Election 2016

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 3:26 am

The Republican party's hold on their base is racism. That's what it is. The Republican base is a coalition of different groups whose single unifying trait is a desire to shit on women and minorities to varying degrees. The entire rest of the platform - from taxes and the budget to the second amendment to foreign policy - is just corporate welfare, and it doesn't resonate very well with the average voter. Republican voters really do - in their own Orwellian "except when I have to vote for them" way - understand that their party is actually full of crooks. The sentiment behind the creaton of the Tea Party is real, even if the movement itself was actually a controlled rebellion from the word go.

Trump has been running as an anti-establishment racist since he declared his candidacy. The Republican party had two chances to shut him out of winning the primary's popular vote:

1) Media blackout on his campaign. If Fox News could have resisted the urge to talk about him all the fucking time they really could have just memoryholed his entire campaign. When they realized negative attacks weren't working (because Fox News is the establishment), they should have just shut the fuck up entirely. Does that look shady as hell? Yes, but so does everything else they do and their viewers don't care.

2) Narrowing the field to two candidates by Super Tuesday. Trump isn't winning these states by a majority, he is winning them by a plurality. Odds are very good that the people who are already voting not-Trump are going to continue voting not-Trump. After all, "I'm not Trump" is literally the only part of their campaign message that's making it to Republican primary voters to begin with. There's a good chance that an establishment candidate could narrowly beat trump if they were the only establishment candidate in the running.

Now, when Donald first declared I seriously thought he was just blackmailing the Republican party. "I know what your base wants and I can fuck your shit up. Give me something to make me go away." But then he signed the no third party run pledge (like he would if someone had paid him his bribe) and didn't fade quietly into the background (like he would have if someone had paid him his bribe). That is when I got really fucking confused, and realized that it was probably going to come down to the Republican superdelegates.

And you know what? I might end up being wrong about it coming down to the superdelegates. It's looking like with the field this split and the winner-take-all (or district-based winner-take-all) nature of so many Republican state primaries, Donald Trump might be able to lock this down on the popular vote alone. That is not something I ever imagined happening. Trump is seriously within the margin of error for the percent of the pledged delegate count I said he'd need to win without the support of a single superdelegate. Trump is not winning; he is slaughtering.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 3:46 am

Isn't the reason they can't narrow the field down because 1) Cruz and 2) Because the not Trump candidates know that the party has to pick a single person to go against Trump and they either want to be bribed too (my guess) or have egos too big to let someone else be the prime pick (probably closer to reality) or some combination of all of these. I don't think they want Cruz to be their man (and now he has the Flint thing on his name) but I don't see him bowing out silently.

I also expected Trump to be bribed out of the running. Why he's still running is probably a combination of 'ha ha fuck you pay me more money now!' and ego. Even considering that I'm surprised he even has the votes he has. He IS a joke. People know he is. I know that people are tired of 'establishment' picks (I am myself) but I'll be damned, I really didn't expect him to be able to make it this far with just that. I truly thought Jeb would be their guy but I underestimated how dissatisfied the Reps are with their usual clowns.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 4:04 am

Ancient History wrote:Trump is symptomatic of how little control the Republicans have of their own process. It's not that they don't want to shut him down, they cannot. It's why the 2012 GOP primary was a clown car, and it's why the 2016 GOP primary is a clown car. The GOP has no effective means of declaring a candidate is bullshit and not actually allowed to run.

Actually, the GOP changed their primary procedures after the 2012 clown car, but it was to make it easier for the frontrunner to shut out the rest of the pack. Because in 2012, the pack was where the loonies were, and the whole 'I am not Mitt Romney' conga line was a damaging distraction. But in 2016 the loonies are the frontrunners, 'I am not Donald Trump' is the establishment's only hope, and the procedural changes are backfiring spectacularly.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 4:18 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Trump is symptomatic of how little control the Republicans have of their own process. It's not that they don't want to shut him down, they cannot. It's why the 2012 GOP primary was a clown car, and it's why the 2016 GOP primary is a clown car. The GOP has no effective means of declaring a candidate is bullshit and not actually allowed to run.
Actually, the GOP changed their primary procedures after the 2012 clown car, but it was to make it easier for the frontrunner to shut out the rest of the pack. Because in 2012, the pack was where the loonies were, and the whole 'I am not Mitt Romney' conga line was a damaging distraction. But in 2016 the loonies are the frontrunners, 'I am not Donald Trump' is the establishment's only hope, and the procedural changes are backfiring spectacularly.

