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

re: unlikely events: I'm not convinced anything has meaningfully changed since all the other times it's been said. To recap: very high negatives (implying low ceiling) and barely-consolidated field of opponents (suggesting race will look very different as field finally shrinks). No one has voted yet, he faces huge structural disadvantages... maybe it's not unthinkable, but I stand by "unlikely."

Going forward, I wonder what it will mean that there is so much talk (relatively speaking) about the Dems not "letting" Sanders get the nom, or the GOP not "letting" Trump get the nom. Less voter turnout? More voter turn-off?

It is definitely unlikely at this juncture

Xp

it just depends on your definition of 'unlikely'. I don't think it's greater than a 50% chance. but I don't think the guy who has been leading the polls for months straight and continues to lead in the polls has a significantly lower than 50% chance at the nomination, *esp* given the 2nd choice options gop voters have.

They're conservatives, yes, obviously, but my point is that that word conceals a substantial range of ideological difference even if all segments of the party have drifted rightwards. Bracketing out Carson and Trump is cheating - they're not THAT all over the map, and it seems clear enough which (substantial and apparently semi-durable) voting blocs they're appealing to... and why Jeb and company do not overlap with them!

I didn't mention Rubio, but I would also have slotted him in a Venn diagram w/ Cruz and Carson (where he shares Tea Party w Cruz, and the other two are working evangelical territory). Even the concept of a "RINO" suggests that this big tent of "conservative" conceals subsets which at the very least hold meaning for the people inside the tent.

Yeah, it's not 1980, but it's still a coalition, and one showing its divisions more clearly even than say, 96 or 00. We're still looking at Steve Forbes, Pat Buchanan, and Gary Bauer, trying to sell themselves as the leaders of the same party, and stuck doing so through the limited vocabulary afforded by Iowa Caucus questions, aka "but where do you stand on ethanol?" They're all conservatives but what that means in theory, politics and policy does not add up to coherence.

Trump *is* the second choice though - or more like fourth or fifth! The majority of Republicans don't want to vote for him, even as a backup. He leads by pluralities, not majorities, and they shrink when we look at states where the campaign has actually been happening. If the field hadn't been a clown car from the get-go, most of his "months straight" would look like Bill Bradley, mired in the 20s, and with his performance since December coming off as a surge that might (but probably won't) stick around for a while. Of course, since it IS a clown car, he's positioned to win some states, but maybe not.

Basically, the clown car effects, and the impossibility of judging whether Trump's unconventional GOTV tactics will actually GOTV, are making it really hard to say what this race would/will look like as a more familiar three- or four-person contest. Tomorrow may at least clear up the GOTV question a bit.

I'm also thinking about the polling in places like, say, Wisconsin... which admittedly doesn't vote for a while and doesn't have tons of polls to go on, but which nonetheless shows a much weaker lead for Trump - a place in fact where Rubio-plus-nobodies is a clean first place over Trump and Cruz. Rubio's whole plan must be to survive the first few primaries not looking like a failure (and, hopefully, swing a fluke win in one of them - which is not the MOST likely outcome, but is definitely not out of the question, even in Iowa), stay in the thing, absorb the bottom-tier candidates' supporters as they drop out, and win a long war of delegate accumulation. In this sense, the most important thing might end up being the order in which other candidates drop out - if the most Trump/Cruz-oriented alternatives bail first, it might increase the perception of Rubio as a distant third-place just based on the composition of the early states.

yeah but the rinos have largely, where possible (which is most places it's possible for the gop to win anyway), been driven out. arlen specter died, richard lugar got primaried out. to an extent these kind of purification cycles become narrower and narrower but twelve years ago when ppl were speculating on jeb's presidential prospects (he was the 'smart one' after all) nobody listed 'not conservative enough' as a potential liability (whereas it was an obv potential factor for mittens and giuliani).

right now if i had to bet and you gave me the choice of trump vs the field i'd take the field (tbh w/ any bet where it's early enough that 'the field' is an option take 'the field', this was true when tiger woods was tiger woods, it's true w/ golden state now, and it's sure as hell true w/ trump who's nowhere near tiger or golden state). if i had to pick one specific candidate though i'd take trump. the paths to victory for anyone else just require too many things to go just right. man i hope he doesn't though. that whole field is filled w/ maniacs i don't want anywhere near the white house but trump is like something out of an alternate history.

fwiw the des moines register poll has trump and clinton winning iowa. trump has a... huge lead in new hampshire as well. no republican who wasn't already the sitting president has won both iowa and new hampshire (though tbf romney only lost iowa by 34 votes).

