Author Topic: The US Presidential Election 2016  (Read 25482 times)

Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #90 on: May 30, 2016, 11:31:09 AM »
I think it'll be close, but I still suspect Clinton will edge the main election. Trump's still in his post-nomination boost, where the party's rallying around him etc, and he's still got a small national deficit to Clinton. Enough states are toss-ups that he could win on current polling if the election were held tomorrow, but if most Sanders backers eventually fall behind Clinton then she should be able to cobble together a weaker version of Obama's 2012 victory (I can imagine Trump taking Ohio but Clinton holding Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida, which would be enough of the swing states to seal victory). If Clinton is hit by prosecutors, after the convention, and still tries to cling onto the Dem nomination, then Trump has a very good shout of winning. But that's a pretty unlikely turn of events; if Trump wins it will probably be a close race, mainly won due to Clinton completely failing to get out big chunks of the Democratic base (some level of reconciliation with Sanders is vital if she wants to produce a decent lead over the Donald). That's very plausible, but instinctively I suspect she'll just about manage to rope the voting coalition back together.

It's worth noting that Trump is now increasingly trying to turn to the GOP for funding, GOTV ops, and ground support, areas in which they lagged badly behind the Dems in 2008 and 2012. Trump doesn't seem to be doing much by way of putting his own operation together yet that will patch up the GOP's continued weakness in these areas, and in a close election that could really cost him.

As for the Libertarian duo, I doubt they'll have much impact not least because the only thing the Dems and GOP seem to be able to consistently work together on is shutting out smaller parties, which they do with absurd effectiveness (aka "you need to be getting 15% in the polls to get in the debates, Gary, and by the way the pollsters are mostly skewed to one of us or the other and won't actually include you in polling"). That said, they're getting a lot of media hype this year and with two very unpopular candidates they could do better than one might expect. Hard to know who that'd hurt more, honestly - on the one hand they might provide a home for disaffected conservatives; on the other, they could well scoop up some of the republican crossover votes that Hillary needs and some of the Sanders voters who want to kick the establishment without voting for Trump. I imagine they won't have much traction with a lot of Trump's socially conservative and economically protectionist supporters, so they might actually harm Clinton more if they do well.
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Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #91 on: May 31, 2016, 08:19:21 PM »
In today's news, the big endorsement we've all been waiting for, Kim Jong-Un endorses the Donald.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/31/north-korea-praises-trump-and-urges-us-voters-to-reject-dull-hillary?CMP=fb_gu

(Genuinely thought it was going to be an Onion or Daily Mash article when I saw that headline, turns out it's actually a thing.)
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Pentagathus

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #92 on: June 03, 2016, 05:21:41 PM »
Kim's a sound lad, I'd vote for Trump now. If only I could vote.

Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #93 on: June 07, 2016, 10:59:06 AM »
In the news, Clinton has, counting pledged delegates and superdelegate endorsements, won the democratic nomination. Today we also have the last big block of Democratic primaries; Sanders seems to have not admitted defeat yet, and it looks like California will be quite close, though Hillary is likely to win there and will probably win New Jersey comfortably, meaning that Sanders would need almost all the superdelegates to back him - and for them to be willing to overturn the fairly clear majority of Democrat primary voters - for him to get the nomination.

Some IBD/TIPP General Election polls were released yesterday, with Clinton vs Trump on Clinton 45 Trump 40, and Clinton/Johnson/Trump at 39/11/35. Interestingly, this suggests that nationally Johnson is pulling about equally and possibly a little more from Clinton - including him reduces her lead by a point. In the RCP averages, Clinton leads by 2 points. A uniform swing calculation suggests that Trump probably needs a little under a 2% lead to win (that's what it would take to flip the "tipping point" state in 2012, namely Colorado). Of course the swing won't be uniform - I suspect that Clinton will be making a strong play for Arizona, and I can't easily see a Trump win that excludes Pennsylvania.
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comrade_general

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #94 on: June 16, 2016, 07:13:36 PM »

Have to love it. ;D

Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #95 on: June 16, 2016, 09:11:34 PM »
Hah. The Trump campaign modelling itself on 300 would explain the whole "complete lack of factual accuracy about basically anything" thing.
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comrade_general

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #96 on: June 16, 2016, 10:52:54 PM »
Pretty sure that's the platform of all of them.

Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #97 on: June 17, 2016, 11:19:08 AM »
Perhaps. But as far as I'm concerned, basically you're going to have two or three candidates on the ballot paper who aren't racists who think women are objects, and one who is. Not to mention the increasingly authoritarian armadillo we've seen from Trump since Orlando, like suggesting people who fail to report "suspicious" (but legal) activity should be held responsible for crimes. I mean, people have a democratic right to vote for a fraudulent racist portugalwit, I'm just saying they shouldn't be surprised if their president then turns out to be a fraudulent racist portugalwit.


