Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

But if Trump had been the Messiah he woulda never let himself be captured by the Romans. Just sayin.

(xxpost)

Yeah, these days 'radical' basically means 'extremist' among certain groups. Unless it's prefixed with a 'totally', and then you're cool.

bernie's campaign is predicated on the argument that most americans agree w/ his policies. he's not making a radical argument - he's arguing that his opinions are mainstream.

https://vine.co/v/ieb6HAZ2apO

The rhyming thing throughout the speech was odd as fuck.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-really-unpopular-with-general-election-voters/

donald trump used to be really unpopular w/ gop primary voters too. not saying there it won't be considerably more difficult for him to pull it off again just let's not count out the american ppl's ability to fuck up just yet.

used to be really unpopular w/ gop primary voters too

when was this?

prior to announcing his candidacy?

Kind of the opposite problem of Jeb!'s.

Has Trump mentioned how he plans on doing any of the things he's proposed?

umm, because he's a winner, and winners get things done. god it's like you're not listening

deals

All else aside, I totally don't get how someone who's like a prototypical asshole boss could be so popular with people who probably have or have had an asshole boss.

they have fantasies of being asshole bosses themselves

An asshole boss in the White House means he is being an asshole to government workers. He won't become YOUR asshole boss - his assholery will be directed at people you already despise.

That is, if you're already a knee-jerk anti-government mouth-frother, one of your most boneriffic fantasies is having President Trump turn to Lois Lerner, John Kerry, Julian Castro, Loretta Lynch, etc. and say a triumphantly sneering YOU'RE FIRED!

this palin speech lmao

Wait, since when has word choice _not_ been important?

OTM

http://www.monmouth.edu/assets/0/32212254770/32212254991/32212254992/32212254994/32212254995/30064771087/4d7b2106-b632-4b79-a6ed-7afc73902d4c.pdf

new monmouth poll. clinton's national lead down below 20%, but leads among older voters and blacks/latinos still huge

interesting: among the age 18-49 crowd, sanders leads 52 to 39. but for age 50+, he trails by a massive margin: 24 vs. 64 for clinton.

also of note is that between december and january, clinton's advantage over sanders among black/latino voters rose from 43 to 50

wouldn't read too much into that, since the sample was probably 200-300 people. i'd characterize it as merely remaining huge

I always thought Trump's big appeal was in how simple he made everything sound, like these sorts of massive complex issues really are as simple as a Facebook meme. Particularly the "you enter North Korea illegally, they shoot you on sight...you enter the USA illegally, you get a job, a house, free health care, education...what happened to our country?" one

xpost yeah, good point, MOE is +5.2%

but either way, the relative lack of gains among black/latino voters stands in stark contrast to just about every other area, where he made significant gains b/w december and now.

are we still pretending that Bernie has a chance at the nomination

margin for just the black/latino subgroup doesn't look like it's reported but is probably much higher xxp

are we still pretending that Bernie has a chance at the nomination

No; his failure to support reparations has doomed his campaign.

shakey out of curiosity, whom would you vote for in a primary?

like, if California's primary was held right now, ahead of every other state's?

right. i know that by the time it gets to you it probably won't matter

I think of voting strategically, for the most part. The ideal goal is a Democrat in the White House, preferably one that's as liberal as possible, with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, esp a Democratic caucus in the House led by Pelosi. This would be the ideal, but I realize that in all likelihood the best case scenario for the next four years is actually just gonna be more gridlock, occasional executive action, and hopefully skillful management of some insane foreign policy crises.

