Election 2016

[Mechalich]

Edit: I predict a banner year for the Libertarian party. They may even get in some debates.

I don't think they'll do well enough to make the debates. That threshold is 15%, which is a lot of disaffected republicans to pull in - I don't think the number of disaffected Bernie supporters will be all that significant. Getting to 15% of the national vote when you're only pulling from the nominally republican half would mean getting around 30% of republican voters to not only defect, but to specifically defect to the libertarians. Considering that certain portions of the anti-Trump Republican coalition - like the Mormons - are poor fits for the Libertarians, that's a tall order. I do think they could hit the 5% threshold for national funding in the next election cycle.

[Koumei]

A lot of Republican voters are against Trump and won't vote because he doesn't represent them.

But the Republican party seems mostly to support him, whether because he's the rich guy who was chosen so whatever, or because he's saying what a lot of them are thinking, and they love the racism. If they need to shout "Fuck you" to some of their supporters and skip into "even crazier" territory, so be it, that's what they'll do.

Though there are a few exceptions there, with even... the guy who looks like a turtle shitting? The one who doesn't do his job? That guy, not ruling out the possibility of not endorsing him. Though that might just be because it sounds an awful lot like doing his job.

[Grek]

I think you're confused, Grek. The only time i used the word shitstain was to describe trump or any hypothetical like him who would tarnish their brand that you were worried about discouraging from running. My last post was even a defense on behalf of otherwise good people who back the Republican Party (despite its objectively flawed political goals that result in human misery when enacted and incite disturbed individuals to violence with their rhetoric).

You don't understand what the Republican Party brand is. Political parties do not exist to appeal to voters. They exist to appeal to politicians. The entire purpose of a political party is to pool together money so that you can influence elections and then use that influence to compel politicians into doing whatever it is the backers of the party want done. The Republican Party exists to hurt people and cut taxes. They do this by stuffing national and state legislatures who want to hurt those people by by running hate ads on TV with the money that the billionaires gave them because they want those people hurt and their taxes cut. When they can skip straight to stuffing Congress to their preferred politicians, they do that. It's called gerrymandering. When they can skip straight to hurting people, they do that. It's called Orlando. The only thing that will tarnish the Republican brand is failing to hurt people and cut taxes. When they stop being able to do that, the Koch brothers, Paul Singer and Peter Thiel will stop funding them. Until then, no amount of public hatred for their policies will mean anything at all to the party as a whole.

(And yes, the Democrats are the same idea. The only difference is that they exist do the will of Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Tom Steyer instead. That makes them much, much better, because the Democratic billionaires don't want poor people to die in the streets.)

[PhoneLobster]

...you are sorely mistaken if you think that a bunch of republicans won't be voting for someone else or staying home in protest...

Pretty sure the polling indicated however offensive some unknown minority of "reasonable republicans" theoretically find him Trump polled better than any of the available alternatives.

But regardless since you STARTED OUT with "hey what if the republican party played the long game and just refused to run him or anyone as a candidate?" and then "lets walk that back to him being excluded from the debates!" I think you have walked back your shifting goal posts pretty fucking far to reach "fuck just, I dunno, maybe some unknown minority of republican voters might not vote for him"

[erik]

Goal post shifting? I did literally say they were both silly day dreams.

Editspansion:
The only thing I was objecting to that you said was the enthusiastic and full support you stated he would get. Because he totally isn't getting that. Big donors aren't backing him. Major party members aren't endorsing him. Tons of likely republican voters don't approve of him. Some may come to him by November but I cannot imagine they all do and that the do so enthusiastically.

So I still hold that

[Trump] will be supported fully and enthusiastically by the party.

is totally wrong and missing the divisions in the party. Trump is dividing the party, not uniting it. I'll understand if you want to walk back your goalpost however.

I'd cheer him on as a false flag trying to destroy the party by openly showing how much of it wants horrible things and is unburdened by facts, except I don't think he's faking and the small non-zero chance he could win is terrifying.

[Ancient History]

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/pre ... ts-illegal

[Covent]

I currently am afraid of Trump not because of his ability to sway voters to his side, but because of the fact of the whole Hillary email thing + Bernie staying in to the convention.

To be clear I am not of the opinion or espousing the idea that Hillary is or has done anything illegal, I just think Trump is exploiting the whole media flap surrounding it to fan the flames of dissent in the Democratic Party via grandiose statements and possibly reaping a crop of Bernie bro voters. It may also split the Democratic base and result in the most terrifying outcome of a Trump victory.

Full disclosure I wanted Bernie Sanders to win the nomination but even I say that at this point it would be better for the party if he conceded and endorsed Clinton. I am terrified of a massive stink at the convention leading to a split Democratic Party.

