One of the reasons that returns are slow is that there are many mail-in absentee or early vote ballots. It always takes time to sort, open, and record. BTW, what "state run media" were you referencing? National Public Radio? Public Television? They are not state-run.

What is happening in America is that "the public", or "the people" have become alienated from their role of active citizens. The political establishment is quite happy to have disaffected citizens, because for the most part disaffected citizens won't be too annoying to officialdom. This trend of decreasing public involvement in politics (like by voting) has been dealing for quite some time -- not just in the last few years.

Peak-political involvement may have been more than 100 years ago (I'm relying on a lecture on political involvement I heard a while ago.). Yes, political alienation is a problem. The cure can't come from the political establishment. It has to come from The People, or it won't happen.

I feel like I'm missing out on some news item that this is in response to, because last I saw Bernie has consistently been reported to win the clear majority of delegates from California (34% to Biden's 27%). And the reason the California vote is still being counted up is because we Californians can vote by mail right up to the day of the election, so those vote-by-mail ballots are still coming in and still being tallied. From what I've heard the late voters tend to lean more toward Biden than Bernie, but that's not possibly enough to tip the scales of California in his favor, with only about 5% of votes left to tally and Bernie leading by 7% right now.

Unfortunately, even California's enormous number of delegates doesn't look like enough to top the scales nationwide in Bernie's favor. It's still possible for him to win, but he'd need landslide victories in a bunch of states that are not his strong ground to do so, so I'm expecting the worst.

(And because somehow saying that someone is likely to lose seems to magically make people vote against them... wtf people, this isn't a guessing game, you don't "win" by voting for the worse-but-more-likely-to-win option! If someone, like me, says the better candidate is likely to lose, that means you need to go out there and vote for them even more!)

I don't buy into this mail in absentee "reason". All votes don't have to be tallied up, even if absentee votes constituted 51% of all total cast votes in the state of California.

Puh-leeze, it doesn't take a genius to figure this out...

And, I don't even care at this point if Bernie looses. It's guaranteed with how this primary vote has been handled from my perspective.

I mean, if I were to live in a fascist dictatorship, then at least it would be officially known, and not some farce dystopian reality that this is.

I don't follow what it is you're not buying. Who is saying all the votes have to be tallied up before what? I mean, eventually they do need to be tallied, but it's pretty clear what the final tally (for California) is going to look like already, and that prediction is being reported. What are you seeing to the contrary, and where?

I mean, I just googled "did bernie win california" to get those numbers above and the results are showing lots of big-name news agencies reporting an expected win for him there.

I don't follow what it is you're not buying. Who is saying all the votes have to be tallied up before what? I mean, eventually they do need to be tallied, but it's pretty clear what the final tally (for California) is going to look like already, and that prediction is being reported. What are you seeing to the contrary, and where? — Pfhorrest

Please don't try and cajole me into docilness. You can do that all you want.

When official elections are handled, and this is by no means any different, then if an opponent attains a majority of the vote (meaning a total of 50.(1)%), then he or she is officially declared the victor in that state where the voting was conducted. Is this really anything new to you?

And in regards to the news, not many major news outlets have even followed this line of logic, and declared Bernie as the official victor in the state of California.

I have never seen so much vitriol against Bernie, until he became a real contestant of Biden's spoon fed road to the US presidency.

Primary elections aren't winner-take-all by state the way the general election is. Delegates are appointed proportional to the actual vote count, so completing the vote count matters. Currently Bernie has secured 210 delegate and Biden 162 delegates (from that google link above, again). There's 43 left to appoint, so if they go in the same proportions as they have so far Bernie will probably get another 24 and Biden another 19. But the exact numbers do matter, and might be different.

I mean, I just googled "did bernie win california" to get those numbers above and the results are showing lots of big-name news agencies reporting an expected win for him there. — Pfhorrest

The fact that you *just* googled it is sufficient proof to my sentiment. Anyways the point seems to be that Biden won Super Tuesday and not Bernie, despite Bernie being ahead in delegate count, which hasn't yet been officially declared. I'm moving out of the US, ASAP after I get enough money.

Fuck this and other unrelated crap that's been floating up recently.

I feel like you think I'm saying there's nothing to be upset about or something. I am upset about Biden's ascent, but it seems like you're extra upset about elements about that that you don't understand correctly.

I don't know what you mean about how I "just" googled it. I knew the general facts that Bernie had more delegates than Biden from California and was securely in the lead even though the could was still ongoing, I just didn't know what the exact current numbers are because they're always changing, so I just looked those up right now before I posted.

Biden "won Super Tuesday" nationwide because he got more delegates nationwide from the states that were voting on that day, and pulled into the lead nationwide for total delegate count. Googling "democratic primary delegate count" right now shows the current numbers as 881 for Biden, 725 for Bernie, nationwide. As I said before, it's 210 Bernie vs 162 Biden in California. So Bernie won California on Super Tuesday (they're just still calculating by exactly how much), but not nationwide.

