The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Terralthra]

The shenanigans going on at the roll-call vote are kinda hilarious. D.C. and Utah, among others, have had their voice votes ignored by the RNC chair and secretary.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yep.

Its basically making Trump nominee by RNC chair fiat.

Hopefully this'll push more people out of the Republicans into either the Democrat or Libertarian camps.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying Trump would have lost otherwise. But I dare say they're trying to give a false appearance of greater unity than their is, to get everyone in lockstep behind the bloated fascist fuck.

[Soontir C'boath]

Didn't basically the same thing happen in '12? Obama managed to define Romney without moving the needle and lo and behold?

Trump has insofar shown he is a different beast than any other candidate in recent memory wherein he's been the definition of being undefined.

Just as people including Nate Silver discounted Trump's ability to win the GOP nomination, it looks like the same is and will be happening for the general.

[Gaidin]

Trump has insofar shown he is a different beast than any other candidate in recent memory wherein he's been the definition of being undefined.

Just as people including Nate Silver discounted Trump's ability to win the GOP nomination, it looks like the same is and will be happening for the general.

And I'm supposed to expect him to want his wife to be defined by 2-3 days of press ranting about plagiarism? Come on. He's at least that normal. Look. The campaigns are at least normal enough that they'll be within 2-6 points of each other for most of it. It's about who defines each other first. It's about who's making what public blunders thanks to what. And both sides are doing it. It is, well, relatively even. The question is who can recover. And at that point it is a question of apparatus. And now you need to ask yourself who has it and who just bullshits when he gets on stage.

[maraxus2]

Didn't basically the same thing happen in '12? Obama managed to define Romney without moving the needle and lo and behold?

Trump has insofar shown he is a different beast than any other candidate in recent memory wherein he's been the definition of being undefined.

Just as people including Nate Silver discounted Trump's ability to win the GOP nomination, it looks like the same is and will be happening for the general.

And if he'd stuck with his normal method, I.E. placing your bets on whoever's consistently leading in the polls, he'd have been correct for both the Dems and the GOP.

If you have some particular reason to think that Trump's immune to normal campaigning (as opposed to having 16 opponents who were mostly garbage), I'd love to see it. I suspect you pulled this out of your ass tho.

All of the available evidence suggests that Trump is running an unusually poor campaign.

[Soontir C'boath]

If you have some particular reason to think that Trump's immune to normal campaigning (as opposed to having 16 opponents who were mostly garbage), I'd love to see it. I suspect you pulled this out of your ass tho.

I am sorry, but when the consensus was that Trump was not going to win the GOP nomination, you can't just turn it around that the other candidates were garbage. On top of that, you and I know that there is an anti-establishment bent that the other candidates could not take on or destroy in Trump even if they were Romney or McCain.

So please, don't tell me what you suspect when you should look at yourself in the mirror in that regard.

He has ran a poor campaign and I agree with that, and yet it has not shown in tangible terms.

[maraxus2]

I am sorry, but when the consensus was that Trump was not going to win the GOP nomination, you can't just turn it around that the other candidates were garbage. On top of that, you and I know that there is an anti-establishment bent that the other candidates could not take on or destroy in Trump.

So please, don't tell me what you suspect when you should look at yourself in the mirror in that regard.

He has ran a poor campaign and I agree with that, and yet it has not shown in tangible terms.

You absolutely can, especially when a majority of candidates voted for someone other than Donald Trump. If you care to dig deep enough, you can find plenty of reasons why Trump's win, while unusual, was not especially strong. The man had 16 opponents, nearly all of whom spent time trying to attack someone other than Trump. They utterly failed to message-test any arguments that would destroy him (They were going on about him not being sufficiently conservative, for Christ's sake). They also, particularly in the later part of the campaign, focused quite openly on political machinations to steal the nomination from Trump, machinations which they know full well voters hate and despise. As for that ol' anti-establishment line, there's not really a whole lot of evidence that this electorate is particularly more anti-establishment than, say, 2008 or 1992. Even if it were, Cruz should have had at least as good of a shot at cornering that vote, given that his entire raison d'être is to piss in the GOP establishment's eye.