I do concede it is possible that Hillary could be indicted but with what limited knowledge I doubt it.

If she was indicted right after getting the nomination it would be catastrophic but I really believe, based of course on limited knowledge from a non insider, that she will not be.

Does anyone else feel like this, or am I just paranoid?

[Ancient History]

A little paranoid. The worst thing Bernie Bros might do is stay home from the election. The email thing is not something Clinton is going to be convicted on. Trump is still fighting for free media attention by saying the most inflammatory things, and will probably continue to do so.

[Kaelik]

Does anyone else feel like this, or am I just paranoid?

For the most part, I believe that with almost no exceptions (in a statistically significant sense) people who are "Sanders then Trump over Clinton" are a lot more likely to be like Psychic Robot, people who claim they are only voting for Trump because they think destroying the country will bring in a golden age, but who from all their other actions give the lie to that claim and prove they actually are just super fucking asshole republicans who happened to find it convenient at a particular moment to pretend they really supported Sanders.

This as opposed to the unnumbered people who have at some point said "Bernie or Bust" but will either vote for Clinton or not.

As for the people who actually will don't vote, I think that's still in flux, numbers wise, and what like... 6 months, is a long time, so that could change a lot. But specifically Clinton and the Clinton campaign seem to be responding correctly to minimize that number, and Sanders has made a few resigned comments that seem to indicate that he is aware the writing is on the wall, so there is room to assume that Sanders might make a compromise and then specifically endorse Clinton before too long.

The only problem I see is that it's quite possible that a lot more people's politics than usual, especially young people (dis proportionately Sanders supporters) do their politics more by word of internet blogging back and forth or whatever these days, and that it's quite possible that assorted Sanders supporting internet warriors will fight with similar Clinton supporters long after the actual parties make up, and repeatedly informing Sanders supporters that they are racist bastards is unlikely to increase voter participation as a measured inclusive approach focusing on the opposition such as the Clinton campaign has transitioned fully into.

[Josh_Kablack]

Romney got 93% of the Republican vote in 2012 - and Romney was seen as a bland, unexciting candidate who had trouble mobilizing the party base. US politics are so hyper-partisan, that it will be seen be pollsters as disastrous if Trump somehow only gets 87% of the votes cast by registered Republicans.

[Ancient History]

Romney lost with 93% of Republicans in 2012 - and the GOP demographic is shrinking. So 87% by Trump in 2016 would indeed be a catastrophe.

[Kaelik]

Romney lost with 93% of Republicans in 2012 - and the GOP demographic is shrinking. So 87% by Trump in 2016 would indeed be a catastrophe.

Out of context of this conversation, this reads hilariously.

[Mechalich]

Romney lost with 93% of Republicans in 2012 - and the GOP demographic is shrinking. So 87% by Trump in 2016 would indeed be a catastrophe.

Well, it depends where Trump loses votes. For example, Mormons hate his guts, and they really liked Romney - so Trump is going to do terribly compared to Romney in Utah, but he'll probably still win the state anyway because it's just that conservative. The same thing is true of many other never-Trump constituencies.

Trump doing really bad means he'll lose worse than McCain did in 2008, but there were only a few states that McCain won by small margins. Arizona and Missouri are the only two states likely to shift. If Trump did really, really terrible he might lose Georgia too - especially if he screws up the ground game as he seems to be doing. Even then though he's going to hold around 150 electoral votes.

The big difference would be in the Senate. If Trump's incompetence flips Arizona and Missouri, that would have a good chance of flipping those Senate seats, and the Democrats would probably take North Carolina and possibly Indiana in this scenario, giving them a solid Senate majority.

[Kaelik]

You know, come to think of it, I regret murdering Lago in cold blood. It would be really fun to have him around to "I told you so" everyone about the fact that he's been predicting the death of the Republican Party and Trump's victory in the primaries longer than anyone.

[Ancient History]

Mittens got 206 electoral votes to Obama's 338 in 2016. That was a blow-out. If Trump can't even meet that performance, you could see Arizona (11), Georgia (16), North Carolina (15) go Democrat this election...and if Trump is really unpopular, "True Red" states could come into play. I'm not saying Texas (38) is going to flip this election, but if the Hispanic, black, and female voters come out... but that's the cost of running a really unpopular candidate.

[Koumei]

You know, come to think of it, I regret murdering Lago in cold blood.

You're gradually learning to regret murdering people? You changed, man.

[Mechalich]

Mittens got 206 electoral votes to Obama's 338 in 2016. That was a blow-out.

