Danny

Meanwhile, the match-up polls are still showing Sanders would perform better in the general election than Clinton. Latest poll from Pennsylvania (a state Democrats have won ever since 1992) has Clinton only narrowly ahead of Trump, tied with Cruz and getting absolutely thumped by Kasich.

Widen it out to financial services generally and it's a pretty major employer in New York State, actually.

I think New York is the one state where the closed system might work in his favour -- most Wall Street bankers (who would presumably favour Clinton overwhelmingly) are unlikely to be registered Democrats.

I think Sanders has an outside shot of winning New York, actually. It's more ethnically diverse than Wisconsin, but it's also considerably more left-wing - and it's arguably more of a "home state" for Sanders than it is for Clinton. It won't make a difference to the overall picture though, because Clinton just racked up much too big delegate advantages in the South.

Meanwhile, the so-called "moderates" continue to show how disinterested they are in actually helping the country: instead of focussing on policy, they're constantly squawking about how bad the local elections will be in order to position themselves for a leadership contest (the fact that many of the people commenting on this have leadership ambitions of their own is I'm sure a total coincidence): https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/politi...uggesting-local

I'm starting to think you're genuinely unaware of a lot of the welfare stances Labour took in the last parliament. They supported changes to the Disability Living Allowance which were just as punitive as the recent PIP proposals. They supported the household benefits cap. They abstained when the Tories wanted to overturn a court ruling against their ridiculous sanctions regime. They didn't even oppose the bedroom tax at first. They said Jobseekers Allowance for under-25s would be means-tested. Not to mention Rachel Reeves popping up every other week to say how unacceptable it was for people to "linger on benefits" and how Labour would be "tougher than the Tories on welfare". Like it or not, Labour were complicit in allowing the Tories to clobber welfare claimants - if they had taken a stronger stance like Corbyn has and got out everyday making the arguments about how bad it was, people probably wouldn't've have suffered so much. And I personally don't want to risk going back to those dark days until the supposed "moderates" have done MUCH more to show they've learnt their lesson.

Except we just saw cuts to disabled people kiboshed barely two weeks ago... I don't see why that's any more inconceivable than them supporting a measure which was literally based on "you've gone over our two-child limit, so we'll decide that third kid shouldn't qualify for any money". And if anything, the fact they were funding tax cuts for the wealthiest would've made it even less likely they would've taken a stand over it. Burnham, Cooper and especially Kendall were all saying even the laughably feeble tax rises in Labour's 2015 manifesto were "anti-aspiration" and "the politics of envy".

But it wasn't just the leader at the time who wanted to abstain. The New Statesman said at the time that only THREE shadow cabinet members wanted to vote against the Bill ( http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/...is-inside-story ). Something had gone horribly wrong with the whole of the "ancien regime" that they didn't think protecting poor people was something they had to go to the mattresses to defend. I don't doubt that Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper et al would privately have had concerns about many of the vile Tory policies (though I'm not sure about Liz Kendall and the ultra-ideological Progress sect), but they showed themselves to be utterly gutless -- I have no faith at all that, if they had still been in charge the last few weeks, that they would've stood firm on the disability benefit cuts if they were being sneered at by the Tories and the press for "supporting scroungers".

But it wasn't just the leader at the time who wanted to abstain. The New Statesman said at the time that only THREE shadow cabinet members wanted to vote against the Bill ( http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/...is-inside-story ). Something had gone horribly wrong with the whole of the "ancien regime" that they didn't think protecting poor people was something they had to go to the mattresses to defend. I don't doubt that Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper et al would privately have had concerns about many of the vile Tory policies (though I'm not sure about Liz Kendall and the ultra-ideological Progress sect), but they showed themselves to be utterly gutless -- I have no faith at all that, if they had still been in charge the last few weeks, that they would've stood firm on the disability benefit cuts if they were being sneered at by the Tories and the press for "supporting scroungers".

