Nate Silver: Bernie Sanders would be ‘losing’ even when he is winning

Nate Silver provides this chart to support his argument that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — hailing from the state with the highest percentage of white liberals — could win the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary yet still lose the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination. If the 50 states all voted and caucused on the same day, Silver would have a solid point, but as the states will caucus and vote over a bit more than a four-month period, Silver’s argument misses the factor of momentum (or, as I might put it, the movement of the lemmings from one candidate to another) over time. Silver’s argument demonstrates, however, that Bernie Sanders is an uber-underdog.

Far be it for me to question Prognosticator King Nate Silver (Prognosticator Queen? Like I am, he is gay…), but a recent post of his on his website fivethirtyeight.com bears this headline: “Bernie Sanders Could Win Iowa and New Hampshire. Then Lose Everywhere Else.”

The emphasis there, I think, I hope, is on the word “could.” Lots of different scenarios could play out from this early point in the game, but I find it unlikely that Sanders would win both Iowa and New Hampshire and yet not win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

The crux of Silver’s argument apparently is that “Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa and Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire are really liberal and really white, and that’s the core of Sanders’ support.”

The chart above is posted with Silver’s article, and assuming that its statistics are correct, yes, it’s no shock that Bernie Sanders is polling well right now in Iowa and in New Hampshire, the first two states to pick their 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate, in early February.

Silver notes that “Sanders has so far made very little traction with non-white Democrats,” suggesting that this could cost Sanders the eventual win.

I don’t know about that.

I do know that Billary Clinton, for whatever reason or reasons, is big here in California, so I couldn’t see Sanders winning California — if California voted early. But California isn’t voting early in 2016; in 2016, California’s presidential primary election will be in June.

Billary beat Barack Obama here in California in 2008, but that year the presidential primary was held here in February, on “Super Tuesday.” It was a big chunk of delegates early on for Billary, but Obama still eventually beat her and won the nomination, of course.

Given that California doesn’t weigh in until June 2016, when it most likely will be (but might not be) a moot point anyway, yes, Billary could still win California’s primary, even if Bernie already had sewn up the party’s presidential nomination (and Billary had conceded), I suppose, but at the same time, in the world of presidential politics, June 2016 is a long, long time away, and so of course it’s possible that Sanders could win California’s primary in June 2016, especially if he already had swept most of the states in the earlier voting.

Not just California, but many other states, probably especially red and purple states, might remain steadfastly loyal to Billary in 2016, even to the bitter end, but as this was not an insurmountable obstacle for Obama in 2008, I don’t see that it would be an insurmountable obstacle for Sanders in 2016.

As I have intimated above, perhaps the biggest flaw in Nate Silvers’ argument is that to me his chart of the states and their makeup of white liberals seems to suggest that all of these states are going to be voting close together, when, in fact, the 2016 presidential primary elections and caucuses stretch from February 1 through June 7 (yes, California is the last to vote, along with four other states on that date.)

If all 50 states held their primary elections and caucuses on one day, or even within one month or maybe even two, then yes, I’d probably expect Billary to win, but that won’t be the case; that won’t be how the game is played. (But nor do I see the 2016 contest being drawn out until June, as it anomalously was in 2008. My best guess is that it will be done by April at the latest. [John Kerry wrapped up his 2004 win in March, and Al Gore also had wrapped up his 2000 win in March.])

All of that said, no one really knows what might happen if Bernie Sanders were to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. It seems to me that Billary probably would implode spectacularly. Yes, it is true that only two states aren’t representative of the entire nation, but coming in at first place in Iowa gives a candidate a huge boost, as it did for Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008. All three of those candidates, of course, went on to win their party’s presidential nomination. (The last time that the Democratic first-place winner of Iowa didn’t go on to win the party’s presidential nomination was Tom Harkin back in 1992.)

Yet we’re so sure that for some reason or reasons it would be different for Bernie Sanders were he to win first place in Iowa. (He is nothing if not an underdog.)

