mistercrayon wrote:

David Milliband is a snake. The way he kicked the boot in on his brother was disgraceful and I'm glad he isn't the prime minister.

Jesus christ, bitch tits.

mistercrayon wrote:

The thing we've been conditioned to believe is that the only good politician is some slick Man who can twist a knife properly at pmqs and bully the media into submission.

It seems to me that people want a nice person (politically) who is a complete dickhead (politically).

No, at least that's not what I want. Political instincts isn't merely the ability to stick the knife in. It's understanding that you're in a battle, and there are many tactics that can be used to win. Highlighting Tory policy stupidity and nasty ideology, the splits in their party over EU and welfare, promoting their own policies better, sounding passionate and engaged. You don't have to be a shit to point out that the tories are shits.

Not necessarily. If he carries the popular vote, there is a decent chance of getting super delegates to switch sides.

acemuzzy wrote:

Good wins for bernie. Too little too late?

No. Clinton has had her run of favourable states which has built up her lead, now Sanders is getting his.

He needed to win these states if he had any hope of the nomination, and he's won them by wide margins. 81.6/18.4 in Alaska, 72.7/27.1 in Washington and 70.6/29.2 in Hawaii. Washington was the big prize, giving 101 delegates out. After those results, Sanders has taken 104 delegates to Clintons 38, cutting her lead to 237.

This is an interesting look at the race. It basically argues that if you take early voting out of the equation, the race is basically a tie. Early voters vote before any campaigning begins in their state, and so basically no one knows Sanders, but everyone knows Clinton and thus vote for her. But the more people know Sanders, the more they like him, which explains why he's been able to make up huge polling deficits, and why he does to well in caucuses, because you can't vote early in a caucus.

So what does this mean for the rest of the race? Well, Sanders profile is only getting higher, and he's been getting more and more financial clout, so can take out more campaign ads to up his recognition. Whether it will be enough or not we don't know, but the race isn't the foregone conclusion it's often painted as.

How does now compared to HC vs BO look?

I_R wrote:

I'm open to some surprises along the way, but I think Sanders needs to win too many states now to have a chance of getting super delegates to change their position.

He doesn't have to win states, he has to win the popular vote.

Well, he does need to win states, because that's the only way he closes the delegate gap.

The keys, surely, are New York, California and Pennsylvania. In all of these Clinton is polling much better than Sanders, even currently. But as previously mentioned beating polls has become a Sanders thing.

If you had told me that the 2016 presidential race could be run between Bernie and Donald I would have laughed you out of my lined cardboard box.

He might be right, looks like it might be an ironic petition.

Donald Trump revokes pledge to support Republican nominee

GOP panelists eager to scrap rule that helps Trump

This really looks like the Republicans are preparing for shenanigans at the convention. Exciting to watch from a safe distance - I'm pretty sure there'll be a violent reaction - and a great chance of the Democrats winning local elections as well as the presidency. I'm maybe being overly optimistic, but I'm imagining the Republicans damaging themselves for decades here.

Oh I'd love it if it all kicked off at the GOP convention and there's a squad of open-carry gun fans there, cos all those guns will make everybody safe from baddies, for sure!

I've just heard Twitter has censored pro Trump hashtags. That's on top of hearing it censoring anti-Hillary hashtags about a month ago. I've grown up in a world where newspapers have political biases, but I hadn't thought about how bad it could get if social networks were to steer the conversation.

I know one of the Saudi royal family owns some of Twitter. Is it the same one Trump was insulting recently?

I find it difficult to believe that Twitter would be daft enough to start doing stuff like this. Aside from anything else, there's a chance that Trump could be president. Deliberately antagonising him would be a very dumb move.

It's from random twitter peeps right now. The #WhichHillary tag was the last one. The claim isn;t that they remove those tweets btw, it's that the tag doesn't appear in the "trending" list when it should. I don't know how people are working out what should be trending.

Yeah I did a bit of looking around and it seems like the same kinda shit people say about the BBC. "I don't agree with it all the time, and I'm perfectly objective, therefore it is biased against me."

Still though, it's way more terrifying than biased news papers.