The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Q99]

Hillary's got a surprisingly good track record of telling the truth (top fact checked honest of any candidate in the race via politics for), sticking with her stances save in a way consistent with normal people being convinced by allies/people she represents/new experiences, and of sticking with allies long term- see the black community's reciprocal loyalty to her. She won the primary basically on the strength of alliances formed over decades. Which does illustrate in turn, Hillary stuck with those groups for decades.

One can argue it's purely pragmatic, though I doubt it, but the end result is still her functioning in a consistent way that really is better characterized by loyalty than you'd ever think hearing people talk about her.

As for foreign policy, Hillary seems more interested in domestic, does clearly listen to advisors, and is not only willing to engage in diplomacy but is quite good at it, ceasefires in the Mid East and all that. So even if her stance is too aggressive for your taste (definitely influenced by Rwanda), 'listens to advisors' and 'more focused on domestic' and 'actually good at diplomacy' should also factor in to calculations. Someone with a semi aggressive view but good at diplomacy can be better at stopping conflicts than someone who doesn't know what they're doing but has a more peaceful stance- which Trump doesn't anyway.

[Exonerate]

Hillary won the primary because she has good name recognition and her opponents were Bernie Sanders (crazy old socialist) and Martin O'Malley (who? I live in Maryland and I barely know anything about him). And even then Bernie still had a pretty good showing, considering he wasn't even really a Democrat until this election cycle. The Democrats are lucky Trump is the GOP's candidate, if they were able to field a less crazy, more likeable person, this race would be a lot closer.

Hillary is instinctively hawkish in both rhetoric and actions. She voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq then later claimed she did it because she didn't think Bush would actually use it (would you hand a loaded gun to somebody who claims they just want to point it at somebody if you weren't willing to risk that person being shot?). She had a lot of tough rhetoric for Iran up until the deal went through. She championed her application of "smart power" in Libya during the Democratic primary debates, then when people started pointing out Libya is a fucking dumpster fire, backtracked again and tried to blame Obama for it. When she was the one who argued strenuously for intervention in Syria. There's a reason the neocons are willing to support her over Trump.

Let's leave motivation out of it for a moment - in any case, I think it's a distraction. I'm sure Bush had the best of intentions when he invaded Iraq, but in the end, it was still a disaster. What I see from Hillary is a consistent pattern of support for military force, with little elaboration on what the end game is, what the benefits might be, how much it will cost, how it will be achieved, contingency plans for what might go wrong, etc. If somebody knows of a case where military intervention was on the table and Hillary did not come out in favor of it, let me know, because I can't think of any right now.

I'm convinced that considerations like protecting civilians are secondary in the minds of top decision makers at best. What they are is a useful tool to tug at the heartstrings and build political support. It's a little amazing to me that a little more than a decade after no WMD were found in Iraq, people are so uncritical when the government tries to make the case for more military intervention.

[Q99]

Hillary won the primary because she has good name recognition and her opponents were Bernie Sanders (crazy old socialist) and Martin O'Malley (who? I live in Maryland and I barely know anything about him).

That can apply for the first primary or two, but past the first few debates Bernie had very high recognition too. Also, the gap wasn't closing, things went pretty much along demographic lines (sometimes appearing otherwise because we had a string of white states- Bernie country- later on there), suggesting that increases in recognition ceased to have a noticeable impact before long.

Hillary won due to her having the Black/Hispanic coalition, plus wealthier white liberals and the support of most liberal institutions (women's groups, lgbt rights groups, etc.)- groups that not just knew her but *trusted* her due to their history with her. No-where can this be seen more clearly than her wins in the South, where community leaders talked about how she *never* stopped visiting their states, even when they went for Obama over her... and track record with black community vs little track record equaled overwhelming wins throughout the race, in vastly different proportion than recognition would suggest.

Recognition gets overstated. The recognition gap was not a sizable factor for the majority of the race, Democrats supported her policies and stances more when polled issue by issue.

And even then Bernie still had a pretty good showing, considering he wasn't even really a Democrat until this election cycle.

