jotted down and shared in part as a result of reflecting both about the results of last night and looking ahead over the next few weeks or so.
First, while I congratulate the Sanders campaign on winning WV, I admit I am not all that impressed. While I am not certain on final delegate results, preliminary examination suggests he perhaps overperformed his original targets as established by Dave Wasserman at Five-Thirtyeight narrowly, and did nothing to really dent the lead of Secretary Clinton among pledged delegates. Further, the high percentage of those voting in the Democratic primary who by exit polls indicated that they would vote for Trump in the general demonstrates to me that there may well have been some deliberate “ratfucking” (to use the term popularized by Donald Segretti in the Watergate era) going on. That is, people who were deliberately messing with the results. Ultimately it does not matter since were a Democratic candidate to be carrying WV in the electoral college, that candidate is likely to already been in excess of 400 electoral votes.
Second, I look at the results of the non-binding Nebraska primary and note both that the turnout was substantially higher than in the caucuses, and that Clinton won by a substantial margin. Given that the state is paying for the primary, there was no additional expense for Nebraska Democrats necessary to hold the caucus. Caucuses are inherently undDemocratic (lower and upper case dD is deliberate) because they are much harder for working class people to attend, and for what it is worth probably overstate the importance of the vote of college students who might have more flexibility of schedule. I prefer primaries, and I strongly prefer primaries requiring that one be registered as a Democrat to avoid “ratfucking.” I would want to allow people to register for such a primary up to 4 weeks before it, although I could live with same day, provided the party registration is for a period of at least 6 months, again, to avoid those people playing games.
As I look forward, there is something I think many people may be missing.