June 08, 2016

U.S. Election Thread 2016-04 - Premature Presumptive

The Associated Press yesterday declared Hillary Clinton to be the "presumptive" Democratic nominee for the presidential election based on alleged pledges of anonymous super-delegates.

This was a quite unprecedented interference in still ongoing and upcoming primaries on a day when no new public vote count was available.

Bernie Sanders said he will continue to campaign up to the convention. His hope is that either the FBI will indict Hillary Clinton for using an unsecured private email server for classified state business, or that some other Clinton scandal will make it most likely that she would lose a vote against Trump. In both cases some super-delegates may change their vote and the convention might vote for Sanders as nominee.

The FBI is under Obama's control and there no doubt that he wants Clinton as candidate to continue his right-leaning policies. But the FBI tends to be leaking quite a bit and someone with access to the case may want to speak to some enterprising reporters.

Sanders requested a meeting with Obama which will happen on Thursday. Obama will offer him a bad deal which would be akin to a total capitulation. Sanders will look for a way to sneak at least some of his preferred policies into the party agenda. He will demand some significant price for endorsing Clinton and will probably wait to do so up to the last minute.

People around the world will wonder what democracy is all about when a race for a presidency ends up as a contest between the two most disliked people in the field who are both proxies for the more or less same small social segment.

The "Not Hillary" voices will not die down. A seemingly racist Trump with otherwise unpredictable policies may be less damaging to the world than an unreconstructed neolibcon Clinton.

Posted by b on June 8, 2016 at 5:44 UTC | Permalink

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