Agreed it was impressive, but it was still fairly much a landslide compared to 8 years ago. Bernie basically captured the classic liberal coalition than candidates like Howard Dean got, plus more outsiders/anti-Hillary types. And while that coalition has grown over the years, it didn't pick up much in the way of new demographics in the meantime.

Hillary is instinctively hawkish in both rhetoric and actions. She voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq then later claimed she did it because she didn't think Bush would actually use it (would you hand a loaded gun to somebody who claims they just want to point it at somebody if you weren't willing to risk that person being shot?). She had a lot of tough rhetoric for Iran up until the deal went through. She championed her application of "smart power" in Libya during the Democratic primary debates, then when people started pointing out Libya is a fucking dumpster fire, backtracked again and tried to blame Obama for it. When she was the one who argued strenuously for intervention in Syria. There's a reason the neocons are willing to support her over Trump.

Trump's foreign policy is an absolute disaster that makes the neocons' foreign policy look smart.

As for Libya, let's remember that was a conflict in-process (including a desert city ordered cut off from food and water. Yea.), which our allies were already moving to get involved in, in which I don't think there's *any* good outcome, just less-bad outcomes, and even if we hadn't been there there would've been intervention.

Yes, Hillary is somewhat hawkish, but she's not a neocon who doesn't look to consequences- indeed, a lot of what she does is listen to foreign policy advisors. She's been deeply influenced by Rwanda- a conflict where we really could've prevented a genocide pretty easily. And... Syria, it's hard to say but preventing the rise of Isis may really have been possible, if we went in with a plan (and a lot of democrat foreign policy advisors were pushing for Obama to do more). The situation may have ended up like Libya rather than what we have now which is, hey, an improvement. Hillary actually does look to planners and thinkers who know the regions when discussing intervention and wants to factor in likely results rather than neocon 'hope for the best', and Hillary also believes in diplomacy first- she has actually negotiated ceasefires in the middle east before and is pro-Iran treaty- and her work as SoS likely played a role in setting up the situation where we got them to the table.

Hillary's not a warhawk who leaps to war, but she is someone who views the military as an option in the toolbox.

The Democrats are lucky Trump is the GOP's candidate, if they were able to field a less crazy, more likeable person, this race would be a lot closer.

No argument there... but then again, let's remember their second pick was Ted Cruz!


I do wonder what a Clinton vs Bush matchup would've been like. You'd hear so much 'dynasty' and 'both sides are the same' talk, I'm sure... (you still hear some of it but it's frankly laughable). It'd really be Clinton legacy vs Bush legacy to so many people.

[SolarpunkFan]

Donald Trump is pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton

Washington (CNN)Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton start the race to November 8 on essentially even ground, with Trump edging Clinton by a scant two points among likely voters, and the contest sparking sharp divisions along demographic lines in a new CNN/ORC Poll.

Trump tops Clinton 45% to 43% in the new survey, with Libertarian Gary Johnson standing at 7% among likely voters in this poll and the Green Party's Jill Stein at just 2%.

The topsy-turvy campaign for the presidency has seen both Clinton and Trump holding a significant lead at some point in the last two months, though Clinton has topped Trump more often than not. Most recently, Clinton's convention propelled her to an 8-point lead among registered voters in an early-August CNN/ORC Poll. Clinton's lead has largely evaporated despite a challenging month for Trump, which saw an overhaul of his campaign staff, announcements of support for Clinton from several high-profile Republicans and criticism of his campaign strategy. But most voters say they still expect to see Clinton prevail in November, and 59% think she will be the one to get to 270 electoral votes vs. 34% who think Trump has the better shot at winning.

Neither major third party candidate appears to be making the gains necessary to reach the 15% threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, with just three weeks to go before the first debate on September 26.
The new poll finds the two major party candidates provoke large gaps by gender, age, race, education and partisanship. Among those likely to turn out in the fall, both candidates have secured about the same share of their own partisans (92% of Democrats back Clinton, 90% of Republicans are behind Trump) but independents give Trump an edge, 49% say they'd vote for him while just 29% of independent voters back Clinton. Another 16% back Johnson, 6% Stein.