No, what this election revealed to me is not that the Trump is particularly strong, but that the GOP is institutionally weak with little connection to their Primary voters. It turns out that people basically don't give a fuck if you keep talking about taxes and cutting regulation, etc, etc. They're just straight-up racists for the most part. Some of them are good at hiding it/deflecting away from it, but they're basically just racist.

As for it not showing up in tangible terms, do you mean apart from him never leading in a national polling aggregate so far? Or him never having 270 electoral votes so far? Which of these terms do you consider intangible?

[Soontir C'boath]

I am sorry, but when the consensus was that Trump was not going to win the GOP nomination, you can't just turn it around that the other candidates were garbage. On top of that, you and I know that there is an anti-establishment bent that the other candidates could not take on or destroy in Trump.

So please, don't tell me what you suspect when you should look at yourself in the mirror in that regard.

He has ran a poor campaign and I agree with that, and yet it has not shown in tangible terms.

You absolutely can, especially when a majority of candidates voted for someone other than Donald Trump. If you care to dig deep enough, you can find plenty of reasons why Trump's win, while unusual, was not especially strong. The man had 16 opponents, nearly all of whom spent time trying to attack someone other than Trump.

Everyone didn't think he'd be a threat. Everyone thought he was a fucking joke at the time to bother with him.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

They utterly failed to message-test any arguments that would destroy him (They were going on about him not being sufficiently conservative, for Christ's sake). They also, particularly in the later part of the campaign, focused quite openly on political machinations to steal the nomination from Trump, machinations which they know full well voters hate and despise.

Which at this point was too late.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

As for that ol' anti-establishment line, there's not really a whole lot of evidence that this electorate is particularly more anti-establishment than, say, 2008 or 1992. Even if it were, Cruz should have had at least as good of a shot at cornering that vote, given that his entire raison d'être is to piss in the GOP establishment's eye.

No, what this election revealed to me is not that the Trump is particularly strong, but that the GOP is institutionally weak with little connection to their Primary voters. It turns out that people basically don't give a fuck if you keep talking about taxes and cutting regulation, etc, etc. They're just straight-up racists for the most part. Some of them are good at hiding it/deflecting away from it, but they're basically just racist.

Both goes hand in hand actually. They are tired from hearing the establishment the same things over and over again and yet not producing any tangible results.

As for it not showing up in tangible terms, do you mean apart from him never leading in a national polling aggregate so far? Or him never having 270 electoral votes so far? Which of these terms do you consider intangible?

And yet we are afraid of Bernie supporters not voting for Hillary? That if we flood Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, Bernie supporters are to blame if Trump wins?

And as said by Flagg, it's too early to tell in regards with national polls. So which is it you all want because you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Soontir C'boath]

Everyone didn't think he'd be a threat. Everyone thought he was a fucking joke at the time to bother with him.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

Let me expand on this. When Nate fucking Silver was basically the figurehead of people at the time refusing to believe Trump could win the nomination even despite his own polling, how can you say they didn't do enough to stop Trump when they thought he was shrimp and not a threat except only in hindsight? lol

[Flagg]

I think Silver along with many other pundits and even candidates assumed this cycle was going to be a repeat of 2012 where you had the batshit crazy clownshoes fucker of the month until late Spring when the adults (by comparison) would take over and a solid establishment douche like Romney would become the presumptive nominee. The problem is that there are no more "adults" in the GOP.

[Knife]

The adults are liberal spies and RINO's.

[Mr Bean]

The adults are liberal spies and RINO's.

It's less that than the base is pissed, and they have continued to get even more pissed year by year since 2010. Every other year they vote and they seem to lose on more and more issues. Not the important issues mind you the rich are getting richer but the less important but much more noticeable issues like gay marriage and now immigration not to mention the ongoing attacks in Europe are stoking that good old fire of Hate of the Other pretty hard.

