The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Vendetta]

Sounds more like Boris Johnson....

[Napoleon the Clown]

On Facebook, I saw an unsourced claim that current polling in Utah stands at:
Clinton 26%
Trump 26%
McMullin 22%
Johnson 14%

I can't say I'm inclined to look for where these numbers originated (so take their accuracy with a grain or two of salt), be it the poster's ass or an actual poll. Either way, it'd be hilarious if Johnson and McMullin managed to siphon enough Republican voters to send Utah blue in the presidential vote.

Here is an article on the poll. It was conducted by Y2 Analytics, which FiveThirtyEight gives a "C+" ranking.

Also the trendlines for Utah don't exactly look favorable for this poll. Not exactly strongly in favor of a Clinton victory.

I'm gonna wait and see before making any sorts of predictions for Utah. It mostly comes down to if just enough votes get pulled from Trump without being adequate to pull one of the joke candidates into the majority. Seems pretty unlikely, to me. Utah is a pretty fucking toxic culture in quite a lot of ways. Mormons make noises about respecting women, but in the case of Utah Mormons, at the least, it's often just noise.

Mormons in general don't like Trump because of his naked greed, but there's quite a few who are blindly Republican and will vote for anyone who has an R in front of their name.

[Q99]

Ultimately, they aren't very D either, even if they don't like this R. I expect simply very low turnout in Utah.

[mr friendly guy]

My God, David Pakman is having a field day with Trump supporters. This one is too funny not to share

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc431kq0Mi4

[Q99]

This is a really powerful campaign ad by Obama

Sorry it's on twitter, but it solidly makes an argument for being the strongest campaign ad this election.

[Thanas]

More and more women come out with claims Trump sexually harassed them.

[Dalton]

This is a really powerful campaign ad by Obama

Sorry it's on twitter, but it solidly makes an argument for being the strongest campaign ad this election.

Obama is a fantastic orator, and whoever edited that piece is a genius. They had only two shots of Hillary Clinton (plus snuck in a snippet of W), and never mentioned her name at all.

[Elheru Aran]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcnea ... .tugxVxZ5J

Buzzfeed, I know, but it's on other news sites and this is the main one I'm seeing posted over FB... I'm not going to bother quoting the article because it's your typical Buzzfeed article (snippets of text, bunch of photos and screen grabs), but here's a quick summary:

While, please note, this is not being posted by Trump himself (so far!), Nate Silver did a comparison between what would happen if mainly men voted vs. mainly women, and unsurprisingly enough they fell as you'd think (men for Trump, women for Clinton). Eric Trump sends out a mailer using the 'mainly men' map (without attestation), and it got seized on by a bunch of Twits. Next thing you know, #repealthe19th is a thing.

[bilateralrope]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcnea ... .tugxVxZ5J

Buzzfeed, I know, but it's on other news sites and this is the main one I'm seeing posted over FB... I'm not going to bother quoting the article because it's your typical Buzzfeed article (snippets of text, bunch of photos and screen grabs), but here's a quick summary:

While, please note, this is not being posted by Trump himself (so far!), Nate Silver did a comparison between what would happen if mainly men voted vs. mainly women, and unsurprisingly enough they fell as you'd think (men for Trump, women for Clinton). Eric Trump sends out a mailer using the 'mainly men' map (without attestation), and it got seized on by a bunch of Twits. Next thing you know, #repealthe19th is a thing.

Looks like Eric Trump posted something stupid. People started #repealthe19th as a joke. People on both sides missed that it was a joke.

I want to know how Trump reacts to this mess.

[Q99]

Looks like Eric Trump posted something stupid. People started #repealthe19th as a joke. People on both sides missed that it was a joke.

I want to know how Trump reacts to this mess.

Even as a 'joke,' it's a pretty mean spirited one. "Haha, maybe we should remove your right to vote."

That plenty of Trump supporters would take it seriously is also no surprise.

[FireNexus]

Looks like Eric Trump posted something stupid. People started #repealthe19th as a joke. People on both sides missed that it was a joke.

I want to know how Trump reacts to this mess.

Sounds like the kind of thing that's "a joke" in that it's probably his actual belief, and designed to rile up others who share that belief, but he'll refuse to take responsibility for it when challenged. You know, standard misogynist/racist/dickhead ass covering.

