The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Ebsy]

Depends on however that State resolves ties.  I think most would make it be a matter of random chance, but frankly I doubt any tie after the initial result of a statewide election would still be a tie after a recount.

I agree, and the 2008 MN Sen race is a good example of the amount of swing that might be expected. MN has very good audit procedures for their elections, but even so there can be ballots in dispute. The initial count was Coleman leading Franken by 215 votes out of 2,885,555 cast. After the recount Franken led by 225 votes out of 2,887,337 cast. After the final court challenge the margin favored Franken by 312 votes out of 2,887,646 cast.

There are two factors to consider here. First is the change in the ballots cast. MN ended up with and additional 2091 ballots found to be valid. Missing votes and unreported or partial precincts can happen just due to human or technical errors. In this case it resulted in an additional 0.072% ballots cast which make up less than one in a thousand. However, when the margin is also less than one in a thousand, that matters.

The second is that the recovered ballots are unlikely to exactly mirror the statewide vote. That was true in MN where Franken gained 1,254 votes and Coleman gained 727. Statistical fluctuations can seem large because the added ballots are not uniformly distributed across the state. So in the case of a tie, it's very likely that a recount will find more valid votes, and it is highly unlikely that they will split exactly evenly when those added ballots total in the hundreds or thousands as they would for presidential electors.

[Ebsy]

The difference, of course, is that TRUMP admits he wants to repeal Obamacare. Sanders' supporters, on the other hand, act deeply offended and outraged when it is correctly pointed out that Bernie wants to do the same.

The fact is that the Democratic spent a lot of time, energy, political capital, money and public trust on Obamacare. It's a major part of our President's legacy. We essentially traded our House majority for it. Bernie Sanders wants to, essentially, start all over again from scratch. He wants to go to the American people, and essentially tell them "Sorry about that Obamacare thing that we spent seven years defending, but it actually sucks and now we're going to do a whole new thing that is going to be many times more disruptive, many times more expensive, and this time literally zero of you are going to be able to keep your insurance, even if you like it!"

That's a tough sell. It will cost considerable political capital. It will strain what little trust the American people have left in the competency of the Democratic Party, in the competency of government, in the very idea of an activist government, to be told "oops, we messed up on healthcare reform, time to repeal it and start all over trying a totally new thing!" Sanders should be honest about this.

[Ebsy]

Not the worst thing, Chavez has done a lot of good things for Venezuela and the poor. Maduro not so much, they're still better then they're opponents though.

Will you continue saying this when Venezuela's poor start starving to death? I guess, most likely, you will.

"Their opponents" at this point, is a catch-all for pretty much everything and anything in Venezuelan politics, starting with pretty far damn left. The only thing that unifies them, is the realization that Venezuela is rapidly approaching a humanitarian and social disaster. At this point, it is not clear how the country is supposed to survive till the end of the year without, literally, people going hungry. Frankly, it is hard to see how that would be possible without a massive international aid program. It is not about beer, for god's sake: it is bread we are talking about. Bread and arepas. Venezuela is collapsing to the point that we should be thinking of how to help Colombia deal with the refugee flows. This ongoing collapse is entirely self-inflicted: caused by a series of insane government policies (though, I am afraid, at this point we may be past the moment when merely stopping those policies would rectify the situation). 

And you, meanwhile, are still talking of "Maduro doing some good" and "being better than his opponents". At this point, I am afraid, whatever your ideological preferences, the only sense in which Maduro could be better than even the more unpleasant than his opponents, is the same sense in which smallpox is "better" than chicken pox. I guess, you always can find some upside. For instance, smallpox is "better" in that it guarantees more work for the undertakers.