Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza => Topic started by: Jubal on June 03, 2015, 10:15:14 AM
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We may as well start early :P
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I hate you. :P
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Hey, we're still running literally 20 months behind your media :P
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Ha the GOP wants to "draft" Romney because they are afraid of Trump and Carson being at the top. So if Dems are afraid of them and Repubs are afraid of them it can only be good for everyone else. portugal the establishment and career politicians! :)
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I think the Dems - given I get a lot of Dem news sources - are a bit bemused by the whole thing to be honest, not least because either Carson or Trump look (from current polls) like they'd be flattened by either Sanders or Clinton. For the Democrats, I think it's something of a mixed blessing; on the one hand, they're more likely to beat Trump or Carson than people like Bush or Jindal, on the other, it would set their policy goals back about a century if Trump or Carson actually won the presidency. The GOP establishment must be panicking like anything though, whilst I can't stand either Carson or Trump (and I think either would reduce the US to a laughing stock on the world stage, pretty rapidly) once certainly can say they're opposed to the party's careerist wing.
Meanwhile on the Democrat side they're having a more even battle, with Clinton as the well-funded establishment candidate and Bernie Sanders, of all people, as her main challenger from well outside the Dem establishment. Trump VS Sanders would be a bizarre presidential campaign to watch.
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Holy hell, you really should look into more sources than Dem news. Of course they would say something like that. In reality they are freaking out too.
By the way, we've been a laughing stock for a long, long time now.
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Oh, I read GOP sources too on a news level - the point I was making is that I get more internal or private stuff being batted around within the Dem party organisation, whereas for the GOP I just get whatever their public websites and news outlets say. And yeah, as I say I think it's an odd mix - most Democrats I know genuinely feel they can beat the two GOP frontrunners, and I get the impression that's the belief within the party (in Trump's case the opinion polls give the Dems a clear edge, Carson tends to match up far more strongly against either Dem candidate), but they are nonetheless scared - they think they can win but are scared armadilloless of what happens if they fail.
And yeah, admittedly opinions of the US around the world aren't great - but certainly in the UK and I think quite a bit of Europe electing Trump or Carson would be seen as being on a whole new level of wtf. Both men have attitudes that would pretty much automatically lose them an election in any western European country you care to name.
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Most Democrats you know? You're personal friends with Killary and Colonel Sanders? Even if not them you're saying others share their personal feelings with you specifically? What the hell are you saying?
The right can be religious wackos but damn the left sure is deluded.
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Obviously I don't know anyone high level, I'm saying that generally my strong impression - from a mix of sources, and not entirely from the standard propaganda engines - is that the Democrats believe that whoever they pick the probability is that they will manage to win. This is partly because they have a slight inbuilt advantage in the way the boundaries etc for presidential races work (whereas the Republicans have a strong advantage in congressional races).
There's certainly good evidence they can beat Trump, if you look at any recent data he trails either in general election matchups. Carson seems to be much more dangerous for the Democrats at the moment, he looks pretty capable of winning. It's obviously quite an early stage though, as Sanders and Carson in particular are only just appearing properly on the national stage, and opinions can shift by a few percent during the campaign potentially.
The current data from RCP's aggregators are as following:
| Dem | GOP | Margin |
| Clinton | Trump | D +4.4 |
| Clinton | Carson | R +4.0 |
| Sanders | Trump | D +4.7 |
| Sanders | Carson | R +6.7 |
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Those numbers are nearly too close to be significant, when you take in to account variations. Romney would have less chance than those guys and he doesn't even want to run so they aren't doing it because they don't think those guys can win.
Hey, wasn't someone supposed to remind me not to bring up politics? All we're accomplishing is to destroy friendships. :(
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Yeah, I think any race would be moderately tight, we're not going to see a total landslide for either party.
Eh, I think with the current state of the world this crap's a bit hard to avoid. :/ Rest assured that I'm not going to take anything too personally!
EDIT: Also I really should start posting some less depressing stuff - will get on with trying to get to the stage where I can post some new threads about the projects I'm doing someday soon...
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Most recent updates:
Carson has tanked, he's down in the mid teens with Cruz and Rubio moving up to even/overtake him. Trump still up around 30%, big furore over his suggestion recently of a policy of temporarily preventing any Muslim immigration into the US. His idea has been condemned by most people from both parties, including suggestions that this might put servicepeople at risk by helping fuel Daesh recruitment (arguable), and people pointing out that his proposals as stated would for example block Afghan or Iraqi interpreters from being protected in the US after serving alongside the armed forces. Conservative commentators have also suggested that the split may precipitate a crisis at the GOP convention if (as I think is likely) it doesn't actually sink Trump at all.
Democrat race just sort of waddling on with few obvious fireworks; Clinton still has a reasonable 10 point lead in Iowa polls, and a much larger 25 point lead across the country as a whole, though Sanders appears to have closed the gap in New Hampshire.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35066940
Increasing allegations from the GOP establishment that Trump is actually a Democrat sleeper agent. Probably just a sign of panic. Both terrifying and hilarious if true, though I'm 99.99% certain it's bullarmadillo.