Women break for Clinton (53% to 38%) while men shift Trump's way (54% to 32%). Among women, those who are unmarried make up the core of her support, 73% of unmarried women back Clinton compared with just 36% of married women. Among men, no such marriage gap emerges, as both unmarried and married men favor Trump.
Younger voters are in Clinton's corner (54% to 29% among those under age 45) while the older ones are more apt to back Trump (54% to 39% among those age 45 or older). Whites mostly support Trump (55% to 34%), while non-whites favor Clinton by a nearly 4-to-1 margin (71% to 18%). Most college grads back Clinton while those without degrees mostly support Trump, and that divide deepens among white voters. Whites who do not hold college degrees support Trump by an almost 3-to-1 margin (68% to 24%) while whites who do have college degrees split 49% for Clinton to 36% for Trump and 11% for Johnson.

Support for Johnson seems to be concentrated among groups where Clinton could stand to benefit from consolidating voters. Although direct comparison between the poll's two-way, head-to-head matchup and its four-way matchup doesn't suggest that Johnson is pulling disproportionately from either candidate, his supporters come mostly among groups where a strong third-party bid could harm Clinton's standing: Younger voters (particularly younger men), whites with college degrees, and independents, notably.

The poll follows several national polls in August suggesting that the margin between the two candidates had tightened following the conventions. A CNN Poll of Polls analysis released Friday showed that Clinton's lead had been cut in half when compared with the height of her convention bounce.
Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane Tuesday, Clinton shrugged off a question about the CNN/ORC survey.
"I really pay no attention to polls. When they are good for me -- and there have been a lot of them that have been good for me recently -- I don't pay attention," Clinton said. "When they are not so good, I don't pay attention. We are on a course that we are sticking with."
While enthusiasm for the campaign has continued to inch up, it remains well off the mark compared with this point in other recent presidential election years. In the new poll, 46% say they are extremely or very enthusiastic, compared with 57% at this point in 2012, 60% in early September of 2008 and 64% in September 2004.

Further, nearly half of voters say they are less enthusiastic about voting in this election than they have been in previous years, while just 42% say they're more excited about this year's contest. Although this question hasn't been asked in every presidential election year, in CNN/ORC and CNN/USA Today/Gallup results dating back to 2000, this poll marks the first time that a significantly larger share of voters say they are less enthusiastic about this year's election. The lack of enthusiasm spikes among Clinton supporters. A majority of Clinton's supporters say they're less excited about voting this year than usual (55%) while most of Trump's backers say they're more excited this time around (56%).

That could be contributing to Trump's slim advantage among likely voters. Among the broader pool of registered voters, Clinton edges Trump by 3 points. The shift among these voters since the convention is largely due to a rebound in Trump's numbers rather than a slide in Clinton's. He's gone from 37% support then to 41% among registered voters now.

Trump holds an edge over Clinton as more trusted to handle two of voters' top four issues -- the economy (56% trust Trump vs. 41% Clinton) and terrorism (51% Trump to 45% Clinton). Clinton holds a solid edge on foreign policy (56% trust her to Trump's 40%), and the public is divided over the fourth issue in the bunch, immigration. On that, 49% favor Clinton's approach, 47% Trump's. At Trump's recent campaign appearances, he has argued that he would do more to improve life for racial and ethnic minorities, but voters seem to disagree, 58% say Clinton is better on that score vs. 36% who choose Trump, and among non-whites, 86% choose Clinton to just 12% who think Trump would better improve their lives.

Trump has his largest edge of the campaign as the more honest and trustworthy of the two major candidates (50% say he is more honest and trustworthy vs. just 35% choosing Clinton) and as the stronger leader, 50% to 42%. Clinton continues to be seen as holding the better temperament to serve effectively as president (56% to 36%) and better able to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief (50% to 45%).

On honesty, Clinton's backers express greater skepticism about their candidate than do Trump's supporters. When asked which candidate is more honest and trustworthy, 94% of Trump's backers say he is, while just 70% of those behind Clinton choose her, with 11% saying Trump is more trustworthy and 17% saying neither of them are. And when voters were asked to name the one issue that would be most important to their vote for president, 5% named honesty or trustworthiness as their top choice, ranking it on par with foreign policy and jobs.