I could see an Iowa win giving Sanders such momentum that of course he wins New Hampshire, and from there it easily might be All She Wrote for Billary. Billary can come back from losing Iowa — her husband did in 1992, after all (and while she lost Iowa to Obama in 2008, she did win the popular vote in the 2008 New Hampshire primary [but tied with Obama for the delegate count]) — but were she to lose New Hampshire in February, too, um, yeah…

Of course, as many have noted, the better that Bernie were to perform in February, the more that the panicked Clintonistas (who pretty much are synonymous with the center-right Democratic Party establishment) would attack him. It is an unknown as to whether the Clinton Machine could destroy Sanders. It certainly didn’t destroy the upstart Barack Obama during the long, drawn-out presidential primary season of 2008 (again, Billary didn’t finally concede to Obama until June 2008).

And you never know how an attack is going to play out for you. It might work and you might win; or, it might generate sympathy for your victim and hurt you, either giving your victim the win or giving you a very tarnished win, a pyrrhic victory.

I mean, Bernie Sanders comes across as the humble, rumpled college professor whom you like, the professor who at first appears to be fairly eccentric but whom, once you listen to what he has to say, is quite sane and quite wise and quite big-hearted, you realize. Sanders also (probably wisely) fairly steadfastly sticks to his philosophy of not savaging his political rivals, but of sticking to the issues.

By attacking Bernie, Billary can’t come out of it not looking like an even bigger harpy with a dynastic, coronate-me-already mindset than she already does. So Team Billary savaging Bernie is far from an assured winning strategy.

And again, I’m quite surprised that in his piece, Nate Silver doesn’t talk about what I might call The Lemming Effect of Iowa and New Hampshire. It wasn’t that long ago that John Kerry rose from the political dead in early 2004, beating Howard Dean to win Iowa and New Hampshire, shocking pretty much Everyone in the Political Universe, even his long-time supporters (such as myself), and once he won Iowa and New Hamsphire, the vast majority of the rest of the primary and caucus states quickly fell to him like dominoes. (Howard Dean won only his home state of Vermont. John Edwards, who would go on to be Kerry’s running mate, won only two states.)

Again, it speaks to Bernie Sanders’ status as the uber-underdog, methinks, that one might posit that while the rest of the states fell like dominoes after John Kerry won both Iowa and New Hampshire in 2004, this wouldn’t happen for Bernie Sanders.

And look at where John Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts sits on Silver’s chart: It is listed at No. 4, but apparently tying with Iowa as the third-most white and liberal state. By Silver’s own argument, it seems to me, John Kerry, because he came from such a white and such a liberal state, shouldn’t have done nearly as well as he actually did.

I’m not especially picking on Silver, and I think that the moral of the story is that presidential politics can be much like a Plinko game: the chip, once dropped, can fall in one of many directions, and predicting where it finally will land can be very difficult. Especially before the chip has even been dropped — before Iowans have caucused and New Hampshirites have voted — we can only speculate what might happen. Only after the chip has dropped and gained momentum will prognosticating be easier and more accurate.

Still, I find it fun to discuss what might happen. Again, my best guess is that if Bernie Sanders wins Iowa and New Hampshire, it’s all over for Billary Clinton. She probably would win significantly more states’ primaries and caucuses in 2016 than did, say, John Edwards in 2004, but losing both Iowa and New Hampshire would be, I believe, such a blow to her right out of the gate that she’d never be able to recover.

I just don’t see that Billary has the charisma to recover from something like that. Few Billary supporters will admit it, but most of them don’t actually like her all that much, don’t find her to be warm and fuzzy and likable. (Certainly, those voters in three important swing states find Billary to be neither honest nor trustworthy, and almost 60 percent of all Americans don’t find Billary to be honest or trustworthy, and when Obama famously once remarked to Billary during a 2008 primary season debate, “You’re likable enough,” he was being quite charitable.)

No, most of Billary’s supporters support her because they delusionally believe that a candidate whose unfavorability ratings consistently exceed her favorability ratings in national polls is a strong candidate. They delusionally believe that as unlikable as Billary is, she’s the only Democratic candidate who can keep the White House in the party’s hands come November 2016.

But how strong can Billary be when so many of her so-called supporters have to hold their noses in order to support her, and support her primarily or even only because they believe that she’s the only candidate who can prevent the Repugnicans from taking back the White House?