Long and short of it is, Trump has embraced that anger, channeled it and is looking to win a turnout battle with an extra four or five million pissed of people than trying to convince the normal eight million independents. If the last six years of district redrawing and voter suppression efforts are successful enough he just might do it.

Also there is the Clinton thing, the more people hear her speak the less they like her. Everyone already hates Trump, but can Hillary remain only disliked long enough to win?

2016 race to the bottom!

[maraxus2]

Everyone didn't think he'd be a threat. Everyone thought he was a fucking joke at the time to bother with him.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

Yeah, people thought he was a joke until he went to the top of the polls and then stayed there. Then people very much saw him as a threat. By the time the first Debate rolled around, the candidates either attacked him (badly), ignored him (foolishly), or tried to co-opt him (hamhandedly).

As for me only having hindsight, what can I say? Is that a bad thing, when we're talking about mistakes that candidates made in the past? You don't even have hindsight; you just have gut instinct.

Which at this point was too late.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

Which does not refute my point that they were garbage candidates. Repeating yourself does not make you more right.

Both goes hand in hand actually. They are tired from hearing the establishment the same things over and over again and yet not producing any tangible results.

If you have evidence for this, please present it.

]And yet we are afraid of Bernie supporters not voting for Hillary? That if we flood Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, Bernie supporters are to blame if Trump wins?

Who's afraid of Johnson and Stein? I'm certainly not. Clinton's campaign certainly doesn't seem to be. "if we flood Jill Stein and Gary Johnson" indeed. Bernie's supporters were already moving into Hillary's camp before Sanders' endorsement. There is every reason to think that most of, if not virtually all, of his supporters will end up voting for Hillary by the time the election is over. It's really just knuckleheads like you who haven't quite gotten the message yet, and nobody gives a shit about how NYC votes.

And as said by Flagg, it's too early to tell in regards with national polls. So which is it you all want because you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Do you understand that there is a difference between saying "Don't piss your pants; this is one poll at a time when they're not super reliable" and saying "Candidate X is weak because they haven't lead in polling aggregations all year?"

Flagg is simply wrong on that point. The polls do indeed become more accurate the closer we get to an election, but it's not as though they're useless. In fact, this is right around the time that they start becoming useful. You just have to couple it with lots of other data to give your view of the election more texture. In my view, the picture so far says that Trump has no fucking idea how to run a national campaign, and it's going to seriously bite him in the ass in November.

Let me expand on this. When Nate fucking Silver was basically the figurehead of people at the time refusing to believe Trump could win the nomination even despite his own polling, how can you say they didn't do enough to stop Trump when they thought he was shrimp and not a threat except only in hindsight? lol

Because Nate Silver is a pundit, not a candidate. Jesus Christ, this should not be difficult to explain. Candidates have tens if not hundreds of people whose sole job is to win them an election. There are lots of crafty people involved in a campaign who know how to read a poll at least as well as Nate Silver does, if not better. Those people didn't do enough to stop Trump because they can read polls and they should have fucking known better.

Does that help clarify?

Also there is the Clinton thing, the more people hear her speak the less they like her. Everyone already hates Trump, but can Hillary remain only disliked long enough to win?

[Citation Needed]

[Mr Bean]

Also there is the Clinton thing, the more people hear her speak the less they like her. Everyone already hates Trump, but can Hillary remain only disliked long enough to win?

[Citation Needed]

No but seriously Real Clear politics has a pretty direct line. When talking about Secretary Clinton one must remember she is a former lawyer and speaks as a Lawyer does and this rubs Americans the wrong way because she parses tiny comments. Look for another massive dislike spike post debate regardless of the debate outcome because of her responses to Trump unless she manages to be 100% canned responses will revert to her natural inclination to pick at the tiniest things.

The more this election goes on the more Secretary Clinton will have a chance to share her vision and the more people will dislike her. Unless you content TRUMP is the reason for her sky high dislikes and slowly increasing unfavorable ratings.

