Election 2016

[DSMatticus]

You're not going to elect Trump...

You say that, but...

A Trump win is very plausible. Hell, "Trump wins with less votes than Mitt Romney lost with" is a plausible outcome. This is shaping up to be an insanely low-engagement election and that means the margin of error on our polling is large enough that this could end up being a small blowout on either side, and the polls are already dead even. Fox News will be hosting the last debate, so the final major event of the election cycle will literally be 90 minutes of talking about Clinton scandals. She's going to need to build (and maintain) a buffer for that debate or we could go into election day with Trump ahead in the polls.

But mostly it comes down to at the end of the day conservative voters rallied around their fascist bannerman and a lot of Democrats aren't going to show up for Hillary Clinton. She was genuinely kind of a shit choice; part of that is her fault (she has done basically none of the things she needs to do to actually rebuild and motivate the parts of the Obama coalition which didn't initially support her, and when given the chance actively chose not to do so *coughVPcough*), and part of it is not her fault but was still fairly predictable (the media cannot stop themselves from tearing into her even though her opponent is embroiled in objectively worse scandals of which there is concrete evidence as opposed to wild speculation about "what we don't know, but hey maybe anything's possible"). Though Sanders didn't really do a very good job of branching out from his base during the primary, and seemed to have the same kind of stubborn combativeness with his own campaign that Trump had, which would have made it difficult to steer him into winning strategies. Who knows if he would have done any better?

But yeah, this election has taught us two depressing things:

1) Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment vastly underestimated the amount of bigoted shitbaggery in the Republican party - Republicans aren't having a hard time holding their nose and voting for Trump. They find it quite easy to justify, because the truth is anyone who actually gave a shit about anyone other than white Christian men already left the party long ago.

2) The associated press has a large conservative bias - large enough that keeping a generic Democrat out of the whitehouse is more important than keeping an actual fascist alt-right Republican out. We kind of already knew this, because they did pretty much the same thing to Gore, but now we know there's basically no ceiling on their tolerance for Republican candidates.

[Username17]

The idea that we are in any way worse off with the media because we didn't nominate the socialist outsider is so out to lunch that you should basically just stop talking forever. Like you should have done when you stood up for fucking Brexit and now the United Kingdom entirely predictably has a far right government doing far right shenanigans with no checks or balances and a broken left wing because that is fucking obviously what was going to happen if Brexit won and you were a fucking idiot for ever claiming otherwise. If you think false equivalency is bad now (it is), you would be biting your tongue off in rage if the media got to run all their "both sides do it" articles about how Sanders and Trump are basically the same thing from the left and right. They were doing that anyway back when they thought he couldn't win and were trying to hurt Hillary as much as they could.

Anyway, the best take away on the debate is that the Yen is down and the Peso is up. Currency traders price in the chance that Trump is going to start a trade war in North America, which will be bad for all the countries, but worse for Mexico and Canada because they are small economies and cross border trade is a bigger percentage of their economy. The Yen is considered a safe haven currency. So the more likely currency traders think a Trump victory is going to be, the worse the Peso and the Canadian dollar do and the better the Japanese Yen does. Part way into the debate, the Peso got a lot stronger and the Yen got noticeably weaker - indicating that international finance markets were watching the proceedings and concluded that Trump was significantly less likely to win after doing his Sniffles McClownshoes routine for an hour and a half while Hillary patiently explained to the rest of the world that the United States was going to continue honoring treaties.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

DSM: Hillary is a shit choice, part of that is because 1A she doesn't motivate the left, and part of that is 1B the media is shit. But honestly, who could know if Sanders would have done better?

Frank: YOU ARE A CRAZY IDIOT, HOW COULD YOU THINK THAT SANDERS WOULD BE BETTER AT 1B, THERE'S DEFINITELY NO POSSIBLE WAY THAT SAYING HE MIGHT NOT BE BETTER MIGHT REFER TO HIM DOING 1A BETTER BECAUSE I MUST LIE EVERYTIME I TALK ABOUT POLITICS NOW, BECAUSE BERNIE SANDERS AND PEOPLE ON THE LEFT ARE STILL ENEMIES 1APRIME AND THE ISSUE OF DONALD TRUMP IS WAY LESS IMPORTANT THAN CONSTANTLY ATTACKING ANYONE WHO THINKS THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD DO LEFTIST THINGS.

