Election 2016

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:07 pm

Trump can't win because almost 30% of the delegate votes which decide the nominee belong to the party establishment. He'd have to win the popular vote 70-30 without them, which just isn't going to fucking happen. Trump is threatening to run third party in an attempt to blackmail the Republican establishment into either giving him the unpledged delegate votes or giving him lots of money, depending on how serious you think his presidential bid is.

You can pretty safely interpret the debate and the Fox News coverage surrounding Trump as the Republican establishment's response; "no, we aren't going to give you a fair shot. We're going to turn our propaganda machine against you and you're going to disappear." So far, that hasn't worked, but if we're very very lucky, this'll keep up and it'll piss Trump off enough that he'll run third party.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:18 pm

It is deeply strange that Donald "You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass" Trump could be the one to save the USA.

He'd be doing it unintentionally (OR IS HE!?), but holy shit.

Donald "Laziness is a trait in the blacks" Trump could be the single greatest philanthropist of all time if he runs third party.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Aug 11, 2015 11:13 pm

With a field this crowded, it's almost pointless to follow the blow-by-blows. Some highlights for today:

Rick Perry Stops Paying Staffers

Poll shows Rick Santorum at Zero Percent

John Gilmore not (yet) invited to CNN debate

...and so on, and so forth. It's not quite like the last election cycle, but only because no one candidate is getting their "week in the sun" - all of them are going up and down on the 24-hour newscycle; any given poll or newsbite shows that one of them might be a hair's breadth away from out of the running.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:05 am

name_here wrote:I'm thinking his plan is to blackmail the Republican party into giving him a few billion dollars or something to not run as an independent and split the base.

That's my theory as well.

K · Post by K » Wed Aug 12, 2015 5:16 am

I think Trump watched the movie Bulworth and decided that a presidential bid is the best marketing campaign he could ever pull off for his shitshow real estate development business.

For every dollar he spends, he probably gets $100 in free air-time.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:21 pm

name_here wrote:I'm thinking his plan is to blackmail the Republican party into giving him a few billion dollars or something to not run as an independent and split the base.

I love it!

All he has to do is turn all the conservative dials up to 11 to show how ugly they are, gain a credible number of mouth-breathing supporters, and then say "I'll stop pulling back the curtain if you pay me to".

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:48 pm

The really disturbing thing about Trump's candidacy is that if you read between the lines his policy is significantly less insane than Walker and Bush's, let alone the real nutjobs like Huckabee. As I said earlier, if this was 30 or even 20 years ago I'd be spooked about Trump's campaign. Right now, I'm just cautiously optimistic. Even though I still think that the guy is hopeless, I really don't appreciate how this guy is paving a path for a less hapless Man on Horseback to stroll through the path of explicit Populist Racial Resentment Trump blazed.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Aug 16, 2015 11:48 pm

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/mike-hu ... ists-baby/

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 1:10 am

Ancient History wrote:http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/mike-hu ... ists-baby/

It's a fairly consistent position if you believe that abortion is murder. Two wrongs don't make a right, after all.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:58 am

hyzmarca wrote:It's a fairly consistent position if you believe that abortion is murder. Two wrongs don't make a right, after all.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 3:19 am

Ancient History wrote:http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/mike-hu ... ists-baby/

I really, really wish I could get Mike Huckabee pregnant.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 3:34 am

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Ancient History wrote:http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/mike-hu ... ists-baby/
I really, really wish I could get Mike Huckabee pregnant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_pregnancy

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:20 am

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Ancient History wrote:http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/mike-hu ... ists-baby/
I really, really wish I could get Mike Huckabee pregnant.

I actually wished pregnancy on a guy the other day. He was going off about how it was just "a little discomfort." I was not nice to him.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 3:10 pm

I read that Lawrence Lessig wants to enter the Democratic primaries. Do you think he'll have any impact at all?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 5:13 pm

My guess? He might pull support from Bernie Sanders, but that's it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 5:25 pm

There is a non-zero chance that Larry Lessig would get some eccentric rich person who would otherwise throw a million dollars at Rand Paul or Ted Cruz to throw money at him instead. I'd put that at about 50/50.

There is a non-zero chance that Larry Lessig could corner Hillary into coming out against SOPA. I'd put that at about 1 in 3. I also don't think it will make much difference, because SOPA per se has already been defeated but the MPAA pig fuckers have thrown a lot of different attacks on free speech through various congressional catspaws, and there's no particular reason to believe they are going to stop.

-Username17

Morat · Post by **Morat** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 2:01 am

Lessig is promising to somehow make the election a referendum on voting and campaign finance reform, and says that if elected he will pass his proposed law and then immediately resign.

Because he's astonishingly ignorant about politics. I think the chance he could get any of the Democratic candidates to pay the least bit of attention to him is infinitesimal. Not least because Clinton has come out strongly for campaign finance reform and if she could be pulled to support a new voting system it would be by Sanders or even O'Malley. So Lessig isn't running on this issue because everyone already in the race is ignoring it. He's asserting that only he has a real plan for enacting this new law.

