This blog will chronicle my comments and other critical articles, cartoons and videos. Time has come for us to put America first and Party 2nd. This page will have the good, bad and ugly of Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians alike, but will always offer pluralistic solutions effective June 8, 2012

Monday, February 29, 2016

Republican Delegate Scorecard for Feb. 24, 2016

This is a crucial prediction, I will check how it will fare with actuals

Mike Ghouse
Center for American Politics

Courtesy - Cook Political

Now that the primaries are underway, votes and delegates matter more than polls. On the Republican side, one candidate would need to capture 1,237 of 2,472 delegates to the Cleveland convention to clinch the nomination. To help you keep track of who's ahead, the Cook Political Report has devised a delegate scorecard estimating how many delegates each of the five leading GOP contenders would need to win in each state and territory to attain 1,237 delegates by June.

Donald Trump is currently "on pace" to win 1,237 delegates after he claimed all 50 delegates in South Carolina on Saturday and 14 of Nevada's 30 delegates on Tuesday, pushing him up to 114 percent of his delegate target. The next closest contender, Marco Rubio, is at only 49 percent of his delegate target. Rubio and others don't have a lot of time to stop Trump: although only five percent of GOP delegates have been allocated so far, 65 percent of GOP delegates will be allocated by the end of March.

The biggest loser out of South Carolina and Nevada is Ted Cruz, who needed 47 delegates from the Palmetto State and 11 delegates from the Silver State, according to our estimates. Instead, he won zero in South Carolina, calling into question where he can rack up delegate leads if he couldn't win a very conservative, heavily evangelical state. He only won six in Nevada. Arguably, his best states on Super Tuesday (March 1) are his home state of Texas as well as Oklahoma, but both award their delegates on a proportional basis.

Who's Ahead? GOP Delegates Won vs. Cook Targets 

Heading into Super Tuesday on March 1, it's increasingly apparent Rubio is the only Republican left who can stop Trump. But that's not to say Cruz, Kasich, and Ben Carson don't matter. The more delegates Cruz or any of the others win in the SEC primaries on Super Tuesday, the greater the odds that neither Rubio nor Trump will win 1,237 delegates by June, raising the prospect of a contested convention in Cleveland. 

By our math, Trump would need to win 246 of the available 624 delegates on Super Tuesday to be "on pace" for 1,237, while Rubio would need just 191. But to come close to that number, Rubio will have to prove he can meet tough viability thresholds in southern states like Texas and Georgia (where he will need 20 percent of the vote to be eligible to win statewide delegates), as well as show strength among more moderate Republican voters in places like Massachusetts and Vermont. 

The single most critical day of the Republican race will be March 15. That's when four large states - Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri - will award a total of 292 delegates on a winner-take-all basis, either statewide or by congressional district. If Trump beats Rubio in his home state of Florida, it could amount to a knockout blow to Rubio. However, if Rubio wins Florida and its jackpot of 99 delegates, he could make up a lot of lost ground. If he wins Ohio and Illinois too, he could possibly take the drivers' seat. 

2016 Republican Delegate Scorecard: Updated for Feb. 24, 2016 

How this works: The scorecard below is not a prediction or forecast. Rather, it's a tool to gauge each major GOP candidate's true progress towards the nomination. At any given point in the primaries, any candidate who exceeds his cumulative delegate target should be regarded as the frontrunner. But, the longer the Republican primaries go on without any candidate coming close to or exceeding 100 percent, the higher the odds of a contested convention. Click here for a larger version of the table. 


A Note on Methodology 

To arrive at state-by-state delegate targets, we first analyzed demographic patterns of support in national as well as entrance/exit polls in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Based on the data, we assume Trump will fare best in states and districts with small shares of college graduates, while Cruz will do best in places with large shares of evangelical protestants. We also assume that Rubio and Kasich, like previous years' contenders in the "establishment" lane, will perform well in bluer and more highly educated states and districts, but will underperform somewhat in caucus states. 