[Username17]

The current platform is the most leftist ticket we've ever had in my lifetime. Possibly ever since the founding of the country, depending on how you calculate those things. If the "left doing leftist things" is to arrange a circular firing squad and denounce our leaders for not having true revolutionary proletariat spirit while they are already bringing more lefty ideas closer to the White House than we've ever gotten them in the history of the country, then the left is a bunch of fucking idiots. There has to be an amount you're satisfied with campaigning for. If you aren't going to be satisfied with someone significantly to the left of Obama, you're marginalizing yourself irreparably. If Hillary doesn't win, the Democratic party won't go "Gosh, I guess we didn't go far enough left." They are going to abandon white liberals for the fickle whiny foot stampers that they are and stake out an economically moderate position with seats at the table for minorities.

Hillary was to the left of Obama in 2008 and she's running farther to the left now. What the fucking fuck do you want? And by what possible retarded reading of history do you think there's a snowball's chance in hell of you actually getting it by grumbling about how much you don't like Hillary?

Here are the actual Hillary Clinton campaign promises. What's the part that isn't sufficiently pure for you? Is it the part where she intends to expand the Americans With Disabilities Act? Is it the part where she wants to extend automatic voter registration to every adult? Is it the part where she wants to strengthen and enforce prohibitions on dumping lead into water where black people drink it? Is it the part where she wants to get affordable broadband internet to every household in America by 2020? Is it the part where she wants to perform the largest infrastructure investment program of my lifetime? What? Throw me a fucking bone here. Other than being a girl and having establishment cooties, what exactly isn't far enough left for you?

-Username17

[Kaelik]

The current platform is the most leftist ticket we've ever had in my lifetime. Possibly ever since the founding of the country, depending on how you calculate those things. If the "left doing leftist things" is to arrange a circular firing squad and denounce our leaders for not having true revolutionary proletariat spirit while they are already bringing more lefty ideas closer to the White House than we've ever gotten them in the history of the country, then the left is a bunch of fucking idiots. There has to be an amount you're satisfied with campaigning for. If you aren't going to be satisfied with someone significantly to the left of Obama, you're marginalizing yourself irreparably. If Hillary doesn't win, the Democratic party won't go "Gosh, I guess we didn't go far enough left." They are going to abandon white liberals for the fickle whiny foot stampers that they are and stake out an economically moderate position with seats at the table for minorities.

Hillary was to the left of Obama in 2008 and she's running farther to the left now. What the fucking fuck do you want? And by what possible retarded reading of history do you think there's a snowball's chance in hell of you actually getting it by grumbling about how much you don't like Hillary?

Here are the actual Hillary Clinton campaign promises. What's the part that isn't sufficiently pure for you? Is it the part where she intends to expand the Americans With Disabilities Act? Is it the part where she wants to extend automatic voter registration to every adult? Is it the part where she wants to strengthen and enforce prohibitions on dumping lead into water where black people drink it? Is it the part where she wants to get affordable broadband internet to every household in America by 2020? Is it the part where she wants to perform the largest infrastructure investment program of my lifetime? What? Throw me a fucking bone here. Other than being a girl and having establishment cooties, what exactly isn't far enough left for you?

-Username17

Frank, usually when someone accuses you of constantly lying about and exaggerating other people's criticisms, the usual response is to back pedal and not double the fuck down and lie more.

DSM said that Clinton isn't engaging the left that well. I accused you of engaging on a weird war against leftists to the exclusion of the right. Both of us support Clinton. Neither one of us even said that Clinton wasn't to the left of some arbitrary country midpoint, or even the democratic party establishment, or that Clinton isn't good, or that Sanders would be better than Clinton.

But now you are accusing us of trying to murder Hillary Clinton. Hey, maybe you should stop doing that? Maybe, instead of just assuming that someone saying "Clinton isn't motivating the left that well" is secretly trying to murder her, you could just respond to the actual things people say. Instead of crazy rambling about how anyone who says anything about the left at any point is evil bent on Clinton's destruction.

[Prak]

I'm pretty sure Frank is physically incapable of responding to what people are actually saying at this point.

[tussock]

Prak, Kaelik, I can see you're both still really butt-hurt about your dude losing to a woman ...

but ...

...

Just, there's no shame in it. Women are OK, it doesn't make Bernie less of a man.

[Kaelik]

Prak, Kaelik, I can see you're both still really butt-hurt about your dude losing to a woman ...

but ...

