New Hampshire Post-Mortem: Hillary, a Corpse on Life Support + Trump's Apotheosis

While the United States might not be a closed society in the classic George Orwell 1984 police state sense, it is one where its inhabitants are subject to a great deal of centrally managed thought control. Every country propagandizes its own population. But the U.S. has long prided itself on its free press, enshrined as it is in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

This morning drove home to me the extent to which we do not have a free press. Waking up I went online to see what the vote totals were in New Hampshire. On the home page to the nation's newspaper, The New York Times, there was a modest headline "Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Win in New Hampshire," with most of its related coverage devoted to Trump's victory. Nowhere can the reader easily find the normally ubiquitous color chart graphic of the vote total.

I cooked a pot of whole wheat pasta at 3:45 AM to kill time until I could amble downstairs to the front stoop where the national edition of The New York Times usually arrives by 4:15 AM. I wanted to see if the lack of statistical information about the New Hampshire results was replicated in the home edition of the paper. Sure enough it was.

Out of curiosity I took a brief spin around the World Wide Web. I couldn't find my way past the Wall Street Journal's paywall, but the Washington Post has the vote totals on its home page. Also, if you Google "New Hampshire results," you'll find them. You just wont find them readily available in "the newspaper of record."

Here they are: Bernie Sanders 60.0%, Hillary Clinton 38.3%. Trump won by 20 points too:
Donald Trump 35.2%, John Kasich 15.8, Ted Cruz 11.6%, Jeb Bush 11.1%, Marco Rubio 10.5%.

The Times, having recently endorsed Hillary, is of course doing everything it can to keep Sanders from enjoying a deserved bounce for his commanding victory in a state that has always been kind to the Clintons. As Patrick Healy summarizes online this morning in "New Hampshire Takeaways: Trust, Experience and Message Count":

New Hampshire Abandoned the Clintons

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the New Hampshire loss for Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. The state was a political bellwether for Mr. Clinton, putting him on the path toward the Democratic nomination in 1992 and backing him in the general elections that year and in 1996.

Voters again came through in a big way in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton won here and revived her candidacy after losing the Iowa caucuses to Barack Obama and John Edwards. But on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton lost New Hampshire’s big cities: Concord, Manchester and Nashua. She lost most of the small towns. She lost in the north country and the seacoast, along the western border and through the White Mountains.

She lost many major demographic groups, performing best among the older and wealthier, and among people who care about experience and electability in November. But these voters were small in number compared with Mr. Sanders’s legions. Mrs. Clinton won 112,404 votes in New Hampshire in 2008 in a tough race against Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards; on Tuesday, she won about 89,000 to Mr. Sanders’s 139,000.

It should be apparent now that Hillary is a corpse animated by the millions in corporate donations and filthy lucre from the sheikhs of al-Saud. If she somehow manages to win the primary she will do so by tapping deep pools of public ignorance. And while normally it is never wise to underestimate the limited vision of the average voter, 2016 represents something different. Hillary is losing not only among the white working class, but women as well. So she can't even buttress her campaign with the the two pillars of her failed 2008 run. Let's go back to Healy:

Working-Class White Voters Are Up for Grabs

In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Obama in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states partly because of solid support from working-class white voters. But Mr. Sanders prevailed with these voters in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Sixty-eight percent of white noncollege graduates supported him, as did 65 percent of people from families earning less than $50,000. On the Republican side, the same groups of voters broke strongly for Mr. Trump. 

Mrs. Clinton says she thinks she can still win back these voters with her policy proposals for paid family leave and for capping prescription drug costs for some Americans, but so far she has not performed well with less affluent voters in New Hampshire or Iowa.

Democratic Women Aren’t Rallying Behind Clinton

Something went wrong between Mrs. Clinton and the women of New Hampshire. Mr. Sanders won 55 percent of their votes compared with Mrs. Clinton’s 44 percent, with married women and especially unmarried women breaking his way, according to exit polls. 

