Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

It's marvelous how we've reached a point at which Rubio's winning one state gives him the motivation to stay in the race.

Oh man I really had a case of the punchies last night. When Tom Delay came on we were talking abt how much you would pay to have a clean shot. For charity, of course.

Wld actually borrow to get one in.

If donations weren't made public I'd seriously consider giving financial shots in the arm to no-hopers just to keep the popcorntastic spectacle going.

i wonder if anyone responded to ben carson's letter requesting a little chat session before the thursday debate?

"Dear Dr. Carson,

lol"

just Bernie, then xp

xpost

i think carson and rubio have plenty of money to keep going. maybe not kasich though

last-ditch strategy seems to be 'keep trump under 50% of the delegates and prepare for a convention fight', so everyone might as well stay in

"Dear Dr. Carson: I understand you're concerned with the lack of civility. I wholeheartedly concur. Accordingly, you are cordially invited to bite me, you loser shitbag."

It is ridiculous, the extent to which cable news will allow anyone to blather on as if everyone has an equally legitimate and reasoned opinion. Except it isn't as if that at all because it's actually as if they need to fill airtime and as if they exist primarily for the sake of sensationalism and are arguably more entertainment consortiums than they are news organizations.

As the Republicans get mired deeper and deeper into this unsolvable mess, I'm going to start checking in on things like The Weekly Standard, where the we-can-still-stop-Trump contortions will be amazing for the next few months.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/five-reasons-trump-is-weaker-than-he-looks/article/2001354

Cynical or not, I like the fact that Clinton is making Flint a big talking point, because used properly it's the perfect symbol of the evils of privatization and "small government" conservatism. But I hope Clinton is actually going to portray it that way and not just co-opt and blunt it as some kind of vague GOP bad guy thing without an ideology behind it.

the more mainstream conservatives also have their head stuck up their ass. here's Douthat, whose voice is barely audible from within the cheeks:

But in the end, Trump’s numbers were impressive but not at all a race ender. The states in play were mostly up and down what you might call the Trump Belt — the swath of America, extending from the Deep South up through Appalachia and into New England, where his unusual coalition is strongest. Yet he won less than half the night’s delegates, with vote totals still in the 35 percent range — peaking in Massachusetts and Alabama (an amazing combination), but falling into the 20s outside the Trump Belt (in Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota) and holding in the 30s elsewhere.

For a candidate who is not only opposed but feared as a race-baiting demagogue by almost the entire party establishment, who looks less electable than any of his rivals in the fall, who has prominent conservatives (including, this week, a sitting United States senator) lining up to swear they’ll never vote for him, who is basically in undeclared war with the last Republican president and the last two party nominees — for such a candidate, 35 percent of the vote still does not seem like it should be enough to win through to the nomination.

Hillary really needs to hammer home the potential Trump University-zation of America.

tbf, the night wasn't really as impressive for Trump as it was for Clinton. I think there's some validity to Cruz's argument that if the other candidates drop and the party coalesces around him, he may have a slight chance to upset Trump, although it's a long shot. At this point, Rubio, Kasich, and Carson have no real business sticking around.

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A reasonably likely scenario that I have not really seen gamed out is: how well does Trump do as a general-election candidate bearing only the half-hearted endorsement of a fractured party? At best! At worst, his nomination will have been wrung out of a contested convention, with Much Butthurt ensuing. Plus a number of reasonably prominent Republicans have already said they'd take their ball and go home rather than support Generalissimo Looneytunes.

Previous primaries have been bitterly contested. Gore and Kerry were not ideal choices, but Democrats at least pretended to come together to anoint them at convention time, and mostly stuck with them through to November. Obama v. Clinton was not a warm love-fest (as you may recall), but Democrats at least pretended to come together to anoint him at convention time.

Usually the major-party candidates go from convention to election day with support from their respective parties. Is that now irrelevant in the Age of Trump (when Everything is Different(tm))?

I'm trying to imagine a Trump general-election campaign where he obviously has allies, but much of the party apparatus is at best like, "oh yeah, and please also vote for... um... the individual at the top of the ticket. Here's an RNC-branded clothespin for you to hold your nose with, should you need it."

yet it feels like Cruz has significantly less chance of beating Clinton than Drumpf does. there are no quasi-mystical "Reagan Democrats" out there waiting for Ted Cruz.

eh, mythical not mystical, duh.

Quinnipiac had Clinton's "unfavorable" polling at 56% a few months ago. Did they measure Trump's?

not quinnipiac but ...

https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/701954365800759298
https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/701960243396354048
https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/702206318673862656

https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/701950330880319489
https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/701949600110931968

Lol the cnn video way upthread that the kkk wanted to "advance the progressive agenda." How can people believe this stuff?

i think an election btwn two of the most hated public figures in the country is karmic justice

i've seen a scary number of ostensibly not-insane conservatives really going hard on this talking point lately.

xpost

‏@pareene
Trump will be brutal for the GOP but the Democrats are going to respond by running a campaign pitched at David Brooks it's gonna be awful

So weird. Buckley said conservatives are the people who stand athwart history and yell "stop"! The klan totally fits that definition.

Lol the cnn video way upthread that the kkk wanted to "advance the progressive agenda." How can people believe this stuff?

