Congratulations to Jared August 15, 2008

August 12 has come and gone on the sun-burnt plains of Colorado CD-2.   Jared Polis pulled out a good win against Joan Fitz-Gerald and Will Shafroth, keeping Will’s strengths in check while whittling down Joan to the very end.

Much can be said about this race and how it turned out, but the key was this: Jared had the right combination of the resources, the skills and the dedication to pull this off.  Much has been made (here as elsewhere) about Jared’s limitless funds but it should be obvious to anybody seriously considering the picture that money won’t buy you anything if you don’t have the awareness and the political skills to match.

Jared’s biggest strategic move was to have the foresight and the cajones to dump an unworkable campaign manager months ago when his campaign was bumbling along without a strong, seasoned leader.  Jared picked up Robert Becker and it was off to the races.  Becker had the flexibility to run circles around Joan’s campaign and Mary Alice just couldn’t keep pace.  Every JFG attack was old and tired, the same old soundbite about Jared’s cash that came across as a whine.  The Joan campaign didn’t have fresh material or a fresh attitude and it cost them.  When Jared produced solid dirt on Joan the answer was mismanaged.

Jared did well to pick up a campaign manager equal to the task, but clearly the bulk of the credit must go to the candidate himself.  He didn’t just rest on the laurels of his money, but wore out the shoe leather as well as Will or Joan (also see his comment here).  Only the candidates themselves know how much they are working door-to-door but there’s one bit of evidence I think says pretty clearly that Jared was working as hard as possible for this seat: he had a bigger margin over Joan in Adams and Broomfield Counties than in Boulder County.

Clearly I was supporting Will in this race but as I said previously, if it wasn’t Will it would be Jared for me.  I think both were good candidates but Will was stronger on my issues (longer track record and more dedication) and had some intangibles I liked.  Even so, I was very impressed with how quickly Jared picked up these issues, how prepared he was for them at the climate/energy debate, and especially by how willing he has been to engage and comment on this blog.  Thanks for that, Jared!

So here’s a congratulations to all for a race well played.  Jared comes out the big winner in all this, Will comes out as well with a new load of street cred for pulling a lot of weight when every observer thought the two biggies would bury him.  As for Joan?  I won’t be catty about it, but politically Joan comes out the big loser in this.  She started with all the weight and prestige behind her, started as the out-size runaway favorite.  And lost.  She didn’t lose because she got out-spent, she lost because she got out-campaigned, and that’s that.  Despite that, Joan is still to be thanked for putting in the extraordinary effort it takes to run for a seat like this.

Good luck Jared, and serve us well.

loves mining, drives a Prius, hates nuclear, loves mining August 7, 2008

We knew that the mining industry was an enthusiastic supporter of Joan Fitz-Gerald before the CD-2 primary race started.  And throughout the race she hasn’t even bothered trying to distance herself from those ties.  As the race has worn on more of Joan’s mining support has come out, become more clear, stood up, been counted, shown its face, and given her opponents juicy ammo.  All this exploded this week as Jared Polis’ campaign released a letter in which Joan tried to back Summit County away from banning cyanide heap leach gold mining (see previous post and ColoradoPols threads about this).

(Note that it didn’t take long for Jared to come out strongly against cyanide mining.  Great job, Jared!  I can tell you’ve been a passionate and dedicated opponent of this technique for years!  Way to stick your neck out and take the opportune obvious expedient right position! Way to be a real leader on this! Oh wait, I guess Jared’s not so clean after all.)

On one of the Pols stories I commented about Joan’s cameo appearances in two different Colorado Mining Association newsletters (one in 2003, the other in 2006), praising her for her support for the mining industry.

Is this a problem?  As some commenters in the Pols’ vigorous debate argue, we use the materials derived from mining constantly.  We rely on those materials, so what’s the problem?  Why is Joan’s defense of the mining industry a problem?

Mining itself is not the problem.  We do rely on minerals, and to get those minerals we must mine for them.  The problem is that the mining industry is comprised of private and publicly-held mining corporations and the only responsibility these companies have is to their owners or shareholders.  They (and rightfully so), strive for maximum profit, and therefore minimal expenses.  Mining cleanly?  Mining with the utmost care and attention to the environment?  An obvious expense.