But it wasn't just the leader at the time who wanted to abstain. The New Statesman said at the time that only THREE shadow cabinet members wanted to vote against the Bill ( http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/...is-inside-story ). Something had gone horribly wrong with the whole of the "ancien regime" that they didn't think protecting poor people was something they had to go to the mattresses to defend. I don't doubt that Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper et al would privately have had concerns about many of the vile Tory policies (though I'm not sure about Liz Kendall and the ultra-ideological Progress sect), but they showed themselves to be utterly gutless -- I have no faith at all that, if they had still been in charge the last few weeks, that they would've stood firm on the disability benefit cuts if they were being sneered at by the Tories and the press for "supporting scroungers".

It shouldn't be, but unfortunately on the evidence of the last 5 years, and especially in the months after the election, it is. Given the choice between those two far-from-ideal choices, I'd rather take the one which doesn't result in the incomes of the poorest people in the country getting cut.

Well, that's your opinion, but I don't agree - I think the Lib Dems allowed a whole host of nasty policies to pass in the Coalition years, and that the Tory majority government has thankfully been better than the Coalition so far, since they've been forced to drop several of their policies - due, I would argue, to Corbyn moving the debate to the Left. I agree that, in traditional "leadership" terms, Corbyn's been a disaster. He's pathetic in Parliament, he doesn't have any political nous, and he looks and sounds like a hot mess everyday. However, for me, that is all less important than moderating Tory excesses and actually protecting poor people's livelihoods in practice, which Miliband never did and which the other 3 leadership candidates certainly wouldn't've done

Yeah, but why wasn't there that Tory backlash on various equally vile policies in the last parliament? I would argue it was precisely because Miliband was always desperately trying to compete with the Tories on being "tough on scroungers" and "credible about reducing the deficit" and all the rest of it. For all the mockery of the "Overton window", I do think it's pretty sure that Corbyn has moved the terms of debate to such an extent that even many Tories feel able/obligated to speak out against various measures, whereas they simply weren't before the election when Miliband and Labour were ensuring the whole political debate was conducted in a ridiculously narrow right-wing space.

On the example they set in the last parliament, and especially what they did in the months after the last election, I highly doubt they would've opposed the disability cuts.

Labour opposing wouldn't have been sufficient on its own to get the cuts reversed, but it was a necessary pre-condition. In a parallel universe where one of the "moderates" was leader, and they were pledging to abstain on cuts, Cameron would've still had the arithmetic to get cuts through and he would've been able to credibly wave away IDS's resignation as just one man's ego rather than being about the substantial issue of the cuts being wrong. As I say, the "moderates"' reaction last week when they were whining about how a "credible" leader would've scored more points at PMQs (the inference being that this is more important than actually affecting government policy) shows they haven't even started learning their lesson. I'm sorry but to me it does show that they STILL think getting their own backsides on the government benches is the most important thing, and that policy and the wellbeing of the country is secondary. Do you really think Liz Kendall as leader would be supporting government intervention to save the steel industry? Her constant refrain in recent months (when she's not been uttering total banalities) has been how the Left is too hostile to "globalisation", and that they shouldn't stand in the way of "modernisation" and free-market-induced changes. Indeed her most recent tweet is words to that effect: Liz Kendall ‏@leicesterliz Mar 26 Liz Kendall Retweeted Janan Ganesh "Leicester is the modern world. Do not hold out against change, this season teaches us, absorb & master it." on.ft.com/22zGtcB

Even as someone who didn't vote for Corbyn, the last few weeks have made me glad he's leader tbh. He has actually got RESULTS in terms of policies, in terms of making the Conservatives scrap the disability benefit cuts and now potentially forcing them into nationalising the steel industry. That is much better than one of the self-declared " credible moderates" who would've been busy abstaining on the benefit cuts and wittering on about how "globalisation" and being "pro-business" meant they had to accept the steel industry falling. The fact that the "moderates" were all saying last week was a win for the Tories, because Corbyn didn't get some smart ripostes in at Prime Minister's Questions (which is apparently more important than ACTUALLY STOPPING DISABLED PEOPLE'S INCOMES GETTING CUT) only confirms to me that the "moderates" have completely lost all sense of what politics is supposed to be about.