Then, we applied those patterns of support to each state's demographic profile, keeping in mind each state party's unique delegate allocation rules (for example, winner-take-all versus proportional). All states voting prior to March 15, with the exception of South Carolina, award their delegates on a proportional basis, making it less likely one candidate will build an insurmountable early lead. However, on March 15th, both Florida and Ohio will award their delegates on a winner-take-all basis, meaning a candidate who wins a bare plurality in both states could begin to pull away.

Super Tuesday Politics

# REPUBLICANS WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH TRUMP,
DUMP HIM THEY’LL LOSE,
KEEP HIM THEY’LL LOSE TO HILLARY

FIRST HE CAME FOR MEXICANS, CRUZ WAS SILENT
THEN HE CAME FOR MUSLIMS, RUBIO WAS SILENT
THE CUNNING MEN ARE NOW JUMPING UP AND DOWN

A BUNCH OF CHAMELEONS AND LOSERS!
IF YOU ARE JUST TO ALL AMERICANS, YOU CAN’T LOSE 



Thank you

Mike Ghouse
(214) 325-1916 talk/text

Dr. Mike Ghouse is a community consultant, social scientist, thinker, writer, news maker, and a speaker on PluralismInterfaithIslampolitics, terrorismhuman rightsIndiaIsrael-Palestine and foreign policy. He is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. Visit him in 63 links at www.MikeGhouse.net for his writings at TheGhousediary.com and several blogs listed there in.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Delegate Maths in case of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders

The Democratic nominee has to secure 2026 out of 4051 delegates to win the Party nomination. The number of super delegates is 712 who can choose whomever they want to choose regardless of the results in primary or caucus. Mrs. Clinton already has 440 delegates while Bernie Sanders has 52. Mrs. Clinton would need 1600 more delegates to earn the party nomination. Here are the delegates number in each state with the date of election. 

2/1/2016 Iowa 44
2/9/2016 New Hampshire 24
2/20/2016 Nevada 35
2/27/2016 South Carolina 53
3/1/2016 Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia 865
3/5/2016 Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska 109
3/6/2016 Maine 25
3/8/2016 Democrats Abroad, Michigan, Mississippi 179
3/12/2016 Northern Marianas 6
3/15/2016 Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio 691
3/22/2016 Arizona, Idaho, Utah 131
3/26/2016 Alaska, Hawaii, Washington 142
4/5/2016 Wisconsin 86
4/9/2016 Wyoming 14
4/19/2016 New York 247
4/26/2016 Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island 384
5/3/2016 Indiana 83
5/7/2016 Guam 7
5/10/2016 West Virginia 29
5/17/2016 Kentucky, Oregon 116
6/4/2016 Virgin Islands 7
6/5/2016 Puerto Rico 60
6/7/2016 California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota 694
6/14/2016 Washington, D.C. 20


Contributed by Aslam Abdullah 

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Only one thing can keep Donald Trump from total victory: Donald Trump

I just could not pass this piece.
Mike Ghouse

Courtesy - Politico


They hate him, they really hate him.

Donald Trump is not the golden boy he thought he was. He thought he could build an invincible campaign by combining media manipulation on one hand and nativist bigotry on the other.

He was a celebrity in a nation that goes ga-ga for celebrities. Then add to that his enormous wealth. He thought he could buy anything.

But he couldn’t buy Iowa. Or didn’t think he needed to.

Rarely has a candidate quoted the polls as often as Trump has. They showed him growing and growing in popularity, and he actually believed they were an unassailable revelation of the future.

He not only believed in the polls, but to him, they were proof that his campaign of bigotry and intolerance was working. Americans must want Muslims banned from entering the country. They must want a wall to keep Mexicans out, and they must be nuts enough to believe Trump would get Mexico to pay for it.

What’s the proof? The polls! They showed Trump winning Iowa handily and he believed in them so much, he utterly rejected the notion that second place would be good enough.
“Unless I win, I will consider it to be a big, fat, beautiful and very expensive waste of time,” he said.