That’s not a very strong base of support, and so were Bernie to win Iowa and New Hampshire, again, I think that most likely we’d see a sea change; we’d see the Lemmings for Billary rush to Team Bernie. After all, Billary never exactly excited them anyway; at best, they found Billary likable enough. Or at least that’s what they told themselves and/or others.

P.S. Again, let me be clear: I could see Bernie Sanders winning the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination but losing the 2016 presidential election, as the American electorate can be stunningly anti-intellectual and pro-dipshit, as we saw with how Americans just allowed the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging George W. Bush to blatantly steal the 2000 presidential election. (Al Gore, widely perceived in an anti-intellectual nation as a wooden egghead, didn’t inspire the in-the-streets revolution that a stolen presidential election should have.)

One could argue, I suppose, that New Englanders, being whiter and more liberal than the nation as a whole, or at least being perceived as such, tend to do poorly in presidential elections, and point to Michael Dukakis’ loss in 1988 and John Kerry’s loss in 2004. (Both are from Massachusetts, of course, as is U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom I’d most likely be supporting right now if she were a presidential candidate.)

But Bernie Sanders is well positioned to win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, it seems to me, and I’d be willing to risk losing the 2016 presidential election with Sanders as the Democratic Party’s candidate, as the Democratic Party’s long slide to the right (first under Bill Clinton and then under Barack Obama) has to be reversed (and not continued and worsened under a President Billary).

As I’ve noted, if Bernie Sanders ends up being something like the Barry Goldwater of the left, that’s perfectly fine by me. Better to win the long game than to lose the long game, and a President Billary would mean losing the long game.

P.P.S. As I’ve noted many times before, I always go for the most progressive presidential candidate possible, regardless of his or her demographics. Being a Californian, I also highly value diversity — note that Nate Silver’s chart puts white liberals like me at only about a quarter of California’s population in 2008 — and so it would be great if Bernie Sanders weren’t yet another older white man and if he came from a more diverse state (Vermont is in the top few whitest states in the nation, if it isn’t at No. 1).

But Bernie’s demographics are his demographics. His being an actual progressive trumps Billary’s being a woman but being a Democrat in name only who no doubt as president would continue to kiss plutocratic ass and sell out the working class and the remnants of the middle class, as her triangulating husband did in the 1990s.

And, of course, our first non-white president has done little to nothing to significantly socioeconomically boost non-white Americans.

A white-male progressive certainly could do, and probably would do, more good for more people than would a DINO president who is not white or who is a woman.

More assorted shit

If the United States of America is so damned big and bad, then why are we so fucking obsessed with the threat (real or imagined) of terrorism?

When were we ever 100 percent safe? Why don’t we fear our cars, since we’re much more likely to die in an automobile accident than we are to die in a terrorist attack? 

Today The Associated Press has not one, but at least two, news items on security for the Super Bowl: “Protecting Against a ‘Lone Wolf’ at the Super Bowl” and “X-mas Bomb Attempt Prods Super Bowl Security Change.”

You know what I’m hoping for?

I’m hoping that members of Code Pink crash the Super Bowl.

They’re good at getting into events — here is a photo of Code Pink members crashing the lie fest — er, testimony — of former Secretary of State Condoleezza “You Know She’s Lying When Her Lips Are Moving” Rice:

— and they never actually harm anyone.

The Code Pink activists are hated because they stand up to The Man, an act that the brainwashed masses deem to be “crazy.” In a democracy, you see, you’re just supposed to just shut the fuck up and let the stupid white men run the show. They know better than you do. I mean, the current state of the nation after the eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration is proof of that. And dissent is uber-unpatriotic, you terrorist-lovin’ pinko. Real patriots march in lockstep with their all-white-male leaders. Every true patriot knows that.

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I recently wrote:

What the fuck is with the widespread belief that others’ beliefs, no matter how insane and potentially oppressive or even dangerous to others, should be held by all of us as sacrofuckingsanct?

We are allowed to believe whatever we want to believe, but when we believe that others should be oppressed or subjugated, that’s a fucking problem, because our beliefs that others should be oppressed or subjugated often end up in actual oppression or subjugation. Actions often follow beliefs. Hate speech, for instance, often leads to hate crimes. And it’s the hateful beliefs that precede the hate speech.