Those results rocked the Clinton campaign, given that Mrs. Clinton is running to become the first female president and enjoyed the support of many of the most powerful women in the state, including its governor and its Democratic senator. Moreover, women provided the margin of victory for Mrs. Clinton in her 2008 primary victory here. 

Clinton advisers are confident that her support will rebound with women in Nevada, South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states that vote on March 1. But some of Mrs. Clinton’s friends are nervous: They did not expect her to lose New Hampshire so badly, and for women to be such a big factor in her defeat.

Clinton is in real trouble. Hence the morning after blackout of her 20-point loss in the newspaper of record.

Another warning sign for Hillary is found in John Broder's "Primary Exit Polls Show Terror Fears Aided Trump and Young Voters Helped Sanders":

Mrs. Clinton topped Mr. Sanders by a wide margin among voters who said the next president should generally continue President Obama’s policies. But they accounted for only about four in 10 Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire — far fewer than in Iowa. Instead, just as many voters said the next president should change to more liberal policies — and eight in 10 of these voters backed Mr. Sanders. Almost two-thirds of Democratic voters said they support replacing the current health care system with a single taxpayer-funded plan for all Americans.

My way of thinking is that Obama is not all that popular among the Democratic base. Since Hillary has hitched her campaign wagon to him, it appears to be a losing strategy.

Needless to say Hillary's backers are starting to freak out. Team Clinton very well might lose Nevada, having beat Obama there in 2008. But Team Clinton is assuring its supporters that all will be right come Super Tuesday, possibly a sacrifice of campaign staff will be performed to appease the distraught.

As for Trump, Healy says:

Trump Voters Are Real

Mr. Trump led in many Iowa polls before the Feb. 1 caucuses, but he came in second place when it came time for the actual voting. That result raised questions about whether all the people crowding into Trump rallies were true-blue supporters or celebrity worshipers. 

But on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump’s supporters proved that they were committed and enthusiastic enough to turn out for their candidate. He won among first-time voters in a Republican primary, as expected. But he also won among Republicans, independents and people who have voted in past party primaries. 

He did especially well with voters who preferred candidates who “tell it like it is.” But he lost to Mr. Kasich, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Mr. Bush among voters who wanted a candidate who “shares my values.” In the end, Mr. Trump won 30 to 40 percent of the vote among many demographic groups, showing that he can win primaries and caucuses when a large Republican field splits the vote.

Trump is popular in the South. Cruz has a lot of PAC money supporting him. Unless Establishment donors give up their "hot chick" obsession with Marco Rubio and coalesce behind Kasich, Trump and Cruz are going to continue to lead the field.

As for the Democratics, let's look and see what happens at the Nevada caucuses come February 20. Rank'n'file labor activists are overwhelming behind Bernie.

New Hampshire

What we are witnessing now in the Clinton campaign, in the media monopoly that backs her, and among her campaign surrogates is mounting panic. We saw it with Bill Clinton rambling on about Sanders' deceit and misogyny to a less-than-overflowing crowd at a New Hampshire junior high school. It was also on display when Gloria Steinem, feminist museum piece, dismissed as cock chasing the large advantage Bernie Sanders enjoys among young women.

It is pathetic. But it is not arbitrary or capricious. It is a centralized decision by Team Hillary to go negative in the run up to the primary today in an attempt to keep Sanders from a double-digit win.

Here is the CNN New Hampshire polling snapshot from yesterday:

On the eve of New Hampshire's presidential primaries, a new CNN Poll of Polls finds both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are holding on to substantial leads in their respective races, but each faces an opponent whose support is on the rise.

Sanders' 54% to 40% advantage over Hillary Clinton is down slightly from a 55% to 37% lead in the previous Poll of Polls. No public polling has found Clinton in the lead in New Hampshire since November.