[Flagg]

Flagg is simply wrong on that point. The polls do indeed become more accurate the closer we get to an election, but it's not as though they're useless. In fact, this is right around the time that they start becoming useful. You just have to couple it with lots of other data to give your view of the election more texture. In my view, the picture so far says that Trump has no fucking idea how to run a national campaign, and it's going to seriously bite him in the ass in November.

What I actually said is that at this point I don't put much stock in polls and that national polls are pretty much useless since the popular vote doesn't count. I also said that when they start doing polls in swing states after the conventions and the debates start is when you get a far more accurate picture.

[maraxus2]

No but seriously Real Clear politics has a pretty direct line.

That's true, although it's probably more to do with being in campaign mode, and the Comey stuff doesn't help. Plus she's never been a particularly warm and fuzzy politician.

When talking about Secretary Clinton one must remember she is a former lawyer and speaks as a Lawyer does and this rubs Americans the wrong way because she parses tiny comments. Look for another massive dislike spike post debate regardless of the debate outcome because of her responses to Trump unless she manages to be 100% canned responses will revert to her natural inclination to pick at the tiniest things.

Sigh. You were doing so well until you started mining your nether regions for talking points again.

The more this election goes on the more Secretary Clinton will have a chance to share her vision and the more people will dislike her. Unless you content TRUMP is the reason for her sky high dislikes and slowly increasing unfavorable ratings.

No, I'd contend* that the last 24 years of irrational hatred and outright misogyny is the prime reason behind her sky-high dislikes and unfavorability rating. It's hard to be popular or govern with a mandate when an entire political party has sought to delegitimize you for the last 20+ years.

In other news, Vilsack Maybe? Pls No.

Vilsack stock rises as Clinton nears VP pick
The former Iowa governor is the subject of increasing speculation within Clinton’s political orbit.
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI and HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH 07/19/16 05:20 AM EDT

LAS VEGAS — Fast approaching her final decision on a running mate, Hillary Clinton appears to be looking closely at Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Labor Secretary Tom Perez, say multiple people who are in regular contact with her inner circle.

But it’s another member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet whose stock has been steadily and notably rising in recent days, vaulting him into what close Clinton friends call the “top tier": Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

A subject of increasing speculation within Clinton’s political orbit over the past two weeks, the former Iowa governor was also the talk of Democrats at the National Governors Association meeting in Des Moines over the weekend, said people familiar with the proceedings — especially after Donald Trump introduced another Midwestern state executive, Indiana’s Mike Pence, as his own running mate.

While Kaine, a former governor himself, is still widely regarded as the front-runner for the job by those in attendance, a handful of Vilsack’s fellow current and former Midwestern governors advocated for him behind closed doors during the proceedings, and the secretary himself suggested in conversations there that he was under serious consideration, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

The timing of the surge of attention couldn’t come at a better time for the man who has been recently increasing his national media presence through a series of interviews and public events as a surrogate. Over the weekend, he went so far as to defend his foreign policy chops during a Sunday show appearance.

Clinton is likely to announce her pick in the coming days, almost certainly in the time between the Republican convention and her own — and possibly during her first general election campaign trip to Florida on Friday and Saturday, to minimize any bump in the polls Trump receives from his Cleveland convention.

The presumptive Democratic nominee has increasingly been appearing with her vice-presidential hopefuls in the days leading up to that moment, including Kaine on Thursday and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown on Monday, and the candidate and a gaggle of her top aides spent Friday at her Washington home to go over her options.

A handful of them — including Housing Secretary Julián Castro, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper — stopped by for in-person meetings, as Clinton has sought to get to know them better.

That’s not a concern for Vilsack, the single prospect who has had a long personal relationship with the former secretary of state, dating back decades before they served four years in the same Cabinet. That relationship has bolstered his boosters’ case for him in recent days, but they also note that he could stand to play a significant role as Clinton courts white working-class men — especially in rural areas — in the Midwest, a constituency she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are particularly concerned about as Trump targets them.