Maybe not Sanders himself, but I do think Clinton's vice president pick should be someone who appeals to white working-class men who is seen as "authentic". That would compensate for some of her big weaknesses vis-a-vis Trump. I would agree that young people, for all their lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, will probably turn out anyway if faced with Trump as the alternative, and Trump would probably also keep the Latinos safe for her too (so there would be little to gain from Julian Castro as the running mate). I was going to say Jim Webb would be an ideal candidate for the VP spot, but I've just seen he said he'd vote for Trump over Hillary, so.... The Democrats really should be cursing John Edwards'.....lack of discipline, because he would be a good remedy for a lot of the Democrats' problems right now.

She's not though: Sanders is winning with moderates and independents, and with the low-income white voters who decide elections. Admittedly Clinton is generally winning with the high-income voters (who presumably don't like the sound of being taxed more by Sanders, but vote Democrat because they're socially liberal) - they might have been at risk of going to the Republicans if Bush or maybe Rubio had been the nominee, but they're probably safer for the Democrats if Trump is the nominee and insulting immigrants and women all the time. He might not have been attacked as such, but his views have still got a lot of airtime - and yet his polling figures against Republicans and his general approval ratings are still MUCH better than Clinton's. Like I say, I would've agreed they didn't matter much a few months ago when Sanders would've been a blank canvas for a lot of voters, but not now. As much as the Establishment in every Western country doesn't want to hear it, Corbyn politics without the batshit foreign/defence policies is potentially a winner.

Although Clinton is certainly going to be the nominee (unless she's indicted over the e-mail scandal), I think you can now make a serious case that Sanders would've been a stronger candidate for the Democrats than Clinton will be. The argument that "Bernie is winning in the Democrat states" isn't relevant to the nomination itself since all states are equal in that, but it IS relevant in terms of who would have the best chance in November, and it is true that Sanders is either winning or tying in most of the swing states (bar Virginia). Then there's the polling which is constantly showing Sanders runs better against all Republican candidates than Clinton does. Until recently I would've dismissed it on the basis that a lot of people didn't know who Sanders was (people were maybe just treating him as a "generic Democrat" and projecting whatever they wanted onto him). but he and his views have become more well known now and yet if anything his standing in the general election match-ups is improving. While the bit in bold is right, if anything that favours Sanders more. Clinton is being powered by black voters who are by far the most in-the-bag for the Democrats no matter who the candidate is, while Sanders is being powered by low-income white voters who are at major risk of defecting to Trump en masse.

Last Quinnipiac poll: General Public Clinton -21 rating (37% favourable, 58% unfavourable) Trump -20 rating (37% favourable, 57% unfavourable) Independent voters Clinton -30 rating (31% favourable, 61% unfavourable) Trump -25 rating (34% favourable, 59% unfavourable) http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/u...016_Urpfd42.pdf

His ratings are barely any worse than Clinton's. Already, there's state polls putting Trump ahead of Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Clinton would definitely have her hands full with Trump. The problem is that, for all the valid talk of the US getting more ethnically diverse, most of the key swing states still have higher-than-average white working-class populations: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. The only swing states with major numbers of Trump-allergic groups are Virginia and Florida. [There's Nevada and New Mexico which also have high Latino populations, but they account for sod all votes in the Electoral College between them.]

:lol: I do admire how shameless your goalpost-moving is.

That's true as far as it goes, BUT Clinton's "firewall" wasn't thought to be just the South specifically, it was thought to be all the more ethnically-diverse states. Nevada is certainly one of those, it's white population is below the national average, and yet she's statistically tied. If her "firewall" really is down to the states where black people make up 40% or more of the Democrat selectorate, then that's down to about 10 states (of which South Carolina is one).

If it's in the hands of the superdelegates (i.e. neither candidate has gained an overall majority from pledged delegates awarded from the results of the primaries alone), then yes. If Clinton wins the primaries anyway then it isn't an issue, she'll be the nominee regardless. But if she loses to Sanders then, as I say, they just couldn't have a candidate who had actually been beaten roundly beaten -- even leaving aside the fact that Sanders supporters would be furious and possibly wouldn't turn out for the general election in November, it would also feed into one of the most damaging lines of attack about Clinton with the general public, that she's corrupt ("she even gets her cronies to bend the rules for her when she loses an election").