[Q99]

Team Because vs Team Despite- The split in Trump's supporters and staff.

Quite an interesting blog post!

Sounds like the kind of thing that's "a joke" in that it's probably his actual belief, and designed to rile up others who share that belief, but he'll refuse to take responsibility for it when challenged. You know, standard misogynist/racist/dickhead ass covering.

Yes. If someone's making a joke at the expense of women/race/etc., it's not because they really respect them and are just poking fun.

[SpottedKitty]

Sounds more like Boris Johnson....

IMHO Our Boris is the dictionary definition of sanity in comparison.

(Yes, I know, he's also the dictionary definition of unkempt, but you can't have everything...)

[The Romulan Republic]

Ugg, Clinton's numbers have actually gone down slightly in the Nowcast now.

What the bloody fuck is wrong with this country?

Its not that I'm very concerned that she might lose. Its just... is 40% of the country really still okay with Trump?

Although I do note something interesting changing in Utah- Utah has become a noticeably lighter shade of red, and for the first time that I can recall, someone other than Clinton and Trump is actually registering in the percentages to win. Trump still has a 75.7% chance to win Utah in the Nowcast, but they give a 9.3% chance to win Utah to McMullin (with 1% to Johnson and 13.9% to Clinton).

[FireNexus]

Ugg, Clinton's numbers have actually gone down slightly in the Nowcast now.

What the bloody fuck is wrong with this country?

Its not that I'm very concerned that she might lose. Its just... is 40% of the country really still okay with Trump?

Although I do note something interesting changing in Utah- Utah has become a noticeably lighter shade of red, and for the first time that I can recall, someone other than Clinton and Trump is actually registering in the percentages to win. Trump still has a 75.7% chance to win Utah in the Nowcast, but they give a 9.3% chance to win Utah to McMullin (with 1% to Johnson and 13.9% to Clinton).

Oh no. The sky is falling. The deemphasized overly aggressive model has been changing rapidly.

STOP. READING. THE. FUCKING. NOWCAST.

Your chicken little bullshit is annoying. And the obsessive referencing of the Nowcast's entirely predictable swings is moreso.

Since you continue to pull this stupid bullshit after having it explained why it's stupid bullshit over and over, how about you try a little experiment. Spend the rest of the election pretending you don't know shit. Write down the things you think to be concerning in a private notebook, and reference them after the election to see how legitimate they are.

Just please stop lowering my (and judging by the general opinion expressed towards your amazingly insightful posts, everyone else's) already rock bottom opinion of the position of your thumb with respect to the pulse of the election and your own ass.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ugg, Clinton's numbers have actually gone down slightly in the Nowcast now.

What the bloody fuck is wrong with this country?

Its not that I'm very concerned that she might lose. Its just... is 40% of the country really still okay with Trump?

Although I do note something interesting changing in Utah- Utah has become a noticeably lighter shade of red, and for the first time that I can recall, someone other than Clinton and Trump is actually registering in the percentages to win. Trump still has a 75.7% chance to win Utah in the Nowcast, but they give a 9.3% chance to win Utah to McMullin (with 1% to Johnson and 13.9% to Clinton).

Oh no. The sky is falling. The deemphasized overly aggressive model has been changing rapidly.

STOP. READING. THE. FUCKING. NOWCAST.

Your chicken little bullshit is annoying. And the obsessive referencing of the Nowcast's entirely predictable swings is moreso.

Since you continue to pull this stupid bullshit after having it explained why it's stupid bullshit over and over, how about you try a little experiment. Spend the rest of the election pretending you don't know shit. Write down the things you think to be concerning in a private notebook, and reference them after the election to see how legitimate they are.

Just please stop lowering my (and judging by the general opinion expressed towards your amazingly insightful posts, everyone else's) already rock bottom opinion of the position of your thumb with respect to the pulse of the election and your own ass.

Fuck off.

This isn't panic, and it isn't hyperbole. I even specifically said that I wasn't much concerned about the election results, precisely because I knew that some sad little shit with a grudge against me might start mindlessly chanting "chicken little" or something, because some people here have apparently decided that every topic I express concern on can be so pigeon-holed, regardless of the actual content of the post in question.

Am I not allowed to spare two lines of a post to express my exasperation at the idiocy of some of my countrymen without being attacked and defamed for it? Am I not allowed to express any dislike or disapproval of any topic?