Clinton largely lost blue-collar white men to Bernie Sanders in the primary, and a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last week showed that 75 percent of white men hold an unfavorable view of her.

Vilsack demurred on Monday when POLITICO asked whether he is currently going through Team Clinton’s vetting process — “Has anyone ever answered that question?” he shot back — but he did speak in general terms about the factors that are fueling his apparent rise.

“I’m a workhorse, not a show horse,” said the former two-term governor, who has long been rumored as a potential chief of staff in a Clinton White House, echoing a line that the candidate herself often uses when talking about her work in the Senate. “Not a rock star; I’m rock solid. I’m all about doing, and getting things done. It’s not in my nature to market myself. My nature is to market what we’re doing in my department, and in my state. I don’t know if that’s the reason, but we work hard down here, and we get things done."

Vilsack — like Kaine — doesn’t have a fiery campaign trail presence and is unlikely to be the running mate chosen if Clinton and her advisers determine that she’s most in need of a high-profile attack dog to take on Trump. He’s started referring to Trump as the “Bernie Madoff of politics” in interviews, but some Democrats have started cracking that Vilsack practically makes Kaine — often cast as the boring one — look interesting by comparison.

Vilsack’s trail presence for months has been more focused on lavishing praise on Clinton. Last August, for example, Vilsack’s adoration for Clinton was on full display as he introduced her in Ankeny, Iowa, before she unveiled her rural policy platform — which he helped craft. He listed all of her accomplishments and talked about their friendship and their shared political history. His 15-minute introduction of the former secretary of state was so complimentary it was almost overkill.

“I will and my wife will always remain loyal to our friend, Hillary Clinton,” said Vilsack, the longest-serving member of the Cabinet, who’s traveled to all 50 states in that capacity but maintained a relatively low national profile,

“Talk about somebody who studies a problem, asks for advice about what will work, puts together teams, collaborates and then delivers,” Clinton said as she took the stage. “He is exhibit A.”

Yet after the presumptive Republican nominee tapped the little-known Pence over the bomb-throwing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday, many Democrats’ concern about the need for a sharp-elbowed running mate dissipated, figuring that a relatively fireworks-free Pence-Kaine or Pence-Vilsack debate would not be likely to harm Clinton’s chances.

A relatively low-key public profile, after all, ranks low on the list of running-mate concerns compared to the prospect of losing an Ohio Senate seat to Republicans if Clinton were to choose Brown. And Vilsack supporters insist he could be a net positive on the campaign trail if he began talking more about his own background, starting with his early life in a Pittsburgh orphanage.

Clinton is aware, however, of the perception that by choosing someone like Kaine or Vilsack she would be playing it safe — one reason her campaign has been happy to maintain a sense of unpredictability by keeping a long list of hopefuls in the public discussion.

Still, sketching out the electoral map, people close to Clinton see Vilsack as a potentially useful tool as they court both the voters who eluded her during the primary and those of Iowa, a crucial swing state.

“I believe he’s always been in the circle of people that not only Hillary is considering, but I’m sure her advisers, including Bill, and others see [as] a viable running mate,” explained former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, also pointing to Vilsack’s roots in Pennsylvania, another likely battleground. “He’s someone who can relate to white men in rural areas, small towns and communities."

Both Iowans pointed to Ohio and Wisconsin as other strategically useful swing states where a rural focus could benefit Clinton — each of which also has a tight Senate race that could be swayed by a strong rural performance.

“I don’t want to compare myself to other people [in contention for the job], but I will tell you I’ve spoken with so many groups and I’ve represented those folks as a small-town lawyer, as a small-town mayor, as a state senator, then representing the state. I understand those folks and their struggles,” Vilsack said. “In this particular election, given the uneasiness people have about Mr. Trump in small towns where I’ve been working, there’s an openness [to Democrats].”

People in contact with Clinton’s inner circle often note that the former secretary of state and first lady — having seen two president-vice president relationships up close — is eager to find someone she can easily work with, and Vilsack’s long history with both the candidate and Bill Clinton is likely a point in his favor.