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Paul made some headway last debate. People are starting to catch on. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if Trump was just running to get Hillary elected. :P
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If so, ballsiest piece of totally underhand unfair politicking since Watergate. :p
And yeah, whilst I'm no fan of Rand is rather see him doing well than Cruz or Trump. I just can't see him winning any of the earlier states, and in a field this crowded he won't manage tp drag the others in his direction easily (as Sanders has more clearly done to Clinton). I do think the should change the order of the states every time, if say Colorado or Maine was first that would potentially give much better early momentum to more libertarian types for example. Current polling now has Cruz establishing a lead for the Iowa caucuses, Clinton keeping her lead in Iowa, and Trump and Sanders leading their races in New Hampshire.
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RP is the only logical and reasonable choice among the big parties. Sadly people are too stupid to want logic and reason.
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Bit of a dogmatic statement in itself, no?
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Negative.
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That too :P
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I saw Trumps TV ad, and tbh it honestly terrifying that its not a joke.
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It is. Trumps campaign is run by the Clintons/Obamas.
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I'm unconvinced by that theory, but if it's true then - as I said before - disreputable but immensely ballsy move.
US politics just depresses me tbh, I don't see anyone actually wanting to introduce effective democracy into the US, I don't like the Dem establishment but I'd still vote for them on grounds of relative sanity over the GOP candidates who frankly all look like parodies with like three or four exceptions (Christie looks like a standard dull Bush era Republican, Paul looks like a very old fashioned conservative and Kasich doesn't look like anything because he's as exciting as watching grass grow). The anti-establishment candidate of the left is standing on the radical platform of giving the US things that most of the rest of the world thinks are just totally normal basics and that's enough to nuke his chances of gaining office.
I do think that the biggest campaign priority for decent people in either party should be to make congressional districts set by an independent commission, the gerrymandering of the house is ridiculous and has led to, under both Bush and Obama (Bush more so though under Obama I think it's become better known) significant executive overreach in response. The legislative arm of the US government hasn't been functional since the Dems lost their supermajority, creating a situation where you either have no functional government or a functional one-party state, it's absurd.
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Updates:
National polls
- Sanders seems to be surging upwards nationally, not overtaking Clinton yet but getting to around the 40% mark whilst Clinton has dipped below 50%. Clinton's lead has dipped below 10% for the first time in the campaign.
- Carson continues to slump, Trump still sitting on over a third of the vote, Cruz seems to be falling back a bit with Rubio steady.
Iowa
- Sanders, in line with the national polls, is shooting upwards whilst Clinton is falling back. Clinton's lead in the polling average is now under a percentage point.
- Cruz has fallen back a bit and now sits dead level with Trump, who has held steady. Rubio and Christie have made small gains.
New Hampshire
- Sanders maintains a slim lead over Hilary and has increased it a little again to 6% in the polling averages.
- Trump maintains a strong lead, followed by Rubio and then, of all people, Kasich
Other news
- Obama's last State of the Union address has been given, said pretty much what you'd expect.
- Gary Johnson has announced he wants to be the Libertarian nominee again (and is probably the clear front-runner for the job, though there are eleven other candidates including John McAfee of virus-checking fame).
So Trump still the Republican front-runner, Sanders suddenly threatening Clinton much more than it previously appeared was the case.
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Iowa for the Dems is still knife-edge stuff - Sanders took the lead for the first time yesterday by a whopping 0.2%, Clinton has a 0.2% lead again today :P
Trump looking strong in both, Sanders pulling away from Clinton to a solid lead in NH.
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We're going to end up with a quote-ziggurat with that at the summit by November :P
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AND WE'RE OFF!
IOWA RESULTS
GOP
Ted Cruz: 28%, +8
Donald Trump: 24% +7
Marco Rubio: 23% +7
Ben Carson: 9% +3
Rand Paul 5% +1
Jeb Bush 3% +1
Democrats
Hilary Clinton 50% +23
Bernie Sanders 50% +21
So basically, dead heat for the Dems, split for the GOP with Cruz now the leader and Rubio probably swinging into gear as the establishment candidate... unless Kasich can pull off a good second in New Hampshire, in which case it'll be four of them (Cruz, Rubio, Trump, Kasich) left with a decent chance. It may well be a while before Carson, Paul, and Bush drop out too - Paul especially might be someone who hangs in there, because if he can pull together a small group of delegates in a race that looks like heading for a floor fight at the convention he could hold quite a lot of power. I can't see Bush trying the same thing, he's not ideologically driven enough and wouldn't want to be a VP candidate.
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I don't follow American politics much, so I probably shouldn't be posting here, but I thought I may as well express my thoughts:
-Trump is hilarious
-Clinton doesn't seem to have many good qualities
-Bernie seems nice.
-Everyone else is eh.
I'd vote for Bernie.
I hope you enjoyed my insight into murucan politics.
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It does look like Trump's numbers were pretty inflated.
If the GOP establishment really falls heavily behind Rubio it's possible he'll get the nomination, though I don't think he's a terribly strong candidate.