Thing is, if there actually is predictive value in these early-state primaries, it would be predictive value for basically typical races - the role they serve is to help reveal, from a three-to-five-person field, if there's a candidate who manages to appeal to these distinctive Republican constituencies, and moreover, which one(s) just have the basic logistical stuff down. The clown-car field (and the Citizens United system that sustains it) means that we're not really looking at that at all. They're not meaningless contests, of course, but I don't think they can perform the same "here's who passes the smell test" function. At least, the results they deliver won't be definitive.

In 2000, Steve Forbes took second place in Iowa (with 30.5%!) and it was still basically the doom of his candidacy because in a field of that size, for GWB to take it with 41% confirmed that this was a race with a front-runner, and even being a billionaire goober pouring all your hopes into one state you couldn't wrest it away. In 2016, Cruz could win Iowa with 25% or so, and then strike out from there on out as comparatively moderate states swing Rubio and meanwhile voters generally discover that the more they get to know him the more he seems creepy, off and totally weird. Put another way, I just think winning Iowa with a 25%-ish plurality can't be as meaningful in terms of a candidate's prospects for Super Tuesday as winning Iowa with a 40%-ish plurality. It worked out for Dole just fine, but I think there the real action was elsewhere and it's only hindsight that confirms the importance of a strong Iowa finish.

yeah new hampshire and iowa matter obv, it's for bullshit narrative reasons but bullshit narratives have an impact, iowa made carter and it definitely helped make obama. at the same time they can easily mean nothing in the long run (that 'no gop in an open race has won both' factoid is weird cuz it's not like there haven't been gop races w/ clear and obv frontrunners). i've always thought south carolina was at least as important and historically arguably more important than iowa or new hampshire. the gop voters there are more reflective of the base of the party and more reflective of the voters in the super tuesday or this year the sec primary shortly after. w/ dems it's the first state w/ a significant black voter base. sanders winning iowa or new hampshire are necessary and helpful but wouldn't be nearly as significant as him winning south carolina. south carolina has been a fluky outlier before, w/ jesse in 88 and newt in 12, but much more often iirc it's served as the first real demonstration of the state of the race. which is a shame as historically south carolina has been the great seed of evil in american history.

"But frustratingly for Dems, the Republicans' bankrupt ideology still gets them control of Congress, and a majority of state governorships and legislatures. Plus 46% or so the vote in presidential elections"

and this is the root of the problem. somebody still has to run the country, and it's not as if the democrats necessarily endorse autocratic methods, but the lack of internal republican party discipline (significantly aided, as a poster upthread mentioned, by boehner's anti-corruption initiatives), and the fact that the republican party these days is almost wholly defined by a negative vision, makes autocratic rule by the national executive basically necessary. worse, this sort of rule seems more acceptable to the electorate than rule with the advice and consent of the legislature, as the two leading presidential candidates for the republican party are themselves autocrats.

the bipartisan wars will continue

Daughterhugfailgate might be the end of this guy. the kid represents the voters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AboctQk2qNk

Oof.

don't know if this was linked. pretty awesome. putting a (white) human face on the crazy.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/iowa-new-hampshire-gop-voters-poll.html

guy trying to give his daughter a hug while she flicks her index finger at him is the first relatable thing about the cruz

Voters said they no longer felt free to be themselves... unable to pray publicly or even say “God bless you” when someone sneezes.

I would have called bullshit on this, but after the ILX thread where everybody got pissy about people saying "have a blessed day" I can believe it

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/22/magazine/republican-voters/25-gop-claude-greiner.nocrop.w250.h378.2x.jpg

And we have given a lot of money to charity, because we have been successful, and we’ve tried to give back. But I have one philosophy: Teach a man how to work, don’t give him a fish. Teach a man to fish, don’t give him a fish."

so much fear in those responses. fear of so many things! and people who really think that christians are now a minority in this country...