They first met over 40 years ago, when Hillary Clinton and Vilsack’s late brother-in-law, Tom Bell, worked together on the Senate Watergate Committee. They grew closer during Bill Clinton’s White House tenure, when she helped his 1998 campaign that made him Iowa’s first Democratic governor in three decades — Christie Vilsack, who works as a top official at U.S. Agency for International Development, often tells friends about the time she and her husand stayed in the White House in the late 1990s, when he was still in the Iowa state Senate. The Vilsacks and then-President Bill Clinton stayed up until the wee hours of the morning visiting over Diet Cokes.

After Vilsack ended his own short-lived 2008 presidential bid, he became a top surrogate for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in her race against Obama.

Vilsack has already quietly been involved with her campaign in recent months, and they still speak regularly, said people close to them both: In early 2015, he directly urged Clinton to install Matt Paul — his longtime aide, and now one of Clinton’s senior traveling advisers — to run her team in Iowa after hearing that she was leaning in another direction.

The one big political blemish Vilsack has on his record is the 2010 firestorm over his firing of Shirley Sherrod, a Georgia USDA official whom the late Andrew Breitbart had accused of making racist statements that were quickly debunked. The Obama administration later apologized and offered Sherrod her job back, though she declined the offer.

The current chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Mike Conaway, a Republican from Texas, praised Vilsack — even though he’s supporting Trump.

“He’s a capable guy. I give him good marks for what he did as secretary of ag for 7½ years,” Conaway told POLITICO. “It’s not surprising that someone of his caliber and quality would be on her shortlist.”

Catherine Boudreau and Ian Kullgren contributed to this report.

[Mr Bean]

Oh maraxus2, need I remind you it's been over two hundred and twenty five days since Secretary Clinton has held a press conference. Secretary Clinton does not do well when she does not know what's coming and can't give canned answers. But we've know this since 2008 during the Clinton vs Obama debates we saw how horribly she did when presented with a question she was not expecting and how needlessly nitpicking her answer would be.

Don't you remember this moment from this year?

Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, and I'm very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60%. [Cheers and applause.] So I— I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.

[maraxus2]

Oh maraxus2, need I remind you it's been over two hundred and twenty five days since Secretary Clinton has held a press conference. Secretary Clinton does not do well when she does not know what's coming and can't give canned answers. But we've know this since 2008 during the Clinton vs Obama debates we saw how horribly she did when presented with a question she was not expecting and how needlessly nitpicking her answer would be.

Don't you remember this moment from this year?

Sorry, so your evidence that people don't like Clinton because she gives Lawyerly answers is: A. the fact that she hasn't given a press conference, and B. she had a shitty debate answer?

I am not impressed.

[Broomstick]

It's not a matter of do people hate or like Clinton, it's do they hate her more or less than they hate Trump? Because both those characters are more loathed than liked, so it will come down to which of them induces less vomit in the general election.

[Exonerate]

At a certain point of dislike, voters will just sit out the election (well, more than they already do) out of disgust instead of voting for the candidate they slightly dislike less.

The Republican voters will rally around Trump. It doesn't matter what his many deep and serious flaws are, all that matters is that he's Republican and talks like a winner - that will be enough to whip up enthusiasm for a substantial amount of the Republican base. Clinton's job will be to inspire enough people to turn out for her, or that failing, at least inspire enough fear of a Trump presidency.I dislike Clinton and I'm worried about her ability to get voters - she's always come off as plastic to me.

[Napoleon the Clown]

My biggest concern with regards to Clinton is the Republicans being even more obstructionist than they are now. They'll launch probes into what she had for lunch, if she wasted tax payer money on tipping a server "too much" or maybe she's not flushing the exact right number of times when she takes a shit. Blocking every piece of legislation just to spite her, etc.

And without a Democrat supermajority, we're in for more of what Obama has been facing, possibly to an even larger extent.

