Wisconsin: April 5, 2016

It is not very often that the Wisconsin Primary makes the news.

It's not early.
It's not big.
It's not part of any day named "Super."

I won't tell you who to vote for,
I will encourage you to vote your hopes,
not your fears,
your ideals,
not your anger,

Paul Simon wrote a song about not wanting to "end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard." The joke is on him, outside of our own heads, we're all cartoons destined for the grave.

Still, each of us chooses our own cartoon.

As for me, I'll choose to be a cartoon of a man who believes in liberty, not shouting people down, that public service is more important than winning,

that character is not the most important thing, it is the only thing.

Beware the Ides of March

I thought that, by this time, Sanders would have been down for the count.

I was wrong.
The true believers were right.
I will try to keep that in mind in the future.

Come Wednesday morning I  believe the headlines will be about the continued over-performance of Bernie Sanders.  The reasons for this are two-fold: his appeal and the revulsion of many moderates to Donald Trump.

I am surprised by the number of people just in my small social circle who consider themselves Democrats who plan on crossing the line and voting in the Republican primaries of Ohio and Illinois.  These moderate Democrats will not be voting in the Democratic primary.  These moderates are Hillary Clinton Democrats.  Her vote will be down.  The vote for Kasich and Rubio will be higher than predicted.

I'll learn how to spell "Kasich" when he becomes competitive in a state other than Ohio.

Still my First Choice

No, he can not see a path to victory.

Still, is there anyone better on your ticket?

New Hampshire Picks

Basically I believe the Pachyderm race is too close to call.  Trump will win but under perform expectations.  Rubio will continue to surge.  Cruz will rise again in the southern primaries in March unless Trump can add on the ground organization to his rhetoric.  Rubio will play among those more moderate Republicans in blue states: the Northeast, West Coast, and the blue and purple states of the Midwest.

Is a hung convention possible on the Republican side?  I suppose so, but my own perspective is clouded by the fact that I want it to be a hung convention and my mother taught me to tread carefully regarding those things I want believe.

Sanders will win the Donk contest in New Hampshire though I think it will be his high water mark.  I don't see him getting the same level of support in South Carolina, Nevada, or the Super Tuesday states.  He won't endorse Clinton and I don't think his supporters will reconcile themselves to the idea of another eight years of Clinton dominance of the party apparatus.

I do think the Clinton campaign will implode due to a combination of the e-mail scandal, the progressive revolt with in the Donk coalition, and the fact that the candidate has never won a contested election.  She is not a proven candidate.  All she proves is how deeply the Clintons used their influence within the Democratic Party to stack the deck in her favor within the bureaucracy of that party.  She is the establishment.

Biden still waits to ride in as a white knight.  First to save the party of Jefferson and then the nation from the Pachyderms who seem dead set on running a campaign based upon bringing back waterboarding.  I think President Obama wants him as a successor.  I think the party as a whole would prefer him as a standard bearer.  My pick of Bloomberg anticipates an attempt to harness the outsider mystique which seems to have seized the nation.  They might even both pledge to only serve one term, promising all members of the Democratic coalition an opportunity to begin jockeying for 2020.

That might be enough to unify the party for a 2016 win.

Rumors point to a Biden/Warren ticket.  That too is possible, but I don't want it.  ;)