I had no idea how desperate the Clinton campaign had become until I read her Campaign Manager Robby Mooks’ essay today (“The facts on where the race stands”) where he grasps to increasingly frail straws to try to paint a picture of hopelessness for Bernie Sanders. The deceptive presentation of data take spin to a whole new level of absurdity.
There have been indications that the Clinton campaign plan has been starting to unravel for a while now. Hillary Clinton herself snapped at a Greenpeace activist recently and lashed out at her in public over Clinton’s campaign cash coming from fossil fuel interests. Also note that if Bernie had done the same thing, the accusations of “sexism” and “racism” would have dominated the corporate news cycle continuing to today. Here is the video:
In Robby Mooks’ piece, he presented misleading data and disinformation. This will need to be debunked point by point.
1. To start with Mook only presents half the picture on total voter turnout. The Democratic Primary schedule has been ridiculously front stacked with the more religious conservative Southern states where Clinton does best. The last state in the South voted on March 15th, and they are now over with. Second, Mook neglects to mention that primary states have higher turnouts than caucus states. Bernie Sanders (like Barack Obama before him) do better in caucus states (and states that have open voting systems that allow independents, young voters, third party activists, and eligible voters who rarely vote to vote).
2. Mook is once again tring to mislead people by claiming Clinton is winning when turnout is high. That is the opposite of what the data indicates. When voter turnout has been high, Bernie Sanders has done very well, usually greatly exceeding the polling averages. Clinton on the other hand has her wins in states that are suffering low voter turnout compared to 2008. When you average the states Bernie has won, turnout has been 90% of 2008 levels, but for the states Clinton won big (6% or more) turnout was only 68% of 2008 levels. The 5 states where the results were close (IA MO MA IL and NV), the average turnout from 2008 levels was 82%.
Here is the data. The first number after the state is how many percentage points Bernie has won (or lost) by, the second number is the percentage turnout compared to the Obama wave in 2008.
Vermont 72 87
Alaska 64 120
Utah 59 59
Idaho 57 113
Washington 46 44
Hawaii 40 90
Kansas 34 106
Maine 29 99
Minnesota 24 97
New Hampshire 22 87
Colorado 19 103
Nebraska 14 87
Oklahoma 10 80
Iowa -0.2 71
Missouri -0.2 76
Massachusetts -1 96
Illinois -2 97
Nevada -5 71
North Carolina -14 71
Ohio -14 54
Arizona -18 90
Virginia -29 79
Texas -32 50
Tennessee -34 59
Arkansas -36 69
Georgia -43 72
South Carolina -48 69
Louisiana -48 81
Alabama -59 74
Mississippi -66 51
*Note Florida and Michigan are excluded from this list because they were penalized in 2008 for trying to cut in line, and so candidates didn’t campaign and the turnout numbers were abnormally low compared to other states in 2008.
3. Bernie is only behind by ~228 elected delegates as calculated by The Green Papers (depending on things like whether Bernie really won Nevada), with ~43.26% of the elected delegates yet to be cast (~2291 out of 4038 are done, ~1747 remaining). A game isn’t over at halftime, there is still half the game to play, and in the 2nd half of this Democratic Primary where Bernie has more of a home field advantage, he has been completely dominating, winning 6 out of the 7 contests (including Democrats living abroad) by landslide margins (with 68 to 82% of the vote). These wins by far larger than expected margins are improving Bernie’s chances of a 2nd half comeback. Here is the rest of the playing field (based on my own personal predictions):
Mook and the Clinton Camp have been trying to claim that she won 20% of the total delegates needed for the nomination literally as early as last Summer. The simple fact is that unelected Super Delegates don’t matter until the convention in July. If Bernie wins the majority of the elected delegates, there is zero chance that superdelegates would dare to overrule democracy in the Democratic Party, and thus unleash a revolt that would destroy our party and guarantee an ultra-conservative Republican sweep of the majority of elected positions on every level of office nationwide, from President to city councils. People already are having a hard time having faith in democracy with the various voter suppression and disenfranchisement schemes.
4. Bernie Sanders is the perfect foil to Donal Drumpf/Trump. The two most popular candidates with independents are Bernie and Trump, but Bernie has much more support (45–26% when all candidates are included on the IVN Poll). Bernie beats Trump by far greater margins than Clinton in virtually every poll, and that has been the consistent pattern with all of the Republicans for the last 6 months. In fact, Clinton actually loses to some Republicans, where Bernie usually beats them all.
Clinton spokesmen like Robby Mook will try to spin this as just being a result of Clinton enduring more attacks from the Republicans, but charts of her favorability ratings clearly show that her approval ratings started to nosedive immediately after she was no longer the Secretary of State and started her pre-run for President. Bernie Sanders has consistently strong favorability ratings regardless of the degree or intensity of attacks against him as previous campaigns have shown. This includes some horrific attacks by the Clinton campaign this cycle that have tried to falsely insinuate Bernie is sexist, racist, or a communist. The simple fact is people just LIKE Bernie better than Clinton (or any of the Republican clown car candidates).
And as a Democrat (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) running for office in the Minnesota State Senate, I can tell people for a fact that a Bernie Sanders nomination will be the best thing for the Democratic Party. He has widespread support that transcend traditional party lines and ideological divides. Bernie Sanders is bringing people into our party in a grand new coalition that includes independents, third party activists, millennials, and that huge swath of Americans that are so disenfranchised or disgusted by establishment politics that they rarely if ever vote. Where Hillary Clinton would be an anchor chained to my ankle in deep water, Bernie Sanders would be a life raft.
It is unfortunate that Clinton campaign has become so eager to win the nomination at any cost that at the top level they would be willing to present deliberately misleading data to paint a picture of a mirage.