Society has a different calculation to consider: minerals, yes, but not at the cost of a destroyed environment.  The People need to balance minerals extraction with environmental preservation.

So we have a natural and unavoidable tension: mining companies want to make money, society wants the products and a clean environment.  We create government regulations to try to ensure we get both, but it is clearly in the companies’ best interest to ensure the minimization of regulations.

So it is industry’s interest to not be regulated, it is in our interest that they are.  The relevant question to be asked here is: which side is Joan Fitz-Gerald on? After seeing her praised in print by the CMA twice, after seeing her letter to Summit County, after noting her PAC contributions from mining industry groups, it’s pretty damn clear which side Joan is on. If she is acting in the interest of Mining can she also be acting in the interest of stringent regulations of mining? Not bloody likely.  The relevant question for CD-2 voters is: does such a strong supporter of the mining industry warrant our vote?

Joan peppered the CD-2 energy and climate debate with platitudes about the environment, how she drives a Prius, how she’s against all things nuclear, etc.  But Joan is walking a razor’s edge espousing a Prius-driving lifestyle while pushing counties away from banning potentially destructive mining practices and taking oodles of mining PAC money.  This kind of hypocrisy may be present in most political officials, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it or accept it.  In Joan I don’t.

The infamous Joan Fitz-Gerald cyanide ban letter August 5, 2008

It’s something I have been hearing about for a while but the actual paper just came out today.  In 2004 Joan Fitz-Gerald, in her capacity as a State Senator, wrote a letter to Summit County telling them to drop their big ideas for a ban on cyanide heap leaching.

What is cyanide heap leaching?  It is a gold mining practice in which gold-bearing ore is piled up in a big heap over an impermeable liner.  A network of, well, essentially garden hose and lawn sprinklers is laid across the heap and a cyanide solution is liberally sprinkled over the ore (more info here).  It is a problem because quite often the “impermeable” layer goes all permeable on the miners and suddenly you have a heavy metals problem in your surface and ground water.

This has happened repeatedly and with such destruction in the state of Montana (as well as throughout the world) that the citizens of Montana voted to ban the practice in a statewide ballot initiative in 1994.  Canyon Resources of Golden didn’t like that ban so much and spent a good deal of money asking the citizens to overturn it in 2004.  They were roundly defeated.  Know this: if the citizens of a pro-mining state act to outlaw a certain mining practice, it must be bad.

Why didn’t Joan Fitz-Gerald know this?  Well, I’m sure she did, but it didn’t stop her from writing a letter (today released by David Thielen after somebody leaked it to him) to the Summit County Board of Commissioners asking them to not ban “lawfully regulated business practices.”  Joan’s letter starts by harshing on “anti-mining activists” for “banning the use of cyanide technologies” (oh the horror!!).  It then implies that Colorado’s mining laws are “good enough” (my quotes) to protect the environment without actually banning cyanide heap leaching.   Joan then goes on to tell Summit County to “get the fact” about discharge permits issued under the current mining laws.

A few points:

1- Joan was already having to live down her ties to mining (being identified as a “friend of the mining industry” by the Colorado Mining Association, for instance) and this pretty much cements that relationship.  If pro-environment CD-2 voters want to elect her anyway, well, it’s on them.

2- Joan telling Summit County that they shouldn’t worry about cyanide technologies because the state’s DPHE is going to regulate and permit discharges is utterly, completely, egregiously misguided. At best. At worst it’s a wilful ignorance of all the heavy metal releases that have occured by other leach operations that were also permitted.  What does permitting do to stop discharages?  Absolutely nothing physically.  It sets out a regulatory and penalty structure for non-compliance.  Does that scare the mining industry.  Uh, no.

3- The concident timing of this letter with Canyon Resources’s attempts to overturn Montana’s voter-passed ban is unsettling.

4- Some have commented on ColoradoPols that “All Senator Fitzgerald was advocating was a consistent statewide policy for regulating mining companies”  Bullshit.  Read the letter yourself and see if you can come to that conclusion.  I can’t.  Even so, who cares?  The state doesn’t need a consisent statewide policy.  If an individual county wants to regulate above and beyond what the state is doing they should be allowed to.