EDIT: Also, Rand Paul is gone.
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EDIT: Also, Rand Paul is gone.
Very sad. :( Guess I won't be voting in this election, for there is no one worth voting for.
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I think Rand's senate seat is up this time round? So I guess he decided to focus on holding that.
Incidentally, it turns out that both Dem candidates made history in Iowa: Hilary is the first ever woman from either party to win the caucuses, and Bernie is the first ever openly non-Christian presidential candidate from either party to receive any pledged convention delegates.
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Incidentally
Irrelevantly.
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I mean, I agree it's not relevant to who's going to win, but nor are most facts or milestones like that. Sanders' I would say is the more notable achievement - being the first woman to win Iowa is one for the psephology geeks but, in a country where a scarily high percentage of people still say they wouldn't ever vote for a non-Christian when polled, breaking the barrier of being a non-Christian getting delegates for a major party nomination is worthy of historical note and shows it can be done.
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This voting system sounds mental. When does it start and end? I may need to prepare for the trumpocalypse.
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The state primaries are spread between now and June basically, then there are the conventions, then the general election campaign and they finally vote on that in like November.
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Wut?
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To give exact dates...
The last GOP primaries are Cali, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota, on June 7. The last Democrat one is Washington DC on June 14,
Then the conventions are:
Democrat: July 25-28
GOP: July 18-21
And for the minor parties, which don't hold primaries in most states -
Libertarian: May 26-30
Green: August 4-7
These have been pushed earlier, often the party conventions are in August. From August the general election campaign starts and runs on through August, September, and October, with the actual vote being on November 8.
It's only just hitting me as I write these numbers down just how bat-armadillo insanely long this system takes.
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Wut?
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That.
Also this is now a thing: http://trumpdonald.org/
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New Hampshire done!
Massive (60%) win for Sanders on the Dem side, Trump comfortably winning on the GOP side with Kasich leading the "moderates" behind him.
So that's (may change as not all results are in still):
Sanders +15
Clinton +9
Trump +10
Kasich +3
Cruz +2
Bush +2
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As an Ohioan, what're your thoughts on Kasich? He seems pretty dull but probably not the sort of person who's going to screw up the whole world, which possibly currently puts him as my least worst option in the GOP field.
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No idea, I haven't been paying any attention to the antics at work.
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Fair enough!
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Here are some interesting, if probably rather depressing, thoughts on the election and the US political process generally. They're from the blog of Nick Bryant, a senior BBC correspondent in the US.
- Does America need to change how it elects its presidents? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/the-reporters-35365848)
- American exceptionalism in a time of American malaise (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35438548)
- The crisis of US governability (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-35590361)
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Nevada done for the Dems, a Clinton win though only by about 4% - and Sanders won among Hispanics which was unexpected and stands him in good stead for future races.
Clinton +19
Sanders +15
And with about 35% of the vote versus a split opposition, Trump won South Carolina which is winner takes all.
Trump +44
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At least Sanders had the gall to call out Obama as crap, being a Dem and all. Trump or Sanders. No Clinton. But in any case...
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Sanders is only a Dem as of like five months ago, of course - he caucused with them in the Senate on procedure, but stood as an independent and had complete freedom to vote as he liked on policy issues.
I'm genuinely not sure which of the GOP front trio I'm most scared about now. Cruz is to my view the most distasteful but also least electable, Rubio also seems pretty awful and might be electable which is probably scarier, and I'm not sure Trump knows either how sane or how electable he's going to be from day to day. Kasich I could put up with as president more than the others, but that's not saying much, and I suspect he's not going to last too much longer.
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It's too bad people don't have sense to see how good Rand would have been since he did the same with the Repub party.
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This is a little bit of a tangent but eh. I was reading an article written by (I think) an american with the intention of informing europeans why Trump is as successful as he is. It was saying he's getting a lot of support from blue collar workers who think hispanics are taking their jobs, okay, no surprise there but also middle class workers who like Trump's economic plan because I gather he's lowering tax. Given that this is me saying this: surely there's a line where 'good economics' (I don't actually know if his economic plan is good or not, only what the article made it out to be) is surpassed by not being a dick?
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Yes, but that line will be different for everyone. What is very worth noting is that Trump more or less never scores above the mid thirties percent support, and the statistical/polling evidence suggests that his absolute cap in the primaries is south of forty. So Trump's appeal is very limited in some ways, but it's a very solid voting block, very loyal, and in a split field it's enough to keep winning primaries (and the GOP system rewards low-scorers who can still carry states, by having some winner takes all primaries like South Carolina). If he was in a two person race for the nomination the evidence suggests he would probably have lost to any other single candidate in the field.
Also, I think Trump being a dick seems to help his brand - middle class workers who are impressed by Trump probably think that his forcefulness/bullishness is what is needed to get better trade deals etc, given that the GOP have very heavily criticised Obama's very intellectual, soft-spoken approach on international affairs. It's the "we want the biggest dick available and we want him on our side to be a dick on our behalf to everyone who isn't us" mentality. It hasn't hit home to these voters at least that Trump would alienate a great many of America's current allies.
