Mr Angry from Gilmore is back again ...

Democratic Party, USA

An article appeared in The Guardian over the weekend which set me off (as sometimes happens). I resisted the temptation to respond because - frankly my dear, no one gives a damn what Douglas thinks. But I obviously cannot control myself. I saw the headline again this morning when I skimmed the front page. It's not just the politics of the article which drove me nuts (I believe it adopts a wishful thinking position because that's more soothing than the real world, it appears). It's also the deliberate avoidance of facts (about the relative strengths in the Democratic nomination process of the two candidates) that rattles my cage. Presumably mere facts present difficulties for the author's vision of how she would like the world to be rather than how it truly is.

That latter part - the disinclination to deal with facts - has always annoyed me about some of my fellow travellers on the political Left. When facts don't fit or cause problems for the narrative some folk on the Left carry on with their first thought, simply ignoring evidence they don't like. I think our task (keeping the progressive impulses of history moving forwards) is hard enough without resorting to pseudo-analysis from which all those pieces of real world intelligence we would rather not deal with have been quietly left on the floor. It reminds me of the behaviour I indulged in sometimes as a child. When I didn't like something - a parent issuing instructions perhaps - I tried to imagine that if I closed my eyes to their presence or obscured them with my fingers they would not be there. But when I lowered my hands the insistent parent was still there. Just like difficult facts.

Here is today's contribution in response to the article from the Guardian, here:

Bernie Sanders just won his seventh straight victory. Is he unstoppable? 

2.4 million more people have voted for HRC than Bernie. HRC is more than 200 delegates ahead of Bernie in the pledged delegate count. Bernie continues to lag behind HRC in both the popular and delegate vote. These numbers suggest quite the opposite of the article's rhetorical question. 

And you write that in Wyoming

He won 56% to 44%, and picked up seven delegates

but conveniently omit the fact that HRC picked up 7 delegates too.

And your article seems to deliberately misuse the language of the nomination process when it says

Sanders has done this in the past seven primaries, eventually crossing the finish line ahead of her.

We know, of course, that there is a fundamental difference between how HRC and Bernie perform in closed primaries or caucuses like Wyoming (with tightly closed and small electorates) and primaries (with far larger and more open electorates). New York is a primary not a caucus. It has a huge number of voters from a far more diverse population. It's in such contests that HRC has been at her strongest. So even if Bernie exceeds expectations in New York the maths of the nomination process suggest his bid has already been stopped because he needed to do better earlier to have any realistic hope of winning the race for pledged delegates.