5- In the climate and energy debate that I live blogged a few months ago, Joan answered a question on nuclear power with a long answer on why she’s anti-nuclear, how it doesn’t fit with this district, how you have to know your district and we’ve had too many problems with nuclear here, etc.  So it doesn’t go for mining as well, Joan?  CD-2 has more than its share of abandoned mines and other mining-related environmental issues.  Why try to derail Summit County from heading off more on their own?

It remains to be seen whether the leak of this letter does damage to JFG’s campaign, but here’s hoping it does.  It matters not to me that Joan gets good marks for enviro votes when she’s pulling letters like this.

Shafroth picks up two major endorsements July 27, 2008

Two days ago the Denver Post announced its endorsement for Will Shafroth for CD-2, a major feather in Will’s cap.  This followed by a week the Rocky Mountain News’ own endorsement of Shafroth.  The only other newspaper endorsement that means much to this race, that of the Daily Camera, will be announced this week.

Grabbing the two Denver papers is a major coop for Shafroth and a major embarrassment for Joan Fitz-Gerald.   While nobody with any ounce of insight into this race would expect Jared Polis to pick up these endorsements, most probably guessed that Joan would have had the inside line.  Her years as a state politico and deal maker presumptively marked her as the “inevitable” choice, and she has certainly been positioned as that from the start of this race.  Whether coming from her own people or from detail-watchers like ColoradoPols, most have been touting Joan in much the same way that Mark Penn positioned Hillary in the beginning of her race.  We all know how that turned out and my guess is Joan goes down the same path.

So why didn’t Joan get the nod over Will?  Only the editors of the dailies know, but here’s my guess: personality.  Whisper it loudly: once people actually get to meet and talk to these candidates they have opposite reactions to Will and Joan.  Will they like more, Joan they like less.  Biased by my own experiences perhaps, but I have heard this from CD-2 voters time and again.  Joan comes off as something nearing bitter, Will comes off as affable.  Quite simply, Joan just turns people off.  We can talk about policy differences all day long, but in the end their policies are not far enough apart to matter much.  This is about personality.  As for Jared?  As nice a guy as Jared may be, he comes off as the over-eager new car salesman trying to get you to just jump in and take this thing for a ride.   That he is trying to buy this race is obvious, but what is dragging him down like a leaded sea anchor is that he doesn’t have the personality skills to make his purchase irrelevant.

In the end, these endorsements may matter not at all.  But they are a major boost of credibility to Shafroth’s candidacy and should give anybody who lays down on conventional wisdom a pause.

happy July 4th July 4, 2008

As indipol got very very busy in the past two months (having had yet another child and having seen work ramp up considerably) political writing plummeted.  But indipol is still thinking about and following politics and hopes to return to writing soon, especially on the Colorado CD-2 race between Will Shafroth, Jared Polis and Joan Fitz-Gerald.

In particular I’m jonesing to cover certain aspects of Jared’s talking points as he tries to play down the fact that he is unabashedly trying to buy a win in this race.  Now I’ve said before that I hold no grudges on Jared’s money (I’m an entrepreneur myself) or on how he spends it, but I do find Jared’s self-funding unsavory.  The reason I find it unsavory is a combination of two things:

1- Politics in America is usually and usually should be of the people, by the people, for the people.  Raising money for a campaign from lots of different people is one way that politics becomes of the people, by the people.  Going to the people for your money and your votes says to me that you are trying to buy the people’s attention.  Leaving the people to themselves and instead buying millions of dollars of mailings and airtime without making much of a dent in your piggybank is a blatant attempt to influence people without going to them.  It is an attempt to buy name recognition rather than earning it.  And while that is not illegal, nor should it be, it is distasteful to me.

2- Instead of just admitting to this and getting over it, Jared is spinning it and I find the spin to be bizarre and disingenuous.  The main spin from Jared’s supporters (both in his campaign staff quotes as well as in his planted comments on various blogs and newspapers — here for example) is that Jared is a special interest of one and therefore should be more trusted than Joan who is raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from PACs and most likely will see serious 527 activity on her behalf (Will has taken very little from PACs — under $10K).  The notion that you are only an “independent” candidate if you self-finance means, taken to its logical conclusion, that only the ultra-wealthy should run.  This is almost Rovian in its spin and is a subject I will return to in a subsequent post.

Happy 4th and don’t forget to vote on August 12th!