So just now I read a piece on the murder conviction on Friday of wingnut warrior Scott Roeder, who in May 2009 shot to death — in a church — Dr. George Tiller, who had provided abortions in Kansas.

Here is the money shot of the piece:

During closing arguments Friday, [defense attorney Mark] Rudy urged the jury to reject the murder charge. “No one,” he said, “should be convicted based on his convictions.”

Rudy mentioned leaders who stood up for their beliefs, including Martin Luther King Jr. They were “celebrated individuals (who) stood up and made the world a better place.”

So Scott Roeder was just another Martin Luther King Jr., you see. Except that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in cold blood, just like Dr. George Tiller was. And Scott Roeder gunned down George Tiller. (Don’t try to understand the “logic”; it will just give you a sick headache.)

Tell you what: After Scott Roeder is gunned down like the dog that he is, then maybe, just maybe, we can start comparing him to someone else who was assassinated. Until then, he isn’t a martyr. He’s an assassin, a murderer. And he was convicted of murder, not convicted of having believed something.

You gotta love his “defense,” though.

I suppose that I could have assassinated “President” George W. Bush and been compared to Martin Luther King Jr. for having done so. After all, if Tiller was responsible for taking innocent lives and therefore his killer was a hero like MLK, well, mass murderer George W. Bush is responsible for having taken many more innocent lives, including the lives of more than 4,300 U.S. troops who have died as a result of his bogus Vietraq War for the war profits of Dick Cheney’s war-profiteering Halliburton and the other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp — and the lives of thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis, whom he permanently “liberated.”

You know, wingnuts, you really don’t want to go down that path, that one’s beliefs justify killing others. You lost the Civil War to us blue-staters, remember.

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Speaking of abortion, The Associated Press reports today that New Repugnican Hero Scott Brown is pro-choice:

Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts says he opposes federal funding for abortions, but thinks women should have the right to choose whether to have one.

Brown tells ABC’s “This Week” that he disagrees with his party’s position that the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion [Roe v. Wade] should be overturned.

Brown says the abortion question is one that’s best handled by a woman, her family and her doctor. He also says more effort needs to go into reducing the number of abortions in the U.S.

Brown has said the GOP shouldn’t take his vote for granted on every issue. He says he’s fiscally conservative but more moderate on social issues….

I’m not sure how much of Brown’s stance is out of political necessity, given that he’s in the blue state of Massachusetts, and how much of it is out of any actual sanity, but I think it’s funny that the wingnuts — who would prefer Brown to say, like wingnut football hero Tim Tebow has said, that he’s happy that his mama didn’t abort him — don’t have Brown on board with them on the issue of women’s right to have control over their own fucking uteri.

Speaking of fiscal conservatives, I’m totally down with fiscal conservatism — the taxpayers’ dollars should be spent judiciously and responsibly — but I have a real fucking problem with the Repugnicans’ philosophy of spending hundreds and hundreds of billions of the taxpayers’ dollars on the war profiteers via bogus wars but refusing to spend the taxpayers’ dollars on the taxpayers. 

Where in the fuck were the cries of “fiscal conservatism!” when the unelected BushCheneyCorp created a record federal budget deficit, with most of that money funneled to the traitors who comprise the military-industrial complex?

Um, yeah.

—

A little more on John Edwards, and then hopefully I’ll never feel compelled to write about the loser again.

While I have no plan to buy former Edwards aide Andrew Young’s tell-all book The Politician, I found this recent reportage from Salon.com’s War Room to be interesting:

Young’s book also elaborates on the now-dominant theme of Edwards as a narcissist on an epic scale. If half of what the book says is true, the candidate’s obsession with his appearance was, if anything, underestimated during the campaign.

Preoccupied with the appearance of his hair and his weight, he scorned state fairgoers as “rednecks” who would try to force feed him. According to Young, Edwards delivered one line that seems a bit too perfect: “I know I’m the people’s senator, but do I have to hang out with them?”

