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

The gop def dont want him in the race anymore - voters arent voting for him and party apparatchiks are complaining about his refusal to drop out

do they actually want cruz?

in any case, even if the party doesn't want him, in his mind he thinks that he could be selected as the nominee by making the argument that the gop should salvage some legitimacy. he has to know that he wouldn't win the general. the trump and cruz voters would be soooo mad

There's no way to know for sure how ego-blinded Kasich is, but a national campaign is such a grind that a truly discouraged candidate won't keep going for long once they've lost heart. It was amazing the Jeb! stayed in as long as he did. By contrast, Kasich still looks to me like a man with hope.

I was thinking today that I wonder if Rubio has had second thoughts, now that it seems very likely there'll be an open convention (think he dropped out when it looked very likely Trump would reach 1,237). It's a bit of a catch-22. If it were an open convention, I think the party would much rather go with him than Trump or Cruz. But if he hadn't dropped out--and I'd have check this against states that voted after he left--maybe Trump would have continued winning with 35%.

I'm not even so sure how Kasich helps #neverTrump anymore. It made sense initially but if he were to drop now, Maryland and Pennsylvania both might go Cruz...he's siphoning away votes in Penn.

So he must really be banking on somehow being the brokered candidate but at this point the RNC is less likely to look at how well he's polling against Cruz now vs how well he isn't doing in the primary. It'd be a much bigger effort to galvanize support around a guy nobody's cared about for months than to build support around a guy who kind of has a base that they could hopefully mold into a less extreme platform.

IMO they should run a smear campaign saying Kasich freed Willie Hortons nephew or something and just peel away his votes

Xpost I think for sure Trump isn't free falling as bad if he stayed in. Not just the vote-splitting....not surprisingly Trump's performance has been much worse since he doesn't have an easy bully target to pick on and can't benefit as much from every candidate fighting amongst each other anymore

i've given my kasich theories way upthread somewhere but basically i think he thinks there is a non-zero (if pretty pathetic) chance of getting the nom at the convention as the one guy nobody really hates. this requires him to do better than he's currently doing, actually win a few more races, look credible - - - and it also requires cruz playing ball as VP despite coming in with way more delegates which seems like a VERY slim chance knowing how cruz rolls. kasich's chances here would be better if delegates really were tied together as blocs and there were a limited number of people you had to sway to win over these big batches of people. in kasich's favor here is that probably most of the "establishment" wheeler-dealers and persuaders will be on his side in this effort. they're obviously not in full control of the party but they probably have more sway over delegates and elected state politicians as people who can make or break your later career etc. the kind of people that are in jeb's rolodex, for whatever that's worth.

plan B for kasich is losing, but coming away as the obvious heir apparent in 2020 after a crash-and-burn 2016, here on the non-zero chance that the party kinda gets its shit together and goes "man we fucked up by nominating a crazy guy, we better change the rules this time or whatever to keep the trumps and cruzes of the world out." if he ran a "principled" campaign as an "electable" "moderate" republican, a "compassionate conservative," whatever, he'd be pretty well-positioned in four years. it's a long shot but a lot less long than it was when he started the race.

i don't think he's doing a particularly good job at building up to either of these things, and they're both kinda making lemonade out of some serious lemons, but they're not horrible master plans. rubio's problem was that he and kasich were effectively competing for that same slot, and kasich had it in him to at least win one big winner-take-all state and rubio didn't even have that. after a string of underperformances the entire time, rubio just looked like a loser and wasn't about to turn that around. if he were still in the race it'd look even worse for both of them.

I think there's a good chance trump causes some sort of disaster if he's ahead on delegates and the party doesn't give him the nomination. but I think that becomes a sure thing if it goes to kasich, it wouldn't be hard to get a lot of voters stirred up if the party handed it to the guy with the least support. the end result could possibly hurt the party as much as a trump ticket would.

these are people who already hate the gop brand

My own theory: once Kasich pocketed the Ohio delegation, he realized he could be a real force in a contested convention, but he'd have to stay in the race to use that muscle - not to win the nomination outright, but to win valuable concessions and maybe the VP spot. He's going to let his chips ride and see what the roulette wheel brings him.

