Beto O'Rourke joined Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg yesterday in endorsing Joe Biden. This circus of filth and corruption is meant to juice the addled former vice president's momentum coming off his Saturday South Carolina blowout win, a win obscured by domestic jitters over the fatal coronavirus, heading into today's important Super Tuesday primary.
FiveThirtyEight's Democratic Primary Forecast now, improbably, has Biden significantly ahead of Sanders, 31% compared to 8%, to win the nomination. Based on what? One state in Dixie that is going to vote for Trump in November no matter what? It is hard to say for sure because no one knows what goes into Nate Silver's special sauce.
What I did notice is that the faux-hipsters of FiveThirtyEight were starting to climb aboard the Bernie bandwagon after Nevada. Then panic in the ruling class took hold and Nate Silver and his pals started to climb down off the bandwagon.
Having paid close attention to FiveThirtyEight the last couple of months I've come to the conclusion that Silver's forecasts, ever changing, are not forecasts but snapshots of the present corporate hive-mind; they don't predict the future but tell us what the future looks like currently in the neoliberal corporate now. I don't want to say it is entirely useless because a snapshot of the corporate political hive-mind is illuminating, but it is basically corrupt.
That being said, let's keep our eyes on the Lone Star. Polls won't close there until 9 PM. If Bernie can win in Texas, and then rack up big wins in California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota and maybe even North Carolina, he'll be in control, particularly with elections in Washington and Michigan next week. Nate Silver will have to rejigger his forecast yet again.
If Biden beats Bernie in Texas then we must acknowledge that the Democratic establishment still has quite a bit of game left. Reanimating a cadaver is no easy feat. Biden was DOA after his horrendous debate performances, Iowa and New Hampshire. A Biden win in Texas, Alabama and strong showings elsewhere means that superdelegate fantasies of a brokered convention are likely to come true.
One thing that has not been sufficiently factored in during this second-wave Biden boom is Mike Bloomberg's appearance on the ballot for the first time. Bloomberg has spent so much money I don't see how he fails to make a splash. Bloomberg will hurt Biden in the South, and I think he will hurt Biden in California. I think the touts at FiveThirtyEight and other outlets have prematurely written off the diminutive media mogul.
No comments:
Post a Comment