I was listening to an Indiana evangelical on NPR this morning regarding yesterday's primary and he said that he couldn't vote for Trump or Hillary. If Trump can't get the religious right vote then that's not good for him. It should be funny watching Trump lay out some more two Corinthians verbiage going forward but I doubt that he'd fool anyone. What is Trump's stance on abortion? If he can convince anyone that he's anti abortion then he has a chance. The Republicans don't need too many of their own sitting this one out.
Trump
- Thread starter moe
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Even jail probably wouldn't be enough for Trump to beat Hillary in November. The demographic disadvantages and strong disapproval ratings are too steep. (Insert here someone's knee-jerk cliche about one Rassmussen poll in the sea of many others that show a very different results). In any case, it would probably take something worse than a Hillary indictment, which to me seems unlikely. Conservatives have spent almost 20 years hoping to pin something serious on the slippery Clintons and it has almost all been for naught in the end.
I suppose a liberal 3rd party campaign would change things. I don't think Bernie is that foolhardy, but I suppose if we've learned anything from this ridiculous '16 campaign, it's not to count on conventional wisdom. I personally think it's more likely that a conservative 3rd party emerges, as a protest from the George Will-David Brooks-William Buckley wing of the party, with the intention of not only scuttling Trump, but embarrassing him with a massive electoral wipe-out, in order to reclaim sanity in the party. But again, who knows?
I suppose a liberal 3rd party campaign would change things. I don't think Bernie is that foolhardy, but I suppose if we've learned anything from this ridiculous '16 campaign, it's not to count on conventional wisdom. I personally think it's more likely that a conservative 3rd party emerges, as a protest from the George Will-David Brooks-William Buckley wing of the party, with the intention of not only scuttling Trump, but embarrassing him with a massive electoral wipe-out, in order to reclaim sanity in the party. But again, who knows?
Sanity in the party? As long as the party clings to a platform that is not populist, they will loose at the national levels. Trump would have been a game changer if not for the harsh rhetoric, as he's way more a populist than any other GOP candidate.
Hillary won Ohio and Pennsylvania, if she can get Bernie supporters to vote for her, she could show strong in the remainder of those states. Next.
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I fail to see how populism is good for anyone. Popularity has a very low correlation with good policy. There is a reason we don't have direct democracy. If we are going to fix entitlements, create more high quality jobs, and set our fiscal course on a sustainable trajectory, we will need leaders who can level with Americans as rational adults and make the case for doing what is hard instead of what is easy. Both sides already pander too much to a child-like low-information electorate that is more eager to have someone tell them what they want to hear rather than deal with the hard truth. And yes, Obama has failed miserably at this. Symbolism has trumped substance (no pun intended) for too long in this country. Trump and his nativist, fear-mongoring, know-nothing, empty rhetoric is the last thing we need.
In the last decade the GOP has been about lowering taxes and getting gubmint out of our lives. Of course they are populist.
I'm not saying it is good, but it's the mindset of the electorate. It's not about who's the best qualified, who's got the better resume, it's who spins the best tale and comes across better.
The whole rust-belt trope is popular among Trump hopefuls, but it ignores demographic realities. For all the talk about Trump bringing 'new voters' to the party, GOP turnout has not been as astronomically high as media narratives would have people believe. And oddly, even though GOP turnout has been much higher than democratic turnout in the primaries overall, Clinton has gotten more votes than Trump. And a Trump nomination will motivate democrats to turn out like few other things could. Yes, Hillary is galvanizing for the GOP as well, and I think in a normal year, most any Republican would be favored to beat her. But Trump's negatives are astronomically worse than Hillary's among almost every demographic group that is evaluated. We are already seeing not only prominent moderate voices, but prominent conservative voices come out and say that they'd prefer 4 years of taking shots at Hillary and challenging her in 2020 over supporting Trump now.
If it's a straight up Hillary vs. Trump matchup, with no wild cards, the question to me won't be if Hillary wins, but rather if she can crack the ceiling of 400 electoral votes. If a conservative 3rd party enters the fray, the question will be if she can carry all 50 states.
Btw, I know our bet is not official yet, but I am looking forward to the BYU tailgate.
The Evangelicals can say what they want, at the end of the day, there is a deep seated hatred for Hillary on the right which will compel people to vote for anyone but her, Trump included. If Trump can take the rust belt which seems plausible, she won't win.
Who would have thought though when the GOP had 17 candidates in the mix that they would have their **** together sooner than what was essentially a 1 person race on the DNC side? I heard a stat last night that some 25% of registered Dems changed their registration in PA to GOP. I don't know the validity to that, but it doesn't seem good for Hillary.
