2016 US Presidential Election Thread Part X

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Pence is the safest pick for Trump. The guy has experience in Washington (which I thought was a bad thing.....), and leads a state.

He also fits more into the mold of what the GOP platform is about. Extremely religious, almost on par with Cruz. Only difference is I don't think Pence, or any of his relatives, have openly stated he's chosen by God to lead this country. Pence has stated that he puts his faith first, conservatism second, and party third.

Indiana can't wait to get rid of him.

If you want a conspiracy, maybe Trump picks him so Indiana can get a D into the Gov office ;)
 
Pence's Midwestern sensibilities will amplify Trumps rust belt appeal. More of a softer touch which will help in farm country of Iowa.


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Trumps Social Media team has posted a Pokemon Go animation capturing Hillary on his FB page. Sign of the times. Could you imagine capturing a rare Dukakis? Mario stomping on Mondale?

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Trumps Social Media team has posted a Pokemon Go animation capturing Hillary on his FB page. Sign of the times. Could you imagine any worthy presidential candidate doing an 8th grade stunt like this?

No, no I can't... Even the worst of our dead presidents are rolling in their graves.
 
Understanding Hillary: The Clinton America sees isn’t the Clinton colleagues know. Why are they so different?

This is a really fascinating and well written article about Hillary and the public's perception of her.

Very good article, thanks for posting. Almost all of it rings very true to me. So much in it is quotable, but this is one point, taken from the very beginning, that I want to bring up:

Her explanation for the Gap is simple enough. “There’s a lot of behavioral science that if you attack someone endlessly — even if none of what you say is true — the very fact of attacking that person raises doubts and creates a negative perspective,” she says. “As someone Exhibit A on that — since it has been a long time that I’ve been in that position — I get that.”

This is very true. And the next paragraph, where the author gives several counterexamples of male politicians who have done well despite being attacked - the point he seems to be missing is that none of them have spent 25 or so years consistently in the spotlight being under such a sustained attack as she has been.

Anyway, that point just barely scratches the surface. The communication and listening style issues are fascinating, as is her ability to compartmentalize.
 
I had dinner the other night with a friend who worked for a moderate GOP senator on the hill 10 years ago. He's now in the private sector. He's voting for Hillary. He thinks that she is, and probably has to be, an inveterate liar. But not about things that actually matter. It's on the real issues, the issues that matter, that she's basically a superstar. Hardworking, ultra informed, etc. he also mentioned that she seems to have a kind of public autism and that in person she's warm, caring, almost inspiring. The kind of boss who would call and congratulate you on the birth of a child.

Fwiw.
 
This is actually not true.
The only information we have is that the polls showed is that at that specific moment in time Sanders would have outperformed Clinton against Trump with primary voters..

It wasn't primary voters. It was the general electorate they were asking. In case you forgot, Trump isn't a Democrat.

Likewise, there's no way BVS's statement about made up polling discrepancies could be remotely true because they obviously were talking to different groups of people when doing the matchups (likely Democratic primary voters for Sanders vs. Clinton, and the general public or likely voters for the Democrats vs. Trump). Not to mention that rarely were general election matchup polls done concurrently while the same polling firm was doing a primary one for Democrats. Nor would they be likely to double-dip for two completely different polls.

At the end of the day, there's more Sanders voters that aren't going to bother showing up to the polls. Maybe they hate Clinton's politics. Or her personally. Or are young and just don't vote. That's really the difference maker. Sanders basically would be entitled to every lifelong Democrat voting for him in November and it's those lifelong Democrats that made up the vast majority of Clinton primary votes. Call them "independents" or life-long leftists like myself or young people that only care if Bernie is on the ticket...but whatever it is, it's a lot of people that won't vote for Clinton.

Case In Point:

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/12/48567...lem-with-a-key-pro-sanders-group-young-voters

Trump gains a whopping 1 percentage point with young people (18-30) when it's Clinton rather than Sanders on the Democratic ticket. But Clinton still has 23% of the youth vote not bother to vote for her when she's on the ticket. That's a massive loss of voters.
 
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I'm at a loss to understand the thought processes that suggest Candidate A performing much better than Candidate B in the primaries means that Candidate A will perform worse than Candidate B in a general election.

And I am closer to Sanders in ideology than I am to Clinton.


Let's say there's dots.

Clinton earned 17 blue dots in the primaries. Sanders earned 13 green dots.

Clinton defeated Sanders in the primaries.


Now, let's go over to the general election. Clinton will certainly get the 17 blue dots from the primaries plus other blue dots that didn't vote in the primaries. But how many of the green dots will she get (including those that voted for Sanders)? How many yellow dots from the middle? Will it be enough dots to combat the yellow and red ones that Trump ends up with?

To give a clear historical example, think George McGovern in 1972. To the left enough to excite voters and win the Democratic primaries, but too far to the left for the American public of 44 years ago. In that case, you have the Democrats nominating someone that did worse in the general election that some other candidates probably would have.

Likewise, idiots like Gingrich and Santorum woefully trailed Obama in match-up polling and there is no doubt among political prognosticators that they would have done far worse than Romney had they become the nominee. And neither was too far away from managing to do just that.

For this election, there's the questions about Clinton's own scandals (or "scandals" depending on who you ask) and her own personal likability. It's not impossible that she's weaker than the average Democratic candidate would have been given some of these underlying issues (as evidenced in favorability polling), the same sort of problems that led to a horse race for the Senate seat at the turn of the century and a loss to Obama in 2008.