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I heard he scored like 45% in Idaho, where the voters included a lot of Hispanic? Maybe I'm wrong, I'm literally regurgitating what I heard from a known BSer (but a good mate) and have nothing else to go on.
Fair point on his brand though, yeah he's been lauded for calling out other republicans on being...bad republicans? Or something. (also allegedly, I'm not following this except for posts here but was told a load of things by the aforementioned friend yesterday.)
Also, I advocated being human instead of being a cold hearted bastard, maybe one day I'll develop real feelings? I feel like this should be noticed :P
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Idaho hasn't voted yet - polls for any state that's not in the next few weeks are pretty unreliable, and any polls before the February will usually just go on who people have heard of most. Also I didn't think Idaho was that Hispanic, it's north of the usual belt of highly Hispanic states, though I may be wrong. Also Hispanics skew Democrat - even in more Hispanic states, the GOP primary voters will be on average whiter than the state as a whole by some margin. This is why the GOP love Marco Rubio - if they don't start appealing to Hispanic voters more they'll basically end up screwed by demographics as the of white voters falls, so having high profile Hispanic candidates is vital to them.
Trump has broken certain taboos in the GOP which I think some of the base likes. So he's attacked George W Bush over Iraq, for example, which the Republicans just never do generally. He's also taken some GOP ideas on things like immigration to their logical conclusions, which then exposes how much of what the establishment candidates shout is just rhetoric - when confronted by the obvious policy implications of what they say ("let's just build a wall and make Mexico pay") they suddenly backtrack and it turns out the rhetoric is empty. Whether that makes them bad Republicans, or more sane than they look, or both, I leave up to your judgement and that of the GOP's voter base!
And yes, I'm proud of you :P
EDIT: apparently Idaho is only 11% Hispanic - the only highly hispanic states are New Mex, Texas, Arizona, Cali, and to a lesser extent Colorado, Nevada, and Florida.
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Idaho hasn't voted yet - polls for any state that's not in the next few weeks are pretty unreliable, and any polls before the February will usually just go on who people have heard of most.
Welp, not entirely unexpected.
Trump has broken certain taboos in the GOP which I think some of the base likes. So he's attacked George W Bush over Iraq, for example, which the Republicans just never do generally. He's also taken some GOP ideas on things like immigration to their logical conclusions, which then exposes how much of what the establishment candidates shout is just rhetoric - when confronted by the obvious policy implications of what they say ("let's just build a wall and make Mexico pay") they suddenly backtrack and it turns out the rhetoric is empty. Whether that makes them bad Republicans, or more sane than they look, or both, I leave up to your judgement and that of the GOP's voter base!
To me that's strange that hispanics skew democrat, I thought most of them (generalising horribly here) were catholic and conservative (family values and such rather than Conservative) which seems to me like perfect republican voters...So long as they're not planning on building a giant wall.
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And yes, I'm proud of you :P
Ty <3
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EDIT: apparently Idaho is only 11% Hispanic - the only highly hispanic states are New Mex, Texas, Arizona, Cali, and to a lesser extent Colorado, Nevada, and Florida.
Good to know, though that seems like quite a lot though tbh if that's the voters rather than the total number including work visa guys that I assume can't vote.
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Yes - Hispanics are quite socially conservative as a voting bloc. But they're also generally more left wing, quite working class, and very in favour of easier migration rules, and that trumps their social conservatism. To take a UK analogy, if you polled traditional Labour supporters in the north on social issues you might find they were a long way more consefvative than thwir party, but it's their economic perception of the parties that wins out. Particularly the migration issue has really derailed the GOP's ability to appeal to them, and I think a lot of Hispanic voters perhaps haven't got the same fear of Big Government(TM) that drives a lot of traditional US conservative and libertarian thinking (or did; that tide may be turning looking at how badly Rand did and how well Trump is doing).
IIRC 1 in 9 American voters is Hispanic, which would make Idaho about average. In New Mexico it's like 40% by contrast.
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Ok that makes sense.
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Yeah I guess Kasich would be fine.
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Yeah, so I didn't keep up with the tables of standings.
Anyhow - Clinton probably has a lock on the Dem race with huge victories in the south, a 300 delegate lead and still leading in most of the remaining big states in polls. Sanders still soldiering on, and just won Alaska and Washington by big margins, so he may stay in until Cali.
GOP side, Kasich doesn't look like making headway, the GOP elite are falling in behind Cruz though Trump now has a big delegate lead... brokered convention still quite possible, if anyone gets a majority of delegates it's got to be Trump at this stage.
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I'm voting for Trump. Mainly because the GOP is much more concerned that he might win and are doing way more to try and stop him than they are those things about anyone on the opposing side. I like him because he's not establishment, not a career politician, and doesn't take endorsements. He's just a businessman who genuinely loves our country with his own views (whether you agree with them or not).