The layers peeling away May 9, 2008

I first used the word “inevitable” on February 10.  Nothing along the way, through the ups and downs in momentum for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, has made me alter my perception.  Barack’s nomination  became inevitable after SuperTuesday and became a near mathematical certainty by the end of February.  No amount of HillarySpin or wins in coal mining states was going to change that.

Now that Obama has yet again soundly won a big primary day in popular votes and delegates, the layers on HRC’s campaign that had slowly, slowby been peeling away are starting to come faster and faster.  The SuperDelegates are turning and the hole in the dam grows daily.  Bill Richardson’s endorsement started the flow and by this past Tuesday BO had just about caught up to HRC in spoken-for SuperDelegates.  Not only had Obama been gaining SD’s far faster than HRC, many SD’s were switching to Obama after having declared for Clinton.  After this Tuesday’s results the hole in that dam has gone from pea-sized to baseball-sized.  In the next two weeks the flow will continue and Barack Obama will have overtaken HRC in the SuperDelegate column.   Hillary may stick it out through early June (the last primary is Puerto Rico on June 7 — this post has the list of remaining primaries) but the race’s results are as inevitable now as they were two months ago.

D prez race poll check April 9, 2008

Thirteen days to the Pennsylvania primary. The race has mellowed a bit. Both campaigns have continued to campaign hard, with HRC being very aggressive but BO stepping it up as well, but their attacks on each other have abated a bit. Continual movement in the polls, combined with continual selective coverage of polls in the media, mean that unless you’re keeping a close eye on all of the polls you’ve either heard that HRC is still winning big or that BO has closed the gap.

The reality of the PA polls is that most of the bad polls have BO and HRC pulling closer. Some have them within ~5 and one has the race tied. SurveyUSA, however, is now a strong outlier, giving HRC an 18-point lead. Maddeningly, SurveyUSA and ARG, the only two pollsters I think have been well vetted by this campaign season, have completely diverged. ARG’s last poll, in fact, has the two candidates tied. That makes trends in PA much harder to assess. I don’t much care what Rasmussen and Quinnipiac are saying, but if SurveyUSA is showing a strong up trend for HRC (12 points to 18 points in a week) while ARC is showing an up trend for BO (12 point deficit to tied), then confusion reigns. Keeping in mind the usual caveat about averaging polls, Pollster.com’s poll average has HRC with a 7-point lead, much smaller than it was a week ago.

beware the polls April 1, 2008

A dedicated reader emailed me this HuffPost article extolling a new Rasmussen poll that shows HRC’s lead slipping to 5 in Pennsylvania.  A few takes from this:

1.  Rasmussen has shown itself to be one of the worst pollsters of this campaign season.  As I wrote in another post, at this point I trust SurveyUSA and ARG, I give diminished credence to some others, and I am totally ignoring others (i.e. Rasmussen and Zogby).
2. SurveyUSA also has a poll out yesterday with Clinton holding a 12-point lead.   A slightly older ARG poll also has HRC with a 12-point lead. That’s much more credible to me.
3. It’s entirely possible for BO to narrow the final in PA to 5 points, but my guess is that systematic poll undersampling works to HRC’s advantage in PA (that is, it will underestimate her support, not his).
4. I continue to believe that BO should keep a low profile in PA and let Clinton work herself out. I wrote a few weeks ago that the Clinton campaign would give BO plenty of ammo and the Bosnia sniper fire play is just one example.  There will be another  earthquake sometime in the next two weeks.
5. The final outcome in PA is important to the SuperDelegate picture.  A big win by HRC (15+ points) makes it harder for them to put continuing pressure on HRC to drop out.  A small win (inside 5 points) makes it much easier.

Well, since Politico said it…. March 23, 2008

Welcome to the party, Politico. Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen tell you what I’ve been saying for weeks. The main point: Hillary isn’t going to win. Can’t win. Period. Let’s get over it and move on.

Follow on points: the notion that she can win is media-as-business hype. It makes little sense for the media to call this since they get millions of stories and web hits out of drawing the drama out as long as possible.

Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

It goes on brilliantly and if you read closely, you’ll see much of the same I’ve been saying loudly since the Beltway Primary and a bit more quietly before that.