There is just no way in my mind that the primary results of a group of 30,000,000 - most of them lifelong Democratic party voters that are far more supportive of Clinton than the rest of the general public, is indicative of the thought process of how 130,000,000 general election voters will react. Those are not equivalent sample sizes, especially when the other big candidate for the Democrats received votes from millions of people that said they'd never vote for Clinton in the first place (or had never even voted previously in their lives).
 
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I mean, I think it's pretty easy to see how *a* candidate who wins the primary might not do better than their primary opponent(s) in the general.

I don't know if Sanders is that guy. He's just as polar as Clinton is, as Trump is. This election is very different. Once the Jebbers and Rubio and the classical male republicans were out, there was no "standard choice." Sanders could've done well, or been trampled. I don't think early polling on him meant anything. Many people pointed it out... he was unscathed and would be ripped apart for being a Jewish socialist in America. But then again, he very well could have used his "honesty" factor to pull away "shake the system" voters from Trump.
 
We'll never know. But the "this is the strongest candidate because they won the primary" argument is already a farcical one when you look at Donald Trump who consistently fared the worst in polling of all the major Republican contenders. And it was brought up time and again by political news sites, FiveThirtyEight, etc. Just because 40% of Republicans were down with building a wall doesn't mean he was their best option.

A lot of it has to do with poor strategy. Republican voters are like 80 and can't comprehend to get behind one tolerable candidate. The "anybody but Romney" crowd could have easily toppled the guy had they got behind either Santorum or Gingrich instead of waffling around like cry-babies. Same could have happened to Trump this time and probably would have had Rubio not malfunctioned.

Call it being burned by Nader or whatever, but Democrats are pretty swift when it comes to the primary game. Of course, looking into the foreseeable future, a lot of that has to do with candidates being anointed. If Cory Booker is the VP, for example, there's absolutely no way he can't win the nomination given all the plusses he'd have going for him (age, ethnicity and VP status). But regardless, Democrats whittle out those that can't possibly win the primaries right away and then coalesce behind the candidate that best fits their interest from what's left...for liberals, it was Obama > Clinton in 2008 since Kucinich wasn't viable, etc.
 
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Very good article, thanks for posting. Almost all of it rings very true to me. So much in it is quotable, but this is one point, taken from the very beginning, that I want to bring up:

This is very true. And the next paragraph, where the author gives several counterexamples of male politicians who have done well despite being attacked - the point he seems to be missing is that none of them have spent 25 or so years consistently in the spotlight being under such a sustained attack as she has been.

Anyway, that point just barely scratches the surface. The communication and listening style issues are fascinating, as is her ability to compartmentalize.

:ohmy: VP :wave:
Was wondering if you were keeping an eye on your friends political landscape across the border :wink:

I'm sure you'd know i'm not voting for Trump!
 
womanfish ..

was it you(or iron yuppie) who said you despised Jill Stein?
I just know she's the green candidate.

What do you see wrong with her?

Jill would be ok if she would a campaign on issues. The least I could say of Nader, is that he never based his campaign on using right wing smears against a Democratic Candidate.
Also, from the get go, she seemed to try and piggyback herself onto the Bernie campaign. She was a candidate of a different party, but her social media presence through the primaries was to praise a candidate of a different party (Bernie) while making visciously right-wing talking point attacks on Hillary.
Then for the topper, she says, hey Bernie, be MY running mate! LOL. When that didn't work. Hey Bernie, I'll step down and YOU can run third party!
JESUS. It became obvious she has no intention of actually being a serious change maker, she became an anti-hillary zealot.

Then, when Bernie does the right thing, and endorses Clinton, she goes after him.

Her resume reads like a trail of tears. I mean, if you applied for a job and your resume was a list of all the jobs you've applied for but DIDN'T get, how would that work out for you?

It may seem old fashioned, but I DO like a candidate based in reality. A read through of her "platform" sounds like a mix of about half of what Hillary is proposing, and half sounds like a conversation around a drum circle/sweat lodge.
Hillary did more in her first few years after college than she has done in a lifetime.

Where would our country be right now if Ralph Nader hadn't gotten enough votes in Florida (and NH) to hand to election to Bush?

would 9/11 have even happened? Even if it had, would the aftermath of it, Invasion of Iraq, which spurred on the crippling debt, the rise of terror groups, etc.. have happened? I don't think so.

Idealism is great. But being a spoiler that ends up bringing down a viable candidate with real progressive ideas and the ability to get them done is not ok in my book. In fact, in may be the least progressive thing you could do.
 
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This kind of sums it all up doesn't it?

I think so. And it's exactly the key reason why I think Sanders would do better. Nobody that supports Clinton would not vote for Sanders in November.

They allowed Sanders to run in their primary and if he won, that would have been on them. Clinton wasn't entitled to the nomination simply because she'd been with the party virtually her entire adult life, but the most fanatical of Sanders supporters should have realized how hard it would be to defeat someone with so much support among the party's voters and its internal machine.
 
I think so. And it's exactly the key reason why I think Sanders would do better. Nobody that supports Clinton would not vote for Sanders in November.

They allowed Sanders to run in their primary and if he won, that would have been on them. Clinton wasn't entitled to the nomination simply because she'd been with the party virtually her entire adult life, but the most fanatical of Sanders supporters should have realized how hard it would be to defeat someone with so much support among the party's voters and its internal machine.

I'm a Clinton voter and would have needed a lot of selling to vote for Sanders in November. I obviously would never vote for Trump but Sanders scared me as well. I may have ended up coming around to him, but not 100% sure on that. I know others that feel the same way.
 
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