I never bought Edwards’ supposed populism, which is why I never supported him for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Do I blame Edwards for not being thrilled to be hanging out with rednecks? No. I’m not thrilled to hang out with rednecks, either. They tend to be not very bright, not very curious, and they tend to fear — and to oppress and even to aggress upon — those who don’t look, act and believe just like they do.

But the difference between Edwards and me is that I don’t lie about my feelings about rednecks.

—

Finally, I like this line in an AlterNet piece about why the U.S. Supreme Court fucked up when the five wingnuts on it ruled that corporations have the First Amendment right to spend an unlimited amount of money on political ads: “Simply put: money is not speech [and] corporations are not people.”

Yup. I especially believe the latter part: corporations are not people.

One certainly could argue that money is needed to disseminate one’s message, but the First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nothing in there about corporations having the same rights as do individual people — nothing about corporations in there at all — and the courts have ruled consistently that what appear (correctly or incorrectly) to be restraints on free speech are constitutional if they are content neutral.

Restraining corporate influence on the national political dialogue is not about suppressing individuals’ free speech; to the contrary, it’s about ensuring that the individual’s voice is not completely drowned out in the national dialogue by Big Money.

To allow that to happen would be to hasten the conversion of our democracy into a complete corporatocracy, which has been going on for some decades now.

No one who understands and cares about our democracy would be OK with its hostile takeover by the corporations, which represent the largest threat to our democracy, by far.

Assorted shit

I wish that the whole John Edwards thing would just go the fuck away already. It was way back in August 2008 that I wrote, in a piece titled “Good Riddance, Guy Smiley!”:

I never much cared for John “Permasmile” Edwards. A millionaire trial lawyer who perpetually grins from ear to ear and claims to care sooo damned much for the poor — I always sensed that something about him was, um, off. I could tolerate him, but he never made me moist. 

Thank Goddess that Permasmile never really had a chance at the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, now that he admits that he cheated on his cancer-stricken wife in 2006.

Just when you thought that the Permasmile sleazefest couldn’t get any skeezier, there is this from The Associated Press today:

Raleigh, N.C. – Dealing with a pregnant mistress and a suspicious wife, John Edwards and a close aide agreed by the middle of 2007 to solicit funds from a wealthy widow who had promised to “do whatever it takes” to make him president, according to the former confidant’s new book.

Bunny Mellon, the widow of banking heir Paul Mellon, began sending checks “for many hundreds of thousands of dollars” hidden in boxes of chocolates, according to The Politician by former Edwards aide Andrew Young.

The tell-all account describes how Young took the money and used it to keep mistress Rielle Hunter happy, hiding her from the media and a cancer-stricken Elizabeth Edwards.

Young claims the former vice-presidential nominee later said he didn’t know anything about the cash even though the two discussed the matter and the cash began arriving soon after Edwards made a call to Mellon.

The Politician is due in bookstores Saturday. An advance copy was given to The Associated Press by publisher St. Martin’s Press.

The book has received a lot of attention because of its racy details about the affair, the crumbling Edwards marriage and the candidate’s efforts to keep the paternity of his child with the mistress hidden. John Edwards finally admitted last week that he was the father of the girl, who is now almost 2 years old….

I said good riddance to Permasmile back in August 2008, but now we have stories of Gumpian boxes of chocolates. The man’s political career is over, but he just won’t go the fuck away.

Oh, well; as I noted back in August 2008, at least Baby Daddy Permasmile seems to have proved wrong Ann Cunter, who once called him a “faggot.”

—

Now, all of a sudden, ending discrimination against non-heterosexuals in the U.S. military is a priority of the Obama administration.

It wasn’t that long ago that we dykes and faggots were told that the nation has more pressing issues, that we’d just have to wait.

Why now, then?

I’m thinking that Team Obama wants a progressive win in order to get its base fired up again, and this probably is the quickest and easiest win that Team Obama can achieve within the near future. (Much easier than, oh, say, real health care reform….)

I don’t know why anyone, heterosexual or non-heterosexual, would want to join the U.S. military when the U.S. military hasn’t been about actually defending the nation from actual threats since — when? World War II?

If you have two brain cells to rub together, it will be clear to you that the U.S. military these days primarily is about funneling billions and billions of our tax dollars to the fat cats legally via the military-industrial complex’s perpetual war machine.