So it was, but it didn't flip the Senate, or the House, which are effectively the only benchmarks that matter. Now the Senate depends on which specific Senators in which states are up in any given year. This year happens to be favorable for Democrats and they have a decent chance to flip it even if Hillary were to win in a squeaker. However, even in a landslide victory they aren't likely to get to magical 60. A landslide victory, could, possibly, gain democrats a majority in the House, but it would really depend on how the chips fall - for example, winning Georgia by pushing huge Black and Latino turnout in metro Atlanta doesn't net you any extra House seats in the state - and how much effective down-ballot damage control the RNC manages to pull off.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Pretty much every loud Bernie supporter I know keeps talking about switching to Libertarian for the presidential election. This is strange because the Libertarians are practically the opposite of Bernie, at least when it comes to policy. When I ask these people about why they want to do things like eliminate the IRS or get rid of all progressive taxation laws I get...nothing. They say something about "government waste" and I ask them why they supported Bernie, who wanted to expand government programs.

I used to think a lot of my fellow Bernie supporters did so because they knew single-payer kicked ass, our infrastructure was hyper fucked, and that maybe bombing brown people all the time isn't stellar foreign policy. Fucking stupid assholes were just supporting him because he was different? Wargl.

[erik]

Romney lost with 93% of Republicans in 2012 - and the GOP demographic is shrinking. So 87% by Trump in 2016 would indeed be a catastrophe.

Out of context of this conversation, this reads hilariously.

The following includes my favorite recent quote that I cannot help but interpret out of context.

An RNC spokesman dismissed plans to undermine Trump on the floor as "silly" and "nothing more than a media creation and a series of tweets."

I keep reading that as a description of Trump.

[Maj]

Pretty much every loud Bernie supporter I know keeps talking about switching to Libertarian for the presidential election. This is strange because the Libertarians are practically the opposite of Bernie, at least when it comes to policy. When I ask these people about why they want to do things like eliminate the IRS or get rid of all progressive taxation laws I get...nothing. They say something about "government waste" and I ask them why they supported Bernie, who wanted to expand government programs.

I used to think a lot of my fellow Bernie supporters did so because they knew single-payer kicked ass, our infrastructure was hyper fucked, and that maybe bombing brown people all the time isn't stellar foreign policy. Fucking stupid assholes were just supporting him because he was different? Wargl.

I was surprised that so many people who would normally consider themselves Libertarian switched over to Bernie in the first place. I honestly think they're just protesting the government. How? They don't know. But they know the current situation sucks and they want to be on team rebel.

[Prak]

What would it take to create a new cabinet position, and put up Sanders as the Secretary of Not Being a Dick?

[Kaelik]

What would it take to create a new cabinet position, and put up Sanders as the Secretary of Not Being a Dick?

That would be really dumb, because he turned into a tremendous dick for several months.

[angelfromanotherpin]

What would it take to create a new cabinet position, and put up Sanders as the Secretary of Not Being a Dick?

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-proce ... t-position

[Ancient History]

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/ ... vertising/

Without anything else more interesting in the news cycle, people are digging into the financial of the Trump campaign.

[Hiram McDaniels]

Pretty much every loud Bernie supporter I know keeps talking about switching to Libertarian for the presidential election. This is strange because the Libertarians are practically the opposite of Bernie, at least when it comes to policy. When I ask these people about why they want to do things like eliminate the IRS or get rid of all progressive taxation laws I get...nothing. They say something about "government waste" and I ask them why they supported Bernie, who wanted to expand government programs.

I used to think a lot of my fellow Bernie supporters did so because they knew single-payer kicked ass, our infrastructure was hyper fucked, and that maybe bombing brown people all the time isn't stellar foreign policy. Fucking stupid assholes were just supporting him because he was different? Wargl.

I supported Bernie over Hilary for the exact reasons that you cited, and I'm sure as fuck not going to vote for a libertarian.

There's a nagging suspicion in the back of my brain that suggests a lot of Bernie supporters were more Anti-Hilary than Pro-Bernie, with little regard for their actual platforms. Or they assumed that a Sanders presidency would mean a complete dismantle and subsequent rebuild of the system rather than a bunch of progressive legislation that would die stillborn in congress. I try to believe that motivations are purer and more utilitarian on the left, but somehow I just know that Ann Coulter gets just as many rape and death threats as Rachel Maddow.

Yet another dark, dark corner in the back of my brain says: "Fuck it. Vote for Trump. Only 53% of the populace actually votes, and they treat the election as a high school popularity contest rather than a contest of policies or ideas...so a bloviating reality tv clown in the white house is exactly what we deserve, and in 8 years we can have president Kanye." But then I come to my senses and remember that the lesser of two evils is by definition less evil. Hilary 2016!

Tangentially, I wonder if quotations are necessary when citing my own internal dialogue.