Trump tops the GOP field with 31%, well ahead of Marco Rubio's 15%. Rubio has picked up four points since the previous New Hampshire Poll of Polls, the biggest change in the averages in the last week. Ted Cruz follows with 13%, John Kasich at 11% and Jeb Bush at 10%. This pack of four -- Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Bush -- has been jockeying for second place in the state for some time. The fifth candidate often included in the group, Chris Christie, has generally seen his support dwindle, and now stands well behind, dropping two points in this week's Poll of Polls to an average of 5%. Carly Fiorina ties Christie at 5% and Ben Carson rounds out the group with 3%.

Politics is not rocket science. Certain things are known to work, one of them is negative campaigning. It doesn't drive support to your candidate; it drives down the support for your opponent, particularly if your opponent is buoyed by idealistic, young, first-time voters who still believe a better world is possible. Going on the attack, accusing your opponent (and, by association, his supporters) of dishonesty and base intentions, is the equivalent of a blow to the face. Most people can't take being hit in the face. So these voters stop participating. I saw it up close in the heady days post-Nader 2000. Once idealistic young Greens figured out that people despised them and that the foundation of politics was conflict and quid pro quo they melted away, back to their lives as spectators.

The goal for Hillary is to keep Sanders' margin of victory in the single digits and then claim victory based on that result. The template here is what Slick Willie did in New Hampshire in 1992 against Paul Tsongas. Clinton came in second, losing by eight points; but he did better than expected and dubbed himself "The Comeback Kid," which the media monopoly dutifully gobbled up.

Signs are that Hillary's negativism is paying off. But it looks like it's too late to keep Bernie from a double-digit win. Nate Cohn has a good New Hampshire rundown this morning in "New Hampshire Should Answer a Lot of Key Questions":

The race may have tightened since the last debate. The five polls released after the debate last week showed Hillary Clinton faring seven points better, on average, than a prior batch of polls. On the other hand, those prior polls showed her behind by an average of 15 points, so there may be some “reversion to the mean” at play — it might be that the five previous polls were unrealistically good for Mr. Sanders, not that Mrs. Clinton actually gained. 

It would be tough to dismiss a huge Mr. Sanders victory simply by saying he’s well known in Vermont. That’s certainly true compared with the rest of the country, but it seems like a stretch to argue that the average New Hampshire voter should be extremely predisposed toward Mr. Sanders. 

Ninety percent of the New Hampshire Democratic electorate isn’t in the Burlington, Vt., media market, and the state’s most populous area — the southeastern section — is also the area farthest from Vermont. It was also Mrs. Clinton’s strongest area in 2008. Whether Mr. Sanders can beat here there, or at least do better than Barack Obama did in 2008, could offer real insight into the extent of Mr. Sanders’s appeal.

Bernie wins New Hampshire. The only way the narrative gets difficult is if he beats Hillary by only a few points. But whether it is nine points or 13, I don't think it makes much difference going into Nevada and South Carolina. The race really begins in Nevada. We will know how much mojo Bernie has based on how he does there. Hillary beat Obama in Nevada in 2008.

The same metric applies to Trump in New Hampshire. He has led there for a long time by a wide margin. If he wins in a squeaker, following his disappointing performance in the Potemkin village of American democracy, the Iowa caucuses, then his path to the Republican nomination becomes a trail of tears. But the New Hampshire narrative for the last week has been all about Marco Rubio. Chris Christie bitch-slapped him repeatedly Saturday night during the Republican debate hosted by ABC, and Rubio didn't look good handling it.

I watched the debate; it's the first GOP performance I have seen. What struck me is how threadbare the whole affair appeared. It reminded me of employees who have worked together for decades trapped in the company break room sniping at each other; that, or hungover fraternity brothers arguing in the filth of the kitchen the morning after a big house party. Trump looked tired. Ben Carson came off as an imbecile. Chris Christie, a bully. Marco Rubio, a hot young stupid ambitious chick in "come-fuck-me" pumps. Jeb Bush, a manikin. Ted Cruz, the second coming of Tricky Dick Nixon. John Kasich, probably the best of the bunch, but no one you would ever want to vote for anyway. ABC framed the debate like a sporting event with shots of the candidates walking through halls like boxers with their entourages on the way to the ring or footballers coming out the tunnel. Marco Rubio even had earbuds draped over his Oxford, reminiscent of so many athletes you see dismounting the team bus with their Beats headphones.

