The Bigly 2016 US Presidential Election Thread, Part XV

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This is a report from 2015, but I saw it brought up again on Morning Joe recently.

A country doesn't turn to authoritarianism because of a charismatic leader (or orange con man buffoon). It turns out of desperation. And there are a lot of desperate people in middle America.

15 years of life expectancy dropping.

And it's largely ignored.

Except by the far wing of the Republican party, that is.

This is where the increase in xenophobia and racism comes from. Where the Trump support comes from. And it's not going away when this orange faced dickhead loses next week.

The Democrats need to recognize this and do something about it, while not losing the course on social progress at the same time. They can't allow this demographic to continue to slip towards the far right, because as we see this year, the results can be downright terrifying.

It's the number one thing that Clinton will need to do in her first year to help bring this country back together. What could happen if we continue to ignore it and allow the far right to take hold is absolutely frightening.

The thing that upsets me most is that the policies of the democratic party do seem more in line with helping these people, but very rich, very loud members of society do a great job of painting it otherwise, taking advantage, and using their large and loud platform of scare tactics to ensure that the lower middle keeps voting for them, even if it's way out of their best interest.
 
If trends in other democracies mean anything, actually you'll see it keep going up and up. People hate the inconvenience of having to vote on election day. In today's "agile economy", to borrow a favoured term of Australia's Dear Leader, people want to vote when they want, not when you say. The early voting stats are truly extraordinary now in some countries, approaching a quarter and even a third of the entire turnout.

Oh, I see the advantages of the system, but I can guarantee there will be a hue and cry here from some because millions of votes were cast before the FBI announcement last week and they'll argue that those votes might have been cast in a more orange light had the voting not taken place until we See You Next Tuesday. Obviously the amount of voters who may have any remorse in this situation is negligible, but there will be folks who claim it is proof of a rigged system and it will be abandoned.

My sister has voted already, she told me that when she went to her Town Hall, a woman who waited in line behind her (for 15 minutes or so) left before actually voting when she got to the front of the line and saw there wasn't a police officer present to monitor the proceedings as had been advertised. There will be folks who think early voting is just another opportunity for corruption/fraud/whatever.
 
If this does indeed become a tight race in the final week, two things will matter most.

Early voting.
Ground game.

One candidate has an advantage in both categories.




One candidate is getting 30% of the GOP early votes in Florida.

One candidate understands the issues and how government works and has policy positions closest to my values and priorities.

The other doesn't.

How is this hard? It's incredible how people allow themselves to be drawn into the weeds under the pretense of feeling smart because they read some internet blather that's precisely designed to make you, gentle reader, feel as if you are smart and shrewd and won't be told what to do.

We have a qualified candidate who understands the job. And we have a con man.

The shocking thing here is the degree to which people are willing to go to lie to themselves in order to justify voting for Trump.

This is the easiest election decision in my lifetime for any thinking person. Hillary could shoot someone dead on 5th Avenue and she would still be a better president than the man who anger tantrum tweets at 3am.

But go ahead. Do exactly what Putin wants. Vote for someone who wants to jail the opposition. It's the Russian thing to do.
 
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this is a true statement





it seems like when you see posts you don't favor often you just label it trolling



when there is a lot of real trolling by people agree with, that gets overlooked.


Hillary wants to make America Mexico. Democrats are openly encouraging voter fraud. Hillary's supporters are more dangerous and violent than Trump's.

Get over yourself, deep.
 
Where does the troll end and the man begin?

One day we will be unable to distinguish ourselves from our avatars.
 
One candidate is getting 30% of the GOP early votes in Florida.

One candidate understands the issues and how government works and has policy positions closest to my values and priorities.

The other doesn't.

How is this hard? It's incredible how people allow themselves to be drawn into the weeds under the pretense of feeling smart because they read some internet blather that's precisely designed to make you, gentle reader, feel as if you are smart and shrewd and won't be told what to do.

We have a qualified candidate who understands the job. And we have a con man.

The shocking thing here is the degree to which people are willing to go to lie to themselves in order to justify voting for Trump.

This is the easiest election decision in my lifetime for any thinking person. Hillary could shoot someone dead on 5th Avenue and she would still be a better president than the man who anger tantrum tweets at 3am.

But go ahead. Do exactly what Putin wants. Vote for someone who wants to jail the opposition. It's the Russian thing to do.