What were the changes?

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 4:52 am

MGuy wrote:What were the changes?

It varied from state to state. There's a decent article discussing some of it here. Basically, there's various methods to cut out people below certain thresholds of voting (usually around 20%) and the hypothetical delegates that would have been gained by any such candidates tend to accrue to the frontrunner instead.

So right now, Trump is essentially winning delegates for votes going to Kasich and Carson, and in states where Cruz or Rubio do particularly bad he could snag delegates from them too.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 4:53 am

The Republican assignment of delegates is arcane, incomprehensible, and undemocratic. And I don't just mean the assignment of delegates to candidates, but the assignment of delegates to states. You can pick any part of it to look into - any part - and the end result will be "oh, I see what they did there. That's really fucking scummy."

For the 2016 election, there was a big swing back to winner-take-all primaries. Florida, for example, abandoned their proportional system in favor of handing all of their delegates to whoever wins the state-wide primary vote. South Carolina is half winner-take-all and half winner-takes-district. Trump won the state and every single district in the state, so he walked away with 50 out of 50 delegates while winning less than a third of the popular vote. The frontrunner has always had an advantage in the Republican primary, but that advantage is bigger in 2016 than it was in 2012.

There've been other changes, too. Republicans in blue districts are actually worth more delegates than Republicans in red districts - which in theory helps moderate Republicans. There hasn't been a lot of evidence of that in the race so far, as you can tell. New Hampshire seems like a place you'd go to find these elusive Republican moderates, and that was a fucking landslide for Trump. He won 35% of the vote and 48% of the delegates.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 7:10 am

Meanwhile, the Democratic party awarded almost three quarters of South Carolina's pledged delegates to Hillary Clinton, but only because she got 73 percent of the vote. The Democratic party has a lot of super delegates but the rules for the pledged delegates are arcane but mostly small d democratic. Super delegates are unlikely to sway things since they will tend to switch sides to whoever wins the most pledged delegates like they did in 2008.

Hillary's win in SC is going to be touted as huge by the media and we all predicted it was going to be. But in this case it genuinely is. Her demographic target was to beat a 20 point win and her polling average was to beat a 25 point win. A 43 point win beats both expectations and the nomination pathway minimum.

South Carolina is still only a medium sized state. Clinton pulled ahead on delegates by 25 yesterday, but there are 880 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday. Still, that's going to produce a media narrative of strength in the two days running up to several state primaries. That is a lot of free Clinton adds.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 1:37 pm

DSMatticus wrote:The Republican assignment of delegates is arcane, incomprehensible, and undemocratic. And I don't just mean the assignment of delegates to candidates, but the assignment of delegates to states. You can pick any part of it to look into - any part - and the end result will be "oh, I see what they did there. That's really fucking scummy."

For the 2016 election, there was a big swing back to winner-take-all primaries. Florida, for example, abandoned their proportional system in favor of handing all of their delegates to whoever wins the state-wide primary vote. South Carolina is half winner-take-all and half winner-takes-district. Trump won the state and every single district in the state, so he walked away with 50 out of 50 delegates while winning less than a third of the popular vote. The frontrunner has always had an advantage in the Republican primary, but that advantage is bigger in 2016 than it was in 2012.

There've been other changes, too. Republicans in blue districts are actually worth more delegates than Republicans in red districts - which in theory helps moderate Republicans. There hasn't been a lot of evidence of that in the race so far, as you can tell. New Hampshire seems like a place you'd go to find these elusive Republican moderates, and that was a fucking landslide for Trump. He won 35% of the vote and 48% of the delegates.

Trump has the advantage of being charismatic. Which is an advantage that none of his primary opponents share. That has been the problem with a lot of recent Presidential elections, really. Dull candidates don't exactly inspire voters.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 1:54 pm

DSMatticus wrote:Trump won the state and every single district in the state, so he walked away with 50 out of 50 delegates while winning less than a third of the popular vote.