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How is he "not establishment"? The guy's been right at the heart of public life for decades, he's donated to huge numbers of political campaigns and has been good friends with quite a lot of very senior politicians. I mean, unless you have to be a career politician to be part of the establishment in your eyes, but in that case you just repeated yourself. And what do you mean he doesn't take endorsements? He's taken endorsements from Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, and Sarah Palin very publicly to name just three. Genuinely confused about that one.
I mean, I don't think he loves America either, I think he just loves Trump.
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lol u mad? ;D
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I'm just confused tbh.
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I guess the word I wanted was campaign donations not endorsements. Establishment is the people who are considering things like nominating someone like Romney, who didn't even run this time, because they don't want Trump to run, even though he will win the nomination by votes. I really don't understand the hate he gets, except that everyone is afraid of him; GOP, Democrats, all the liberal media and even Fox News. And that's why I like him.
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Practically nobody except a couple media pundits are planning that, so your "establishment" is kinda small? Anyway the strong likelihood is that there will be floor rules that prevent anyone who hasn't won any states getting onto the ballot, like was the case in 2012. The GOP's system is working out very well for Trump in any case, he's gained less than 40% of the vote and he's still in a pretty commanding position; he'll be an unusually weak primary winner in terms of vote %, even if he avoids a contested convention. The idea that the system is horribly rigged against him is bullarmadillo, he's doing considerably better than he should be doing given how many votes he has.
I'm really not sure how everyone being afraid of someone is automatically a good thing. Everyone's also afraid of ISIS, and their houses burning down, and venomous snakes, but those don't make good Presidential candidates as a result.
As to why people hate him, it depends from person to person. For some people it's just that he lies repeatedly (Politifact rated 75% of his statements that they checked as mostly or wholly false, higher than any other candidate), other people don't like the way he talks about his family like property and has implied several times that he'd quite like to date his daughter, other people don't like the fact that he'd introduce a bunch of laws that would discriminate against Muslim-Americans, or that he's said he wants to bring back forms of torture that have been banned because they were inhumane and ineffective. There's the fact that he's advocated beating up even peaceful protesters at his rallies, too, which doesn't exactly show a commitment to free speech.
I feel you're pinning on him the hope that he'll be a tough guy who'll remove corruption, get people to pay their taxes, take the "establishment" down a peg, and make America feel stronger in the world... but there's no reason to think he's capable of that or even wants to.
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ISIS? Really? You're comparing him to ISIS? That kind of sums up your argument right there.
Bashing my reasoning while failing to provide a viable alternative hasn't done anything to sway my opinion. I didn't come to debate I simply stated my intent and reasons for doing so. I would have appreciated a simple "fair snuffles" and nothing more (preferably nothing at all if you can't accept my free will), especially not an attack on my choices or use of political terminology. I don't follow politics so I'm not familiar with all the jargon.
There are plenty worse people out there and you know it. And you know which side they're on. And that's why you feel forbidden to say anything negative about them.
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Of course I wasn't comparing him to ISIS and that doesn't sum up my argument at all, I was pointing out that it's a logical issue with what you're saying, which it is. I wasn't trying to attack your terminology either, these words don't have technical definitions and I was trying to work out what you meant by the words you were using. Also the idea that I feel "forbidden" to say anything about anyone is just silly.
I won't say "fair snuffles" when it comes to Trump because I don't feel he is fair snuffles, I think he's a very dangerous and unpleasant guy, and that's my very deeply held opinion which I have as much right to state as you do. If I didn't accept your right to a free choice I wouldn't bother trying to talk to you about it, and if I didn't care about you or your country I wouldn't bother trying to talk to you about it. I'm sorry if you're upset by that, I apologise if I came over badly in the way I was saying things, and I won't say anything further on the matter if you'd rather I didn't.
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Fair snuffles.
I'll probably be too lazy to actually go out and vote anyway.
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The way I see it all those things I listed are more like ISIS and so naturally I would support something that ISIS is afraid of.
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Isn't trump a terrible businessman? I know his first business (which he started with that teeny little million dollar loan) went bankrupt, although I don't know much about his other business ventures.
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He's still richer than any of us will ever be in our lives despite being bankrupt in the past. Also the US is so far in debt that bankruptcy is a moot point.
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Yeah but he inherited his wealth, as far as I know he hasn't actually made much money himself. So the idea that his business experience would make him a good economist doesn't seem to hold up. I mean the premise of that argument is probably flawed anyway.
Not that I've really played much attention to these candidates, just hoping you people don't elect an overly crazy one.
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Ha! That hope died when Rand dropped out.
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Not that I've been following it closely but isn't Kasich all right?
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He's kinda nutty like the rest that's left. Doesn't have any chance of winning though.
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Cruz is gone. Sanders won Indiana but didn't really make up any lost ground. Basically the nomination process is over.
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Has Billary already won the other nomination?
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No, but yes. Sanders needs 2/3 of the remaining delegates to catch up, which is not going to happen. He'll probably win most of the remaining states since they're mostly in his sort of regions, but he'd need to win all of them by like 20-30 point margins, including California.
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So cowman, do you welcome your new female overlord?
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portugal no.