...

Just, there's no shame in it. Women are OK, it doesn't make Bernie less of a man.

Tussock, like always you are in fact wrong. I have supported Clinton over Sanders for the entire primary. But that's okay, at this point I've just accepted that I am the only Clinton supporter in the entire universe who doesn't think that everyone to the left of Clinton is a racist sexist. Once I thought there were other sane people, but Frank dissuaded me of that notion.

[Prak]

Tussock- I supported Bernie for the Primaries. It took me a bit to support Clinton in a way that was more than "well, she's better than Donald." But as this campaign has gone on, I've seen just how much the points against Clinton were bullshit sexism fostered by the right.

I'd still like Bernie, but I'm fully behind Clinton.

[Mechalich]

I really don't think 'Hillary isn't motivating the left well' is actually what's going on. The data suggests that a better representation is that 'Hillary isn't motivating the young well.' Various polls show the under-35 crowd giving only around 60% of their support to Hillary and Trump put together, with huge defections to Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Johnson actually out-polls Trump with the under-35s at times.

The thing is, if you're considering voting for Gary Johnson you don't actually qualify as part of 'the left,' regardless of whether or not you voted for Sanders a few months back. Instead, what we have is a whole lot of young people who believe that the establishment is completely and totally corrupt (they're not entirely wrong) and want to cast 'plague on both your houses' votes but aren't actually strongly committed to the right or the left, especially not on economic policies.

The media has fed this, especially since Trump's actions have basically erased all discussion of policy from the campaign entirely. So the average younger, relatively low-information voter gets the impression that Trump is a racist asshole (true) and that Hillary is a ruthless schemer (not true) while he relatively not-covered Johnson comes off as a moderately hipster-ish dude who wants to legalize marijuana. Which is a real problem because the libertarian platform is certifiably insane, but the major media outlets haven't bothered to take the time to make that clear.

Ultimately, Trump doesn't need young voters, they aren't a significant part of the Republican coalition. Clinton, by contrast, does, and she's currently running way behind Obama with that group. If she had Obama's support level with the under-35 grouping this election would not be close at all.

[Kaelik]

I really don't think 'Hillary isn't motivating the left well' is actually what's going on. The data suggests that a better representation is that 'Hillary isn't motivating the young well.' Various polls show the under-35 crowd giving only around 60% of their support to Hillary and Trump put together, with huge defections to Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Johnson actually out-polls Trump with the under-35s at times.

It's not the people who say (in non-binding polls) that they are voting for 3rd party candidates that we are talking about.

It's the voter engagement and going to the polls that we are talking about. Maybe all the people who prefer Clinton will actually vote, and maybe they won't, but the allegation is that she's not doing a good job ensuring that (or that the media is doing a good job ensuring that doesn't happen).

[DSMatticus]

This is... okay, pathetic is really the only word. There are no others.

We start off strong with Frank's "I am going to repeat your doubts about Sanders back to you, except I will say them in an accusatory tone. Take that!"

We followed that up with blanket accusations of sexism from Tussock against anyone who might ever criticize any woman for any reason.

Which, in turn, isn't quite one-upped by Mechalich's "it's not that Hillary isn't motivating the left well, it's just that she's failing to motivate the young voters who made up the Obama coalition, who are... traditionally the leftmost part of the Obama coalition. Shit." It's not even that you can't split that hair, it's that once you do nothing actually changes.

But regardless of how disappointing the quality of this conversation is, there are two substantive points that have come up:

1) Would Sanders have done worse in the media than Clinton? I'm honestly not sure. The media - and not just on the right - have been laying the groundwork to sabotage (whether intentionally or just because it "makes good news") Clinton for most of a decade. You can make people care about pointless bullshit, but you can't do it overnight. There's certainly the possibility that increased scrutiny would have revealed that Sanders fucks goats or whatever, but there's also the possibility that it would have revealed a great big nothing. And then instead of having 6+ years to spin that great big nothing into the BENGHAZI EMAIL FOUNDATION CONTROVERSY they would have had a couple months.

And if Sanders really has avoided fostering the sorts of insider connections other senators have, then a lot of the attacks that have worked well against Clinton (i.e. just pointing at politics as usual and holding her to a higher standard than literally anyone else in order to "express concern") wouldn't have worked all that well. It's difficult to imagine Sanders walking away with a bigger media black eye than Clinton because holy shit have you seen the way the media covered Clinton? Do you really think screaming socialism is going to work as well as what the media has done to her? Because the media has been screaming socialism since I was old enough to vote, and all it really seems to do is turnout Republicans - which wasn't enough for Romney, if you'll recall.