Of course, I agree, that our current electoral system gives disproportionate power to white people and campaign finance allows the wealthy to buy politicians. But because of that, in 2016 the House will almost certainly have a Republican majority. Lessig apparently assumes that if he's elected Republican Congressmen will vote for a law that is both anathema to the GOP and will directly lead to many of those congressmen losing their jobs! This kind of law can only be worthwhile if it is actually very bad news for the political establishment, so expecting their support is insane.

The presidential election can be like a national poll of political support. 1860 showed that the the opposition to the slave power was organized and popular enough that the era of slaver dominance over the Federal Government was over. But it wasn't a referendum. A referendum would have gone to the courts to see if it was constitutional and then been enacted immediately. But until they left Congress, the Southern delegations blocked everything they could.

If we had a parliamentary system, then, yes, Prime Minister Lessig could pass some huge reform and then resign. Because the PM definitionally commands the majority of the parliament for major legislation. But Congress is not elected at the same time and in the same way as the President.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Aug 21, 2015 4:54 pm

Getting valuable election knowledge from knowyourmeme: Deez Nuts is polling at 9% in North Carolina.

On August 19th, the United States polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) released the results of a new survey on the primary candidates, which found that Donald Trump was leading in polls for the by 24%. Additionally, the firm revealed that Deez Nuts was polling at 9% in North Carolina, 8% in Minnesota and 7% in Iowa. That day, the North Carolina news station ABC 11 tweeted about the polling data, assuring readers they “were not hacked” (shown below).

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:04 pm

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show ... doxy-taxes

At first, I thought: 'Well, he may be a stain on the underwear of life, but I kind of have to admire his testicular fortitude.' Now... now I'm wondering if this isn't a certain kind of mad genius.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:25 pm

My first thought was "ok, so, he's not purely an industrial barrel full of shit. There's a cupcake in there too."

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:33 pm

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:39 pm

Ancient History wrote:

This.

We're all marveling at how amazingly less awful and crazy Trump seems when standing next to the rest of the Republican hopefuls. And it's hilarious and makes for great spectating especially when the foil is TRUMP, but at the end of the day any one of them, best or worst, would be bad news sitting in the oval office. They're all cursed dolls with cursed frogurt and sprinkles doesn't change that.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 1:57 am

I do sometimes wonder if Trump isn't actually the best case scenario Republican candidate. Let's be clear; they're all corrupt racist misogynist fucks. But Trump is not establishment corrupt, and it is entirely possible that he would do things that helped undermine the Republican establishment either intentionally or by accident. And for fuck's sake we need that. Democrats are not going to take back the House or the heavily gerrymandered swing states. They're not going to do it in time for the 2020 redistricting and even with the inexorable march of demographics it's a safe bet they'll have a hard as fuck time doing it for the 2030 redistricting. The house is going to be Republican for the next ten to fifteen years minimum (as are the state legislatures of critical swing states like Ohio) regardless of how the public votes. So having people like Trump attempt to bend the Republican propaganda machine to their whims and in so doing tear the thing to pieces sounds fucking wonderful. The only other hope is that Hillary (or Sanders - I can dream) packs the Supreme Court and then it uses some flimsy pretext to unilaterally demand redistricting of huge swathes of the country.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 3:19 am

The thing that worries me about Donald Trump is that he's running a hodgepodge of economic populism and extreme social revanchism -- that isn't in of itself fascist, but I still stand by my assessment of him as a capital-F fascist.

The efficacy of establishment conservative toads is baked into the cake at this point. With the battle lines drawn by W. Bush, McCain, and Romney Hillary Clinton can be assured of a 6% election margin just by showing up thanks to the magic of raw demography. However, the last time someone tried to run a social conservative/economically liberal hodgepodge was, what, back in 1944? There's almost no data on how well that would perform and the country has changed massively in any case.

I mean, on one hand, despite the angst and bitterness of progressives and socialists, social issues trump economic ones. So it's quite likely that Donald Trump's campaign, rather than picking up disaffected whites in the Midwest and Northeast, only polarizes the electorate further -- which is something the Republican Party cannot afford. On the other hand, people are genuinely pissed off and this is legitimately new territory at least as far as rhetoric goes. Donald Trump is unapologetic about saying that taxes need to go up on the rich! I never thought I'd hear a Republican frontrunner say that shit. And there's always the possibility of a foreign policy crisis/scandal/recession.

I don't know, man. I mean, from a cynical stochastic perspective Trump may just be what the Democratic Party needs to seal the deal with the Obama Coalition and maybe even recapture the House. On the other hand, the GOP openly humping the leg of fascism legit frightens me.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 4:24 am

I can only see this as a good thing. Not because I believe Trump isn't an absolute scumbag but because he is bringing up "we should up taxes on the rich!" to a party that has been very pointedly trying to say that they shouldn't. IF he can make it a big enough deal that their constituency starts demanding just that it'll be win FUCKING win right?