Look, as much as I want Hillary to way, there is no way in hell she's getting the 28% of GOP Florida volters reported in that poll. It's such a clear outlier. Polling in NC and FL has systematically shown the usual 90-10 splits. I wouldn't give that specific individual result any deep thought.
 
So let's talk facts. Facts are fun!

Nevada is one of the only states that release the party affiliation of early voters.

50,000 more votes have been cast by Democrats in Nevada as of last night than have been cast for Republicans.

In 2012 early voters were about 70% of all voters. Obama had a similar advantage at this point, and took the state by 7 points.

Barring something unforeseen, Nevada is going to go to Clinton.

Taking every battleground state out, this puts her at 264.

So Trump needs to win Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Utah and Arizona to even have a chance of winning.
 
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So let's talk facts. Facts are fun!

Nevada is one of the only states that release the party affiliation of early voters.

50,000 more votes have been cast by Democrats in Nevada as of last night than have been cast for Republicans.

In 2012 early voters were about 70% of all voters. Obama had a similar advantage at this point, and took the state by 7 points.

Barring something unforeseen, Nevada is going to go to Clinton.

Taking every battleground state out, this puts her at 264.

So Trump needs to win Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Utah and Arizona to even have a chance of winning.

The problem, and my concern, is that the results in each state are not statistically independent. The so-called firewall quickly collapses in a close national race. If he wins Florida and North Carolina, it probably means that undecides are breaking in his direction more than expected in the polls; that makes it significantly more likely that he will be quite competitive in places like Colorado, Wisconsin or even Michigan.

Based on NC early voting, turnout doesn't seem to be a huge issue in terms of polling (i.e. early voting trends are confirming the assumptions on the composition of the electorate). It's really more about the undecideds and third party voters at this point.

Edit: by the way, Hillary is running a bit behind Obama 2012 in NV. Check this out: http://www.ktnv.com/news/ralston/the-nevada-early-voting-blog. It really depends on the next couple of days.
 
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Right. But the large number of undecideds at this point is a huge factor for volatility.

What I am trying to say is that the behavior of undecideds in battleground state A is very much correlated to the behavior of undecideds in battleground state B (particularly those with similar demographics, like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, for example), so Trump winning in one of these states makes it more likely that he wins in other ones too.
 
Black turnout is noticeably way down which is ironic since they're the group that effectively forced Clinton upon the general electorate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/u...ly-voting-boding-ill-for-hillary-clinton.html

If the election were held today, Colorado or New Hampshire would be the only thing standing in front of a Trump victory according to the 538 now-cast. Same thing is showing that he now trails by only 2.9 points nationally.



I'm also in agreement with those that say early voting tells you nothing. As the above article indicates, early voting was very successful for Democrats in 2010 and 2014 and look how that turned out. All it really means is that somebody who made up their mind already decided to vote before Election Day. In effect, it tells you nothing.
 
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Black turnout is noticeably way down which is ironic since they're the group that effectively forced Clinton upon the general electorate.

I hope you realize how bad and inappropriate this sounds.

Also, African American turnout is down from the Obama elections, but still higher (or at a minimum equivalent) than for white or Latino voters.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/u...carolina-seems-to-confirm-a-clinton-lead.html

Black Voters Turn Out Like Everyone Else

In 2012 and 2008, black voters were much likelier than white voters to vote early.

That’s not true this year. The black share of early voters has dropped to 23 percent from 28 percent in 2008.


Interactive Feature: 2016 Senate Election Forecast
There’s no question, in my view, that this indicates that black voters are less enthusiastic than they were in 2012.

But it does not suggest that there will be a huge collapse in black turnout — say, falling from 23 percent to 19 percent of the electorate. Instead, it indicates that black voters are basically voting like nonblack voters.

There are many reliable black voters — midterm and primary voters — left to cast ballots. Indeed, more than half of black voters who turned out in the 2014 midterm are yet to vote. The fact that they didn’t rush to vote on the first day of voting this year doesn’t change that they remain extremely likely to turn out, whether now or on Election Day.

What would it mean if black voters turned out at the rate implied by their vote history, rather than the elevated level of turnout from 2012 or 2008? They might represent something around 21.5 percent of the electorate, rather than the 23 percent they did in 2012.

This is an important shift. But it’s not an unexpected one. None of the pre-election polls suggest that black voters will represent 23 percent of the electorate, so there is no reason to assume that the polls are biased toward Mrs. Clinton on that basis.