“Big states” is spin, not reality March 21, 2008

The last remaining iota of Hillaryspin is this: Clinton won the big states and Obama didn’t, so therefore Clinton should get the SuperDelegates because she is a better candidate and is going to run better against McCain. Most coverage I’ve seen has been uncritically biting on this bait and repeating it as received wisdom. Here’s the reality: only three “big” states will be in play in November (# of electoral votes in parentheses):

• Ohio (20)
• Pennsylvania (21)
• Florida (27)

(By “being in play” I mean in the past two presidential elections they went for one candidate by less than 5%.) Hillary won Ohio, will likely win PA and we’ll have to put FL in the “who knows?” category. But dropping down into the next level, these are the “semi-big” states that have at least 10 electoral votes and will be in play:

• Michigan (17)
• Virginia (13)
• Missouri (11)
• Wisconsin (10)
• Minnesota (10)

Of these competitive “semi-big” states, throwing out MI, Obama not only made a clean sweep of the four but trounced HRC in three of them (only Missouri was close).

Nails it March 18, 2008

Unless you saw it live you’re not likely to see Barack Obama’s speech today in its entirety, and the clips you’re likely to hear will not do it justice, so watch it in full here.

In a two words, Obama nails it. He pulled off exactly the right speech at exactly the right time in this campaign and in the process totally disarmed Clinton and her advisors for the time being. He mixed together the myriad race, class and opportunity issues we face together as a country so well and in a way so unique to his background that from this point forward Hillary will find it next to impossible to own them. By being so frank and forthright on this so often avoided question, while being inclusive at the utmost, he has put her campaign in an incredible response bind. Other than effusive praise, there is nothing the Clinton campaign can say in response that will not be seen as divisive, snarky, sour grapes or evil.

PA and then? March 14, 2008

At this point I’m watching only SurveyUSA and ARG in Pennsylvania.  Interestingly, they’re off by 8 right now.  SurveyUSA has a 19-point lead for Clinton, ARG has an 11 point lead.  I expect they’ll converge close to April 22.  Watch for the “undecided” count (3 in SurveyUSA, 6 in ARG).  In Mississippi almost the entire poll undecided count went to BO.  Most polls had HRC ~37 which is what she ended up with.   They had BO in the mid-50’s but he got 61%.

My “advice” for BO remains the same: stay low in PA for the next three weeks and let HRC play herself out.  As we saw with Ferraro’s implosion, Hillaryland will give BO items to work with.  The important thing now is how he works with them.  He’s got to sound above the fray on the petty attacks but take it to her on the real meat.  Right now he’s getting there (“she’s never answered that phone at 3am either”) and he should keep on it, slowly ramping up lines like that.  He needs to make voters doubt her suitability to be prez in the same way she has successfully gotten people to doubt his.  Her biggest weakness is that people are far more likely to see her as untruthful and scheming and BO needs to find a way to play on that.  All that said, HRC is still going to win PA, so the question is by how much?  BO should accept that if the primary were held today he’d lose by about 15.  How much can he knock that down by and how’s he going to do it?

After PA there are eight states left and Obama will win at least five of them.  The playing field for the Dems remains the same as it did before TX and OH: HRC has no room left to tamp down that 100-delegate deficit.   She may have the momentum now (she clearly does) but she doesn’t have the time.  Even if there is some FL and MI miracle, she will not overtake BO by the convention, either in delegates, states, or the popular vote.  So the question remains: if your only hope left is that the SD’s vote with you and overturn BO’s leads in delegates, states and popular votes, are you willing to suffer the consequences?  Obviously the answer is yes for the Clintons, but what is it for everybody else?

a few things post-Mississippi March 12, 2008

• Obama won MS yesterday by almost double but Clinton still has the real momentum. In the exit polls, voters who made up their minds within the last few days went strongly for Clinton. But delegates is the count that matters and with WY and MS Obama basically erased the gains HRC had made on March 4.
• The only other worthy bit I got out of the MS exit polls was how important TV ads were to deciding votes. 66%-24% said they were important and the 66% went for Obama by 2-1. Those 24% who said they weren’t important went for Hillary by about 15 points. There is a lesson here for Pennsylvania….
• One other potentially interesting bit (I don’t think it matters but you might): in TX and OH, R crossovers voted for O or both equally. In MS they voted strongly for Hillary.

It may be painful to watch, but…. March 9, 2008

…at least it lays bare how people really think about politics. And for me that’s more interesting than the final outcome anyway.