Anyhow, actual update is that Trump's poll numbers have been sliding downwards, Clinton's holding steady, which presumably means fewer Republicans are feeling OK to say they'll vote for Trump. Both sides have horrible approval ratings still - FiveThirtyEight recently suggested that Johnson could actually be competitive in Utah, where both candidates have approval at a catastrophically low 20%.
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comrade_general

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #98 on: June 17, 2016, 02:22:30 PM »
Some peepole be leik:

Clockwork

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #99 on: June 17, 2016, 03:21:27 PM »
More and more I'm thinking either anarchy or dictatorship is the way to go.
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Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #100 on: June 17, 2016, 04:12:23 PM »
Ah, the good old "liberal fantasy" line. Classic bit of work there. Though we have been over this. According to independent checks by politifact, under a quarter of fact-checked statements Trump makes actually get into "half true", "mostly true", or "true". That's unbelievably low when compared to literally anyone else regardless of political persuasion. Trump's policies are incoherent and as poorly thought out as most of his campaign statements; he's running a personality cult, not a political campaign, and his only reference point for "truth" is "things he's said" as far as I can tell. Which is why I guess he's so impervious to fact checking. If people choose Trump-branded "truth", that's pretty much that; it relies not on logic or statistics or facts but on the Word Of Trump (which not coincidentally conveniently and frequently plays to a lot of people's existing prejudices).

@ Clockwork: hell knows, you might get your wish. Me, I suspect we in western democracies look at anarchy or dictatorship mainly as a curiosity thing, a "wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have taxes" or a "wouldn't it be great if one person who knew what they were doing ran this show". It's not a new thing, either - to continue with the 300 theme, wealthy Athenians often looked to Sparta as an example of a better system were people were manlier and democracy didn't slow everything down and so on - but it was Athens that had a more developed intellectual culture, higher living standards, etc. Functional democratic (or even as we have now semi-democratic) government, a working market or mixed economy, taxes and public services; these things often seem like a bit of a burden, but I think we might very much miss them if we moved to something else.
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comrade_general

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #101 on: June 17, 2016, 05:08:07 PM »
You talk about truth as if every other politician uses it. :P

Killary is under investigation by the FBI for portugal's sake!
« Last Edit: June 17, 2016, 06:15:45 PM by comrade_general »

Clockwork

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #102 on: June 17, 2016, 10:16:30 PM »
Get off your damn high horse Jub. This isn't earth-shattering but in the end people vote for whoever seems to have at least voiced some of their problems and that's how it's always been. If candidates get votes then what they're saying resonates. Country wide statistics rarely take into account concentration anyway, if it's a problem that affects a certain area or state or whatever, any stats can be misleading or outright lies. Without the raw data, where it came from and all that you can't tell for sure if the stats are lying to you. Whatever you're basing your vote on, you're taking a certain amount on faith. Do I wish for anarchy or dictatorship? No of course not, but obviously I think there's a problem with democracy.
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Jubal

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #103 on: June 17, 2016, 11:30:04 PM »
I'm not at all on a high horse (obviously sorry if it came over that way), nor am I suggesting that other politicians are 100% truthful by any means, just that they're truthful a statistically far higher percentage of the time than Trump is. Trump lies so much, and doubles down on his lies when called out, that it puts him in a statistically different ball-park to most other politicians. He also relies on people losing their faith in any other sources of information - of course people take some things on faith, and that's why having journalists and analysts and experts who can advise the public is important to a functional democracy. Trump specifically makes attacking journalists a regular part of his candidacy and his stump speeches, and I think takes advantage of a long-brewed mistrust in experts and expertise.

I don't blame Trump's voters for this in general, Trump is largely exploiting existing weaknesses and problems in the system that the US political classes have allowed to brew up over many years (the Republican side by stoking them, the Democrats by ignoring them). And things like post-industrial decline in the midwest (an example of a localised problem, and you're completely right that a lot of these issues do vary by area) are very real problems that hurt people and their families, and people like Clinton haven't yet come up with convincing enough answers to that. A failed Trump candidacy might in the long run turn out to be no bad thing in that it could at least show up that some of these things do need to be dealt with; I do however think a successful Trump candidacy risks making a lot of those issues worse by harming US trade, and creating new ones by marginalising latino and muslim-American communities in particular.

Anyway, I'm not going to say any more on the matter now for a while to avoid more arguments.
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Glaurung

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Re: The US Presidential Election 2016
« Reply #104 on: June 17, 2016, 11:43:43 PM »
More and more I'm thinking either anarchy or dictatorship is the way to go.
Plenty of choices, then, if you want to try either system out: Somalia on the one hand, and probably some other bits of the world; on the other hand, depending on exactly how oppressive a regime you want, North Korea, Russia and various "istans", Sudan, Saudi Arabia, ...

I think I'll stick with Churchill:
Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.