131 Comments
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Stephen Robinson's avatar

Yeah, but does a Democrat even need to “eat a corn dog” when he needs to deliver 90 percent of the Black vote and 65 percent of the Hispanic vote. Not to engage in stereotypes but there are far more regional/culturally important traditions for a Dem to engage in leading up to the campaign.

So, you have Buttigieg/Klobuchar looking more at “home” with Iowa voters for MONTHS while Booker/Harris/Castro stand out as “different,” yet if you look at the Dem electorate, it should be the opposite.

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fancycwabs's avatar

This one is campaigning 101. Barack Obama had both of his Democratic opponents eliminated during his first campaign for state Senate in Illinois by challenging signatures on their petitions. It sucks, but them's the rules.

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davebarnes's avatar

No sympathy.Everyone knows you need to collect 2x signatures that you believe are valid.

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JollyRogerMexico's avatar

Again, you've thought it out but I'm not convinced.

The first 10 states aren't really compelling me. Sure, Vermont is "liberal" but it's also very, VERY, white. Ditto Maine (and less liberal).

Delaware and Rhode Island? Sure.

The rest of those states are horror shows. None of them looks remotely like the US as a whole.

I also don't see how yours is "less complex" than my 2nd option. I'm not buying the "echo chamber" argument. Since the election is decided by electoral votes, reward the states that reliably deliver them by letting them select the candidate. If Wyoming wants more skin in the game they can register and turn out more Dems (you know, like Stacey Abrams did in Georgia).

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JollyRogerMexico's avatar

You're from S. Carolina originally, right? I'm gonna assume that the "regionally/culturally" important traditions would be visiting churches. I don't fully disagree, but how do we get a candidate who can bring out the (Atlanta) Georgia vote but also Milwaukee, Detroit, and Lansing? Maybe Cleveland and Cincinatti at some point.

If I'm doing the calculus (integral? differential?) I'm going to prefer candidates who can deliver Michigan over S. Carolina, but how great to be able to deliver both.

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Dorothea is a Democrat's avatar

The court takes no joy in its conclusion. I call bullshit.

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яовэят ёскэят 😘's avatar

Elsewhere in the decision the ruling says that every candidate needs to play by the same rules-- but these are not the rules that have been used before, but that doesn't matter because reasons.

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revenant's avatar

You said it , Stephen- something is fundamentally broken in the system.

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яовэят ёскэят 😘's avatar

You ought to care whether a candidate is capable of speaking to actual living human beings. In the big states, only glossy ad buys make a difference, and that tilts the contest even more heavily toward the corporate-sellout types that in other posts of yours you deplore.

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яовэят ёскэят 😘's avatar

"if they are holding everyone else to it" This is the thing though. Nobody else has been held to this level of rigor: if one guy on the sheet messed up the date, but the person before and the person after wrote the same date, that was considered sufficient evidence of what date that signature was collected.

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Bageled Mind Virus's avatar

The Court takes no joy in this conclusion

cynicism cranked up to 9000.

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brandodell's avatar

Wish I had the answer. Clearly, Dems have a weakness with the white vote, particularly the white non-college vote. I don't want to go with the easy answer of "they're bigots" because (1) if so, that means we're totally screwed, and (2) as you note, it doesn't explain why Obama did a lot better with that demographic than the two white nominees who followed him.

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brandodell's avatar

But did other candidates with the same level of errors get a pass? If so, that'd mean unequal treatment. I still don't get the "only get the bare minimum" tactic though. How does she know even one of them doesn't have a major error, more than just failing to put in a date?

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Michael Everette's avatar

Decades of brainwashing propaganda spewed forth by the right wing media into the brains of deplorably ignorant people.

BENGHAZI!!!!!!EMAILS!!!!HUNTER BIDEN!!!!!SQUIRREL!!!!!

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marshwren's avatar

Clearly, the system works exactly as intended; all one needs is a complicit judiciary to aid and abet. In a textbook democracy (hahahahahahaha) de minimis non curat lex (the law does not concern itself with trifles) should prevail; except when (as noted) a microscopic application of the law suits the Party in power.

That said, Finkenauer's campaign made a fatal mistake by not padding the signatures to make the challenge possible. She needed 3,500? She should have gotten 5,000, or more. This should have been covered in "Electoral Politics 101". For dummies. Unless, OTOH, the DP in IA really is as moribund and defunct as that.

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Michael Everette's avatar

In 2012 something similar happened on the Republican side.Michigan-11 is a deep red district.Thaddeus McCotter was a shoe in to win the seat for the Republicans,in fact anybody was a shoe in.

But McCotter ended up 1000 votes short to get on the ballot,and reindeer herder - Santa impersonator Kerry Bentivolio ended up going to congress.Fortunately he was too stupid to do anything really bad except cast votes.

https://www.nhregister.com/...

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