Sorry not to have posted. Really nothing much has changed. Same old, same old. Except that I can vote now. And its looking increasingly like a vote in the California primary in the 33rd district will actually matter which is remarkable.
Tonight the media will be reporting a Sanders loss. He is not doing so well in the east coast urban states. This will be followed by more pressure from the media and the Clinton campaign (sometimes you wonder if that isn't the same thing) for him to stand down, just as Hillary did in 2008 when Obama was winning everything. Not.
But Sanders has not lost yet. Certainly if you do not take Super-delegates into account, this is still very open. And California might count, I heard someone say 'for the first time since Bobby Kennedy'. But lets not think about what happened there.
Tonight will be important also for Trump. If he wins big in Pennsylvania, he will claim it is all over. Pennsylvania has 48 sort of non-super super delegates who have pledged to go with who wins the popular vote, but they don't have to stick to that.
And then there will also be complaints from the losers about people not being able to vote, because they are black, haven't got ID, because they were unregistered by a computer, because they are independents, because they registered to vote for the Independent Party by mistake, because they were old or busy and couldn't stand in line forever. And there will be people saying its unfair because the rules for choosing delegates favored one side or the other, or because of super delegates or the uncommitted GOP delegates who are not super delegates but are exactly the same. In all there have been a lot of questions about the process, which is all good - we should question the process but remember we are choosing the candidate for a party - so naturally each party has its own rules. Its just a bit bizarre in the US where in most states, the state runs the election for the party. What America lacks perhaps that Europe is accustomed to is a separation between party and state!
An open primary system such as they now have in California for US senators is far more democratic and really what people think the system is - it effectively creates a 2nd Ballot AV system like the French Presidential election. But that is not what we have. Because that would be so rational.
One of the claims about democracy is that it creates a rational result but actually collective rationality is a bit of a mathematical challenge. For picking a single office holder or option we have something termed the Condorcet Winner, after the Marquis de Condorcet that came up with this method of voting. The Condorcet winner is the option that beats all the other options in voting pairs. But there is not always a winner. You can have a situation, like rock paper scissors, where each beats the other - this seems to us irrational. How can a community prefer p to q, q to r and yet prefer r to p? It is the collectivization of rational choice that is having a hard time here.
The pollsters here have got really into these Condorcet style opinion polls pitting the candidates against each other in pairs and asking who would you vote for in a general election. Looking at Clinton, who narrowly beats Sanders in polls for the Democratic nomination, Clinton clearly beats Trump no problem, and Cruz. But if the GOP were acting rationally they would nominate Kasich who ACTUALLY beats Clinton. So is Kasich the Condorcet winner? Certainly the GOP's best chance is to nominate him (like that's going to happen!)
Funny thing is - look at Sander's pairings. He beats Trump, Cruz and Kasich and is in fact the Condorcet winner (well except that he doesn't beat Clinton). The whole process fails the Condorcet Criterion for rational collective choice...and there is no Condorcet winner.
But it is interesting that Sanders beats everyone except Clinton, bizarre even. Now you also have to take into account his lack of media coverage. And what's more Sanders is doing well in places that actually vote democrat - does it matter so much that Clinton does well in the South where the majority will vote Republican? Perhaps the clue is in looking at the issues - Sanders is actually closest to the majority of Americans on issues in (notoriously unreliable) opinion polls. Sanders is, if you like, the voice of America (unheard). And yet Kasich and Sanders are the least likely to get elected.
But opinion polls only tell us how people were thinking when the poll was taken. We still have a long time to go and this campaign is going to change drastically very soon. After the conventions there will have to be some coalition building (how at this point that will happen is really fascinating to watch) in both parties and there may also be an independent or third party candidate. For the more they disqualify each other the more impossible unity becomes. My next post might have been 'reasons to vote for Hillary but I am running low.'