The military-industrial complex is about killing innocent individuals in foreign lands, ensuring that the United States is hated around the world, giving the military-industrial complex a constant supply of “enemies,” real or imagined, an excuse for its continued bloated-beyond-belief existence.

“National security” — what fucking Orwellian bullshit. Yeah, to steal billions upon billions of dollars from us, they have to tell us that it’s for our own good (health care, by contrast, is bad for us). Fucking traitors is what they are.

But I digress. My point is: Why do gay men want to waste their gifts that they have to give the world on the military-industrial complex?

OK, for lesbians I can see the attraction of the military, I guess, but for gay men? [Insert dropping-soap-in-shower joke here…]

Still, discrimination based upon sexual orientation in any sphere is wrong, and equal human and civil rights in the U.S. military, such as the U.S. military is, is another step toward equal human and civil rights for non-heterosexuals throughout the United States in all spheres of the nation.

And it’s about time that the Obama administration accomplish something, for fuck’s sake.

P.S. The Repugnicans are arguing that we can’t change the U.S. military’s current policy of discriminating against non-heterosexuals while we’re still fighting in the Middle East.

Oh, fuck them.

As the Repugnicans want nothing short of perpetual fucking warfare for their defense-contractor cronies, that means that non-heterosexuals would never get equal human and civil rights in the U.S. military if we wait until the wingnuts deem that it is the “right time.” (I wonder if it never was the “right time,” according to the stupid white men, to stop racial discrimination in the U.S. military, too.)

If the members of the U.S. military can’t handle the fact that there are non-heterosexuals among them, then they are too fucking pussy to defend us anyway — even though they aren’t about defense anyway, but are about enabling the war profiteers and basically amount to being thugs for the corporations (a la “Avatar”) paid for by us taxpayers (and corporations, of course, don’t pay their fair share of taxes).

—

Can I sense a trend or what?

After Open Salon created an “open call” for our favorite most underrated actor and I picked Joseph Gordon-Levitt as mine, The Associated Press posted a nice piece about him titled “Gordon-Levitt Goes from ‘3rd Rock’ to Sundance Kid.”

According to the piece, Gordon-Levitt has wowed this year’s Sundance crowd with his latest starring role, in the film “Hesher,” as he wowed Sundance last year with “(500) Days of Summer.”

Here’s another gratuitous photo of a shirtless Gordon-Levitt from “Hesher”:

Associated Press image

And after I got my first Open Salon “editor’s pick” — which means that my piece appeared on Open Salon’s home page — for my piece titled “Urgent Memo to Jerry Brown: Be a Scott Brown, Not a [Martha] Coakley,” a Sacramento Bee political columnist wrote a column titled “Will California Be the Next Massachusetts?” He wrote:

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and the lone likely Democratic candidate for governor, Jerry Brown, are taking their cue from [President Barack] Obama and lashing out at corporate executives, including potential Republican challengers, for leading the nation to economic downfall. It’s potentially potent positioning in a state with 12-plus percent unemployment.

Their Republican foes, meanwhile, are portraying Boxer, who is 69, and Brown, who is 71, as aging career liberals who are part of the problem, not the solution, clearly hoping to capitalize on the angry, anti-establishment wave that Scott Brown rode to victory.

Robert Cruickshank, a Monterey college teacher who writes on the liberal website Calitics, declares in a recent article that Jerry Brown could be California Democrats’ Martha Coakley – the Senate candidate Scott Brown defeated.

Is California ripe for a political shift? Anything is possible in a state as inherently volatile as this one in a year like this one.

We are in confusing times, and so yes, I can see California’s voters making stupid (that is, self-defeating) choices at the ballot box in November 2010, but I surmise that Boxer’s re-election is surer than is Jerry Brown’s getting another crack at being California’s governor.

I think that the title of “aging career liberal” sticks to Brown — who still is haunted by the retarded, unfair moniker of “Governor Moonbeam” — much more than it does to Boxer, but again, if Brown doesn’t act like Martha Coakley did, like his win is inevitable, then, well, I think that he’ll most likely win. His most likely Repugnican challenger, billionaire Megalomaniac Whitman, is truly repugnant, which should be a big boon to Brown.