Instead, they suggest that she would win because of strength among well-educated white voters.

This is based on actual early votes.
 
Trump is President if Michigan can ram this bill through that they tried a few years back. Is there still time? :lol:

Michigan would divide electoral votes in presidential elections under new Republican bill | MLive.com

I'm shocked that the electoral vote shenanigans didn't become a big part of this election cycle. A Trump victory would have been assured with a couple of states doing some splitting.


I feel like you've managed to say "Trump will be president if..." with a lot of random what if statements, to a point where you think it's destined to happen.
 
I believe in the polls and they are telling us that Clinton will be the victor but her odds are getting genuinely worse with each passing day.

I also don't think the trend towards Trump can really be stopped. There's no more debates to hurt him, there's the Clinton e-mail issue from this weekend that won't fully be reflected in polling until right before Election Day and he's doing a very large, last minute ad-buy in key states across the country. So, if Trump is leading on the now-cast in Nevada, Florida and North Carolina at this point, and the best is yet to come in polling, then I don't see how the trend doesn't lead to a comfortable victory in all of those states, thus putting the nation's entire eyes on states like Colorado and New Hampshire.
 
I feel like you've managed to say "Trump will be president if..." with a lot of random what if statements, to a point where you think it's destined to happen.

he does. he quite obviously really wants trump to win so he can come barreling in here a week from today and tell us how stupid we all are. it's pretty clear that he's super insecure and his driving motivation in life is a desire to feel superior. that's why everything he says about black people is patronizing at best and outright racist at worst. he's "not racist", he just knows better than they all do and if they only lived like he does they wouldn't have so many problems.

he won't admit it and he lives in a state where it won't matter anyways but i guarantee you that bmp is hoping for a trump victory so he can come in here and rub our faces in it.
 
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We could have been Denmark if we had just listened to him!!


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Even with her email scandals, Hillary Clinton is the only alternative on election day

Almost six week ago we enthusiastically endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, calling her “an experienced, thoughtful and deeply knowledgeable public servant” while warning that Republican opponent Donald Trump was a “thin-skinned demagogue who is unqualified and unsuited to be president.”

Since then, we have been fortified in our opinion by Clinton’s commanding performances in three presidential debates and daily evidence that Trump utterly lacks the ability — or even the attention span — required by the high office he is seeking.

Yet with the election less than a week away, the race remains closer than it should be given the cavernous gap in qualifications between the two nominees. And Clinton has had to cope with not one but multiple “October surprises” that Trump has sought to exploit to his advantage. There has been a steady drip of revelations from emails stolen from a top Clinton aide — apparently by Russian hackers — and posted online by WikiLeaks. Trump, who once called on Russian hackers to dredge up missing Clinton files (he later insisted that he was joking), has said that the stolen emails proved that Clinton was “the vessel for a corrupt global establishment that is raiding our country and surrendering our sovereignty.”

More recently, FBI Director James B. Comey reported to Congress that the bureau had discovered emails “that appear to be pertinent” to its previous investigation of Clinton’s private email server. Comey went public with this information 11 days before the election even though he acknowledged that he couldn’t yet assess “whether or not this material may be significant.” That didn’t stop Trump from insisting that the discovery of additional emails was “bigger than Watergate.”

These “surprises” are better described as distractions, and Trump’s assertions to the contrary are self-serving, cynical and disingenuous.

Yes, the emails stolen from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta contain some legitimately embarrassing information, including evidence of an overlap between the Clinton Foundation and a firm that arranged speaking fees for former President Bill Clinton. But while the peek behind the Clinton campaign curtain may have titillated political junkies, the revelations don’t support Trump’s histrionic suggestion that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was ethically compromised, let alone that she was running the department as an outpost of a “corrupt global establishment.” (That said, as we have urged before, it would be wise for all members of the Clinton family to sever ties with the foundation if Hillary Clinton is elected president.)

As for the other October surprise, Comey rightly is being criticized — including by former U.S. attorneys general from both parties — for publicly announcing that the FBI would be examining emails that “appear to be pertinent” to an investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server. That investigation had ended this summer with Comey’s recommendation that no charges be filed. It was irresponsible for Comey to offer such a vague yet politically charged statement. Someone as wise in the ways of Washington as Comey, a former deputy attorney general, should have realized that his letter to Congress would be manipulated by Republicans for partisan advantage.

