Primary Day is on in New Hampshire, and we have some winners. In Dixville Notch shortly after midnight, John Kasich got three votes, Donald Trump two votes, and Bernie Sanders got four.
Two other NH towns have midnight voting. Millsfield, gave it to Cruz (9 votes) and Clinton (2 votes, upsetting Sanders), and Hart’s Location chose Kasich and Sanders.
Which is to say, it is Tuesday now, it is snowy, and New Hampshire is going to the polls.
Questions of the day
Seems like the big questions for the day are:
1. How will things shake out for the Republicans (and will we be saying adieu to any of them in the next 24 hours or so)
2. How much will Sanders win by, and how will it be spun?
An early guess
I’m going to offer up a midday guess that Trump will win, but not by a slam dunk. Kasich will do better than expected, I’m guessing. I think there will be support in NH for “the sane one.” He’ll place.
Christie will probably do well; Cruz, Rubio and Carson will probably falter. Bush and Florino will do poorly.
On the Dems side, and other thoughts
Clearly Sanders will win, despite the rather dreadful folk song a few supporters wrote for him.
Clinton’s a tough call for me. I think she’ll do well with the older NH folks, of which there are many, but also think her campaign was damaged by a number of things this week: Bill and Chelsea did poorly on her behalf, the older women “scolding” younger women and calling them names didn’t seem to help, and heading off for photo ops in Flint even fell a bit flat.
The ‘what did she say to Goldman Sachs” question keeps coming up, which puts her in a tough spot. Release the transcripts and see that she is probably more nice to Wall Street than not during these speeches, or hold it back and let people speculate? Probably best to get it out there and get it over with.
So, my prediction is she’ll do worse than Rosa says but better than Tirebiter suggests. And Vidda will know what the voters say instead of the polls. : )
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And, few more words on the GOP. Trump is still doing sort of well, but his campaign isn’t really built on anything “winning,” as far as I can tell. Not sure that he can go the distance, nor sure if he even wants to.
Carson doesn’t really have a campaign going anymore. Everyone has left.
Rubio is now branded as a robot. His chances of being the GOP’s “Obama” have vanished, quickly.
Christie seems to have found his groove. Doubt it will be enough to carry him very far. Maybe an administrative position in the Trump administration? : )
Cruz. Everyone hates him. Don’t see how this will lead to victory.
Kasich is really trying to be the traditional Republican choice. Doesn’t seem like a year when that is resonating with enough people.
Wait a minute, I didn't know
Wait a minute, I didn’t know I said anything other than that the polls were all over the place. Ah well. : ) What, you don’t like the folk song? I thought it was charming. My favorite headline today was “Rubio Allies Say He Panics During Moments of Crisis.” Which led to two thoughts, “Well Thank God the Presidency Doesn’t Have Moments of Crisis” and “With Allies Like This Who Needs Enemies” LOL
Sanders up with 27% vote counted
Sanders is up 18% with 27% of the vote counted. Not bad.
Clinton started her concession speech sounding like someone whose team has listened to a lot of Sanders speeches. All you have to do is believe she’d actually do all that stuff (because she’s now out-Sandersing Sanders). In fact, she almost sounds like Bill — she was at Alabama, she was at Flint! She’s for human rights! for every American!
Etc. Check it out, it’s quite a speech.
I Me Mine
She seemed to try out a new line, too. I paraphrase:
“Remember Citizen’s United? That case was about me! So, I’ll fight big donations harder than anyone.”
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Hey, I was right about Kasich. Wrong about Christie.
The courage to reject the status quo
I just watched the Sanders speech, and he had a few good lines, but the best one was the one about having the courage to reject the status quo. He’s right — it does take courage. Even when the status quo is deteriorating before our eyes, and our prospects get worse and worse, it still takes courage to try something different. I hope a lot of states follow NH’s lead.
Hmmm...
From the Guardian:
“According to exit polling in New Hampshire, the only demographics Clinton won here were those aged over 65 and those earning more than $200,000 a year”
Sanders had more support from women, younger voters, undecideds in NH than she did.
Sanders Loses
End result: Clinton 15 superdelegates, Sanders 13
The Super Delegate system is
The Super Delegate system is crazy. And it’s nonfunctional anyway. This won’t affect Sanders if he starts picking up even more of the primaries. Every time a candidate who had the Super Delegate vote locked up so to speak, which Clinton does right now, the vote switches to whoever seems to be getting the popular vote. Super Delegates can change their vote before or at the convention which regular delegates can’t. In fact as I remember it Clinton had all the Super Delegates last time but they all switched over to Obama once it was obvious that he was going to get the most delegates. The party does not want chaos. And that is what has always happened since this system began. This super delegate system should just be abolished but even though there’s an on-line petition right now calling for that it ain’t gonna happen this election cycle. But it also aint gonna matter if Sanders picks up enough states. He still won NH, those votes shouldn’t be figured into the count. They can change and will if he gets the popular vote in enough states to guarantee that he has the nomination. The vote is 13 for Sanders, 9 for Clinton. It’s self-defeating to count the super delegates right now if you’re a Sanders supporter. Looking forward to that debate tonight.
"It's self-defeating to count
“It’s self-defeating to count the super delegates right now if you’re a Sanders supporter.” What I meant to say was that “it’s too depressing to count the super delegates right now if you’re a Sanders supporter.”
Another great debate
We’re really being treated to some excellent debating on the Democratic side this year. Clinton is good, and Sanders is good.
New from Clinton this week – her line about how going after Bin Laden was her idea, and implying that Sanders was practically un-American for having said that Obama didn’t take advantage of the support he had when elected. She had a new closing line, too, about how she isn’t just a “one issue” candidate – implying that Sanders was – and that she would work on all the issues. She also said that she had a “comprehensive plan” for just about everything. Didn’t disavow the “special place in hell for women” line when given the chance.
Sanders foreign policy portion has evolved a bit, but he struggles to explain how a long-term goal of peaceful relations with enemies is a good goal. (Americans still like our freedom bombs). He had some strong words about Clinton touting her ties to Kissinger, and a good response for the attempted Clinton smear about his Obama support – “You were the one who ran against him.”
He did well talking about big banks, and Clinton still struggles to show how she’d be independent of their influence. Her response is that Obama has a Super Pac and it didn’t influence him. This falls very flat – he appointed bankers to his staff and bailed out banks, and no one went to jail. Kinda proves that they bought influence. Sanders was right to say she insults our intelligence to suggest these donors don’t want something in return.
Overall it seemed like the room was Clinton’s to lose, she did well and she got good cheers, but they also heard from the unknown person who made some good points. I’m guessing that as this all sinks in, Sanders gained a few more supporters or at least started some debates among Democrats who are just meeting him.
I think supporters of each will see this as their candidate doing well.
Last debate before many states weigh in.
I think someone should tie
I think someone should tie Bernie’s hands down because he was starting to look like the old cranky man down the street standing on his porch shaking his finger and yelling Get Off My Lawn. I thought it was too obvious that he has been studying up on foreign affairs. She’s always going to have the baggage of the corporate donations and the “Wall Street ties” which bother the more idealist wing of the party. I think it was probably a wash. But I was sort of disappointed or surprised at his performance having seen him with Tarrant a few years ago when he made mincemeat of him. But then Hillary Clinton is no Rich Tarrant, obviously. I think supporters are locked in pretty tightly as to who they support. But if Bernie gets the nomination can we just superglue his hands to his sides during the rest of the election cycle, please?