My preference for the #2 slot in the GOP New Hampshire primary, ahead of Kasich or Bush at #3, is Chris Christie. The guy is a toxic force, a lethal debater, extremely unappealing, a blowhard. Christie at #2 would shake things up.

Iowa Post-Mortem: GOP's Boy Wonder Appears, Trump Actually Does Quite Well and Signs of Clinton Meltdown

The tendency will be to say the big takeaway from the Iowa caucuses is that Donald Trump shit the bed, coming in second as he did to the vile Ted Cruz, and not necessarily by a minute margin either with the Texan champion of the GOP Tea Party makeover beating the Manhattan real estate mogul 27.7% to 24.4%.

But that is not my takeaway. My takeaway is that the Iowa caucuses offered a smorgasbord for Republicans, giving every significant segment of the fractured party a reason to crow. For starters, evangelicals proved once again that victory for a GOP candidate in Iowa is dependent on their faith-based network. Cruz joins Mike Huckabee (2008) and Rick Santorum (2012) as winner of the caucuses thanks to the Christian vote. And as Huckabee and Santorum managed to linger on after Iowa without ever dominating the race again, so too will be the fate of Ted Cruz.

For the party establishment, Iowa delivered the joyful verdict that Marco Rubio is indeed a player. Rubio came in third, just a little more than a point behind Trump. For months Rubio has been puffed as the future of the party, the bright, new face of the GOP, and he came through after really only spending January in the Hawkeye State. Reince Priebus must be tickled pink this morning. If Rubio performs well again next Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary, while Bush, Kasich and Christie underperform, the pressure from on high will be for the also-rans to get out of the race and fall in behind Norman Braman's page-boy.

For Donald Trump, all is not lost. In fact, I would say, if not "mission accomplished," then "one helluva job." An all-time record was established for participation in a Republican Iowa caucus, with 46% showing up to his/her first caucus (roughly equal to Bernie's draw in the Dem caucuses, though not up to the 57% Obama drew in 2008). And Trump had basically no ground game to speak of. This is from the frontpager in today's New York Times, Jonathan Martin's "Ted Cruz Wins Republican Caucuses in Iowa":

Turnout was about 185,000, a record, according to Edison Research, which conducted entrance polls at precincts across the state. Mr. Trump’s success had been expected to hinge on whether he could mobilize his supporters. But the turnout was not enough to deliver him a win, even though 46 percent of those who turned out were participating in a Republican caucus for the first time. 

Instead, Mr. Trump paid the price for building only a rudimentary political organization in the state: The brew of energy and anger powering his candidacy did not fully translate into votes.

This lack of ground game will not be a problem in the upcoming primary states. Trump is unsinkable; his loss to Cruz is of very little importance. What should be very troubling to Trump is the emergence of Rubio as a candidate with comparable heft. As long as Rubio remains in the frame, come convention time the party will do everything in its power to deliver the nomination to him.

When it comes to the Democratic results in Iowa, the tie between Hillary and Bernie is almost as good as a victory for the Sanders camp. Clearly the Clintons were anticipating a victory and the spate of "Go home, Bernie; you're a fringe candidate after all" stories to follow. Now the opposite is happening. Take the opening to this morning's frontpager by Patrick Healy, "Little Separates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in Tight Race in Iowa":

The close results were deeply unnerving to Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as well as her advisers, some of whom had expressed growing confidence in recent days that they had recaptured political momentum after weeks when Mr. Sanders was drawing huge crowds and rising in the polls. The Clintons had appeared optimistic at rallies over the weekend, thanking Iowans for their support as much as urging them to turn out to vote.

The close vote means that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders are likely to split Iowa’s share of delegates to the Democratic convention, and Mr. Sanders will be able to argue that the Iowa result was a virtual tie.

