Kansas isn't actually feeling the burn

[jmowreader]

If you go into Bernie Underground you get the impression, from reading all the "Bernie! Fuck yeah!" threads about the Kansas caucus, that Sanders just swept California. Did he?

Well...by reading the title of this thread you can pretty much figure the truth is ugly. This is how bad.

According to NBC News, Bernie had 26,450 people standing for him. The population of Kansas is 2.904 million, so only 0.91 percent of the total population of Kansas is feeling the Bern.

However, we ARE talking about Kansas here. You know Kansas. It's the state that reelected Sam Brownback. The state that spawned Fred Phelps. People tune their radios to Rush Limbaugh and throw away the knob. Kansas has been redder than the side of a fire truck since the day it achieved statehood and nothing's ever going to change that. (As a matter of reference, Ted Cruz came within four thousand votes of Bernie's and Hillary's COMBINED totals...and he only took 48 percent of the Republican vote.)

Then I thought, who is Bernie's core constituency? Of course! College students, right? Kansas has a few of those. If you add up the student bodies of Kansas' seven four-year public universities you find there are 100,804 college students there. Let's subtract the people who were recruited from out of state to play sports and the thousands who flock to Kansas universities from around the world to study the things no one does better - like agronomy and grain science - and we'll say there are 90,000 people enrolled in Kansas universities who are eligible to vote in Kansas elections. Of those few people, he only got 29.38 percent.

Which leads to the critical question: if Bernie can't even get the people who love him to the polls to support him, how are they going to convince the rest of us to go?

[Rose Siding]

1. There are good Dems in KS too and I don't want to discount them

That said, it's a small pond and considering that only 1/10th of the 2012 GE total showed up, the revolution is clearly not a go in KS.

[yallerdawg]

2. Yes, the central United States did not just swing socialist.

And we definitely don't want them to get a chance to express their opinion of socialism in November!

Not that there's anything wrong with socialism!

[BlueMTexpat]

3. Two excellent books about

Kansas: What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule by Thomas Frank

As with every state in the US, there are a LOT of good people, whether we always agree with them politically or not. The US President should be a President for ALL the people, not simply for those who agree with any single segment of the electorate.

This is one reason why I love that Hillary is fighting in every single state, even - and especially, in the case of NH - where she is NOT favored to win. That shows real gumption and determination, rather than a dilettante approach.

[brer cat]

5. +1 nt

[Nonhlanhla]

6. No disrespect intended

but I personally don't like this kind of analysis when it comes from the Bernie folks, and I don't like it when it comes from our side. Caucuses obviously don't draw such large numbers as primaries (and even primaries don't draw immensely large numbers). Secondly, just because it's a red state does not mean that we should discount it - just like we don't want the Bernie supporters to discount Hillary's votes in the red Southern states. Thirdly, Kansas actually has a long history of populism - it used to be more progressive populism, but the tide turned eventually. See above mentioned "What's the Matter with Kansas"?

So, in short, obviously the whole of Kansas does not support Bernie - and perhaps not even large numbers of people there do. But the same can be said of South Carolina's support of Hillary. What was it, about 13% of Dems there voted?

[jmowreader]

7. No we DON'T want to discount it...

If you look at the other states that have voted, a similar pattern emerges: the people who LOVE Bernie, who are filling arenas for him, aren't getting people to the polls.

[Nonhlanhla]

8. Yes, that we certainly agree on.

He's doing fairly well, and I believe the people in those arenas mostly go and vote for him, but his coalition is just too small. Hillary's more intimate settings and retail politics, as well as her long history of working with minorities (among others) most certainly helped her to form a broader coalition.

[Maru Kitteh]

9. "People tune their radios to Rush Limbaugh and throw away the knob. "

Kansas has been redder than the side of a fire truck since the day it achieved statehood and nothing's ever going to change that.

Okay I know technically it's NOT funny but I LOVE how you put this! I do!

[Cha]

10. I know, huh? I liked it, too.. and now I get to read it twice.. LOL