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I'd much rather see Bernie in than Killary. He won't be able to do 1% of what he says he will do and will probably die of old age during his first term anyway. :P
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Borrow a Canadian president, they must have loads spare given they're run by a 'prime minister' or some sort of autobot nonsense.
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Updates:
- Kasich is out
- Bush Snr and Bush Jnr are not planning to endorse Trump
Polling has Trump running six and a half points behind Clinton. That's worse than Romney was doing VS Obama in early 2012, but not much worse, and I'd expect Trump's numbers to tick upwards as parts of the GOP establishment endorse him and get on board. If asked to guess I'd say the final map will look pretty similar to 2012, maybe with Trump winning Ohio and Clinton winning Arizona.
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Anyone but Killary 2016
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I dunno, it looks OK to me.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Killary_Harbour.jpg/1920px-Killary_Harbour.jpg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killary_Harbour
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Today's news, from the Lib convention:
Libertarian nominee is Gary Johnson
Gary Johnson beats John McAfee (placed third) and Austin Petersen (second) in two ballots to win the nomination, falling only just short on the first ballot and getting 55% of delegates on the second. He also won three of the party's four primaries (with the exception of Missouri, where he wasn't on the ballot and which is Petersen's home state). His running mate will be another old blue-state Republican, former Massachussetts governor William Weld, a new Libertarian member who struggled through to gain the VP spot (elected separately) on Johnson's recommendation.
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A lot of good all that'll do. ::)
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trumps already won. ggwp guys.
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i always assumed trump would win since you can rely on america to always select the worst leaders
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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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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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Kim's a sound lad, I'd vote for Trump now. If only I could vote.
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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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Have to love it. ;D
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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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Pretty sure that's the platform of all of them.
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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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Some peepole be leik:
(https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/60713244.jpg)
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More and more I'm thinking either anarchy or dictatorship is the way to go.
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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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You talk about truth as if every other politician uses it. :P
Killary is under investigation by the FBI for portugal's sake!
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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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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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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.
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Then there's this Churchill:
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Attacking journalists eh? Have you never seen the way the journalists attack Trump and twist whatever he says to sound evil? He's unscripted. He speaks from his mind spur of the moment unlike most who read from delicately prepared scripts not even written by them. But you're a collegiate Brit and so naturally you've never had a slip of the tongue or spoken out of turn or rambled aimlessly. Unfortunately the media is loving it and they are very good at twisting words and nit-picking every syllable. But it's funny because there's Clinton with all her obvious lies and FBI investigation and the media can't seem to find any fault with her.
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See how blatantly uncomfortable that reporter is when they accidentally show something real?! She quickly tries to be like "welllll that's not representative of his supporters... I don't know why we showed you that... Trump is actually racist..." She pretty much called him a "token black guy". Yay media. :P
There you have people coming together in understanding and friendship and the media just blows the whole thing off and tries to draw attention away from it. It's the liberal media's agenda to keep racism alive and promote controversy. Any time a black person starts thinking for themselves and getting educated they move as far from the left as they can. My uncle is a prime example.
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The fact that so much of the media is left leaning just means that you have to sift through so much noise to actually hear anything. There's so many clickbait half truths because attacking the right is just so easy because it's the side that has to make the necessary but unpopular or less cutesy decisions. The left is just completely unwilling to step in on and instead just treats whatever is nasty like a non-issue.
Immigration is a problem in parts of every country and the options are to forcibly relocate people to spread them out or to limit the number of immigrants. The former is deemed (rightly in my view) to be harsher. The left merely states the benefits of immigration which everyone is aware of but never addresses any of the problems that come with it. So yeah when you have the majority leftist media just sniping with no actual substance or alternative argument it's so easy to just jump on the bandwagon due to a lack of perspective or free thinking. Not that I'm accusing anyone here of that, just in general.
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Trudat. It's funny when people call Fox news "so biased" toward the right, which it is, when virtually every other news agency is so far up the lefts' ass that they are breathing out of the same nose.
And anyone who has a problem with illegal immigrants is a RACIST! There's obviously nothing wrong with immigration, there is something wrong when you don't do it legally - getting proper ID and permission, pay taxes, etc. The left doesn't seem to understand the difference.
Also funny when they say we're a nation of immigrants. Well yeah my ancestors moved here in the legal fashion, but hell I didn't I was born here. I'm a "native" American. ;)
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Aye it's annoying how much opinion is polarised on these issues, as if they are completely black and white matters.
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Major update for today is that Clinton is not going to be indicted over her email server - FBI argue that what she did was careless but not illegal.
It's honestly a bit hard to see where Trump goes from here, beyond praying the economy collapses in the next few months or that the polls are wrong. Clinton will now have far fewer media stories about this, beyond a final flurry - I'm sure some will be manufactured, and Trump will keep trying to play this card in adverts, but there won't be any more actual events in the story, regardless of whether you think the FBI were right or not - and she's still sitting on a comfortable lead over Trump, narrowly ahead of him in pretty much all the battleground states according to polling. Both candidates seem to have hit rock bottom in terms of how disliked they are, and the answer is - thus far - that more people hate Trump than hate Clinton. And Trump still doesn't seem to have much of a ground game coming together - how much that will make a difference is a big unknown (and for someone like me genuinely really interesting).
