On July 23, 2016, ahead of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 2016 DNC Rules Committee voted overwhelmingly (158–6) to adopt a superdelegate reform package. The new rules were the result of a compromise between the Hillary Clinton and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns

Ultimately, the DNC decided to prevent superdelegates from voting on the first ballot, instead of reducing their numbers

People keep seeming to forget about the super delegate reform Bernie fought for. They are still there now, 15% of all the delegates (a lot of the super delegates being democratic elected officials like members of congress since that automatically gives the status). But they can’t vote in the first ballot any longer. They could only vote in a contested election in subsequent ballots, after all the other pledged delegates are unbound as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate

Even before those reforms, they never really made a difference in any convention, except possibly 1984 when they helped push Mondale from a plurality to a majority by voting for him on the first ballot.

I’m not personally in favor of them at all, but it’s not nearly as bad as it’s made out to be sometimes. If we go to an open convention though, unless there’s a majority choice on the first ballot, they may play a role on subsequent ballots.

Yes, that’s true. The poll averages themselves haven’t moved much either though. And the reliance on the fundamentals forecast has me nervous, but they definitely do it for a reason. When they developed the models and looked at poll history the pattern they found was the fundamentals had a big influence on what the polls would look like closer to the election and the eventual result. Polls closer to the election are more predictive than the fundamentals. Polls farther away from the election less so. There’s at least some reason to think things have changed enough maybe the fundamentals aren’t as fundamental for this race, but I guess we won’t know until afterward.

Exactly, I think because races have been so close lately, and the probabilities are ending up close to 50% often, people sometimes unintentionally conflate them with poll numbers. 53% to 46% would be a massive poll lead. For probabilities though in this situation it’s the same as saying they have even odds of winning. Look at those massive 95% confidence intervals, the race is in a statistical dead heat. It’s kind of remarkable how steady it has been despite all the wild events that have happened.

He knows that Biden and democratic policies have been good to unions, heck the teamsters pension fund was even bailed out by them in 2022, preventing large pension cuts to 350,000 union workers.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/14/kevin-brady/bidens-36-billion-to-save-teamsters-fund-from-inso/

Going to be a real leopard ate my face moment if Trump wins and fills the national labor board with anti union officials again.

It’s especially inexplicable because in straw polls Biden has a clear lead in support among teamster members.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/teamsters-trump-biden.html

“But you know,” Mr. Palmer added, “you can pick up a snake and play with it, but if you play with it enough, it’s going to bite you eventually.”

Is it okay if I still vote for both of those things at once? Because she’s been shockingly incompetent in cases that have nothing to do with Trump too.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/aileen-cannon-judge-trump-documents-case-made-multiple-errors-earlier-rcna98207

It’s obvious she’s a Trump’s stooge though. First supreme court nomination by Trump if he wins for sure. No surer way to fail to the top of a fascist kelptocratic system then by doing favors for the boss.

This is bizarre, I looked and Rochester Minnesota has multiple high speed providers, including two that offer fiber.

And the isp you have is a wireless isp that doesn’t even list Rochester as within its coverage area, they’re intended to serve more rural areas west of the city. On their map it gets close to but not quite in Rochester, but maybe they’re still able to access it (slowly) since it’s a wireless provider.

I’m guessing this is a whoever owns your Airbnb problem rather than a Rochester Minnesota problem. I don’t understand why they would be paying for this rather than use any of the readily available high speed options there.

Theoretically yes, but that’s not what happened. Also not sure if average in op’s case is referring to mean or median, the word average could refer to either. But mean and median are close in this case. Median wage growth statistics are readily available, here’s median:

https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker

And if you dig into data more, you’ll find real wage growth (wage growth minus inflation) was strongest in the lowest income bracket, not the highest.

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/

That’s not to say that just a couple years of higher wage growth in low income brackets will erase the US’s enormous long-standing problem with income inequality. And the top 10% have still been doing better than upper middle class with recent wage growth.

An annual screening mammogram is automatically covered. If it’s a “diagnostic” mammogram following up some specific issue or complaint, then it would then fall into whatever normal policy rules you have with your insurance company for imaging tests. That’s more likely the case here since this person had to go on to have an ultrasound as well.

If you have insurance but get billed for an annual screening mammogram, it’s possible it was coded improperly by billers and you should definitely check up on that before paying.