You know what? I don't care. You are pretty near the last person on Earth I would look to for guidance on what it is appropriate to think, or say. Especially since you ignored the content of the majority of my post entirely to focus on the one thing you could spin into a cheap personal attack based on prior and unrelated topics.

As if we don't both know that your disturbing need to attack me at the slightest hint of an excuse is in large part simply a manifestation of the fact that you haven't gotten over the primary.

[bilateralrope]

Sounds like the kind of thing that's "a joke" in that it's probably his actual belief, and designed to rile up others who share that belief, but he'll refuse to take responsibility for it when challenged. You know, standard misogynist/racist/dickhead ass covering.

If it started as a joke*, my guess is that a Clinton supporter made the joke. Something along the lines of All Trump needs to do to win is #repealthe19th. Then that tweet gets retweeted without the context of the rest of that persons tweets and it gets out of control.
It wouldn't be the first time I've seen people get really angry over a tweet that they see without the context of the authors other tweets. Or the first time people have had trouble communicating that they aren't serious over a text based medium.

*I'll admit that it might have started by someone being serious. I have no proof either way.

[maraxus2]

Yeah, the nowcast is pretty useless. The election isn't being held today, and the long-term trends actually indicates stuff. Plus, we should expect roughly 40% of the public to be on board with Trump. Mondale got that at a time when we were much less polarized and Reagan was a much better candidate than Clinton.

That being said, campaigns can and do completely collapse in the last month of an election, and sometimes their shittiness isn't reflected in the polls. Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin saw something like that happen back in 2012, where he was consistently behind by a small margin, only to completely shit the bed on Election Day.

Speaking of bed-shitting:

Donald Trump, Slipping in Polls, Warns of ‘Stolen Election’
By ASHLEY PARKER OCT. 13, 2016
Donald J. Trump has lashed out at fellow Republicans, calling them “disloyal” and “far more difficult” than Hillary Clinton. He has griped openly about a “rigged” political system, saying Wednesday that he has “no respect” for the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, and
previously complaining about a “defective” microphone in the first debate.

And on Monday, at a rally in Wilkes­Barre, Pa., he worried that the election could be “stolen” from him and singled out Philadelphia, a city with a large AfricanAmerican population, warning, “We have to make sure we’re protected.” Mr. Trump’s ominous claims of a “stolen election” — which he often links to black, urban neighborhoods — are not entirely new. But in recent days, he has been pressing the theme with a fresh intensity, citing everything from the potential for Election Day fraud to news media bias favoring Mrs. Clinton to rigged debates.

The assertions — which coincide with Mr. Trump’s decline in the polls after a shaky performance in the first debate and accusations that he forced himself on women — highlight concerns that he may not accept a Clinton victory, breaking from the traditional decorum of defeated presidential candidates and undermining the legitimacy of the election result.

At rallies in recent days, Mr. Trump has become a candidate full of excuses, perhaps the clearest manifestation of his frustration with his current standing in the polls and the growing alarm in his campaign that a White House victory is slipping away.

On Monday, on a trip through Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump began the day urging the almost entirely white crowd outside Pittsburgh to show up to vote, warning about “other communities” that could hijack his victory.

“So important that you watch other communities, because we don’t want this election stolen from us,” he said. “We do not want this election stolen.” Later, at the evening rally in Wilkes­Barre, Mr. Trump raised more concerns about voting fraud. “I just hear such reports about Philadelphia,” he said. “I hear these horror shows, and we have to make sure that this election is not stolen from us and is not taken away from us.” He added for emphasis: “Everybody knows what I’m talking about." The crowd chanted an anti­CNN epithet as Mr. Trump attacked the “crooked media.”

At a rally in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday, Mr. Trump said that, “This election will determine whether we remain a free nation or only the illusion of democracy,” suggesting that the system was “in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests, rigging the system.” He continued, “And our system is rigged.”

The country has not had a presidential candidate from one of the two major parties try to cast doubt on the entire democratic process and system of government since the brink of the Civil War, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “I haven’t seen it since 1860, this threat of delegitimizing the federal government, and Trump is trying to say our entire government is corrupt and the whole system is rigged,” Mr. Brinkley said. “And that’s a secessionist, revolutionary motif. That’s someone trying to topple the apple cart entirely.”