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When you talk about Trumps ground game I'm imagining him wrestling with Clinton. I'd enjoy watching that.
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It comes as no surprise she wasn't indicted. The Clinton war machine is just too strong. Bill even had that closed-door meeting with the people in charge and probably told them "if you indict my disgusting wife you'll expose corruption that goes all the way to the president". Besides, the email thing doesn't even compare to how careless she was with the Benghazi situation and everything preceding that. In fact the only ad I've seen was about Benghazi, not mentioning emails, and sent a very powerful message about stopping her now.
And I imagine they get those poll numbers from online polls or places centered in liberal urban communities like LA or NY because no one in the rural areas would vote for Killary. I talked to people down in WV where there are a lot of Democrats and even they say anyone but her.
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I'm not honestly sure who I'd put my money on between the two of them. Neither is quite a prime physical specimen.
But yeah - the other issue Trump faces is that now he has multiple open lawsuits in which he's the defendant, so it's not out of the question that he could get indicted before November (though I think it's unlikely, he's every bit as much a wealthy member of the social establishment as Clinton and has a lot of experience at dodging lawsuits).
As to the poll numbers, ignore them if you wish, but in general ignoring the polls or assuming they can't be right is a pretty bad idea for a campaign. Sure, rural areas will mostly vote Trump bar maybe some bits of the west or northeast, but most Americans don't live in rural areas; 80.7% of the population of the USA was urban or suburban in the 2010 census, so a candidate could win literally every rural voter in the country and lose by a landslide. Polls tend to be a mix of online and phone, and then those numbers are rebalanced according to census data (so if you ended up interviewing say 45 urban and 5 rural voters in a sample of 50, you'd basically make the urban voters count for slightly less each and the rural voters count for more to make your data look more like the actual electorate). So there isn't really an argument to be made that the results are skewed by where or how they poll, and poll-based modelling has been very effective in the last few elections at predicting the result.
I guess the issue for Trump is that he's hit Hillary with the Benghazi and email things a lot, and it's still not broken through; it's hard to see where he gets the boost from to either really sink Clinton or boost popular support for his own campaign at this point. (This is, bluntly, speaking, not helped by the fact that he's running an unbelievably incompetent campaign and not exactly working hard to appeal to anyone who isn't already backing him).
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What's your source for all that? www.cnnthirdpartypollswerenotbiasedweswear.com? :P
Also Libertarian Girl put it a little more eloquently;
"Today the FBI Director basically said with his recommendation on the Clinton case:
yeah she did send classified information on a server that could definitely have been hacked which is definitely a violation but meh, oh well cuz Clinton. No consequences for you!
The rest of you plebs still have to obey laws tho or your lives are ruined. K thanks bye."
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My sources, apart from general knowledge of how polling works and the actual US census, tend to be RCP, which reports all pollsters regardless of political lean, and FiveThirtyEight, who have a pretty impressive record on calling states in presidential elections using more mathematical modelling and rankings of pollsters based on their past effectiveness at predicting actual results. :)
Eh, she seems to have watched a different announcement on the matter to the one I just saw James Comey give.
I mean, I guess my view is that in an ideal world, this sort of foolishness would probably disqualify Clinton as an acceptable presidential candidate. But then, in an ideal world Trump would also be a total non-starter as a candidate, and I keep seeing precisely nothing to change my view that Clinton is entirely and absolutely the lesser evil here both for the US and for the rest of the world.
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Clinton seems like the giant lizard of preference to me but it's pretty damn dire that the choice is between two such lizardy lizards.
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The government investigated the government and found that the government did nothing wrong. So we're all safe now. :)
Clinton's got her hands in too many corporate and foreign pockets, at least Trump earns his own money and only has himself to answer to in that regard. In other words Clinton owes quite a few dirty favors.
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(http://i1370.photobucket.com/albums/ag242/Funston1/12348126_1634036856866413_5456578786995719210_n_zpsajnjbg2j.jpg)
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Hillary doesn't need to remind people she has a vagina, she just needs to remind people she isn't Trump. Which is what she's doing, and it's basically working as far as anyone can tell.
I mean, between the man with probably the strongest reputation for probity in Washington, who doesn't have anything on the line here and who was originally a Republican appointee, and Trump (who may just have a tiny wee bit of bias/interest here), I'm inclined to go with believing Comey, I'll be quite honest. And any damage from the email scandal is now done; if Trump is still behind at this moment, he's never going to drag her down further by making the same attacks again. And if you don't believe Trump owes any dirty favours you'll believe anything, frankly, given aspects of his business past and some of the current lawsuits.
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There's nothing I can say that you'll listen to. Even if Clinton killed someone on live tv she would still have a cult following. It's literal government corruption on live tv and to the liberals she's as innocent as a newborn.
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Well, now you know how I feel about the fact you're seriously considering voting for someone who is, and I can't be bothered to pull my punches any more here, skirting pretty damn close to fascism in his policy proposals.
