Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

The number to pay attention to over at 538.com is the chance of a brokered Democratic convention.   Nate Silver has built a model which shows the likelihood of no candidate having a majority of delegates in Milwaukee four and a half months from now.

Less than three weeks ago, on February 10, there was just a 25% chance of a brokered convention.  At the time, Sanders had a 48% chance  –even money, really —  of having a majority of delegates, and winning on the first ballot.

Today Sanders chances of a majority are down to one in three, and after failing spectacularly with black voters in South Carolina, those chances will go down even more.  Right now there’s a 52% (now up to 58%) chance of a brokered convention, and I bet that gets a boost after the results from South Carolina are factored in.

A brokered convention means a broken Democratic party.  Nobody will want to back down, and there will be a days and days of acrimony and spectacle just made for TV and Twitter and YouTube.  The media would go wild.  It would be an absolute debacle.

Normally, national political conventions are just a boring rubber stamp, along with endless speeches.  Milwaukee 2020 could be one for the ages.

Six weeks later, at the end of August, Trump will be coronated in Charlotte, North Carolina.  It won’t be a political convention, it will be a giant Tribute to Trump extravaganza.  A unified and energized Republican party will emerge to rally behind the President, against a divided and dispirited Democratic party.

That’s what a brokered Democratic convention would mean, and that’s what to watch for.

This is in today’s American Thinker

 

He could win it all in the debate tonight.  Then a win Saturday in South Carolina would be the nail in the coffin.

Bernie’s not a politician, not really.  He serves in public office for the prominence it gives him, the pulpit from which he can preach.

Bernie’s a preacher, a true believer, and unyielding, unapologetic socialist.  He won’t back down, he won’t equivocate.  He will stand his ground.

The debate begins.  Has Bernie got it in him?

There are close to 3 million immigrants from India in this country.  From 1980 to 2010, they increased eleven-fold, roughly doubling every decade.  I suspect a lot more will be coming soon.

It looks like the Republicans will win the House, and one of the things President Trump will insist on in 2021 is a rational immigration policy – a policy that selects immigrants based on what they can be expected to contribute to their new country.  In immigration, as in all, it’s America First.

Canada has a relatively sane immigration policy, and Indians are the largest group to benefit, followed by Filipinos and Chinese.  We’re likely to have the same experience as the Canadians, and Asian-Americans, led by Indian-Americans, will soon be our fastest growing ethnic minority.

Seeing as how we’re going through a time of conflict with China, it’s good to be friends with a country with 1.3 billion people.  A lot of those people are very bright, speak English, and want to come to this country.  When they get here, Trump wants them to be Republicans, and he’s off to a good start.

Sanders is having the Democratic nomination handed to him.  The field is so weak, he seems strong in comparison.

Bernie’s first big break came at the Feb. 7th CNN debate.  At the time, Sanders, at 22.7%, still trailed Biden in the national polling averages.  Warren was a strong third, with 15%.

Then Warren and the CNN reporter ganged up on Bernie, jointly accusing him of lying about saying a woman couldn’t win.  It was a set up, and that hit on Sanders was such a cheap and dirty shot it backfired.  Immediately after the debate Warren went down to 12%, and Bernie shot into the  lead with 28.6%, a lead he has never relinquished.

Then in yesterday’s NBC debate we had the destruction of Bloomberg , the one candidate the betting markets thought had a shot at beating Bernie.  Bloomberg showed himself to be unelectable.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men aren’t going to put Bloomberg back together again.  So right now the bettors are giving Bernie close to an even shot at the nomination.  

A Democratic Party led into a national election by an honest to God, self declared socialist!  My God, this could be big, really big.

This could be a realignment election, a once in a generation event, similar in importance to FDR’s win in 1932.  That election led to an entire generation of Democratic rule, from ’32 to ’52.

I can see it happening.  Trump looks like he’ll be doing at least two rallies a week from now until November.  He doesn’t just want to beat Sanders.  He wants to crush him.

Sanders, and socialism, need to be repudiated by the American electorate.  Only then can there be a return to sanity in the Democratic party.

Bernie was a red diaper baby, born in Brooklyn in 1941.  In 1980, at the age of 39, he was elected Mayor of Vermont’s largest city, Burlington.  Eight years later he remarried, and the day after the wedding he flew to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon.

The man was 47 years old, educated and well informed.  He knew what the USSR was, and what it stood for, and its bloody history.  He nonetheless went to Moscow, and lavished praise on the most prolific mass murderers and the greatest despots of the 20th century.

If you’re under 30, you don’t know anything about the Soviet Union.  It ended before you were born.  So Bernie’s past association with it means nothing to you.  This is one reason why Sanders gets 45% of the Democrat vote under the age of 30.

Just 13% of Democrats over 45 go for Bernie.  These people have some memory of what the USSR was like, and they want nothing to do with it, or its apologists.

Political campaigns can be educational.  It’s tricky, and has to be done with great skill.  But Trump has a lot of smart people working for him, and I’m betting they can come up with a way to explain what the old Soviet Union was really like, and demonstrate to the ignorant youth vote that only a complete nut would take his new wife on a honeymoon there.