Kos wrote 11 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Lost This Thing Fair and Square. Los Angeles Dem didn’t like this piece at all, so he wrote Correcting Kos---Sanders Didn't Lose "Fair and Square". His piece has a number of errors so I’m writing a correction of his correction.
1 & 2: Clinton had hundreds of super-delegates promised to her before a single vote was cast and before a single caucus was held. So, it was just fine for super-delegates to disenfranchise every single voter and caucus attendee before the primary began. But now, towards the end of the primary trying to get those Clinton promised super-delegates to vote for Sanders is a “coup” and disenfranchises “people of color?”
In 2008, Clinton also started with most of the unpledged (super) delegates. It didn’t matter. When Obama got more than half of the pledged delegates, the super delegates adjusted so that they wouldn’t skew the results. I have no doubt that the super delegates would do this again if Sanders managed to take more than half of the pledged delegates. In other words, enough would defect from Clinton (like they did in 2008) that they wouldn’t override the pledged delegates. That isn’t the case in 2016. Clinton currently leads Sanders by about 270 pledged delegates. Let’s say that Clinton takes about half of the remaining pledged delegates, 390. She would finish with 2160 which is 53.3%. If she took the same percentage of super delegates, that would be about 381, giving a total of 2541. You need 2383 to win so this would be a win. In fact, it would beat Sanders by more than double Obama’s margin over Clinton in 2008. It would not be fair for Sanders to win by super delegates only while having less than half of the pledged delegates. I’m quite certain that this will not happen.
The people of color comment is the notion that the southern states which are majority Republican shouldn’t count. This is where much of the minority vote for Clinton comes from. I’m not sure how you could do it more fairly since there is no way to know for certain if a given state will vote mostly Republican or mostly Democratic. For example, Indiana surprisingly went mostly for Obama in 2008. In terms of total votes by Democrats, Clinton is beating Sanders.
3: Polling actually shows Clinton is getting worse. There are no flat lines or floors for Clinton in this chart. Her unfavorables are steadily increasing over time.
Excuse me but this chart is 16 weeks old. I guess if this is what you really want to go by then there is a similar one for Trump:
4: Clinton’s former campaign chair DWS rigged the entire process in Clinton’s favor every chance she got. Sanders has been a victim of an unfair process from when DWS first cut the number of debates from 26 in 2008 to 6 this year, and scheduled them all on weekends and during popular sporting events if she could. When things were close and Clinton was running short on cash, DWS unilaterly ended Obama’s ban on federal contractors giving to Democrats.
Well, in 2008 you had as frontrunners two people with scant credentials as senators. Having more debates seems reasonable to find out how qualified they were. It was also highly historic in that you would either have the very first black nominee or the very first female nominee. Things like this tend to generate interest. However, this article, Is Six Democratic Debates Too Few? at Fivethirtyeight doesn’t seem to see it as unfair. As far as money goes, I’m not sure when this time period would be that Clinton was “running short on cash”. She had plenty of money before Super Tuesday and before New Hampshire and before Iowa. She has had plenty since Super Tuesday. Sanders’ early fundraising was not as good as Clinton’s but I don’t recall any point where he was short of money either.
5: Kos claims the media blackout didn’t matter because Sanders was all over the internet. So what? That doesn’t make it fair. Sanders would have done better if he were on the nightly news. that is where he needed to be to win.
Sanders has actually been a frequent contributor on MSNBC for years. He was a carryover from Air America (where Rachel Maddow came from) where he contributed as far back as 2006. I used to listen to Sanders on Al Franken’s show on Air America. Clinton in contrast was not a contributor with either Air America or MSNBC. But let’s try this one: How Saturday Night Live is Preparing America for Bernie Sanders.
Larry David has so far played Bernie Sanders on SNL on three occasions, and through a largely uncritical collection of sketches, David and the Saturday Night Live team have no doubt aided the Sanders campaign. SNL writer-star Colin Jost admitted as much in a recent interview with Seth Meyers, when he described audience reaction to David playing Sanders on the show: “I think he’s helped Bernie. Larry’s so likeable…that you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, Bernie Sanders...’
Even back in October, when Sanders was still way behind in the polls and considered unelectable by the media, David’s Sanders character was greeted by the audience like a rock star in the Dem debate skit. Meanwhile, Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton got second billing, as ‘Sanders’—the real thing trailing Clinton by 20 points in national polls—got the loudest cheers and the most air time. To anyone not in the know, SNL made it look like Sanders was the Democratic frontrunner, not Clinton.
6: Sanders did raise a hell of a lot of money. But again, DWS changed the rules from prohibiting federal contractor donations to allowing them solely to help Clinton. That isn’t fair at all.
I’m sorry but I'm just not grasping how this intersects with reality. Back in March I did a post where I talked about campaign funding. Sanders had more money in the bank than the highest Republican which was Cruz. Sanders had in fact raised twice as much money as the top Republican which at the time was Carson.
7: Closed primaries are fair.
I noticed that you didn’t mention either the fact that Sanders did best with low turnout caucuses or the fact that Nebraska switched and went from Sanders in the caucus to Clinton in the primary. Naturally, Sanders is in favor of caucuses.
8: So called Red State primaries and caucuses are fair.
I would hope so since, as I already mentioned, you can’t predict which ones will be red or blue for the general.
Sanders isn’t having an “insane temper tantrum.” Instead, he’s making the best case he can for why he should be the Democratic Party nominee. He gets to do that. But don’t slander his attempts to gain super delegates’ votes...
The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton had enough integrity in 2008 to not try to steal the nomination with super delegates. Does Sanders have less integrity than Clinton?