It’s probably because I work daily in a world of forecasts, trend lines, modeling/mapping, projections… and if/when I do my job well, these things morph into facts. And so there are certain stages where I come to recognize the shape and feel of an increasingly strong prediction as almost a “pre-fact."
I’m there now, regarding 2016 as a General Election contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Super Tuesday is six days from today. Hillary Clinton is tracking to sweep it and dominate, based on everything you’d want to look at if it was your job to dispassionately predict the outcome:
Texas (251 delegates), RealClearPolitics has Clinton at an estimate of +22.4 over Sanders.
Georgia (117 delegates), Clinton +38.0.
Massachusetts (116), Sanders +3.5.
Virginia (109), Clinton +17.0.
Minnesota (93), Clinton +26.0.
Colorado (79), RCP has just one poll from Nov showing a Clinton blowout, but I hear Sanders is popular there, so let’s call that one unknown and call it a tie for projection purposes.
Tennessee (76), Clinton +23.0.
Alabama (60), showing unpolled. Likely to go as Georgia and Tennessee do. I’d project it as Clinton +25.
Other smaller states go mostly the same, though Sanders owns Vermont, the smallest (16 delegates).
You see where this leads, stacking up the math? Clinton wins next Tuesday’s delegates, based not on any superdelegates but on real live voters voting, at an overall 60-to-40 ratio over Sanders.
It continues on March 8, when Clinton is on track to win Michigan decisively.
I understand this stage of things: the intense investment in a chosen candidate, the frustration, the growing sense of pre-defeat and the intemperate punches and kicks that result. But, damn, it is and will be hard to watch. Eight years ago it was the Hillary supporters who I couldn’t stand to watch bashing our (pre-)nominee as Barack Obama kept surging ahead slowly.
This time it’s reversed, and the outcome will become clear a whole lot faster than it did during the long grueling Spring of 2008. But that doesn't make the Rec List and the Recent Diaries list in here any easier to bear, these days, for those of us (and there are many) who loathe neither candidate, maybe even admire them both, and who just want our eventual Democratic nominee to secure the White House come November.
So here we are. With all indicators, the data, looking the way it does. Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump.
Which brings me to an invitation, for those who are posting the most vehement anti-Clinton pieces.**
(I’m not talking about fair-game candidate contrast pieces, like the strong and high quality “encyclopedic case against Clinton and for Sanders” that sat atop the Rec List yesterday morning. I’m talking about posts and comments that seem more animated by base loathing and attack-urges, than by issues and facts.)
Invitation. Skating to where the puck is headed, to use the hockey metaphor. A few short months from now, can you substitute the phrase “our nominee” for Hillary Clinton’s name? Would you be able and willing to do so?
Question. If yes, thank you in advance. if no, then what is your interest in participating actively on DailyKos? Do you connect your being here, at all, to the partisan Democratic purpose of this site?
I like both candidates and will cast a NY vote for Sanders on April 19 if he’s still running. I do want our nominee to know that her solid victory also contains some more progressive voices of dissent. But she will indeed be our nominee. As Trump will very likely be her opponent. The outcome of this contest couldn’t be clearer to me. Which is why I always hate this part, the “screamers scream against reality” part.