Man, who was that guy who tweeted throwing a complete fit when Obama won "without winning the popular vote" (except he also won that)? That guy should definitely speak up about Trump not having a mandate to do anything.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 2:15 pm

Koumei wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:Trump won the state and every single district in the state, so he walked away with 50 out of 50 delegates while winning less than a third of the popular vote.
Man, who was that guy who tweeted throwing a complete fit when Obama won "without winning the popular vote" (except he also won that)? That guy should definitely speak up about Trump not having a mandate to do anything.

Dunno but it is true for the 2008 primary. Clinton had more votes but less delegates than Obama.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:08 am

It was Donald Trump. When Obama won re-election in 2012 like basically all sane people said he would and this surprised the Republicans, Trump threw a massive hissy fit and it was amazing. However, he basically did that the very moment that the results were saying "Yep, Obama wins" when the popular vote happened to favour Kitten Mittens. An hour later, even the popular vote tally was favouring Obama, and Trump hurriedly deleted his tweet before moving on to more general "He's not even American!" and "Democracy is dead" things.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:40 am

Oh. I'm so lame. Missed the obvious structure to the set-up.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:45 am

Didn't Karl Rove have a moment on Fox during the 2012 election? Google says LOL, yes.

The "insiders" in the republican party really did expect to win that one. In much the same way they really did expect to be welcomed with open arms into Iraq, in that it pays well to grin and say yes when the crazy rich people ask if they're right this time, and that's easier if you choose to sincerely believe it.

Which is why it's bad to have important things decided by a small number of rich people.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 11:37 am

Finally a Trump gaffe that might stick?

If anything should hurt him even in the republican primary it's failing to disavow an endorsement from David Duke.

Post by **fbmf** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:20 pm

Ancient History wrote: Trump is symptomatic of how little control the Republicans have of their own process. It's not that they don't want to shut him down, they cannot. It's why the 2012 GOP primary was a clown car, and it's why the 2016 GOP primary is a clown car. The GOP has no effective means of declaring a candidate is bullshit and not actually allowed to run.

Does the DNC have some sort of counter measure in place for this that the RNC doesn't?

Game On,
fbmf

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:46 pm

fbmf wrote:
Ancient History wrote: Trump is symptomatic of how little control the Republicans have of their own process. It's not that they don't want to shut him down, they cannot. It's why the 2012 GOP primary was a clown car, and it's why the 2016 GOP primary is a clown car. The GOP has no effective means of declaring a candidate is bullshit and not actually allowed to run.
Does the DNC have some sort of counter measure in place for this that the RNC doesn't?

Game On,
fbmf

Yes, it's called sanity. See, if a Democrat shows up and starts saying literally insane things, Democrats are allowed to call other candidates "wrong" the Republican party can't do that though, because their entire party is built on telling people that they can never be wrong, no matter what super dumb thing they think.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:33 pm

fbmf wrote:
Ancient History wrote: Trump is symptomatic of how little control the Republicans have of their own process. It's not that they don't want to shut him down, they cannot. It's why the 2012 GOP primary was a clown car, and it's why the 2016 GOP primary is a clown car. The GOP has no effective means of declaring a candidate is bullshit and not actually allowed to run.
Does the DNC have some sort of counter measure in place for this that the RNC doesn't?

Game On,
fbmf

There's two lanes that the DNC can fight Trumpism in that the RNC apparently no longer can. The first is the rhetoric angle that Kaelik mentioned. Hillary Clinton gave the wrong vote on the authorization of military force. Bernie Sanders gave the wrong vote on the protection of lawful commerce in arms. They can give various excuses, and they do, but both of them remain vulnerable on those factual matters and have had to admit that those votes were mistakes. A Democratic candidate who was wrong about a whole lot of things, or like nearly fucking everything, would be vulnerable on a host of issues and other Democratic candidates could smack them around mercilessly in debates and townhalls to giant applause. On the flip side, Rubio's actual position is that he's going to "balance the budget" by cutting taxes by 6.8 trillion dollars over the next decade and increasing military spending by nearly 2 trillion dollars over the same period. What can he possibly say about a "non serious" candidate's budget proposals? The Republican establishment's claims are prima facie absurd. If someone comes in and claims that the solution to the nation's problems are fascism or Atlantean crystal power or whatever, this isn't actually different from the way the "real" candidates have been handling their electorate for the last twenty years.

