Disclaimer: This is a Hillary Clinton appreciation thread, which means that most people who come here really like Hillary Clinton. If you have criticisms, please be respectful.
If you missed any Saturday diaries or conversation, click here.
Some good diaries from Saturday:
TobyRocksSoHard: Hillary is Returning to Brooklyn on Tuesday to Claim the Nomination
TobyRocksSoHard: Hillary Wins the US Virgin Islands by 75 percent, 6-1 Delegate Split!
First Amendment: AP: Clinton Gains 3 Superdelegates. 67 Delegates Clinches Nomination. USVI, PR Will Move Her Closer.
floridageorge: 1-2-1 punch. Hillary-Elizabeth-Michelle: “Dictator,” “Fraudster in chief”, “Demonize and Dehumanize”
zidouyu: How Obama Won Me Over and Why That Makes Me #HillYes More Than Ever
Constance Hilliard: Why 85% of Black Female Voters Support Hillary Clinton (And It’s Not for the Reasons You Think)
Congratulations to Hillary Clinton for winning the Virgin Island caucuses by such a resounding margin that she either got a clean 7-0 sweep, or the delegates were split 6-1! The divide depends upon the strange rules for Virgin Island caucuses, whether a candidate must be rendered non-viable in each district, or across the board (where it appears Bernie got less than 15%).
Either way, a great outcome that gets Hillary slightly closer to the prize. And Puerto Rico’s primary today will get her even closer.
On Saturday, Hillary was at multiple events in Southern California. In Sylmar, she discussed immigration reform with an audience at Mission College:
“Immigration is at the center of this presidential campaign,” Clinton said to the crowd at Mission College. “In my first 100 days I will introduce legislation for comprehensive immigration reform.”
In her criticism of the likely Republican nominee, Clinton said that when he “talks about deporting 11 million immigrants, he’s talking about ripping apart families.”
Clinton listened to the personal experiences of several immigrants in a largely Asian and Latino crowd, some of whom talked to KCAL9’s Greg Mills about their immigrant experiences.
Hillary also had a discussion about the foster care system:
This L.A. Times columnist notes that Hillary and Bill Clinton will be doing 30 events in the final five days leading up to the California primary. While he states the reality that Hillary doesn’t need California at all to clinch the nomination, he is one of many to buy into the spiel that losing California would be a horrific, disastrous, and downright terrible thing for Hillary. Because people who lose the California primary are weak, terrible people who never, ever go on to win.
Sadly, we have to work with the media we have, not the media we want.
My prediction? I think Hillary Clinton will win California. I was thinking that she’d win by about 7-9 points, but I’ll be conservative and guess that enough decline-to-states will vote for Bernie that it’ll be around 5 points. Based on the Benchmark map, it appears she has incredible strength in the highly populated Southern California areas, considerable strength in the Central Valley areas, and even some strength in the San Francisco Bay area, where she is projected to win Contra Costa County, Alameda County, and Solano County, among others:
As far as I’m aware, Hillary Clinton also has never lost a primary in a state that favored her demographically, with perhaps Michigan coming the closest. California has a heavy non-white population, and Latino voters have favored her in other Western/Southwestern contests.
So Hillary for the win. However, until it’s official, we have to work to help make it happen.
On that note, canvassing efforts seem to be going well:
At my staging location for canvassing and phone banking, we seemed to have a pretty good turnout, with at least 10 people during my shift, and more arriving throughout.
Because it was too hot for all but a brave few to canvass, I spent Saturday afternoon phone banking. While it had many positives, it was not quite as pleasant as my phone banking on Women Wednesday experience. Most of that had to do with HubDialer, the computer system we used to reach potential Hillary supporters. To put it bluntly, HubDialer is awful.
It is supposed to make phone banking more convenient by dialing each phone number for you. The problem? You don’t get to see the information about who you’re calling until the call has already begun. Want to practice pronouncing someone’s last name? Tailor your pitch based on the recipient’s age or location? Forget about it. Also awful is that once you’ve ended the call and have entered information, HubDialer whisks you on to the very next call. There is no “pause” button that you can press if you’d like to take a five-minute break. If you do pause, HubDialer reminds you repeatedly in an irritating tone that your call has ended and you must enter the information.
That said, once I adjusted to the program, things went okay. I had a lot of voice mails and hang ups, but also several confirmations that they would/did vote for Hillary. The pattern seemed to grow more positive as my shift went along. For a short while, I got a string of refusals. They ranged from people stating that they voted already, “but not for her,” to one woman’s nasty, “My husband and I would sooner vote for our golden lab than for Hillary Clinton.” For this phone banking session, we were placing calls all over California, and with HubDialer, I didn’t have time to observe which areas I was calling to see whether the no-Hillaries were geographically based.
I began to despair, but then I called one Latina voter and spoke to her daughter or niece. This woman said that she had a large family and they were all voting for Hillary! Music to my ears! I also spoke to a nice man from Oakland who was for Hillary and wanted to know how my phone banking was going. I told him about the numerous voice mails and hangups, and he thanked me for my effort and said “keep at it.” So nice when people recognize that human beings are on the other line. By the final hour, I received several confirmations that people would vote for or had voted for Hillary.
So overall, pretty good experience. Best of all, I got my mom, who has never phone banked or canvassed before, to contribute three hours of her own time to phone banking! She was glad to have done it in the end, and says she’d be willing to phone bank during the election.
That said, I hope that the Hillary Clinton campaign tweaks the HubDialer experience to allow volunteers to see information about the voters before they call. In its current form, HubDialer is non-intuitive and confusing. I think I’d rather be canvassing, which I’ll do today.
Meanwhile, I’m going to shift my plea from requesting contributions to the campaign to
**VOLUNTEER**
Send a message that California is With Her. Also have a look at violining247’s volunteers thread for some good information. The phone banking tips are especially helpful!
On a final note, I’ll be publishing my last open thread diary next Saturday. With the primary nearly over and Hillary set to be the presumptive nominee on Tuesday, hopefully the entire website will be a space for Hillary supporters to talk positively about our candidate.
This is your open thread.