False reasoning and punditry

I hate false reasoning and false logic.  Sanders won 2 of 3 primaries yesterday... does that mean he won yesterday's contest?  No.  He gained fewer delegates than Clinton did, and that's what matters.  I'm hoping he starts picking up more delegates than Clinton and starts to catch up, but this hasn't happened yet and claiming victory when there isn't one is like Bush's mission accomplished speech on the aircraft carrier.

I heard yesterday on NPR about how pundits aren't discouraged or upset about being wrong all the time because they're not looking at how things are but instead looking at how they want them to be.  I understand why they do it.  They want people to believe in the goals they have.  For example, if people think that Sanders is winning, he's more likely to win in the future, so you tell people he's winning.  This why I could never be a pundit, I want to analyze how things are and look at the potential.

There's reason to hope, but winning 2 out of 3 states while losing the delegate count fight isn't it.

I've also seen people saying that the states that Clinton has been winning, for the most part, are states that vote Republican in the general and this fact by itself means that they matter less.  This just simply isn't true because the primary is decided by delegates and the states that have voted thus far have just as many delegates as they would if they voted Democrat in the general.

There's reason to hope, but it's not because the states that have voted thus far don't matter.

There's reason to hope, though.  I have the hope that states that are more liberal, those that vote Democrat in the general elections, will have a heavier turnout for the more liberal candidate.  Sanders is more liberal than Clinton on her most liberal day, and significantly more liberal than than her record shows her to be in general.  Therefore, one can reason that, potentially, just maybe, perhaps, there will be higher turn out in places where people may be more enthusiastic about Sanders.  I'm not being sarcastic in my hedging though.  We have yet to see the true groundswell that Sanders needs in order to win the nomination.

Pundits and news reporters are touting Clinton's overwhelming number of delegates and saying it will be difficult for Sanders to catch up.  But this, too, is overstating things and blinding us from the truth. Clinton currently has 663 delegates based on primaries and 458 super delegates.  Sanders has 459 delegates and 22 super delegates.  Super delegates can change their votes before the convention begins, so really, right now, the difference between the two is 204 delegates.... and there are over 3,000 left for them to split up.  All that said, Sanders needs to pick up a lot of delegates before the super delegates will start to change sides.

I wrote this the afternoon of Sunday, March 6... the day of Maine's Democratic Party primary.  Maine is now reporting at 80% that Sanders has won 64% to 35%, making the delegate count difference about 8 delegates less.  If Sanders can pull this kind of win over Clinton is some of the other, larger, Democratic footholds, he stands a chance.