2) Has Hillary Clinton actually made a legitimate attempt to energize the Obama coalition? Tim Kaine Tim Kaine Tim Kaine Tim Kaine. No, I don't think most people have any fucks to give specifically about Tim Kaine, but Tim Kaine is emblematic of the way she's ran her general campaign strategy - that is, just sort of assuming that the base would show up to vote for her without any further rallying and that she should run like a generic Democrat. She would look presidential, Trump would look like a madman, and she'd play it safe while coasting neatly into victory without taking any risks. Well, that is turning out to have been a bad call. Partly because the media has fucking hammered her for really no good reason, and partly because when Republican enthusiasm for Trump hit rock bottom it bounced instead of splattered. Trump is almost certainly a weaker opponent than Romney, but (once again) not nearly as weak as everyone thought he would be.

Youth voters do not think Hillary Clinton shares their values. Some of that is because she has a long, highly visible career and it's very obvious that she's drifted to where she is today - making people skeptical. Some of that is the media going out of their way to depict her as some crooked, scheming hag who "needs to smile more." But some of that is just her own damn fault for squandering key opportunities to signal to the missing parts of the coalition that she stands beside them. Seriously, what the fuck did Tim Kaine bring to the ticket? Nothing. The answer is absolutely nothing. She could have used that VP pick to bring some people around to the "well, maybe she's not that bad" camp, and she did not. That is no one's fault but her's.

Sanders would have been in the same boat had he won; i.e. in dire need of pivoting his rhetoric to focus on minority issues (in particular, but not exclusively) and making concrete gestures of solidarity. And we know that Sanders had at least some of the same kind of stubbornness and combativeness with his advisors that Trump had, so it's possible that never would have happened - who the fuck knows? Regardless, we know what Clinton's electoral weakness is going to be (low turnout among youth voters), and it's really clear that insofar as she's had big opportunities to remedy that she's ignored them. Could the media do her some favors and sell her to youth voters on her behalf, or just stop attacking her? Sure. But she also could have ran a fuckton better campaign.

[MGuy]

When Obama ran there was a huge campaign aimed toward people like me. He spoke of "Change" and then there was the whole Vote or Die thing. The only things I remember being brought up against him in the run up between him and Clinton was his shorter history and something something is he really 'black/american/christian enough???!'.

Now I didn't see all that the second time he ran but eh, Romney was the bottom of the bucket pick and kept shooting himself in the foot so eh. Fast forward to now, Clinton basically has "It's a vagina! Vote for her now!" and "She's not TRUMP!" going for her as far as anyone in my age group or younger are concerned. The media really has painted a bad picture of her and despite long talks among people I know to stop acting like she's just as bad as Trump and to please stop sharing bad articles and shit I believe it is too little too late. Even with Bernie giving her the go ahead people do not TRUST her and regardless of what she actually does or says that seems to be the thing she should've worked to earn. If she tried to do so already it did not pierce the wall of anti Clinton/Trump propaganda I get spewed to me on the daily from shows and talking heads that walk the spectrum between Left and Right.

As for Frank... I really don't know why he thinks that shunning anyone who ever speaks against the grand narrative is an effective way to win votes. The people that are already going to vote Hill are already on your side. Shutting out anyone else in the hope that the other side will seem so bad people will of course get into formation doesn't seem to work. I do find it funny he brings up the Brexit because as far as I can tell that only goes to show that ignoring every voice you don't want to hear kinda backfires.

[Maj]

Seriously, what the fuck did Tim Kaine bring to the ticket? Nothing. The answer is absolutely nothing. She could have used that VP pick to bring some people around to the "well, maybe she's not that bad" camp, and she did not. That is no one's fault but her's.

I think Kaine was an attempt to win over moderate Republicans...? But really I think my best hypothesis is that she picked a dude who looked innocuous and unknown so it would highlight how badass she is as president, and show the country that a woman doesn't need a strong man as VP to help her do her job.

[DSMatticus]

I think Kaine was an attempt to win over moderate Republicans...? But really I think my best hypothesis is that she picked a dude who looked innocuous and unknown...

