in the midwest to get the point across to southern voters that he's not going to win there, whether they like it or not, and send the message to stop voting for a candidate that isn't going to win.

at the end of the day, it's far more important to be competitive in new hampshire than it is to be competitive in south carolina.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/01/pete-buttigieg-quit-democratic-race-joe-biden-south-carolina

the thing about the latin speakers is that they may be a little bit socially conservative, and that might freak me out, and should concern a lot of democratic voters (support for abortion rights would be expected to be lower amongst ideological catholics, for example), but they do believe in government programs.

they actually do want single payer healthcare, unlike a lot of his supporters in other parts of the country. they are at least voting for his platform, or at least, part of it.

so, it's this confusing thing. but, this support is probably enduring, at least.

....it's just that, issues about influence from conservative voices aside, it's not going to seriously help in a general until 2050. it's too far ahead of the demographics, and it might not even be the right way - by the time that hispanics are ready to become a dominant electoral force, they may find themselves overtaken by asians.

arizona. focus on arizona...

we can get into debates about epistemology, but i don't generally care if conservatives exist, so long as i can just avoid them.

what i get frustrated by is religious people showing up in liberal spaces and trying to change them.

no. that's proselytizing. that's forcing your views on others. and, that's wrong.

if you're not comfortable in liberal spaces, then go to conservative ones - there's more than enough of them out there.

i don't know exactly what conservatives do for fun.

i guess they have events at church, and stuff.

that's your tribe. go join it.

stop deluding yourself otherwise.

what i would say to these people is this: the world's full of conservatives. go find some and make some friends.

no, i don't want to change the "toxic drinking culture" to make more space for religious muslim women.

rather, i think there should be more of an effort to promote integration by peer pressuring them to participate.

i don't want to live in a conservative muslim society. sorry.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/muslim-women-work-drinking-culture-law-a9363796.html?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=Feed

regarding bernie, though.

now that south carolina is over, and this strategy to contort his own views to try to win conservative black churchgoers, who do not in any way represent the democratic party, has failed, maybe he can unravel this bullshit and get back to being bernie sanders again?

the outreach amongst latin-speaking voters has been effective. but, all he's done in trying so hard to reach conservative southerners is muddle his own messaging, and harm his chances in states he can actually win.

i'm going to guess that he's going to have to fend off buttigieg in vermont.

"this primary isn't a game" - elizabeth warren

so, that's an epic fail at winning the prisoner's dilemma.

they need to just turn the mic off, at this point. but, the rules make what she's doing pointless - if she's trying to bleed support from sanders, it's actually not going to work, because she's not even viable anywhere.

buttigieg and klobuchar at least have long shot paths. but, she's really running in the same category as tulsi gabbard, at this point.

and this was obvious - i said from the start that she wouldn't win a single state, and she won't. 

if she's running for 2024, she should drop now, because she's killing herself off.

ok, we're back up in the laptop.

i haven't showered yet, as i'm waiting for a second round of dishes.

i don't think he's home, but somebody sparked some very bad smelling drugs around 4:00 this morning, and it was bad enough that i had to react. they seem to have stopped once they realized i was awake. but, we're going to need to leave the fan on all day to clear it out.

i generally prefer to drink coffee over night and sleep during the day.

so, i'm going to spend the morning getting back to cleaning up these blog posts going back to mid-january, which is just that much worse, now.

i don't expect to leave the house again until mid-week, although i'm thinking about catching the beethoven concerto on the weekend (i initially missed that). there's some other things that i'm...

...do i really want to pay to watch a 70 something steve hackett perform covers of songs he helped write in the early 70s? they're some of the most substantive pieces of music of the latter part of the twentieth century. i just don't know if there's a point to it.

but, that's what i'm doing - cleaning up the blog and listening to music.

ok, let's get away from this now, for real.

that's a somewhat sketchy calculation though, because it relies on exit poll numbers. i pulled out the actual initial vote totals for a reason. 

what i want to know is what percentage of biden's voters were black. i guess we can do this somewhat implicitly - if he got 48.4% of the vote, and 34.16% of total voters were black and voted for biden, then 34.16/48.4 = 70.6%. so, almost 71% of his voters were black.

and, that would mean that the number of black voters he got was 0.706*255,662 = 180497.  this is in very close agreement with the previous number.

likewise, if clinton got 73.44% of the vote and 52.46% of total voters were black and voted for clinton then 52.46/73.44 = 71.43% of her voters were black. .7143*272,379 = 194560. again, this is pretty close and pulls out the same roughly 15,000 vote spread.

his numbers are worse than clinton's. that's my point. and, if you identified clinton's major flaw as her inability to appeal to black voters at the same level as obama did, as though she ever could have, then biden is not a solution - he's worse, and the results will be worse.

we can update those numbers with something more precise. the margin is roughly the same because the concept is just shifted, but there is a conceptual error in the previous post as a consequence of the confusing language; it's 40% of all voters that voted clinton and were black, not 40% of her voters that were black. i did it right the first time if you go back and look...

this is the correct and more up to date math. it's the same conclusion, which is what i pulled out intuitively and then sat down to actually calculate, but the numbers are bigger because they represent correct proportions.

clinton in 2016:
(61% of all voters were black)*(86% voted for clinton) = 52.46% of all voters were black and voted for clinton.
373,063 total votes were cast. so, she got 195709 black votes. roughly.

biden in 2020:
(56% of all voters were black)*(61% voted for biden) = 34.16% of all voters were black and voted for biden.
527,728 total votes were cast. so, he got 180272 black votes. roughly.

that's a decrease of 15000 votes. roughly. 

....amidst a huge increase in turnout, and what i believe is substantive population growth.

where did all of the new votes go? well, sanders went down, too.

they appear to have gone to the lower candidates. so, i may have been on to something, it just didn't catch critical mass.

iowa is maybe a lost cause.

but, if the democrats want to win in november, nevada and new hampshire are truly must win states. he badly lost in both states, he could barely crack 10% in the primary in new hampshire, and has been dismissive of the people that live there, since. does he expect to win there in november, with that kind of attitude? or will he forget to campaign there altogether?

a big win in south carolina like this would be seismic if this were the republican primary.

it's not. and, the other candidates should pay him no heed in his pleas.

we went through this in 2016, and they're just repeating all the same errors.

they've learned nothing.

should the other candidates clear out to make way for biden?

no.

these results don't strengthen his argument at all - they've demonstrated that his support amongst black voters was overrated, and he has yet to demonstrate that he can generate support amongst key white swing demographics.

south carolina will not be in play in the general, and the argument that black voters in milwaukee (somewhere that is in play) will vote for him because he won south carolina is just racist, and probably totally wrong on top of it.  

they should force biden to win a state that has swing demographics and will actually be in play before they get out of the way - a state like new hampshire, or nevada.

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.