Xpost Yea Kasich's sole bargaining chips are "you guys don't HATE me" (meh) and "CURRENTLY I'M THE ONLY ONE BEATING HILLARY IN NATIONAL POLLS" which would be banking the Super Bowl on a QB in Week 5 appears to match up well with the other contender's defense. Neither are compelling except to people who already like Kasich or people that are really desperate

*who in Week 5

the GOP might be really desperate, is the thing. and you do have to go back to some of those states where both rubio and kasich were polling kinda okay, and combined looked competitive with trump (esp. california). kasich actually winning those seems like a slim chance to me, especially if he's not campaigning his ass off (and there's not been much sign of that, that i've seen)... but it would really help him out a lot. there's almost no polling information on most of the races since rubio dropped out; maybe kasich has internal polls suggesting places where he could be more of a contender than we think. remember that the CW was that cruz was more or less running out of really good cruz states - it could be that the spread of delegates in june doesn't look so lopsided with kasich way at the bottom.

i guess there is the chance that he's playing to be ted cruz's VP slot but does anybody want that gig given cruz's chances in the fall? talk about a career-killer.

it's true that there's very little polling in most states (one of the more frustrating things about the post-Rubio dropout is we barely know what it's done to the race yet outside of the Wisconsin poll)

The only way I see Kasich being a possibility in 2020 would be if Clinton beats Trump or Cruz handily, goes on to have a more or less successful first term, and the Republicans feel 2020 is more or less a write-off. I could see Kasich winning a hollowed-out field, where the best candidates (and who would that be? no idea) decide not to run. But if they lose this time and have a winnable election in 2020, I can't see them ever turning back to Kasich. I think Santorum had delusions that he was next in line this year, and what a colossal miscalculation that was.

Santorum had delusions that his infamous 'website' might finally come down

i guess there is the chance that he's playing to be ted cruz's VP slot but does anybody want that gig given cruz's chances in the fall? talk about a career-killer.

being vp on a losing ticket isn't the worst, you cement your place as a nationally recognized politician and get granted front runner status for the next election.

cf the establishment guys publicly thirsting for paul ryan as speaker / "consensus pick" nominee at the convention or whatever

That's only actually worked once though since the war, where the losing VP got the nomination next time: Mondale in 1980, which is a special case, really, seeing as he'd already served a term as VP in '76. I can't see any instance of it happening otherwise--they either run and lose, or don't run at all.

Winning VPs, yes.

xxpost some betting markets have his odds as better than Kasich (albeit the ones more manipulated by pump 'n dump but w/e)

NBC News
April 1 at 10:20pm ·
"At this moment the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way," Donald J. Trump said 2 days after telling MSNBC he thinks abortion should be illegal.

lol cos that's what Republicans treasure in their candidate, a guy who says "welp law's the law, caint do nothin bout it"

http://joshspilker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-22-at-8.39.13-PM.png

-James Hetfield, Creeping Death Party

sorry, "Part-ehh-ehhhhh-oh-whoooa!"

that's what trump's hats should say instead of "make america great again"

if he thought anything mattered he wouldn't change his positions so dramatically and recklessly

abortion is so bad, we need to punish people who get abortions, except maybe it's not so bad so they should just be allowed. i don't know. it's up to me.

^ some weird ass Mac Miller lyrics

Anderson Cooper made a salient point about Trump the other night: how suggestible he is in interviews. Chris Matthews mentions punishing the woman, Trump says yeah, there should be some punishment. Chris Wallace says, this morning, so you're not ruling out a third-party run, Trump hints that yes, maybe that's something he'll still do (after not speaking about that for months). There have been other examples.