Roger J. Stone Jr., a close confidant and informal adviser to Mr. Trump, has also highlighted fears of election rigging. In an August column in The Hill, he wrote of voting machine manipulation. And during a panel Saturday at this year’s New Yorker Festival, as he discussed the possibility of such tampering, Mr. Stone hedged when asked whether he would advise Mr. Trump — should he lose in November — to concede the election and accept its legitimacy.

“As long as there is no irrefutable evidence of fraud, yes,” he told his questioner. "He should — unless there is any refutable evidence to the contrary.”
Mr. Stone is one of the people behind Stop The Steal, a movement of 500 volunteers who plan to stand outside what they believe could be “suspect precincts” on Election Day and conduct their own exit polls to compare against voting machine results.

“In an election in which Donald Trump has made it pretty clear that the Clintons are going to prison, I think they would do anything to make sure they win it, even steal it,” Mr. Stone said. But, he added, “Trump cannot just lose and say, ‘They stole it.’ He has to have some tangible evidence — and that’s exactly what we’re trying to collect.”

Democrats fear that Mr. Trump’s accusations, in the short term, will lead to voter suppression — and, in the long term, could encourage huge swaths of Americans to view Mrs. Clinton as an illegitimate president if she is elected. “He’s using phrases like ‘rigged election’ to incite his followers to rig the election by using tactics like voter intimidation, and I don’t think it’s particularly subtle, and I don’t think he cares about the integrity of our elections,” said Stacey Abrams, the Democratic minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Ms. Abrams, who is African­American and has worked on voting­rights issues, is also the founder of the New Georgia Project, a voter registration and engagement effort in the state. She said Mr. Trump was employing a “voter intimidation model.” “Just scare them away from the polling place,” she said. “That’s his crude form of voter suppression — not particularly artful, but effective.”

The Clinton campaign is stressing to supporters that they expect voter participation to be higher and easier than in previous elections — but it has also
begun recruiting election lawyers to help with voter protection efforts. “We are prepared for anything in terms of how he chooses to conduct himself in the closing weeks of this campaign, and that includes what is increasingly looking like a scorched­earth approach,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign. “He is clearly trying to lay a foundation for challenging the legitimacy of the potential next president, just as he sought to do with the nation’s first AfricanAmerican president.”

With less than a month until the election, Mr. Trump’s grievances has come fast and furious as he has begun to slip again in the polls. On Thursday, Mr. Trump also asserted, without offering evidence, that the Obama administration was allowing illegal immigrants to enter the country to vote
in November, another example of how he claimed the election was being rigged. “They’re letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote,” Mr. Trump said at a meeting in New York with the National Border Patrol Council, the union of border patrol agents.

There has been no evidence that the administration is delaying deportations of — or intentionally letting in — immigrants so they can vote. (Illegal immigrants are barred from voting in federal elections.)

Mr. Trump’s claims seem to be resonating among his supporters. At a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, a woman stood up and, her voice quavering, said she feared “voter fraud” before offering a stark call to action to Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Mr. Trump’s running mate.

“If Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I’m ready for a revolution because we can’t have her in,” the woman said. Mr. Pence has emerged as Mr. Trump’s most loyal defender. But the call to revolt was a step too far for him. “Yeah, don’t say that,” he said, shaking his right hand as if to try to brush away her comment. He then tried for a more positive spin: “There’s a revolution coming on November the 8th,” he said. “I promise you.”

Correction: October 13, 2016
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the day of the week that Donald J. Trump had a rally in West Palm Beach. It was Thursday, not Friday.

Link

EDIT:

You know what? I don't care. You are pretty near the last person on Earth I would look to for guidance on what it is appropriate to think, or say.

I thought that was my job?

[Q99]

We know why the Nowcast went down anyway- Rasmussen's sudden inexplicable 6-point-swing. Not something to take too seriously.

If it started as a joke*, my guess is that a Clinton supporter made the joke. Something along the lines of All Trump needs to do to win is #repealthe19th. Then that tweet gets retweeted without the context of the rest of that persons tweets and it gets out of control.
It wouldn't be the first time I've seen people get really angry over a tweet that they see without the context of the authors other tweets. Or the first time people have had trouble communicating that they aren't serious over a text based medium.

*I'll admit that it might have started by someone being serious. I have no proof either way.

The first tweet largely doesn't matter- a lot of other people jumped on taking it seriously, or a "just-joking-ha-ha-but-no-really," 'joke'.