Both candidates remain largely unliked, with majorities saying they have an unfavorable view of each candidate in the new poll.

The CNN/ORC Poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 1-4 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. The survey includes results among 886 registered voters and 786 likely voters. For results among registered or likely voters, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

I wasn't originally going to get involved in campaigning, but fuck this, I'm going to make calls.

[Simon_Jester]

You go right ahead and do that, just make sure you're working on behalf of actual campaign organizations that know what they're doing and can use your time and effort to maximum effect. Go for it, 100%, by all means.

That said, as Nate Silver pointed out in a recent blog post, all year, we've been seeing Trump wobble back and forth between being even with Clinton and being about 8-10 percentage points behind. On Trump's best day he isn't ahead of Clinton, he's level with her. The time for panic is not yet, but the time for complacency is ALSO not yet.

[The Romulan Republic]

The time for complacency is the day after Clinton is declared the winner.

I've been looking up various ways I can volunteer as well. I'm a member of Democrats Abroad and they've been asking for volunteers, so I might do that.

[Q99]

You go right ahead and do that, just make sure you're working on behalf of actual campaign organizations that know what they're doing and can use your time and effort to maximum effect. Go for it, 100%, by all means.

That said, as Nate Silver pointed out in a recent blog post, all year, we've been seeing Trump wobble back and forth between being even with Clinton and being about 8-10 percentage points behind. On Trump's best day he isn't ahead of Clinton, he's level with her. The time for panic is not yet, but the time for complacency is ALSO not yet.

Because it's not only winning that matters, but margin- A big win will drag down a lot of races and make things easier for Democrats next time around. A small win means the time for complacency still won't arrive- it'll be a line-holding action til more Millennials come of age.

[The Romulan Republic]

That too.

There are so many reasons, in fact, why it is important for the win to be by as wide a margin as possible. Including:

1. We want to be absolutely sure we do, in fact, win, obviously. It might be closer than it looks.

2. The wider the margin, the harder it'll be for Republicans to win through fraud/voter suppression (possibly with Russian aid).

3. The wider the margin, the harder it'll be for Republicans to convince people that Clinton stole the election.

4. We absolutely do not want Clinton to win with less than half the popular vote. We want the Democrats to be able to claim an unambiguous mandate from the voters.

5. A landslide will better discredit what Trump stands for. We do not want his brand of pseudo-fascism to be any more mainstream than it already is.

6. High turnout will help down ballot races.

[Q99]

5. A landslide will better discredit what Trump stands for. We do not want his brand of pseudo-fascism to be any more mainstream than it already is.

Right! We want to thwump Trump so hard that the real Republican can reclaim the party. Because as much as I don't like them, they aren't Trump bad.

6. High turnout will help down ballot races.

Also, people are less likely to turn out when their side is looking to get a thumping, so if it looks like +10 going into election days, that could lower opposing turnout.

[Gandalf]

5. A landslide will better discredit what Trump stands for. We do not want his brand of pseudo-fascism to be any more mainstream than it already is.

Right! We want to thwump Trump so hard that the real Republican can reclaim the party. Because as much as I don't like them, they aren't Trump bad.

I thought Trump was a real Republican, but just more open about his actual beliefs as opposed to the rest of the party.

[SolarpunkFan]

I thought Trump was a real Republican, but just more open about his actual beliefs as opposed to the rest of the party.

Indeed. Trump didn't just appear out of thin air, this is 2+ generations of Southern Strategy at work here.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yes and no.

Trump is the worst elements of the Republican Party with much of the pretence removed. He's the fanatics and nut jobs the party leaders pandered to for votes, highjacking the party.

Personally, I suspect the Republican Party is, practically, unsalvageable at this point, and moreover, I don't think that it deserves to be salvaged. I'd rather see it collapse, and a new party rise in its place.

I'd thought Trump might be enough to cause that. But it seems that for the most part, the party is still in line behind him.