It is certainly one of those two things. Tim Kaine was either meant to be so perfectly status quo that he neither excited nor offended anyone, or he was a (failed) gesture of solidarity with corporate America and "moderate" conservatives. Either way, the end result is that a VP pick that could have been used to bring back the parts of the Democratic base she was polling poorly with... wasn't used to do that, and now she is running against Romney-but-weaker with the perilously cracked remains of the Obama coalition. I honestly think she (like everyone else, including me) underestimated Trump's palatability. Republican enthusiasm is mildly bruised, not decimated - so while you may not need to bring your perfect A-game to win this election, a B- is going to make it a toss-up.

I do find it funny he brings up the Brexit because as far as I can tell that only goes to show that ignoring every voice you don't want to hear kinda backfires.

Yeah, it's worth noting that Brexit happened because a bunch of traditionally labour strongholds voted to leave. Frank would do well to remember that Theresa May wasn't actually elected and labour has been in shambles for quite awhile now. They lost the 2010 general election by 7.1 percentage points and the 2015 general election by 6.5, and that's before we start discussing the disproportionate seat advantage tories managed to eke out of their popular vote advantage because the UK has shitty elections. David Cameron could fuck a pig (oh wait) and it wouldn't shift the results by enough to make the current incarnation of labour competitive.

Frank has the cause and effect reversed. Labour voters voted for leave because labour is too fucking incompetent to give them an alternative, and has been since 2005. Yes, the tories really are a bunch of meany poopieheads, but you still have to present a vision of what the country's (and Europe's) problems are and how to fix them. Labour have not done that. They have sat passively on their ass and allowed the tories to peddle their narrative about a world destroyed by irresponsible, overbearing governments largely unchallenged - which in turn has fueled deeply xenophobic narratives about "leeches" and the like. If you want to bitch about the failure of labour, you need to bitch at the leadership. They dug their own grave, and they are going to have to dig themselves back out of it if they don't want to collapse into the party of permanent inconsequential dissent.

For fuck's sake, Ed Milliband's labour was still the party of "also austerity" in 2014. If you are admitting (wrongly) that the government can't afford to run its existing services, of course that is going to empower the assholes who want to cut those services!

[Username17]

Tim Kaine was either meant to be so perfectly status quo that he neither excited nor offended anyone, or he was a (failed) gesture of solidarity with corporate America and "moderate" conservatives.

That is a false dilemma. The much more likely answer is that if Hillary Clinton wins any two of the four largest swing states, then she wins. Even if Donald Trump takes literally all of the rest of the swing states. Tim Kaine is personally popular in Virginia and Pennsylvania, so if he can put both of them out of reach by campaigning in those places the entire rest of the election is a side show. That's how the electoral college works. Clinton is going to win California by more votes than there are people in Finland, but you actually get to be President by counting to 270 Electoral College seats, and Virginia has 13 of them.

In general, Hillary Clinton is smarter than you are and has been actively campaigning for progressive causes for longer than you've been alive. While she can and does make mistakes, when she takes an action you don't understand your first and second hypothesis should be that she is playing a deeper game.

-Username17

[tussock]

We followed that up with blanket accusations of sexism from Tussock against anyone who might ever criticize any woman for any reason.

You know, if you had any actual fucking criticisms, you might almost have a point. Instead, there is literal complaints that Hilary is not what Obama was or what Sanders might have possibly been if fantasyland.

1) Would Sanders have done worse in the media than Clinton?

Here in the real world, he already did. There was a primary, and debates and shit, in which he did worse than Clinton in the media, when speaking, when talking policy, when debating various things, when trying to look presidential under pressure. Sanders had a lot of substantively better ideas and he lost anyway, and then Clinton's campaign took up his better ideas for themselves and made them part of the official democrat ticket platform. So now you get Sanders' best ideas on someone who does better in the media.

2) Has Hillary Clinton actually made a legitimate attempt to energize the Obama coalition? Tim Kaine ...

Clinton is polling as winning the popular vote, winning the electoral vote that actually counts, smashing it with minorities and women, winning with old people and young people and every division of voters except white males. White males prefer Trump. Like they preferred Bush, and Bush, and Reagan, and so on since the southern strategy kicked in. That just got a fuck-tonne better after the first debate, just as it did after she debated Sanders.

