elections

I have to admit I'd counted Kasich out. But if he manages even a second place finish in New Hampshire he could still have a shot.

Poll shows Kasich rising in New Hampshire (TheHill)

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is gaining ground in New Hampshire.

Kasich garners 20 percent support in the American Research Group (ARG) poll of the state released Tuesday, second only to Donald Trump’s 27 percent.

Marco Rubio follows Kasich, with 10 percent. Chris Christie and Ted Cruz are tied for fourth with 9 percent, and Jeb Bush has 8 percent.

Kasich’s total is a big jump from the previous edition of the poll a week earlier, when he had 14 percent support.

Everyone expected Sanders to beat Clinton in New Hampshire, New England is his home turf. But if he takes Iowa too, that's a gutpunch to the Clinton campaign. The two latest polls have the Democratic race there a tie: this one has him slightly up, a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll has him slightly down, both within the margin of error.

Clinton is up in the next two races, Nevada and South Carolina. But if the first four Democratic primaries break out as two for Sanders and two for Clinton, it smashes the DNC/HRC narrative and the Democrats may have a chance of avoiding the doom of a Clinton candidacy. But if it's 3-1 Clinton she'll probably take the nomination, and we'll have a President Rubio or President Cruz to look forward to. If, somehow, Sanders takes Iowa and then parlays that into a further victory in either Nevada or South Carolina and takes three of the first four primaries, Clinton can start planning her concession and retirement, but that's an unlikely scenario -- though some are seeing Nevada as in play.

Sanders Takes Slim Lead Over Clinton in New Iowa Poll (ABC News)

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has climbed to a slim lead over national frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a new Iowa poll.

With just 20 days remaining until the first-in-the-nation caucus, a Quinnipiac University poll released today shows Sanders leading Clinton for the first time in the Hawkeye State with 49 percent support -- his highest support in any Iowa poll yet. Clinton garnered 44 percent support.

That's a 9 percentage point increase for Sanders and a 7-point drop for Clinton since the last Quinnipiac poll in Iowa almost one month ago.

Sanders' lead, which is still barely within the margin of error, is bolstered by a broad gender gap...

The error for the poll is given as 2.8%, but the results are given to whole numbers; taking it as 3% Clinton is in a statistical dead head with Trump and Cruz. And Clinton's positives are not going to increase, while Rubio and Cruz have room to make converts among independents. Yet the Democratic leadership seems bound and determined to climb on board this sinking ship.

General Election Presidential Matches Close; America Pulling for Spartans

Well, duh. That's been obvious for some time now. The problem is that Sanders has been giving the Democratic leadership credibility by playing their game, rather then tearing down the whole rotten, corrupt, undemocratic, and infantilizing two-party system. It's no good making a deal with the devil and then acting surprised when he double-crosses you.

Jim Webb: ‘The DNC Is Nothing More Than An Arm For The Clinton Campaign’ (The Daily Caller)

Former Democratic presidential candidate and Virginia senator Jim Webb backed Bernie Sanders in his fight with the Democratic National Committee on Friday, saying: “Good for Bernie. The DNC is nothing more than an arm for the Clinton campaign.”

Good for Bernie. The DNC is nothing more than an arm for the Clinton campaign. https://t.co/nI0Ua2BPwE

— Jim Webb (@JimWebbUSA) December 18, 2015

The Democrats seem bound and determined to nominate a candidate who will guarantee high turnout for the GOP and who has little support with independents. The GOP -- once the Trump bubble bursts, as it will -- will probably nominate someone quite a bit younger and more charismatic than Clinton, and will spend a few years in the wilderness with the White House, the Senate, the House, and the majority of states under Republican control -- and no one to blame for it but themselves.

Who's Spoiling Now? Polling Indicates That Democrats Underrate Sanders' Electability at Their Peril (The Huffington Post)

The Q-Poll findings: "Sanders does just as well [as Clinton against Rubio], or even better, against [the other] top Republicans [Trump, Carson,and Cruz]." Against each of the latter three, Sanders' winning margin exceeds Clinton's by an additional 2%, 3% and 5% respectively, compared to a survey margin of error of +/- 2.6%.

It is by just such narrow margins that modern elections are won or lost. For example Slate opines it to be "a sign of how accustomed we've become to razor-thin margins of victory that Obama's 2.3-percent popular-vote victory [in 2012] seems almost like a rout...[T]hree out of four of our last elections have been decided by a popular-vote margin of less than 3 percent" which, the author observes, "best resembles the Gilded Age" when choice was similarly limited to pluto-Dum and pluto-Dem candidates.

Sanders' additional margin of safety places him beyond the margin of polling error around which Clinton's fluctuating numbers for her Republican match-ups are more commonly found. Sanders' numbers also seem "almost like a rout" compared to a toss-up for Clinton.

Democratic voters therefore have it exactly backwards. It is Sanders that should be attracting their near certain (87%) confidence of victory next November now accorded Clinton, while their doubts about a Sanders toss-up (49%) should properly attach to Clinton. Democrats are not just misinformed, but grossly misinformed, about the key issue of whether Clinton or Sanders will more likely win against Republicans.

Nominating Clinton is suicide for the Dems, but they seem determined to do it.

Why Young Voters May Choose Marco Rubio Over Hillary Clinton (Slate Magazine)

As with other groups that lean Democratic, Rubio doesn’t have to win young voters. He just can’t afford to lose them all....

A new NBC poll reveals just that. The headline number shows the Florida senator with the win: At this moment, if all adults had to choose, Rubio would beat Clinton, 48 percent to 45 percent. And while Clinton has an advantage with blacks and Latinos, she ties Rubio among Americans who are 18 to 34 years old, 45 percent to 45 percent....[I]t comes as Team Clinton fights for support among millennials—and young women in particular—who aren’t thrilled with Hillary, even as she vies to be the first female president.

The New York Times crunches the numbers of who voted for whom in the Presidential race, and the trends those numbers reveal:
The Building Blocks of Re-Election.

In These Times reports on a little noticed aspect of the corrupt revolving door between government and the corporate world: The Post-Election Politics Of The Revolving Door

The implications of all this should be self-evident. If, as a regulator, you know you can be paid better by working for companies you are regulating, you are more likely to go easier on those companies in hopes of landing that more lucrative job. Likewise, if you see managing campaigns as a gateway to a higher-paid post-election job in corporate PR, you are more likely to urge your political clients to pursue strategies that go easy on businesses you hope will soon be paying you a retainer. And if you are splitting time between advising candidates and shilling for special interests, your counsel will inevitably tilt towards those interests.

Back in 2004, I send out a little essay on post-election reflections that several folks passed around (by e-mail, back in those pre-Facebook days). In 2008 I sent another, more hopeful post-election message; and I guess I'm making it a tradition now.

One bit of good news, looking back at that 2004 message, is how the landscape has shifted on the question of marriage equality. In that election, gay marriage was used to as a hot-button issue to get right-wing voters to the polls. But today I stand as a proud citizen of one of the first states to have its electorate affirm the civil marriage rights of same-sex couples, as Maryland voters approved Question 6. Hooray!

The state of our "democracy" is so bad that Russia -- Russia! Putin-land! -- can fire some legitimate zingers at us. Sure, it's all about distracting Russian voters from their own countries' problems; but then, our corporate media's coverage of Russia's problems does a good job of distracting us from talking about our slide into plutocracy, doesn't it?

Russia skewers US election as undemocratic, ‘the worst in the world’:

The Russian government is lambasting the U.S. presidential race as an undemocratic spectacle amid growing concerns about the country’s own commitment to free and fair elections.