Was he quoting Jesus?

Who the fuck seriously claims that no one says "bless you" after someone sneezes? "Have a blessed day," sure, I've never heard that out loud, except at, like, Ren Fairs or whatever.

I grew up as a strict constitutionalist. Let’s say my brother got caught with a pack of cigarettes in his room and my mom went to punish him. My dad said, “What are you doing in his room? You can’t punish him, you didn’t have jurisdiction to do the search.”

Now that is a Jesus quote, right?

You can’t punish him, you didn’t have jurisdiction to do the search.

Gonna use this.

"Have a blessed day," sure, I've never heard that out loud, except at, like, Ren Fairs or whatever.

I think I've mostly heard it from older black men & women tbh

http://magickalgraphics.com/Graphics/Occult/BlessedBe/blessed138.gif

so many things to quote here

We have a war on everything — war on gender, war on police, war on race, you name it.

war on iowa wites

In Cuban homes we say "Jesus" when someone sneezes.

That's what we say when someone is having a sneezing fit. "Jesus! Will you stop sneezing?!"

otm

I hear "Have a blessed day" at the drive-thru all the time at Chick Fil-A, pretty sure it's either corporate policy or at least SOP at the ones I frequent.

"Jesús" is also the sound of someone sneezing fwiw

if you go to Chik Fil-A you're gonna get what you asked for: earnest Christians and cows pleading not to be murdered & eaten

decent lemonade too. My last meal though made me vomit, no doubt thanks to the midi-christlorians interacting with my gay blood.

jeezus cow blood is poison to gayz. read that somewhere.

film critic otm:

Michael Sicinski ‏@msicism
Voting for Hillary reminds me of nights my family would argue for 45 mins about where to go to dinner and then give up and order pizza.

also, GOP ignores Nixon at their peril:

Because it will take a strong man. Oh, yes. Make no mistake. Naturally it could be a woman — I’m aware of that; send your letters elsewhere — but when the likely candidate from the Democrat side is either a grandmother who takes polls on her favorite color, or a guy with the manner and politics of the Rosenbergs, who will stand up?

Trump? My God, the moment he’s nominated every broker on Wall Street will lock himself in the toilet with a bottle of rye and a pistol. Stocks will drop through the floor, pension funds will dry up, and what the hell will Trump do? Flex his muscles at a blonde?

http://mashable.com/2016/01/31/dick-nixon-sizes-up-campaign-trump-cruz/#V30scqvIhmq2

xpost more like deciding to heat up leftovers in fridge

Not enough bad sports analogies or complaints about how his ideas and tactics aren't used xpost

yeah kinda weak sauce but this: "when [Cruz] lies his expression is like a child with a full diaper" is otm

that nymag voter spread is some grim shit

Timothy van Deest, 64, airline agent

^ sir i am not getting on any airplane to which you are associated

sample size of 100, so I'm not sure why they bothered presenting the results. the little voter profile things are insane, though. it's depressing to read so many terrible things from so many different people.

i loved how one of them, in supporting the idea of states' rights, described Missouri as a "different planet" than...Iowa.

i lol'ed at the dick nixon article several times i will admit

he ain't lying

xp

there's a joke i heard growing up: the bottom row of counties defected from iowa to missouri and the average iq jumped 10pts in both states.

later on i learned MN tells it about IA, MO tells it about AR. i don't think arkansans tell it about louisiana though

i feel bad when i read that new york mag thing because it immediately reminds me of that *republican brains are different* thing and then i actually start to look at the shape of those people's skulls in the pictures and try to figure out what is wrong with their brains. which is just gonna make them more fearful and paranoid if they think people are dissecting their weird brains. they just need some time in the government re-education cent.......oops...not supposed to mention those....

‏@ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald Retweeted David Sirota
The main divide among Iowa Dems on Clinton/Sanders - by far - is not gender but age...

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/694162002051100672

( i mostly start fixating on their prominent foreheads and notice that most of the men have big foreheads and are bald or going bald. like even their hair didn't want to be up there anymore.)