If one can manage to set aside Trump's nativists rhetoric there remains some truths:
1. Trump has actually created jobs in this country, many of them. Hillary hasn't
2. Hillary has been surrounded by scandal dating back to the 80's and it seems like every year a new one comes out.
3. Hillary will say anything to anyone if she thinks its what they want to hear. Independents and Conservative Dems don't respect that, maybe even less than GOP voters.
4. Hillary was an abject failure in her time as SoS. People died because of her failure in leadership (perception is reality)
5. We will rehash every scandal of Hillary's between now and election day in Nov. ad-nauseum.
6. A large percentage of professional women are disenfranchised with Hillary
7. This election cycle sucks for the informed voter.
8. Hillary will try to show some of the shadier things Trump has done in business yet this can easily be spun as him knowing how to work a system to get the job done and again "create jobs". There is nothing she can point to that can match him as she is a career politician. She has never created anything.
9. Email gate still looms on the horizon.
10. She is one the least likable and most polarizing figures on the planet so much so that it offsets Trump's polarizing stances.
I'm not sure that I'd say the GOP "has their **** together" due to the lack of solidified support behind their apparent nominee but they do seem to have a nominee sooner. The 2016 race will continue to surprise the folks who follow it.
Have you not been paying attention? Clinton is getting indicted and it's gonna be President Sanders. :grimace:
Getting my game tickets next week.
Trump and Cruz are the only 2 in this whole process I wouldn't vote for over Clinton. Trump is going to get hammered. More interested in how the down ticket elections go.
If you go for club level, you should sit with us on the BYU side. Demographics would suggest much shorter lines for booze.
LOL Nice. You got any recommendations on areas to avoid for lodging? We are shooting for something near a Metro of course.
I didn't think Trump would make it this far. At this stage in the game anything is possible. Personality will win this election, and if Trump can soften his personality he's got a legit chance at beating Hillary.
I disagree. Numbers will win this election. Demographics are changing and hurting the GOP. Now with Trump, they are sprinting away from those numbers. Good luck hanging on to the Senate and House.
You can usually do better price-wise in Arlington, Alexandria, or Crystal City than downtown DC. Crystal City is particularly dead on weekends and all the hotels have metro shuttles. Another reason to avoid downtown is that same weekend will be the opening of the new Smithsonian Museum of African American History. They have moved heaven and earth to ensure that they would finish everything in time for Obama to officially open it in his last year, and that opening is now set for September 24. So traffic and crowding around the Mall area will probably be much worse than usual.
Besides Arlington and Crystal City, there are some new hotels by the baseball stadium that might be reasonable since the Nats aren't home that weekend. That's close to both the Green Line (Navy Yard) and Orange/Blue (Eastern Market). Old Town Alexandria is also popular. The Sheraton in Old Town is nearby some of Alf's favorite watering holes, so alien sightings will be likely.
I think people are underestimating Trump's chances. He has done nothing but exceed expectations so far so I'm wary of saying he can't win. And although he has said a lot of nutty stuff so far the general election is a long way away and that's a lot of time for him to start talking nicer and for people to forget the nutty stuff he has said.
I'm not saying he's going to win and if I had to predict I'd predict he'd lose, but if he does win it wouldn't surprise me.
And the debates between Trump and Hillary in the fall are going be huge TV events. I don't know political debate ratings but whatever they've been in the past I bet the ones this fall break the records.
I'm not saying he's going to win and if I had to predict I'd predict he'd lose, but if he does win it wouldn't surprise me.
And the debates between Trump and Hillary in the fall are going be huge TV events. I don't know political debate ratings but whatever they've been in the past I bet the ones this fall break the records.
Trump doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. They polled Indiana GOP voters as they exited yesterday (and I do realize that is only one state, but it is applicable to an extent to other states) and asked them if they would vote for Trump if he was the nominee in the general and 24% said they would NOT vote for him.
You can bet your *** Hillary won't let anyone forget the crazy **** the Donald has said over the last 8 months and in addition to that she'll remind everyone of all this wonderful "employment" he has created (quoting one poster in this thread, lol). He has employed immigrants as part-time seasonal workers and he has sent a lot of the clothing work to China. Hillary will also remind everyone of the GOP trying to overthrow Trump's candidacy. He won't win the women vote, he won't win the Hispanic vote, he won't win the African-American vote, he won't win the Muslim vote.
but he's got the angry (and scared) white guy thing going so it should be interesting.
So you admit Trump has created jobs? He has employed many individuals and companies during the course of his development projects. How many has Hillary employed? Ever? how many jobs has she been responsible for creating? What does she know about business and revenue generation?