[Simon_Jester]

I thought Trump was a real Republican, but just more open about his actual beliefs as opposed to the rest of the party.

Trump is a real example of a certain type of Republican. The main reason he won the nomination is that he strongly resembles the ideal candidate that Republican voters have been conditioned to support.

In essence, the Republican Party has been grooming their core supporters to vote for someone like Trump for decades. They've carefully cultivated a mindset in which pro-corporate shilling, arrogance, know-nothingism, and a feckless arsonist-in-a-powder-keg mindset are all viewed as signs that a candidate is "strong" and "good for America" and so on.

They did this so that they'd be able to nominate candidates like Bush Junior, who as the most Trump-like person the Republicans have ever actually run. The problem is that Trump, well, trumped them. He has nearly every quality that Republican primary voters have been trained to think of as desirable in a president, and the many, many qualities he lacks are ones they've been trained to think of as irrelevant.

In hindsight this was foreseeable, from an outside point of view on the Republican Party.

[Gandalf]

So you would posit that Trump is in fact a real Republican, and that the GOP have basically been playing bait and switch with their voters for decades?

[The Romulan Republic]

Personally I wouldn't say that. I would say he is the culmination of the evolution of the Republican Party since at least the 60s, however.

[Simon_Jester]

So you would posit that Trump is in fact a real Republican, and that the GOP have basically been playing bait and switch with their voters for decades?

I would posit that there are several kinds of Republicans that are all equally real.

One kind of Republican (the Establishment Republican (TM)) has been carefully shaping public opinion for decades within their party, in an attempt to make certain kinds of platforms and candidates palatable to their base. They've profited quite a bit from that politically, but it has side effects. One of those side effects is that they've created a Trump-shaped hole in their own primary voter base's hearts. One which Trump was able to step in to fill

That doesn't make Trump more or less authentic than other kinds of Republicans.

[maraxus2]

So you would posit that Trump is in fact a real Republican, and that the GOP have basically been playing bait and switch with their voters for decades?

Trump isn't really a Republican in the sense that he has no solid loyalty to the Republican Party. He's raising most of the cash for the RNC, but he very obviously doesn't care about campaign organizing or winning anything down-ballot. That most, if not all, of the Republican political establishment hates Trump should go without saying at this point.

Trump's not, and never has been, a long-standing member of the conservative movement. However, he can still get their voters. For instance, the Religious Right basically doesn't know what to do with him, and switch between supporting, ignoring, or fighting with him. White evangelicals, though, support Trump by a 4-5 clip.

Contrast that with the conservative media and the plutocrats like Foster Friess and the Koch brothers. They have lots of influence within the movement, but either won't or can't swing a lot of votes. That's one thing that's so astonishing about 2016 - the election has demonstrated that the conservative intellectuals and establishment conservative press are really quite weak. The National Review bombarded Trump with endless bad press for the entirety of the Primary, and continue to do so. It's pretty obvious that most voters don't give even a single shit about what Charles Krauthammer thinks. Their beloved Party was just taken over by a reality TV star who insulted the other candidates' wives and talked about his penis on national television.


Trump's a conservative not so much because he says conservative things, although he does, but because he's very good at turning white anxiety and grievance into a political weapon. Conservatives, and Republicans in particular, have been doing this for over a half century now. They're usually very good at it.

The only problem is that Republican promises haven't matched up very well to the conservative ideal. Paul Ryan doesn't really have an answer for people losing factory jobs in his own Congressional district. He really doesn't have an answer for culturally conservative poor whites, but he does rely on their votes to keep his Speakership. A lot of Trump's voters have valid reasons for feeling anxious and aggrieved. They've been voting for conservatives for a while, yet their lives aren't measurably better. In a lot of the country, people are measurably worse off than they were 30 years ago. Maybe that's one reason why things like this happen.

There's a meme on right-wing twitter that goes "I'm a X first, a Y second, and a Republican third," where X is usually Christian, Y is usually "conservative," and Republican always comes last. Trump speaks to that in a way that most Republicans really can't. He has no abiding loyalty to the Party, so he can talk as much shit about the hateful plutocrats that run the RNC as he wants. That's far more valuable to conservative candidates now than a hundred Heritage Foundation thinkpieces.