The second lane is the way the two parties assign delegates. The Democratic Party has a simple system: every state is variously proportional (with a few odd hiccups involving districting) and the convention has 794 super delegates out of a total of 4233. In the face of really determined party resistance, an outsider candidate would need almost seventy percent of the national vote to force the nomination. The only reason Sanders is still in the race is that he isn't outside the Democratic Party's mainstream, and he could get the super delegates to back him at the convention if he won the popular vote. The Republican system is actually designed to coronate a factional candidate (because the party has multiple factions with little overlap and none of the candidates are expected to get more than half the votes). The control mechanism is supposed to be the harsh distribution of delegates where the lion's share goes to the leaders in each state. That means that you need to get enough campaign support to be the winner in a bunch of different states. The idea is that you'd need the party's campaign infrastructure and the backing of the party's wealthy donor class to get your name out enough to get the multiple first place showings you'd need to keep from getting frozen out of the delegate count. Trump bypasses that because he's already a household name and personally a billionaire. He doesn't need to kiss anyone's ring to get 30% of the vote in Florida and Missouri on the same day.

Trump's campaign style is uniquely fitted to the Republican Primary System. The candidates are not penalized for lying and essentially never tell the truth. And you get an insurmountable lead by coming first with 35% of the vote in a sufficient number of states. That was exactly the system Romney needed to unite the party under his banner, but it's also exactly the system that The Donald needs to walk away with the whole thing. Currently Donald Trump has 35.6% support in average national polls, that and two dollars would buy you a cup of coffee in the Democratic Primary. But the Republican Primary is undemocratic in exactly the right way for him to be a favorite for the nomination.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 4:21 pm

Basically, the Republicans needed to shut Trump down earlier - don't let him in the debates, don't let him on the ballot - as a write-in candidate, he'd have a lot less momentum; outside the debates he'd get a lot less airtime. You don't see Vermin Supreme on stage next to Clinton and Sanders. But when political parties deliberately shut people out like that, it looks horribly undemocratic (because of course it is) and doesn't play well in Peoria, as it were. It's sort of the downside of democracy: if anyone can run, anyone can run, no matter how crazy or unqualified.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 8:41 pm

Yeah. It's like I said to my pro-Trump (and slighly nutty) friend earlier today, when he accused me of secretly wishing Trump and his ilk were legally barred from running.

Fucking Jefferson Davis in a time machine should be eligible to run for President. What I want is an electorate that would laugh them out of the room.

But alas, public discourse doesn't work that way. See also Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers et al.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:51 am

Happy Super Tuesday. Grab your popcorn and wait for the feces to hit the oscillator.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 6:37 pm

Trump isn't getting attention merely by being charismatic. He's getting support because (whether honestly or not) he's touching on issues that 1) have a great deal of popular concern behind them and 2) are no-go issues for the conventional elites.

He's willing to talk about turning the sacred cows into hamburger, even if nothing ever comes of it. That interests people... much moreso than an endless parade of candidates who won't acknowledge the cows exist.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 6:52 pm

So, while he's still basically wrong, Kasich seems to be the most reasonable Republican candidate.

He doesn't have a chance in Hell, does he?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:07 pm

Prak wrote:So, while he's still basically wrong, Kasich seems to be the most reasonable Republican candidate.

He doesn't have a chance in Hell, does he?

He's really not any more reasonable than anyone else, he just actually put effort into lying to the American Republic about being a moderate during the Primary.

No one else did that because it's a fucking losing strategy normally.

I mean, he "reasonably" claims to be okay with abortions for rape and incest now, but he used to be totally against that, and he signed a law preventing those abortions in his state. So clearly he isn't actually reasonable, he's just a lair.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:19 pm

Samantha Bee covered this recently.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:24 pm

Kaelik wrote:
Prak wrote:So, while he's still basically wrong, Kasich seems to be the most reasonable Republican candidate.

He doesn't have a chance in Hell, does he?
He's really not any more reasonable than anyone else, he just actually put effort into lying to the American Republic about being a moderate during the Primary.

No one else did that because it's a fucking losing strategy normally.

I mean, he "reasonably" claims to be okay with abortions for rape and incest now, but he used to be totally against that, and he signed a law preventing those abortions in his state. So clearly he isn't actually reasonable, he's just a lair.

Oh, so he's just the republican candidate that is the least spectacle? ...why do I still feel that's preferable to, like, any of the other candidates? I'm not saying I'm going to vote for him, I'm just saying I'm tired of the children and would prefer a candidate that at least sounds like an adult.