I agree with Bernie about certain things (tax rates, financial regulations, universal healthcare) and not about others (guns, foreign policy) but also think his odds in the national election would be much, much worse than Clinton's. I disagree with Hillary on tons of stuff (foreign policy especially) but think she would fare better against whatever nutjob loser the GOP ends up putting up. Since Hillary ostensibly offers the party wider margin of victory and an accompanying increase in the likelihood of downticket victories, I'm inclined to think that a vote for her would bring my goal closer to reality. So that would make me inclined to vote for her, but honestly I find my ideological differences with her to be too deep. And I wouldn't vote for Bernie given that I think his nomination would be a disaster (and much more likely given how many delegates California has). So in the end I probably wouldn't vote in this hypothetical early CA primary at all.

but since sanders isn't going to get the nomination, couldn't voting for him in the hypothetical early CA primary also be 'strategic' as a way of reminding the democrat in the white house that being as liberal as possible might be well-received? (or, more importantly i think, reminding other democrats that they can run on a sanders-style platform and potentially get into that democratic caucus in congress?)

twitter claims that sarah palin is blaming her son's domestic violence charge on obama's lack of respect for the troops

XXpost

So why do you think the multiple polls showing Bernie doing better in the general election wrong? Do you think that he just hasn't been tested yet, or that he will choke in debates against the GOP or something?

but since sanders isn't going to get the nomination

he might if CA's primary was actually first.

"So why do you think the multiple polls showing Bernie doing better than Hillary in the general election are wrong?"

Stupid grammar.

So why do you think the multiple polls showing Bernie doing better in the general election wrong?

I'm not sure what polls you're referring to. Generic matchups of all the potential candidates invariably reflect party preferences above all else. There is no way Sanders would do better than Clinton against Cruz or Trump in the general election, he is just not a good politician with broad appeal. He is a dude with narrow appeal, the appeal to people who like to be lectured by cranky old white guys - which is not a majority of the population.

So why do you think the multiple polls showing Bernie doing better in the general election wrong?

according to Nate Silver's latest "you shouldn't be reading this website right now" disclaimer:

Head-to-head polls of hypothetical general election matchups have almost no predictive power at this stage of the campaign

(i don't disagree with his recommendation, but it's just funny to be in a situation where you want traffic on your website but you don't really want people to put too much stock in what you're saying yet)

So in the end I probably wouldn't vote in this hypothetical early CA primary at all.

welp

why is palin back now. this is awful.

I mean a Democratic woman running against Trump is going to be able to exploit demographic advantages that Sanders is not, for example. And Dems need to turn out large percentages of Latino and Black voters, which Clinton is better positioned to do. It's about what voting blocs are going to be excited to vote for the candidate - and college educated whites are not a large enough voting bloc to make up for deficits in other demos.

xp

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01003/pain-biden-debate_1003371c.jpg

why is palin back now. this is awful.

― goole, Wednesday, January 20, 2016 1:37 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gearing up to be Trump's VP pick, obvs!

she never left!

it's been interesting watching certain liberal journalists go after sanders for calling Planned Parenthood and the HRC part of the "establishment." i mean, clearly they *are*

as the establishment candidate hillary also has resources + allies (and enemies of course) from throughout her career. i also think she'll be more palatable to moderates and i think sanders is a relatively unknown quantity that might be extremely vulnerable in a general election race. hillary has been attacked throughout her career (also apparently this impresses no one but me, she is vastly more experienced) so we more-or-less know what to expect; all not to mention that she's married to one of our nation's most popular recent presidents and served as SOS for another (maybe not as popular and more divisive but i think she's right to try to run on Obama's legacy). otoh sanders might be able to GOTV due to enthusiasm among the youth + far left voter base.

in fairness hypothetical head-to-head polls this far in advance have like zero validity. i (cautiously) support sanders and i accept that running him in the general election is a risk xxxxl

ultimately i think that a lot of "pragmatic" clinton supporters are seduced by the same cult of personality that sanders supporters are accused of falling for. they think that clinton, by virtue of her experience, will somehow be able to wrestle useful legislation through congress, or be BFFs with more world leaders, or use executive power to do some meaningful work. my feeling is that any democratic president is going to surround him/herself with capable people to run the various parts of the executive branch, but that sanders would be better by some degree when it came to actual decision-making

(nb this is not my case for hillary, just some stray thoughts about why i think she'd be a stronger candidate in the general. i happen to like her for a number of reasons beyond her electability.) xp