[Gandalf]

My biggest concern with regards to Clinton is the Republicans being even more obstructionist than they are now. They'll launch probes into what she had for lunch, if she wasted tax payer money on tipping a server "too much" or maybe she's not flushing the exact right number of times when she takes a shit. Blocking every piece of legislation just to spite her, etc.

And without a Democrat supermajority, we're in for more of what Obama has been facing, possibly to an even larger extent.

Wouldn't they do that with any Democratic president?

Being obstructionist worked well for them because of the Democratic position of "Governments can do stuff." If they prevent stuff from occurring, it makes the Democrats look ineffective to their voters, and Republican voters get to see their guys fight the Democratic antichrist.

[Simon_Jester]

Various reasons come to mind:

--Treasonous/criminal (the email thing)
--Corrupt (Wall Street)
--Transferred a certain hatred of Bill Clinton over onto her (history). This includes fun stuff like Vince Foster and all that.
--Democrat. Worth a pretty decent degree of dislike if your party affliation leans towards the right.
--Straight up good ol' misogyny. Or is that misanthropy? Misandry? Whatever. "Only MEN should be President, that's what the Founding Fathers intended, blah blah".

I'm sure there's more if you want to dig into that particular black hole.

EDIT: And of course there's the whole Obama thing. Either her being semi-racist during the 2008 race, or working for him and thus being tarred with the same brush. Neither will endear her to anybody.

So... basically, Clinton is laboring under the disadvantages of having been the target of a twenty-five-year smear campaign.

The American public has finally polarized into two camps. One of them assumes that every accusation made against Clinton is true, in which case she's basically the worst politician ever in that she's assassinated a small army of inconvenient people, taken massive bribes, et cetera, et cetera. The other camp has concluded that 90% or more of them are self-serving lies and swiftboating whipped up by her enemies, so that it's best to just ignore literally all the scandals and try to judge her on other qualifications.

Didn't basically the same thing happen in '12? Obama managed to define Romney without moving the needle and lo and behold?

Trump has insofar shown he is a different beast than any other candidate in recent memory wherein he's been the definition of being undefined.

Just as people including Nate Silver discounted Trump's ability to win the GOP nomination, it looks like the same is and will be happening for the general.

The catch is that Trump may be able to break some of the 'laws' of American political science without breaking others. His style of campaigning may work brilliantly with Republican primary voters and a highly specific slice of independents, without working among the nation at large. He may actively mobilize minorities and youths to vote against him at unexpected high rates, even if they couldn't care less about Clinton. He may do all sorts of unforeseen things.

Moreover, he'll be up against a much higher level of competition and investigation as a presidential candidate. Most of his rival Republicans in the primary were reluctant to focus the big guns against him, or did not want to try airing his dirty laundry. Or they could not do so while sticking to accepted Republican narratives in which business and capitalism are positive goods, xenophobia, racism and sexism and so forth are rarely denounced, and 'entrepreneurs' are the saving grace of American society.

Clinton has very little to lose by doing that.

Now, Clinton does have significant weaknesses, and handling the press and the debates appears to be one of them. I don't know how that will play out.

You absolutely can, especially when a majority of candidates voted for someone other than Donald Trump. If you care to dig deep enough, you can find plenty of reasons why Trump's win, while unusual, was not especially strong. The man had 16 opponents, nearly all of whom spent time trying to attack someone other than Trump.

Everyone didn't think he'd be a threat. Everyone thought he was a fucking joke at the time to bother with him.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

Yes. However, the Clinton campaign is not going to be treating him like a joke, nor is the national media, at this point.

There was a widespread expectation, I think, that Trump would turn out to be like many of the flash-in-the-pan Republican candidates who ran in 2012 (Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and so on). People who were leaders in the polls for a little while, and then totally melted down. Or people would see him as a Republican version of Howard Dean- again, a figure who got a substantial base fired up but then melted down and lost it due to his poor media presentation.