I don't think Clinton's remotely "innocent", a large percentage of the US establishment reeks of corruption, but the US electoral system coupled with the Republicans picking Trump has people like me, who honestly aren't Clinton's natural base, backed right into a corner. Trump clearly has no concept of civil liberties; he has advocated during this election campaign for the use of torture, mass deportations, state seizures of private property to support the very rich, profiling, mass surveillance, an end to religious freedoms on an arbitrary executive basis, and nuclear proliferation just as a starting list. He's also shown no signs of being any more competent than Clinton (which is in itself damning given the competence levels she's shown), especially considering the number of business bankruptcies and fraud-related cases he's been involved in and the fact that his economic policies and major spending pledges simply don't mathematically add up. I accept that there's a case against Clinton, and it's in some ways quite a strong one, but the case against Trump is from my perspective considerably stronger on the grounds that he's also corrupt as hell and his policies are awful, unpleasant, and unconstitutional. I'm all for taking the establishment down a peg, but replacing them with one particularly awful member of that establishment is hardly going to achieve that.
Thus we remain at an impasse. :P
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Trump's not going to be running the show by himself. He'll have guides who know how things work. He'll at least be trying to do things for us Americans and our veterans. Not making us feel less important than people in a foreign country as he put it. Clinton will continue the Obama policies that have not done us a bit of good and has divided this country.
Clinton was essentially declared incompetent by the FBI. But saying that she's still a good candidate because the FBI decided, or was blocked, to indict her is like saying OJ would make a good babysitter because he was found innocent.
Trump wants to get people working again. Clinton just wants to give away free money. Free fish. Trump wants to get people fishing again.
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I think Trump won.
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Yup.
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Can confirm. Second time in our lifetimes that the winner actually got fewer votes than the loser, though I guess that's just the system over there.
Next year we get to see this game played by a whole bunch of major European countries instead all getting the chance to vote for their own demagogues, so that'll be fun. If Marine Le Pen wins in France we may be looking to Donald Trump and Theresa May as the "liberal" voices on the UN Security Council.
Detailed thoughts, feel free to tl;dr these -
The next couple of years will be interesting from a US perspective. The Supreme Court is probably the biggest issue - if Trump appoints ultra-conservative justices, and assuming the Republicans continue not to do their job and ratify Obama's nominee (they're meant to be there to block massively biased or incompetent nominees, and they're instead blocking an overqualified moderate in the hope they can get their own guy on after Trump gets in) then it only needs one of the two elderly liberals (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, or Steven Breyer, 78) to die and the court becomes massively conservative, which would probably deepen a lot of the social divisions between blue and red states by kicking issues like the legality of marriage equality and abortion back to being state-level decisions. Trump has said he doesn't really want to overturn marriage equality, but he does still apparently want to overturn Roe v. Wade, the SCOTUS decision that legalised abortion in all states.
In other areas, I suspect that Trump will try and "take action on immigration" which will cost many, many billions and do absolutely bugger all beyond make a few people's lives armadillotier. I'm very worried about what he'll do on climate change targets, especially given literally none of his advisors seem to think energy efficiency is worth doing (which is dumb; even if you believe global warming is a hoax, which is a silly position to start with, getting less reliant on fossil fuels is a long term no-brainer simply from an economic competitiveness standpoint). I think he'll back down on things like NATO and will be railroaded into a fairly status quo foreign policy strategy. Trade could be more interesting, but again I think his advisors may be bright enough to stop him entering trade wars. The thing that seems to have most gone out the window is being "anti-establishment" and "draining the swamp", given that literally the most insider-y insider in the GOP, head of the RNC Reince Priebus, has just been appointed as his chief of staff. Also his transition team is basically comprised of corporate lobbyists so far.
Short of a Dem landslide in 2018, and even with that as the Dems have to play a lot of defence in the 2018 senate races and the house is rigged to hell, he also may well have both houses of Congress with his party for a full four years, which will be unusual for a modern president. How well Trump will get on with the GOP remains to be seen - the appointment of Priebus may indicate that he's actually going to more or less let their insiders run things, though I may be wrong.
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I think it will be all right. All far right. Ayyyyy lmao.
But seriously though I don't reckon much is going to change, it sounds like the judges he'll appoint will likely be his only real legacy. And that could be quite a armadilloer of a legacy to be fair considering the support he got from the Christian crazies. Could be a refreshing change to foreign policy though (ie less warmongering).
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I think we need to wait and see how the change to foreign policy works out. Less bombing armadillo might be good, but allowing Putin or China a free hand to wreck armadillo up in their backyards could be very distinctly un-good and ripping up international trade deals could well be really rather bad. My suspicion is that on most aspects of geopolitics Trump will buckle and let the military keep doing their thing just as they're doing at the moment. Obama had a lot to say about foreign affairs before he took office but basically ended up implementing a slightly less armadilloty version of Bush's international policies. The military have a huge amount of influence and I don't think Trump will want to butt heads with them too much.
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Can confirm. Second time in our lifetimes that the winner actually got fewer votes than the loser, though I guess that's just the system over there.
A true republic :')