Just days before the vote in Iowa, a tiny crowd turns out to hear Hillary Clinton in Dubuque.
In the lead-up to the first primary – in Iowa – it seems that Clinton is in serious trouble and Sanders’ support continues to grow. The main thing holding back his numbers is his lack of support among black and also Latino voters. I think this will very likely start to change. He still has, however, the nearly insurmountable barrier of the “super delegates”, who are 20% of the Democratic delegates overall and of whom something like 15% are committed to Clinton. That means Sanders would have to win slightly over 60% of the popular primary vote and he’s not close to that. On the other hand, Clinton is not only in trouble because of her personal unpopularity; her e-mail issue seems like it won’t go away. In fact, one of her staff members reportedly even predicted that she couldn’t beat Trump.
The tops of Corporate America are very worried about a Trump presidency, but they also really don’t want a Sanders presidency either.
One possible outcome of the Democratic Party convention: They know that Clinton is seriously disliked and has major baggage. They cannot stand Sanders. So they arrange a deadlocked convention in which neither candidate gets enough delegates votes, thereby opening up the convention to a compromise candidate. Maybe Elizabeth Warren?
Categories: politics
Major party conventions don’t work like that – there’s no secret cabal behind the scenes that can “arrange” for elected delegates to turn against the candidate that they are committed to
Life doesn’t work like a bad Tom Clancy novel
A brokered convention is highly, highly unusual. But, then, so is the present situation – one in which Corporate America finds itself with the possibility that one of its parties has nominated a candidate who is totally unacceptable to them (Cruz or Trump) and the other party has either nominated a candidate who is unelectable (Clinton) or equally unacceptable, although for different reasons (Sanders). This, of course, represents the extreme instability of both US and world politics in general.
A stronger argument against the brokered convention scenario is that it requires three candidates; without that, one HAS to win a majority. So far, as this blog site has called it, there are two real candidates (Clinton and Sanders) and a faux candidate (O’Malley). But what happens if Clinton really plunges in the polls? Isn’t it possible that some of her supporters (both corporate backers as well as voters) could turn to O’Malley? In that case, all he’d need would be to win 10-15% of the vote and things could change.
We’re not saying this is the most likely scenario, but just one to consider.