[bilateralrope]

Mr. Trump’s claims seem to be resonating among his supporters. At a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, a woman stood up and, her voice quavering, said she feared “voter fraud” before offering a stark call to action to Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Mr. Trump’s running mate.

“If Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I’m ready for a revolution because we can’t have her in,” the woman said. Mr. Pence has emerged as Mr. Trump’s most loyal defender. But the call to revolt was a step too far for him. “Yeah, don’t say that,” he said, shaking his right hand as if to try to brush away her comment. He then tried for a more positive spin: “There’s a revolution coming on November the 8th,” he said. “I promise you.”

How can we interpret this other than as a promise of violence should Trump lose ?

[Crazedwraith]

Mr. Trump’s claims seem to be resonating among his supporters. At a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, a woman stood up and, her voice quavering, said she feared “voter fraud” before offering a stark call to action to Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Mr. Trump’s running mate.

“If Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I’m ready for a revolution because we can’t have her in,” the woman said. Mr. Pence has emerged as Mr. Trump’s most loyal defender. But the call to revolt was a step too far for him. “Yeah, don’t say that,” he said, shaking his right hand as if to try to brush away her comment. He then tried for a more positive spin: “There’s a revolution coming on November the 8th,” he said. “I promise you.”

How can we interpret this other than as a promise of violence should Trump lose ?

It's sound like he explicitly discouraging violence and just means 'there will be a social revolution when we win'

[The Romulan Republic]

We know why the Nowcast went down anyway- Rasmussen's sudden inexplicable 6-point-swing. Not something to take too seriously.

If it started as a joke*, my guess is that a Clinton supporter made the joke. Something along the lines of All Trump needs to do to win is #repealthe19th. Then that tweet gets retweeted without the context of the rest of that persons tweets and it gets out of control.
It wouldn't be the first time I've seen people get really angry over a tweet that they see without the context of the authors other tweets. Or the first time people have had trouble communicating that they aren't serious over a text based medium.

*I'll admit that it might have started by someone being serious. I have no proof either way.

The first tweet largely doesn't matter- a lot of other people jumped on taking it seriously, or a "just-joking-ha-ha-but-no-really," 'joke'.

Hmm, doesn't Rasmussen have something of a history of skewing Rightward?

Actually, given the superiority of the Democrats' get out the vote machine, I wouldn't be surprised if polling in general is chronically underestimating the actual Democratic numbers.

[Q99]

[
Hmm, doesn't Rasmussen have something of a history of skewing Rightward?

What, Rasmussen, skewing rightward? Pff. They correctly predicting Romney's victory when everyone else was calling it for that O'hara fellow!

They are a real polling firm, they don't just make up numbers, but frankly such a big shift seems like adjusting demographic weighing to give something more in line with what they want.

Actually, given the superiority of the Democrats' get out the vote machine, I wouldn't be surprised if polling in general is chronically underestimating the actual Democratic numbers.

Political scientists are quite interested in this because we've never seen one get-out-the-vote machine so hampered, or a year where the traditionally high-turnout conservative vote has so much reason to be depressed (the Trumpite audience coming from lower turnout sectors).

Also of note, Hillary's 'low' approval rating is truthfully a 'lopsided' approval rating. White Americans aren't fans of her. Black, Asian, and Hispanic Americans? Quite popular!

[Ziggy Stardust]

Its just... is 40% of the country really still okay with Trump?

The best analogy I've heard for Trump is that he is a brick being thrown through the window of the government to get attention. It's not so much that the people like the brick itself that much (although, there are the segment of loud crazies out there that do), it's that they know it's going to be successful in making noise and getting themselves heard.

The fact is, regardless of what he does, Trump is seen by a certain segment of the population as their ONLY chance for being heard and represented in government. These areas of the country that are predominantly white, poor, and rural have been suffering for decades due to the loss of manufacturing and industry jobs. Even if the anger of these people is thrown in the wrong direction (blaming, for example, atheists, minorities, liberals, etc. for their disenfranchisement) by blowhards like Trump and the Tea Party, it's hard to argue that they don't have a reason to be angry at all.

[Vendetta]

40% of the country would vote for a dead weasel if it had an R next to its name.

Based on, well, whatever that is on top of Donald Trump's head, this year is the evidence of that.