Kaine? You know the swing states, Appalachia and shit this time around, maybe the retired folks from there in Florida, the ones that win the election, they have their own ideas about what a democrat is and what they should say in public. Tim Kaine is that, he comforts those people in the face of stories about liberal elites, because he doesn't talk like one of them, he can run big rallies in those places with his accent that makes him sound just like one of them. Almost like Clinton is trying to win the election rather than fluff your own personal pillow for you.

[Josh_Kablack]

Tim Kaine is personally popular in Virginia and Pennsylvania,

Speaking as a Pennsylvanian, he seems to be more of an unknown than a "popular" around here in my corner of this state. Got any non-anecdotal evidence of his popularity in PA to trump my observations?

[MGuy]

Was there something I missed? I don't remember Tim's announcement stirring anything greater than a "who?" among voters and commentators.

[Kaelik]

Was there something I missed? I don't remember Tim's announcement stirring anything greater than a "who?" among voters and commentators.

Among commentators it basically amounted a "This is a great choice for a sober middle of the road Democrat" which is all you need to know to know that he's about as right wing as you can get and still be named VP of the democratic party.

Frank is contending that amongst voters, if you aren't in PA or Virginia, then you aren't even supposed to know or care who he is. Why he includes PA in that I have no fucking idea, because assorted PA state politicians I have spoken to have no more fucking clue who he is than anyone else in the world did, and had to look him up same as me and everyone else. Surely that isn't the case in Virginia, but I have no idea how he's supposed to appeal to PA.

DSM is talking about how Tim Kaine is a Democrat designed to piss off Sanders supporters. I will say, if Tim Kaine is supposed to do that, no one sent him the memo, because his office suddenly decided his most important issues are campaign finance reform and corporate regulation right before he got the nod, to the point that they released a bunch of statements that flatly contradict positions he ran on in the past. So whether Tim Kaine believes any of that is certainly open to argument, but he at least is aware of the things he's supposed to say.

[DSMatticus]

VP's are traditionally worth about 2 ppt in their home state. Unfortunately, Virginia is basically the bluest swing state, and if Hillary Clinton needs Tim Kaine to win Virginia then she has probably already lost - 538 gave Tim Kaine a <1% chance of changing the outcome of the race. Meanwhile, if Hillary Clinton's support among millennials matched their approval of Obama, that would be worth about 2 ppt nationally, which would have a fuck-off huge chance of changing the outcome of the race.

Any strategy Hillary puts forward other than "rebuild the Obama coalition" is an objectively inferior strategy. Full stop. You can bitch that we are having this discussion with the benefits of hindsight (How could we have known Republicans would ultimately rally around Trump to this extent? How could we have known that the media was going to do everything they could to tear Clinton apart? Playing it safe seems smart when you're ahead!). You can bitch that even with the perfect strategy she probably wasn't going to close that gap completely for the full 2 ppt. But you cannot defend Tim Kaine as the "correct" choice now that the race has closed this much - Trump can clearly win this, and was at one point one ppt in one state away from being the favorite. Virginia is just too blue to need Kaine without the election having already been decided in Trump's favor - if the tide shifts in Trump's favor by enough to put Virginia in play, Trump will have already picked up enough electoral college votes elsewhere to win it.

Got any non-anecdotal evidence of his popularity in PA to trump my observations?

"They're in roughly the same part of the country and his accent is kind of similar."

DSM is talking about how Tim Kaine is a Democrat designed to piss off Sanders supporters. I will say, if Tim Kaine is supposed to do that, no one sent him the memo, because his office suddenly decided his most important issues are campaign finance reform and corporate regulation right before he got the nod, to the point that they released a bunch of statements that flatly contradict positions he ran on in the past. So whether Tim Kaine believes any of that is certainly open to argument, but he at least is aware of the things he's supposed to say.

Well, no. I wouldn't be surprised if Tim Kaine were supposed to be a bone thrown to the "very serious people" who make up the political commentariat, who are overwhelmingly biased towards the centre-right, but I don't think Tim Kaine has the name recognition to actually piss off any significant number of Sanders supporters. They are angry about other things and don't know who the fuck Tim Kaine is.

The only things I really have to say about Tim Kaine are that:
1) I fucking hate him.
2) He is a missed opportunity to hotglue some of the cracks in the Obama coalition.
3) The game he brings home court advantage to is already so blue-sided that if Hillary can't win it without him she's going to lose the election anyway.