Let's get the facts straight. Texas, and some other shithole states got tallied up the same night the votes were cast away. California got sidefucked and we're still counting our votes. Why are we Californians being treated as shit here?

Because we try to maximize the number of people whose votes get counted, so we let people vote by mail, and count them all so long as they put them in the mail by election day.

In Texas, if you couldn't make it to the polls in time on election day, tough luck, they want to have a number to report that night.

I don't see why you think this is bad for Californians somehow.

I don't see why you think this is bad for Californians somehow. — Pfhorrest

If you can't see why this is bad, then you don't need to vote at all.

I see why Bernie losing nationwide is bad, I just don't see why California taking care to count as many people's votes as possible is bad for Californians. It's not like Biden is winning more because of it or something.

In any case, all hope is not lost. I was just running the numbers a minute ago and Bernie needs 1266 more delegates on top of the 725 he has right now to reach the 1991 delegate threshold to be guaranteed the nomination. Since only 1773 of the 3979 delegates have been appointed so far, that means he needs 57% of the remaining 2206 delegates to be sure to win. And he only needs 1182 delegates, or 54%, to win a plurality.

Professional statisticians like FiveThirtyEight say that that's very unlikely, but seeing the numbers myself, it doesn't feel so hopeless after all.

Just so we're clear. I think, the world would be a happier place if Bernie doesn't get elected. So, the cat is out of the bag, the dice are loaded, other states that would never vote for Buh-nii in the general election, and got blasted as the true victors, and California got bumfucked over a mail-in ballot policy that is infinitely more fair than the vote rigging happening elsewhere.

Hope you're happy with your status quo.

Nihil-novi!

:yikes:

I don't know what in hell you are talking about, Shawn.

Every newspaper I have read indicates that Sanders won California...big time.

Yeah, they have more votes to count, but (and this may come as a surprise to you)...California is a very large state. There were nearly 4,000,000 votes to count...and MANY OF THEM had to be hand counted.

What is your beef?

Indictment/arrest and trial is appropriate for a criminal. But when the criminal becomes president and mocks and subverts the law, then the law won't do and other means must be found.

Trump has been hurting people his whole life. There can be no question whatsoever that people have died because of his actions and inaction....

Every newspaper I have read indicates that Sanders won California...big time. — Frank Apisa

I haven't seen his name mentioned much over at CNN, even MSNBC, or Fox. Have you?

Yes, I have. Many times. More times than I hear the name Trump, lately.

Most of the hosts and their guests bring him (Sanders) up often. For some reason, many of them want to see him leave the scene...to refrain from giving Trump and the GOP more fodder for their General Election commercials.

I disagree with them...but I understand where they are coming from. I'd rather Biden face at least one one-on-one debate with Sanders right now. It could give us a better idea of whether or not Biden can stand up to the classless bullshit the Jackass-in-Chief will throw his way during the GE.

I haven't seen his name mentioned much over at CNN, even MSNBC, or Fox. Have you? — Shawn

Among the news results showing up in that search I linked last night were CNN and MSNBC, so yes.

And to confirm, this news-specific search that doesn't even mention Bernie by name:

https://www.google.com/search?q=california+democratic+primary&tbm=nws

...shows ABC, NBC, Vox, CNN, Boing Boing (?), and NPR all clearly reporting a win, just on the first page.

I understand that the majority of news outlets are actually not broadcasting the fact that Bernie is ahead.

Something related to this is how juxtaposed is the issue of Bernie winning California over Biden having a Nationwide victory.

Anyway, your free to comment here, but, it seems your not following consistently the news, and simply entertaining a strong confirmation bias hereabouts.

Considering the citizens of the US can not name the characteristics of democracy and seem to think democracy came from the Bible, and they have no idea what morals have to do with liberty or democracy, I would say there is little hope of recovering the democracy they defended in two world wars.

Only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended. That is not a job the church nor the military can do. I get you all are concerned about the media, but hey, whose responsible for that? Only an educated population can protect our right to honest and unbiased news.

The cure can't come from the political establishment. It has to come from The People, or it won't happen. — Bitter Crank

Thanks Bitter Crank, but without education preparing the people to do that it will not happen. They are totally defenseless and think the best way to beat Trump is to have someone just like him running against him. Even if the Democrats won with such a person, the state of the union would not improve. We need a new revolution, one that occurs in the media and schools to save our democracy. There are new books coming out that may wake us up, but I am afraid that will not be enough.

There is another thread along the same line as this one, but different folks are in this one so will bring up the philosophy problem here too.

The democracy the US had depended on literacy in Greek and Roman Classics. The US transmitted a culture for liberty and democracy with an education based on the classics. However, interest in the Military-Industrial Complex and the having the strength of our enemy, lead to replacing the Greek and Roman Classics with German philosophers, Starting with the build-up to the first world war, it was Hegel and Nietzsche who grab the consciousness of Germany. It might behoove us to pay attention to the philosophical differences between the classics and German philosophy and pay attention to how the US has blended religion with government and thrills at believing the Power and Glory of God is the Power and Glory of the US.