Another Path to Victory for Bernie Sanders

[flamingdem]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/07/another-path-to-victory-for-bernie-sanders/

On March 2, I wrote up the projection that became Bernie’s Narrow Path to Victory in CounterPunch. Parts of it have held up incredibly well; other parts have been quite wrong. The overall outlook, however, is that five weeks and some 1371 contested pledged delegates later, Bernie Sanders is only about a dozen delegates short of where I said he would need to be as of April 6.

Not bad.

At the same time, aside from the contests of March 15, my race by race forecasts using a number of data points including FiveThirtyEight’s Facebook Primary (Adjusted to USPD), have been substantially accurate. Meanwhile, Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight have set out a Rose Colored Glasses scenario for getting Sanders to the most pledged delegates as of June 15.

In what follows, I am not going to go over Bernie’s Narrow Path or the Rose Colored Path in any detail but will refer to them each occasionally. We’ve learned a bunch about what is possible and what isn’t in the previous five weeks. If you pressed me hard, I would probably say that Sanders is likely to fall around 50 delegates short on June 15, provided he even survives the race beyond April 26. But a potential 50 delegate shortfall in a more than 4,000 delegate race is no reason at all to throw in the towel. As such, I’m setting out a more realistic path to victory for Bernie Sanders than either my own month old effort or FiveThirtyEight’s.

LEARNING THE LESSON, MAKING THE PROJECTION

The major thing to learn, and that FiveThirtyEight definitively ignores, is the lesson of the Ides of March: hitting at or near your ceiling in five big states on one day as an insurgent is an impossible order. Four of the five races that will be held on April 26th, as opposed to just one on March 15, will be closed primaries. Accordingly, I am setting out a path to victory with much more pressure on the later race in California. Here is Another Path to Victory in text summary form; race by race notes bunched according to the calendar to follow:

[Press Virginia]

1. Who knows how people are going to react to Bill's performance tonight

will it have any effect on black voters? Could they just not show up to support HRC?

[SheilaT]

2. Interesting article.

Thanks for the link.

NY will be crucial. It's my opinion that if he does any worse than a tenth of a percent better than she, the Hillary campaign will be screaming VICTORY!!!! as if they were the Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and Bernie is General Custer and all his unfortunate troops.

But NY is still 10 days away, well 9 to be precise, since it's after midnight there. There's no advance voting in NY. Advantage Bernie. It's a closed primary, which is supposed to be Advantage Hillary, but the actual number/percentage of independent voters in NY simply isn't that huge. True, some New Yorkers will have very fond memories of her as Senator, which will be to her advantage. But loads of others do see her as a carpetbagger, which hurts her. Plus, Bernie is originally a New Yorker, and you can tell as soon as he opens his mouth, and that's (I suspect) a huge advantage.

Then, there's the wild flailing about of the Clinton campaign, doing everything possible to smear Sanders. Why would they be so desperate? Is it possible they have internal polling that shows him already tied with him, or so close that it's the same thing? And they're not stupid, at least I hope the ones running the campaign aren't. They would know that ever since Bernie started his straight run of seven wins, he only gains in the final days and hours before voting.

[flamingdem]

3. I wonder how many will watch the debates

and also if the young and activist NY Sanders supporters are hitting the pavement.

I'm glad they learned now that facebanking, doing canvassing via facebook and from home, is not the best way to get the word out. Though that said Berners from all over the US should be flooding NY with friendly calls right about now.

[SheilaT]

4. I gave up on watching the debates last cycle.

I never felt like I learned anything from them.

Don't know if you've had a chance to see this:
https://www.berniepb.com/

It's a graphic of the Bernie phonebanking. Right now no one is calling, but will resume calling the eastern time zone states at 10am tomorrow.

[flamingdem]

5. That's great, thanks!

I love the idea of seeing it in action.

[Duckfan]

6. I get the feeling we'll all be doing this after all is said and done....

I do try to be an optimist and given that both Bill and Hillary are shooting their mouths off (Hillary using Sandy Hook came back to bite her) helps our cause. And after reading above article, I didn't think there were New Yorker's PO'd for Hillary moving there to become a Senator. So there are some factors to think about--possibly good factors that give Bernie a "W" in the end.

[PATRICK]

7. Nailbiting

Normally I would predict a certain victory for Sanders in NY. The elephant in the room is the party establishment, the M$M and the weight pressed down against a normal contest of candidate versus candidate. That is a very large extent of what "black support" means
whatever the natural favoring of Clinton. Churning out the GOTV down by the organizations with long history. Which is why the hammering of unions who maybe have been hammered too much already by Hillary supporter Cuomo.

This always puts Bernie in a "must win" situation when beating the odds never is allowed to make the logical point. But Clinton can certainly blow the state too with missteps.

I see a lot of frayed nerves about this "path to victory" thing. No one seems to believe voters are making a difference yet. It is pretty obvious the dynamics are not going to be easy and a real blow out of the odds would be a clincher. So far the voters have pretty well supported the better candidate so here's hoping the distraction circus and electoral college attitude of the other side gets its comeuppance before California.