This could present a problem when sitting down with other countries.

"yeah we'll lift the ban on nuclear weapons, just play nice k?"

he seems like he has a severe case of ADD and can't keep his thoughts straight for more than one minute at a time. i say this as someone who has ADD and frequently feels similarly "jumbled." this is a thing that people can deal with, but they need to first realize that it's a problem, that their random whims don't pass for deep insight.

Makes me think of Kevin, Elaine's Bizarro-Jerry friend on Seinfeld. "You know, maybe I don't like children after all--maybe I will get a vasectomy!"

kasich to me has a little bit of that stuart symington thing going on, if you've read "the making of the president 1960" (which is an informative read for anyone wanting to know how brokered conventions worked in practice).

I mentioned Stuart Symington in 2012, how much something written about Symington in 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon (The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies) reminded me of Romney: "the most possible of all nominees, but he was also a man lacking any deep and abiding political philosophy...his appeal is largely to the older-line professional politicians, and their hope is that the convention will find objections with each of the other candidates and agree on Symington." Applies to Kasich too: he'd be the perfect nominee except for the fact that no one actually wants him to be the nominee.

the GOP equivalent then was Harold Stassen.

That's only actually worked once though since the war, where the losing VP got the nomination next time: Mondale in 1980, which is a special case, really, seeing as he'd already served a term as VP in '76. I can't see any instance of it happening otherwise--they either run and lose, or don't run at all.

the question is whether people are treated as if they have loser's stench after being on a failed ticket. only one person is gonna get the nomination, everyone's chances are always low. lots of those vp candidates never were gonna get further in national politics regardless - it's not like sarah palin tossed away her chance at a presidential run by being on mccain's ticket. but for the ones w/ presidential aspirations (edwards, paul ryan) I don't think they found themselves in a worse position after the election.

might depend how spectacularly they lose by? i mean it's a small sample set so who knows. just feel like if there's a decisive rejection of the cruz/kasich ticket, say, they lose everywhere, it's gonna be hard to shake that off even if in the abstract you might be like "oh well it wasn't his fault" etc.

I don't think they found themselves in a worse position after the election.

Probably, but you initially framed it as a clear advantage: "you cement your place as a nationally recognized politician and get granted front runner status for the next election." Was there actually a moment when Edwards was considered the front-runner for 2008 once Clinton announced? I can't remember. Ryan's VP loss clearly paved the way for him to become the speaker, but I'd ask the same question: how far back do you have to go find him as the front-runner for 2016?

If a losing bid were a clear advantage, I would think there'd be at least one instance of someone moving on to the nomination. There isn't, unless you count Dole getting the nomination 20 years after his loss in '76.

I'll put it this way: I think there are the perceived advantages you mention, but they're outweighed, or at least neutralized, by a reluctance to go with someone who's already lost one national election.

http://predictwise.com/blog/2016/04/market-ineffeciency/

I don't know how it happened but my FB feed is now full of Hillary supporters strategizing on ways to attack Bernie's wife.

classy! as ever

so Clinton is up 12 in NY, sez Quinnipiac... lolclaims a few weeks ago that she had a 48-pt lead.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/274935-clinton-seeks-to-avoid-loss-in-home-state-ny

Comment from the Greenpeace volunteer in the video fwiw; http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/im-the-greenpeace-activist-who-asked-hillary-clinton-to-pledge-to-reject-fossil-fuel-contributions-at-the-purchase-ny-campaign-rally/

Kasich's VP play doesn't have to come down to a second-ballot Cruz coalition - he could join a Trump ticket before before the first ballot. Could be bingo: insta-win.

i feel like we're overdue for a candidate in one of the two parties dropping dead during the primaries

perhaps someone could bring a live bear into the RNC

Trump's arrogance in saying Kasich is "taking" HIS votes suggests he would've made a fine Gore Democrat in 2000.