If you hate Democrats, progressivism AND black people it's a win win win.

true i think it's just that "liberal / progressive" = REALLY BAD and obviously the KKK is really bad, so there you go easy peasy

"there are no quasi-mystical "Reagan Democrats" out there waiting for Ted Cruz."

Yes but the argument goes that there is a potential groundswell of TRUE CONS who would come out for the ideologically pure Cruz. His 100% ACU rating means that the die-hard, god-fearing, flag-waving base would FINALLY get Their Candidate, after having been sold out so many times by RINO squish establishmentarians. The guys who are like "I dutifully voted for Juan McLame and Mittbot, and got NOTHING. Just a bunch of RINOs who do nothing to stop the Obama juggernaut. No more. I stay home unless I can finally vote for a candidate I believe in, for the first time since Reagan." A decent proportion of those guys don't trust Trump to stay on point, no matter how much they like what' he's currently saying about immigrants and refugees.

Thing is, those people overlap enough with the "I'll crawl over broken glass to vote against Shrillery" vote that it probably doesn't matter.

hah, Juan McLame

I think there's some validity to Cruz's argument that if the other candidates drop and the party coalesces around him, he may have a slight chance to upset Trump, although it's a long shot.

Also a sizable section of the party don't want Cruz over Trump!

btw:

Total votes across Super Tuesday
Clinton —— 2.7 million
Trump —— 2.2 million
Cruz —— 1.7 million
Sanders - 1.6 million
Rubio - 1.4 million

cheering for van jones in that clip obv but i wish at some point he'd said on tv why exactly the modern democratic party is not the old one. not because of some vague "change" or "evolution" but literally because the southern racists left for the gop. i get why someone doesn't want to get sucked down the quibble hole when the issue is THE FUCKING KLAN and i get that van jones is probably using most of his psychic energy there just to maintain the appearance of unthreatening calm in the face of THE FUCKING KLAN, but this is so clear and indisputable and i have this fear that even anti-trumps across the country are thinking "yeah, get with 2016, we're much less racist now" instead of "WE KICKED OUT THE SEGREGATIONISTS AND INCIDENTALLY LOST A FEW DECADES OF EXECUTIVE POWER FOR IT AND NOW THEY'RE ALL IN YOUR FUCKING PARTY, ASSHOLE, OH AND TO THE EXTENT THAT EMBARRASSED TAX IDEOLOGUES DID MANAGE DISINGENUOUSLY TO PUT A LID ON IT IT SURE ISN'T ON THERE RIGHT NOW"

sorry. i just want to be hearing this explanation everywhere until americans actually have some kind of baseline fucking idea of where they're living and when and instead i keep hearing liars tell me how important it is to "know history"

i guess when someone is earnestly telling you on television that the klan was the militant arm of progressivism it's hard to know where to start, or why anyone's alive

Van Jones is a dreadful representative for Dems and liberals. I've cringed every time he's opened his mouth. His instinct around Beltway conservatives on cable shows is kumbaya.

Lol the cnn video way upthread that the kkk wanted to "advance the progressive agenda." How can people believe this stuff

Take the tack that many of these idiots use with "liberals are the real racists!" and it's not too far from there

see also: Margaret Sanger = PROGRESSIVE BABY KILLER & HUEG RACIST

sanders speech earlier sounded like they believed the race was over

didn't hear, but i can't believe this was intended as i've gotten 4 fundraising emails since

Applause for every word of dlh's post, including and especially the all-caps and profanity. That is something I too want broadcast far and wide.

xxpost Morbs Trump/Hillary—Quinnipiac, national favorable/unfavorable, Feb. 18

1 Sanders 51/36 [+]

2 Kasich 35/18 [+]

3 Rubio 39/37 [+]

4 Clinton 37/58 [-]

5 Trump 37/57 [-]

6 Cruz 36/45 [-]

7 Bloomberg 21/26 [-]

I think Van Jones is generally excellent.

sanders speech earlier sounded like they believed the race was over

didn't hear, but i can't believe this was intended as i've gotten 4 fundraising emails since

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 11:36 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, they are messaging hard that they are going fifty states and will attempt to leverage platform changes if they don't win.

for such a candidate, 35 percent of the vote still does not seem like it should be enough to win through to the nomination.

for such a pundit, the small space between the buttocks does not seem like it should be enough to admit the entire cranium through to the colon

there was some point maybe six years ago when online progressives were all VAN JONES VAN JONES and i figured he was some Occupy guy. Then i read a little bit of his spiel and discovered a boilerplate O-bot.

xp lol

Same reaction.

so why did Marquito win Minnesota idgi

Lesser of the three evils, maybe? Kinda surprised we didn't go for Kasich.

dll otm. I thought maybe the dude was making some esoteric point about the klan's philosophy of government but i guess he literally was just rehashing the old classic republican syllogism: democrats used to have a segregationist coalition in the south, democrats are progressives, therefore progressives are racists. They are such idiots.

May have been mentioned before, but the robust continuation of the Sanders campaign is good for democrats. They're not tearing into each other and progressives won't feel neglected so long as sanders keeps their favorite issues in the conversation. The worst thing would be for that race to stop and hillary is just waiting around, causing democrats to lose interest