Leaders of the tax-writing committees in the House and Senate are working on a deal to expand the existing child tax credit in exchange for extending certain business tax credits

Republicans: No money to help end child poverty unless corporations get handouts too

But seriously when this credit was active, it alone cut child poverty by a third. Imagine what we could get with a true universal basic income. A good first step at least though.

They’re the secretary of state. Every state has one. Their primary job is administering elections in the state. This includes applying rules for eligibility of candidates. For instance if you were 30 and applied to be put on the ballet for president, it would be the secretary of state who says no, you must be at least 35, we’re not putting you on. Of course their decisions about various things can be challenged in court and often are.

In the Colorado case the decision first came from a judge, because there the secretary of state declined to take him off the ballot. Colorado voters sued their secretary of state for neglect or breach of duty for allowing Trump on the ballot in violation of the fourteenth amendment.

Here’s the ruling from that case where you can see it was technically the secretary of state for Colorado who was sued:

https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Anderson-v-Griswold_Verified-Petition_2023.09.06_01.pdf

In Maine no one had to sue the secretary of state first, the secretary of state just said straight up, hey trump you’re not eligible, 14th amendment applies, just like they would have if he didn’t meet other qualifications like being a natural born citizen or being at least the age of 35. Now likely Trump will sue the secretary of state in Maine to try and get the courts to put him back on. They also became involved in the litigation in Colorado after it started, since he had an interest in the case.

First I think both approval voting and ranked choice are both vastly superior to first past the post.

Ranked choice does have some weak points and can create some non optimal outcomes on occasion. Approval voting has its own distortions and issues too though.

https://electionscience.org/voting-methods/ten-critiques-and-defenses-on-approval-voting/

I’m personally a little undecided about which one I like better. It might make the most sense to use different voting systems for different types of elections to minimize sub optimal outcomes and avoid their respective weaknesses as much as possible. But honestly I don’t care, either is great, anything except first past the post please.

When the supreme court shredded a New York gun control law last year (a law that had stood for a century), their reasoning was unless a gun regulation or something very similar to that regulation was already in place at the time the bill of rights was written, then it is not allowed based on their interpretation of the second ammendment. As the dissenting justices pointed out, this of course, is crazy, and if actually applied like how they said it would invalidate pretty much any gun control we still have that hasn’t been taken away already. And isn’t similar at all to how we look at standards for other things in the bill of rights.

So honestly the fifth circuit is probably correctly applying this reasoning here, and many gun laws are in court over this new standard. This was a standard created by the Supreme Court last year though, the fifth circuit didn’t pull it out of their ass this time. But like any of this “originalist” nonsense they aren’t gonna apply it consistently, just when it suits them. I would expect the supreme court to let this law stand this time to avoid yet another very unpopular decision highlighting their extremist second amendment interpretations, even though it doesn’t live up to the ridiculous standard they created last year. Expect them to start applying that standard again capriciously at any time though.

Having so much money that it’s hard to even conceptualize, and you decide its best use is to hurt trans children. Disgusting.

If they were actually concerned about their well being, how about starting with the widespread youth lgbt homelessness across the country? Or you know, actually improving their access to health care instead of working to cut it off?

If this graph isn’t just made up bs in the first place, one thought I recall from every major college campus I’ve been to is random religious preachers camped out every day telling everyone they’re evil, subhuman, and going to hell. Guessing the atheists find that a little more annoying and worthy of shouting back at than some of the religiously inclined.

This drives me up the wall. People act like doctors can calmly watch someone decompensating and be like, okay, right now is the point that they will die without an abortion so we can intervene. If you wait until someone is about to die, well they’re probably about to die no matter what you do. Like premature rupture of membranes for instance, if it happens early enough your doctor may be like, there’s a very low likelihood you can carry this fetus without intact membranes long enough to get to viability before you become septic. So you do the abortion to prevent this and save their life easily. You don’t wait until the poor woman is on death’s door and be like, okay now we can pull out the dead fetus and rotting placenta. And maybe we’ll be able to rescue you from severe septic shock let’s cross our fingers. But that’s what these lawmakers have created, intentionally or unintentionally. That’s just one example but there’s many other similar situations that could happen to anyone. Even if everything is very clear to the doctor, all it takes is some asshole conservative prosecutor to second guess them, harass them, drag them to court, revoke their license, get some hack pro life doctor to testify against them, get the doctor thrown in jail, etc. And anyways it’s a healthcare decision between a patient and their doctor, the government has no place here, except for maybe helping to ensure access for all individuals who need prenatal care. I feel for the doctors that have to choose between these things though and would never want to be in that position.