First, a little ride in Spin City: So Obama wins another caucus (60-40, 7-5 in delegates). Another unimportant, insignificant caucus win that really means nothing, or at least means less than winning a primary because …. well, let’s face it, it’s because Obama – not Clinton – is winning the caucuses, so how important can they be? Caucuses are really undemocratic. Except for the Nevada caucus, which was really important for a variety of reasons and, which of course, Hillary won. Expect she didn’t win because Obama got 13 delegates to her 12. Hmmm….this is all so confusing. Damn. Well, anyway, Wyoming certainly doesn’t matter because it only had 12 delegates and no people and voted for Obama. Only the big states that vote for Hillary matter.

What has been a little surprising to me is how many people are missing the forest for the trees at this stage in the D contest. When some of you email me it sounds like you’re reading from the campaign talking points sheets. Here are the facts (and some assumptions) as I see them:

1. Obama is beating Clinton by about 53%-47% in won delegates (ignoring SD’s for the moment).
2. Barring a major scandal (and assuming something doesn’t change with MI and FL), it will be next to impossible for Clinton to bring that 6-point Obama lead close to 50-50 by June with the 10 contests remaining. Give her a smashing 30 delegate margin in Pennsylvania and she’s still going to hit the convention ~100 delegates down*.
3. Neither will have a 50%+1 majority of delegates going into Denver, meaning that functionally, the SD’s will decide it if neither candidate concedes before the convention.
4. The remaining SD’s aren’t stupid and will not break enough for HRC to overturn a 100+ delegate lead for BO.
5. Thus (and again, assuming no shenanigans on MI and FL) there is precious little chance that HRC can win the nom at this point. What she can do is carve up Obama for the R’s.
6. BO will not accept a VP slot on a HRC ticket. (Why would he if he’s taking a 100+ delegate lead into the convention?)
7. BO’s deepest preference would be to not take HRC as VP, but it might be the only way they avoid going into the convention with the race still open. (Although I’m not sure she’d want to be VP.)
8. There is far more upside for HRC returning to the Senate after this race than for BO returning. If she drops the prez aspirations for now she can be Majority Leader in short order (not right away, but it wouldn’t take long).

*Here’s what’s left:

• MS / 33 dels / March 11 / Obama should win handily
• PA / 158 dels / April 22 / right now my guess is HRC wins by 5-15
• NC / 115 dels / May 6 / Obama wins easily
• IN / 72 dels / May 6 / HRC probably wins by 5-10
• WV / 28 dels / May 13 / HRC wins
• KY / 51 dels / May 20 / HRC wins
• OR / 52 dels / May 20 / Obama wins
• SD / 15 dels / Jun 3 / Obama wins
• MT / 16 dels / Jun 3 / Obama wins
• PR / 63 dels / Jun 7 (might be the 1st…depends on what they work out) / Obama wins

I don’t see an easy path here for the D’s. HRC knows as well as any close observer what is ahead, which is why she’s talking about a split ticket. What is ahead is the seduction of power’s collision with the brick wall of reality. Asking for a split ticket is HRC’s way of trying to get off the tracks of this train wreck. But BO is certainly not going to accept a VP slot with a sizable delegate lead and I don’t think she really wants the VP pop either. She won’t take VP, either will he (only because he’s sexist, right?), but she feels like she has too much vested now to step aside “for the good of the party.” So she won’t, and since she’s staying to fight, she’s going to fight to win. Which means, either HRC concedes and concedes well before April 22, or this thing is going nuclear.

Did R cross-overs matter? March 6, 2008

A reader asked me to comment on the influence of R’s voting in the TX and OH D primaries. The answer is, they didn’t matter. Here are the numbers from the CNN exit polls:

Ohio

D: 69% (56% HRC – 42% BO)

R: 9% (49-49)

I: 22% (48-50)

Texas

D: 66% (53-46)

R: 9% (46-53)

I: 25% (48-49)

Some common thinking out there was that R crossovers would vote for Hil because they think she’s more likely to lose to McCain. I think that’s talkinghead fodder. I don’t think primary voters in any significant numbers vote for reasons that sophisticated. Voters vote their interests, probably realizing that individual strategizing at the ballot box is a waste of effort.