It’s also troubling that Comey reportedly ignored the advice of senior Justice Department officials that he not inform Congress of the investigation (and baffling why his superiors didn’t order him not to do so unless and until the FBI knew the emails were consequential). As former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and many others have noted, Comey’s action violated two fundamental principles: that the Justice Department doesn’t comment about ongoing investigations and that it doesn’t take unnecessary action close to election day that might affect an election’s outcome.

This week the Justice Department informed Congress that it would “continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible” to review the emails found on a computer belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. But it seems unlikely that the work can be completed before next Tuesday’s election. So how should voters factor this development into their decision?

They shouldn’t. Contrary to what Trump suggested, there is no reason to assume that any official emails found on Weiner’s computer will contradict the FBI’s earlier finding that Clinton’s use of a private server, while careless, didn’t violate laws against the mishandling of classified information. But even if a voter harbored doubts on that score, they can’t justify a vote for Trump. There is no comparison between Clinton’s carelessness in corresponding with colleagues and the recklessness that Trump would bring to the conduct of actual foreign policy. And that is only one of a multitude of differences between the two nominees.

A victory for Trump on Tuesday wouldn’t just be a November surprise; it would be a national disaster.


it's very simple.
 
he won't admit it and he lives in a state where it won't matter anyways but i guarantee you that bmp is hoping for a trump victory so he can come in here and rub our faces in it.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that could ever be worth suffering through another Republican Presidency and what that would entail, let alone the Armageddon brought about by a Trump victory.

Had she not slaughtered him in the first debate, I was actually planning to vote for her and make a point of it on my Facebook and the rest of the internet as to why it was important. Instead, she kicked his ass and I figured it was all over with and that everybody could just do what they wanted. I didn't even watch the later debates although I heard bits of the second one when my girlfriend was watching it.

Unexpectedly over the last couple weeks, I and everyone else has been proven wrong. I will be absolutely disgusted if Trump manages to eek out a victory in the final weeks.

I do think there is a told you so element to all this...just as Democrats nominated the worst possible candidate so did the Republicans. Hypothetically, if it were Bernie or Elisabeth or Joe or whomever, they sure as hell wouldn't suddenly have some stupid e-mail scandal popping up every five minutes and making the polls tighten. It would have been an outright landslide. It's not the policy ever harming Clinton in the polls, it's the person.

I still think she wins, but it's going to be awful fucking close in the polls the next few days as the full extent of the FBI stuff from the weekend starts creeping its way into them. Never will I have less respect for the American people if conjecture alone can be enough to scare them into voting for such an
awful human being. If she loses in part because of voter turnout being low on the left's side, I can guarantee you'll be seeing Cory Booker march into the White House four years from now...
 
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Polling update: Great polling for Trump later this morning out of Nevada but some decent news for Clinton in North Carolina. They basically swap now if the election were held today with Trump needing North Carolina + either Colorado or New Hampshire to win this thing.

This should be of interest since it covers similar ground:

Which Tipping-Point States Favor Trump? | FiveThirtyEight


BTW, just played around on this: http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-swing-the-election/

If you lower black turnout to like 50%, it actually doesn't really shift any of the states. If you do that and also increase the share of whites without a degree, it only moves Florida into the Trump column (again, the trailer trash vote I was referring to).

In other words, from the standpoint of turnout among various groups, it's very tough for Trump to suddenly win Colorado or New Hampshire. It's going to take a very depressed turnout from the nation as a whole to give him the sort of environment he needs to win one of those.
 
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total collusion, these people are 100% corrupt

A Justice Department official with close ties to Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta sent him a "heads up" last year to warn that lawmakers might question witnesses about the presidential candidate's private emails, messages released Wednesday by WikiLeaks show.

Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, the official now in charge of informing Congress about the revived Clinton email probe, gave a personal status update to the Clinton campaign in the email sent May 19, 2015.

The message from his Gmail account to Podesta was titled: “Heads up.”

“There is a [House Judiciary Committee] oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division will testify,” Kadzik wrote. “Likely to get questions on State Department emails.”

The warning came just two weeks after Kadzik’s son had written to Podesta asking for a job on Clinton’s presidential campaign. In the same May 19 message, Kadzik also gave an update about a separate filing in a related Freedom Of Information Act case.

PODESTA:
 
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