So yes, at first the candidates realized that Trump didn't just have a trivial and temporary lead- the candidate with 15% support while the other 85% is split evenly among ten people is NOT necessarily going to be the winner. But they wasted a great deal of time and energy throwing rocks at each other, while Trump just stuck to his guns and gradually absorbed a larger and larger share of the support base until he had overwhelming momentum.

That's simply not a factor here. No one has any reason BUT to target Trump and hack at his reputation, and he presents a large and vulnerable target to that kind of hacking. He's easy to catch in lies, a lot of people already despise him, and he has easily publicized failures and bankruptcies on his record that greatly undermine any attempt on his part to run on the strength of his business experience.

Does Trump have a chance, could he conceivably win? Yes. Is it likely? Honestly... I do not think so, because it would require yet another wave of people, who have every reason to be his committed enemies instead of being ambiguous about him, to screw up.

They utterly failed to message-test any arguments that would destroy him (They were going on about him not being sufficiently conservative, for Christ's sake). They also, particularly in the later part of the campaign, focused quite openly on political machinations to steal the nomination from Trump, machinations which they know full well voters hate and despise.

Which at this point was too late.

It's funny what we can say in hindsight and that's all you have.

No, his argument is that in hindsight, Trump's rivals for the Republican nomination made some easily identified mistakes. They squabbled among themselves, they considered Trump a joke candidate for long enough that he got ample time to gather momentum, and many of them were ideologically unwilling or unable to seriously point out some of Trump's most important deficiencies as a candidate.

These are mistakes which Clinton and the Democratic Party are relatively unlikely to repeat now that they have Trump as a single enemy (no distractions and no one else masking his significance as their opponent) without the same ideological ballast (fewer of their voters are going to be confused or upset if Clinton points out what a lying, backstabbing, con man Trump is).

Whereas you are arguing, apparently, that Trump's victory over his Republican rivals proves that he has some kind of special unique shield against politics that prevents anyone from beating him for any reason, with all the usual rules being suspended due to his sheer blowhard-ness or something.

As for it not showing up in tangible terms, do you mean apart from him never leading in a national polling aggregate so far? Or him never having 270 electoral votes so far? Which of these terms do you consider intangible?

And yet we are afraid of Bernie supporters not voting for Hillary? That if we flood Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, Bernie supporters are to blame if Trump wins?

And as said by Flagg, it's too early to tell in regards with national polls. So which is it you all want because you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Thing is, you're arguing that the polls are meaningless, therefore the result will be the opposite of what the polls predict. This is inherently a weaker argument than saying "polls aren't very meaningful but if the polls consistently show Trump losing, then the preponderance of the evidence at this time suggests that Trump will probably lose."

[Gandalf]

Just saw Mike Pence do his speech. I think the best thing I can say about him is that he looks like Gary Cole doing a comedy character.

Though he makes me wonder what the fuck is up with Indiana for voting for this guy.

[Q99]

It is interesting to note Hillary has never been charged with a crime. That's not just not-convincing, that's not even charged or indicted for anything. Heck, even Comey pretty much said that he'd charge her if he could but they never charge people for that kind of thing.

People really, really want her charged with crimes. People with the powers to do so. Either she already controls government (she doesn't), or she's actually not guilty of what she's accused of. Guilty of making mistakes and misjudgements and violating policy to be sure, but nothing on the levels accused.

My biggest concern with regards to Clinton is the Republicans being even more obstructionist than they are now. They'll launch probes into what she had for lunch, if she wasted tax payer money on tipping a server "too much" or maybe she's not flushing the exact right number of times when she takes a shit. Blocking every piece of legislation just to spite her, etc.

And without a Democrat supermajority, we're in for more of what Obama has been facing, possibly to an even larger extent.

Very much their standard operating procedure- which is why it was important to pick someone who knew the government levers and how to pull stuff against obstructionism.


Heck, for that matter, the Republicans are increasingly 'my way or the highway, no compromise' with each other. The lack of alliances is what sunk attempts to sink Trump.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I just saw Ted Cruz reject endorsing the nominee publicly in his own convention. That's the level of refusal to compromise that is in play here as Cruz remains in the game.