[Vendetta]

So you would posit that Trump is in fact a real Republican, and that the GOP have basically been playing bait and switch with their voters for decades?

Trump is to the Republican party what a cuckoo is to a sparrow's nest. He produces a superstimulus of the things that the parent bird (voters) have been conditioned to respond to and so he got all the food.

[Q99]

I thought Trump was a real Republican, but just more open about his actual beliefs as opposed to the rest of the party.

Indeed. Trump didn't just appear out of thin air, this is 2+ generations of Southern Strategy at work here.

He's the product of their strategies without sharing many of their beliefs and not having much allegiance to them.

Trump's rise is very much a result of what they did, but a large part of that is they kept hitting the same buttons for votes and short term gain and didn't realize that was appealing to and encouraging a lot of things as priorities in their voters that didn't line up with a number of their priorities.

It's both entirely their fault while producing someone who very much clashes with a lot of them.

[Q99]

Oh, case in point- Dallas Morning News endorses a Democrat for the first time since 1940

The ideological divide between Trumpism and the old guard is visible.

[Q99]

So, I'm pretty surprised a bigger deal isn't being made of, y'know, Trump wanting to purge the US military leadership.

[Mr Bean]

So, I'm pretty surprised a bigger deal isn't being made of, y'know, Trump wanting to purge the US military leadership.

It's kind of in the back of the line behind everything else he's said. More importantly he can purge but he can't rehire without Congressional Oversight and because of the promotion ladder he has to fire everyone right down to the Captains and Colonels before you start hitting the bone of good officers because if it's one thing we have... it's a shit ton of General's and Admirals. To the point at which you could fill a 707 with generals ram it into the side of a mountain and still have another 90 on tap you could promote, bring out of retirement or free up to take positions in the military.

Our military is far to big and complex to pull some third world shithole style nonsense of making his son General of all Armed Forces in Germany.
So purge, purge away.
Of harmful things Trump could do as President it's pretty far down the list.

[Q99]

It's kind of in the back of the line behind everything else he's said. More importantly he can purge but he can't rehire without Congressional Oversight and because of the promotion ladder he has to fire everyone right down to the Captains and Colonels before you start hitting the bone of good officers because if it's one thing we have... it's a shit ton of General's and Admirals. To the point at which you could fill a 707 with generals ram it into the side of a mountain and still have another 90 on tap you could promote, bring out of retirement or free up to take positions in the military.

Our military is far to big and complex to pull some third world shithole style nonsense of making his son General of all Armed Forces in Germany.
So purge, purge away.
Of harmful things Trump could do as President it's pretty far down the list.

I think it *should* be higher on the list. The US military has a lot of institutional knowledge, replacing people en mass involves losing a lot, and a president wanting to replace military "En Mass," is very much a very scary, very fascist sentiment. Especially considering prior comments on the geneva convention, torture and reprisal killings aimed at civilians (his anti-Isis tactic- hit their families), and him making the military do what he wants it to do. Oh, and new comment on how he'd have had the US flat-out take Iraq's oil, "To the victor, belongs the spoils."

Even if he limited himself to existing generals to put in place of those he dismissed... I do not think it bodes well. There are enough to chose from that putting the worst ones in charge, or at least the ones most willing to take cues from Trump, could cause real death.

This is, in my view, one of the scarier things he has said, and like you say, 'scary stuff he has said,' is a long list, so I do not say that lightly.

[The Romulan Republic]

Agreed.

But then, this isn't really worse than I would have expected of Trump. Its just one in a long list of things that makes me wonder what its going to take to get more people to wake up to what he really is, which is an aspiring (no comment on weather he would actually be able to succeed) pseudo-fascist dictator. Who's currently only a few points behind (or ahead, depending on the poll) of Hillary Clinton.

[Flagg]

Donnie Douchebag is the epitome of an empty suit bomb-thrower. Or as they would say in Texas "All hat, no cattle, but plenty of bullshit."