But he did not win. To use his term, he got schlonged.
The loss was not huge in terms of numbers — he lost by 3.3 percentage points to Ted Cruz — but it was huge in terms of expectations. Trump had said second place was worthless. But after Iowa, he found himself in second place.

There was one other factor that made his Iowa loss so dangerous to his future: It appears that people came out in large numbers for the purpose of defeating him.

A large turnout was supposed to help Trump. But the turnout was huge, the largest in Iowa caucus history for the Republicans, and Trump lost. Why?

J. Ann Selzer, the most respected pollster in Iowa, wrongly predicted Trump would win, but afterward, she had an interesting observation.

In Iowa, voters get to chat and argue at the polling place before the voting begins. Iowa is a state of small towns, and it is usually neighbors talking to neighbors, trying to persuade each other to switch candidates.

Selzer believes that helped doom Trump.
“Trump’s unpopularity made it hard to convince anyone just leaning toward another candidate or undecided to move his way,” Selzer wrote. “Much easier for Rubio and Cruz to pick up votes in the room.”
Trump’s unpopularity? Trump didn’t think he had any unpopularity.
But now actual human beings are voting instead of just pollsters polling, and the truth is coming out: Trump is not quite the superstar he thinks he is.
And, for a few hours, his Iowa loss appeared to have taught Trump a lesson.
“People can change; I’ve changed a little bit,” Trump told reporters after his defeat.
It appeared as though a new Trump had risen from the ashes of defeat: Restrained. Contrite. And almost human.

But, alas, totally phony. Not long after the new Trump was born, the old Trump took over. And he decided he lost not because of any personal failings or because of any political stands he took.

No, Trump decided (as many in the media did, by the way) that he lost because he did not participate in the last debate in Iowa, deciding to hold his own rally for veterans instead.
“I raised $6 million for veterans!” Trump boomed. “I would never give that up to come in first!”

If so, why didn’t he just give the $6 million to the vets? That is couch-cushion money for Trump. He could have written a check for $6 million and gone to the last debate and won Iowa — at least in his mind.

(I really hope that some media outlet assigns a reporter to trace how much of the $6 million actually ends up in the hands of needy veterans, by the way.)

At a rally in Milford, New Hampshire, on the day after his Iowa loss, the old Trump had taken control again. “Cruz was born in Canada,” Trump said for the umpteenth time. “He gets the nomination and the Democrats are going to sue his ass off!”

There was one change in Trump, however. Even though the latest polls show him winning by 21.1 percentage points in New Hampshire, Trump is going to do something in New Hampshire that he didn’t do in Iowa.
“I’m going to start spending a lot more money,” he said. “I don’t want to take any chances.”
That means more TV ads to get Trump’s face and voice before Granite State voters. The risk, however, is that the more voters see and hear Trump, the less they will like him.
In New Hampshire, the largest portion of voters are “undeclared.” They make up 44 percent of the electorate. And on Election Day next Tuesday, they can go to their polling place and ask for either a Democratic or Republican ballot.

Will they vote as Democrats in order to make Bernie Sanders of neighboring Vermont a winner over Hillary Clinton?

Or, will they vote as Republicans to defeat Trump?
“We can no longer be the stupid country,” Trump said Tuesday.
Exactly. And voting against him is a way to prove we are not.
Roger Simon is Politico’s chief political columnist.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/only-one-thing-can-keep-donald-trump-from-total-victory-donald-trump-218700#ixzz3zD1nNPTz

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Donald Trump Isn’t Real

This is a good piece to read, 

Courtesy of New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/opinion/donald-trump-isnt-real.html?WT.mc_id=2016-FEBRUARY-OUTBRAIN_AUD_DEV-0201-0229&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&_r=1





Monday, February 1, 2016

What is a caucus, and how does it work


Courtesy of Reuters

The long and sometimes arcane ritual of electing the next U.S. president begins on Monday in more than 1,100 schools, churches and libraries across Iowa, a state that wields political influence far greater than its small size.

http://watch.reuters.tv/WpR

Mike Ghouse
Political Commentator

www.CenterforAmericanPolitics.com
Google - 12 Million Views