The Clinton team was counting on its huge, well-trained army of volunteers, covering all of Iowa’s 1,681 voting precincts, to counter the enormous enthusiasm of voters who jammed into events to hear Mr. Sanders. But his well-financed Iowa organization was able to convert the energy of his crowds into voters on Monday night, as he drew huge numbers of first-time caucusgoers, young people and liberals who responded to his rallying cry against the nation’s “rigged economy.”

The virtual tie between the two candidates instantly raised the stakes for their next face-off, the primary next Tuesday in New Hampshire. Mr. Sanders holds a solid lead in polls there and has the advantage of being from Vermont; candidates from neighboring states have won the state’s primary in recent decades, and Mr. Sanders is admired in the state.

Clinton advisers said late Monday night that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were discussing bringing on additional staff members to strengthen her campaign operation now that a pitched battle may lie ahead against Mr. Sanders. The advisers said they did not know if a significant staff shakeup was at hand, but they said that the Clintons were disappointed with Monday night’s result and wanted to ensure that her organization, political messaging and communications strategy were in better shape for the contests to come.

Even more damning is Clinton beat reporter Amy Chozick's "Tight Democratic Race in Iowa Unnerves Clinton Campaign." Campaign manager Robby Mook appears to be headed for the chopping block:

Even before Mrs. Clinton finished her brief remarks to her supporters late Monday night, discussions were underway among her outside advisers and donors about the need to bring in longtime Clinton aides and diminish the role of Robby Mook, her young data-driven campaign manager. Asked about such discussions, Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the campaign, grew irritated. “Are you serious?” he said tersely to a reporter. 

Next to a commanding five-point win, Bernie could not have asked for anything more. Mook is the guy who was saying from the outset Hillary could return the Obama coalition to the polls. I'm sure at this point Slick Willie has put his foot down and told John Podesta to get serious.

Sham Elections in the United States

As one ages, meaning, when one leaves youth behind and moves into midlife, attention to the basics becomes paramount. And what I mean by the basics are diet, exercise and rest. If you are attentive to these details of your life, you can successfully counteract some of the decreases in energy that result from the loss of youth.

Along with this wisdom regarding the basics, age also brings an appreciation of a central bias of U.S. reporting on foreign elections and election processes. The bias is that U.S. electoral democracy is cleaner, fairer, more open than other countries.

Putin's United Russia party swept Russia's elections on Sunday. David Herszenhorn reports in
"Russia: Putin’s Loyalists Dominate Vote" that "Candidates loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin won elections for governor in all 30 regions that held elections on Sunday, as balloting reflected the Kremlin’s total domination of political opponents and its iron grip on the country’s political system."

Neil MacFarquhar had a story yesterday that criticized these elections because of recent changes in ballot access requirements and the outsize influence of money in the process. This was said without sarcasm in the flagship newspaper of a nation that has the most complex, antiquated, money-dominated electoral system on the planet.

The same day as MacFarquhar penned his critique of Russian elections, Hillary Clinton made an appearance at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. There is now no doubt that the American electorate is going to be force fed a Hillary candidacy for president.

Presidential elections in the United States are based largely on the performance of candidates in two small, lily white non-urban states -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- that occur early in the primary season. Third parties don't figure in the process. Iowa and New Hampshire are classic Potemkin villages,

The system is rigged. Ballot access laws prevent any third-party candidate from reaching the people. 

I'll be dealing with this issue more in the future. I saw it up close as a member of the Green Party during the last decade, specifically as a Nader supporter. What the Democratic Party did to Nader in 2004 is very instructive. Democrats basically sued -- successfully -- the Nader campaign to keep it off the ballot in several key states. You won't find the Gray Lady inveighing about it in her editorial pages, but Nader 2004 proves beyond question that the United States does not have a fair election system.

And then there is role of money. After Citizens United there is no longer any question that elections are now a contest between who has the biggest pile of money. I don't think, post-Citizens United, that the sham can continue much longer.