What is your point? Seriously. Creating jobs on a national scale will involve tweaking policy (tax, trade, etc.). No matter who is elected, won't that person have advisors who will help them with policy changes that help to put more Americans to work? We all can't work at Trump's casinos and golf courses. I would give him a small advantage in this area but it's just one check mark in the column.
Well, Bill paid off Paula Jones, the foundation has been paying off officials and Chelsea a 600,000 income so they have created, maybe, 10 jobs.
Clinton has but to win the 19 states and DC which the Democratic candidate has won in every election since 1988 plus Florida where she leads Trump by double digits. President Clinton.
You need to check out the reports of what his companies are doing in Dubai, Qatar, and UAE. Builders over there utilize essentially indentured laborers from Bangladesh and other poor countries due to their desperation. Their passports are confiscated upon arrival to prevent them from leaving, and they have to pay the debts for their travel, which of course never go down, because they end up being paid a fraction of what they are promised.
This practice is certainly not limited to Trump, but properties that he manages and licenses have been documented to do the same things and it has been reported on be a few outlets. Obviously, this won't square well with his rhetoric on jobs and immigration here--unless we go forward with the assumption that the human lives 'over there' are fundamentally worth less than the lives of people who live here. Given some of the kooky endorsements Trump's gotten (i.e., from white supremacist organizations), maybe that assumption isn't such a stretch for Trump.
That's a fundamentally flawed analysis. The popular vote and electoral college tally correlate very strongly and predicatbly (mainly, because the popular vote is nothing more than a collection of the statewide totals). While it's possible to dream up hypothetical scenarios where some candidate's swing-state results vary tremendously from the overall tally, it doesn't play out that way in reality. The nuances of the electoral college will only become significant in a close election. It's unrealistic to assume that Trump could somehow lose nationally by 5, 6, 8 points, etc., yet the results in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania will somehow swing wildly the other way. There simply aren't enough angry white men in those states to make that kind of a massive swing happen, even though the effect is strong in the primaries.
The only reason to care about the electoral college permutations if is things are within a couple points one way or another, which at this point, is not expected.
Nate Silver lays it out much better than I could. This article was written pre-Trump, but the fundamental aspects of the analysis remain unchanged. The popular vote will dictate the electoral vote outcome as it always has: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-blue-wall/
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Furthermore, even if we want to focus on state-by-state races in the rust belt states, it's not really accurate to say that normal rust belt ham n eggers (your term) constitute a majority, and imply that they will strongly break for Trump. You have to remember that even among the wide swaths of these middle class voters, women still make up half of them. And women tend to turn out in higher numbers than men. And women loathe Trump in numbers that are off the charts relative to any other Presidential candidate in recent memory. Sure he's not going to lose women entirely, but it's not unrealistic to assume he'll lose them worse than any Republican in recent history, which will absolutely be his undoing. That's without even taking into account the growing minority populations in some of these same states. These states aren't the highly white, blue-collar monoliths that they were in the 80's. If they were, McCain and Romney would have been more competitive than they were.
And, I thought he was one of the more intelligent ones. It isn't necessary to beat the world every time. He only has to beat the competition he has in the area. The objective for Fig is not to win, but make him look bad
Poor Moe needs to get caught up. My TV made a plain statement this AM that Hillary lost in Indiana yesterday. Appears he cannot believe his eyes because he is still saying Hillary was the winner. It is midday and still no realization that Bernie received about 52% or the vote.
Cajun, this is not a rerun. Things are very different this election The Democrats, exclude Obama, who won those prior elections had actually accomplished something. Hillary has not actually been successful in doing anything that has been assigned to her. Still waiting on outcome of criminal charges which she may or may not win a conviction.
Cuntry only sees one side of the ledger and makes a stupid statement. as you take your finger of the scales, Trump will submit negatives on Hillary prior actions and inactions that were much more costly than any rheotric The Donald has uttered in political speaking.
Coop doubted he would not get out of the starting gate. Then swore and be damned that he could not take a next step. The only thing good that can be offered to his is consistency. Consistently stupid.
That leaves Opie on the other side. And look, he is superior to the entire opposition. He has given steps of how Trump "couldn't", but now holds out hope that there is a chance.
Now 1 on 1 and Trump will release the dogs. How will it be reported? But Fox is now out there to keep it "Fair and Balanced". Have a good day.
I think people are going to be a lot more surprised at Trump's performance than traditional wisdom would think.
True story. This morning I did a google search for all state results and used a color coded map and the map was wrong. I just looked for it again and couldn't find it. But that's where that comes from fwiw.