The only two of those that matter here are 2&3, because my personal disdain will not affect the outcome of the race and those other things will.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I really don't think 'Hillary isn't motivating the left well' is actually what's going on. The data suggests that a better representation is that 'Hillary isn't motivating the young well.' Various polls show the under-35 crowd giving only around 60% of their support to Hillary and Trump put together, with huge defections to Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Johnson actually out-polls Trump with the under-35s at times.

Speaking as a young voter, this is 100% true.

Obama was very charismatic, promised to solve a lot of problems, and inspired a lot of hope when he first ran. Hell, I went out and volunteered for him before I was old enough to vote.

Hillary...well, she's the default candidate because all the others are incompetent (Johnson), have no chance(Stein), or batshit crazy/deluded (Trump). Am I excited about her or do I think she has any integrity? No. Does she actually have anything new or exciting to offer besides the much-trumpeted "is female, look at the dancing bear"? No. Sure, she's got the best grasp of policy of anyone running in the race, but you hear her complaining about "the Hillary standard", the emails, various foundation scandals...and she's part of the establishment which is really the big thing here.

The establishment is broken and nonfunctional, and it's both parties - and our - fault. Just look at it - Ted Cruz, Wendy Davis, those Wisconsin democrats who fled the state rather than vote on Scott Walker's deunionization plans, and the rest of the legislators who rather than reach across the isle are compelled by their frothing constituents to never ever compromise on any issue ever because that would be morally wrong. If anyone does try to compromise they're despised by the constituents of the party they "wronged" and get crushed in primaries.

So when someone like Trump comes along and promises "deals", points out that this country has no leadership and promises to fix problems it's very easy to project that as something vaguely respectable you can vote for. Yes, he's a frothing racist who switches positions to tell idiots what they want to hear at the drop of a hat. Sure, he has no principles or scruples whatsoever, and I wouldn't trust him to lead me out of a paper bag, but people are falling for it and I guarantee you any independent support he has is projecting him as a dealmaker, compromiser, and someone willing to speak truth to power. Combine this with one of the giant polar factions backing him because he is on their team and his plausibility as a candidate makes a little more sense. Trump is incoherent enough that you can choose your own Trump, and this is 90% of his appeal.

Meanwhile Hillary is running as the agent of Team Left with an "it's my turn" attitude and while offering coherent, well-thought out positions she does not seem to have an actual plan to get Congress to do anything about them. Obama had plans. Obama got everything stuck in Congress because the Republican Congress was more interested in showing their base that they could stop the EvilBad Kenyan Muslim terrorist. The vast majority of the Republican base despises Hillary personally, how the hell is she gonna get anything done?

That said, Hillary gets my vote because the alternatives are worse.

[deaddmwalking]

It's unfair and untrue to say Hillary Clinton lacks integrity.

[Kaelik]

It's unfair and untrue to say Hillary Clinton lacks integrity.

That was the one weird thing you wanted to contradict him on? I would have picked "Democrats are dumb meanies who won't compromise with Republicans."

[tussock]

Surely that isn't the case in Virginia, but I have no idea how he's supposed to appeal to PA.

It's not magic, Kaelik. No one knew who the fuck Bernie Sanders was until he was in the running to be the Democrat's candidate, but then he spoke at huge rallies and on national TV repeatedly and strangely enough the people who liked around the country him were exceptionally close the same groups who liked him in his home state, where folks already knew him, in a completely predictable way.

People totally looked at who voted for him in his home state and picked that based on nation-wide demographics he would not be able to beat Clinton. And he did not beat Clinton. Because those predictions are not bullshit.

So you can look at the sort of people who vote for Time Kaine, already, who he wins with, and then put him on nation-wide TV and at huge rallies in swing states and have him speak after Obama and not sound like an idiot and stuff. And you can predict how people will like the look of him, using demographic trends of those who have already heard him and how they voted, and extend that to the people who will now hear him as the campaign continues.

And if the people he does well with are the same people who don't connect with Clinton, that is a good thing for Clinton, and the Democrats.


It's not a huge deal, it's probably just a fraction of a percept in a few states, but it really super doesn't matter how most democrats feel about him.

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

Not exactly the worst guy ever, anyway? Brady Campaign 100%, NRA F, League of Conservation Voters (trees) 91%, Heritage 0%, Democratic Action 90%, Right to Life Zero, Planned Parenthood Perfect. 90% votes align with the party. Seriously? That's the bad guy?