Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

it'll be interesting to see if all the money campaigns spend on ad buys, GOTV efforts, campaign offices + staff, mailers, and analytics actually do anything or if you really can blow them off and still win a presidential election in the US. i suspect you cannot.

Uh, wait a minute; not to dis Mordy specifically but can we unpack this please?

If Clinton wins and Trump loses, should we conclude from this that she won and he lost because she used the normal mechanisms (ads, gotv, staff, mailers, analytics) and he didn't?

Or might we conclude that she won because she wasn't a hideous racist misogynist hell-beast depending on votes from the odious pits of Nazi slime?

Or maybe might we conclude that her win was (at least partially) due to her being a basically centrist coalition-building political operator whose success was built (at least partly) on forwarding an overall political program of progressive actions delivered inside the context of contemporary representative democratic politics?

Or maybe might we conclude that she won because conventional Democratic politics (with all its flaws) is still kinda sorta organized around a group of policy preferences that INCLUDE (i.e., not exclusively based around but still nevertheless include) sympathy for the downtrodden and a generally progressive attitude about how government ought to be used and how we all might move forward as a society?

I think you are over-analyzing that statement

The question at hand was "can you run a batshit crazy campaign that spends no money and still win?" If the answer is "no", the reason will be for a combination of all of the reasons you list. If the answer is "yes", we will be too busy leaping out of the nearest window to really analyze what happened.

DJP - OK, guilty as charged!

I just think there may be a lot of reasons why Clinton may (and should) win. Use of conventional methods is only won of those reasons.

Not being a racist dickbag from the foulest pits of Hades is another reason, and one that is worth considering.

gah xp, but the point remains the same

Trump winning would suggest you can win a presidential election without a campaign, but trump's loss wouldn't prove the opposite.

I'm relatively convinced that there's a decent percentage of the population that is well-shielded enough from actual news that they probably still basically only think of Trump as "that man from the TV show". Undecided potential voters who eschew political conversations and don't know much about Trump or the things he's said and don't see him as the racist dickbag that he is. This is one arena where Clinton's big money ad buys will hopefully have the greatest sway.

(I'm convinced of their existence because I've lived among these people. I just don't know how widespread a phenomenon that is.)

i feel like i'm being very obvious here, but surely the festering continuing failure of the republican party to coalesce around a palatable alternative to trump plays a role here, no? i feel like even today the party would abandon him if they had a republican to abandon him for.

that wapo article makes the point that lewandowski's being fired on a *monday morning* is proof (if proof be need be) that we're dealing with people who are uniquely bad at their jobs

even today the party would abandon him if they had a republican to abandon him for.

They've been offered plenty of alternatives. The plain fact is that the base doesn't want any of those choices; they've been very clear that Trump is what they want.

Going way back, the analogy is the editors of Playboy thinking their readership wants long-form articles, and the actual subscriber base is all like "where the titties at?"

I just think there may be a lot of reasons why Clinton may (and should) win. Use of conventional methods is only won of those reasons.

i guess it'll be v hard to tease it out but i do occasionally see poly sci ppl making claims that a particular GOTV spend, or analytics effort is worth X percentage points. idk how they can determine that beyond comparing a particular campaign to a prior one (like seeing how much worse Trump ends up doing than Romney or McCain) but you're right that trump has so many other sui generis elements to him that it'll probably be more difficult than usual to separate out how much his unconventional lack of campaigning hurts him v all the other terrible stuff about him.

I'm relatively convinced that there's a decent percentage of the population that is well-shielded enough from actual news

I'm increasingly convinced that a decent percentage of people get their news exclusively from googling themselves, which would answer a lot of questions.

so Trump's responsible for most of the printing of documents that still takes place in this country.

They've been offered plenty of alternatives. The plain fact is that the base doesn't want any of those choices; they've been very clear that Trump is what they want.

― william the comptroller

yes, they have been offered plenty of alternatives. there were, like, sixteen of them, and they were all fairly shitty. i wouldn't call any of them the equivalent of a playboy "long-form article", that's for sure. eventually it got down to trump and cruz, who is in his own way just as unpalatable as trump- he could never be the figurehead of a #nevertrump movement.

the point of view espoused by trump is not, that we can historically measure, a majority point of view. he can command the absolute allegiance of a sizable minority of republicans. getting from 35% or whatever to a majority has a lot to do with the other candidates they fielded and the failure of the party as a whole.

Lord Alfred, I weep for the forests being clear-cut to feed Trump's ego.

rushomancy - is there a nonshitty Republican that you think could have captured the Teahadi base AND the establishment, WHILE offering a substantive conservatism that would serve as a useful counterpoint to Clintonian Democratic policies?

Would love to meet this person if so

Also if he exists, why didn't he run for president; everybody else was doing it

I know it's hard to keep all of these crazy balls in the air, but it's a little sad that Trump's clear intellectual incuriosity and disengagement from news media and like probably reading in general isn't getting as much press as Palin's did.

I tend to agree that large swaths of the public still are untouched or barely touched by the news cycle, so that their awareness of Trump still lingers from his reality show appearances and their promos. Television ad buys, for all their weaknesses at defining real issues, can reach these people and redefine Trump along new lines.

btw, I think the editors of Playboy were well aware of the preference of their readership for titties; the long-form articles provided cover for "redeeming social value" which allowed them to send magazines out via the post office without running afoul of blue laws.

Almost anyone else in the race would have crushed Trump, if they were running one-on-one. It's the splitting of the GOP's resources and attention that made this possible.

seems plausible. trump never actually got over 50% in the nomination polls, even with the help of an air of inevitability http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html#polls

All the primary combatants were kicking their chops thinking of ways to coopt trumps base instead of stopping trump himself

If you give people the option of voting from a broad spectrum of dumb jerks and one of the dumb jerks has been a well-known public figure for thirty years, the results won't be that surprising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYaC3Bcuew

holy shit

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/21/trump_pays_30k_to_draper_sterling_what_is_xeno_technology.html

sorry again to somehow have ended up where i am now, loudly clearing my throat to introduce salient dave eggers observations into a political discussion functioning perfectly well without them, but i am quoting this just bc the kind of post-game theoretical match-ups between trump & a hypothetical adequate republican seem to obscure some of the real priorities & metrics informing his success & selection-

For a year now, pollsters, the media and the world at large have been baffled by the fact that no incendiary or asinine thing Trump says or tweets seems to make any dent in his appeal. He has broadcast countless statements that would sink any other candidate. (In his Sacramento speech, he repeatedly called the US a “third world country”, which would be the end of any other campaign in American history.) And for a year we’ve all assumed that when Trump said something xenophobic or sexist or offensive to the world’s billion Muslims, or the world’s billion Catholics (remember when he took on the pope?), or to the world’s 3.5 billion women, it must mean that his supporters agree with his newest outrageous statement.

But this is not true. Something very different is happening. His supporters are not really listening to anything he says. They cheer when he says he’ll help the veterans, they cheer when he says he’ll build a wall, but ultimately they do not care what he says. They don’t care if he actually will build a wall. If Trump decided, tomorrow, to reverse himself on the idea of building a wall, his supporters would shrug and their support would not waver. He has been for gun control and against gun control. He has stated his support for Planned Parenthood and for the idea of criminal punishment for women who seek abortions. He has called the Iraq war, and most of our adventures in the Middle East, mistakes, but has said he would carpet bomb Isis. He has reversed himself on nearly every major issue, often in the same week, and has offered scant specifics on anything in particular – though in Sacramento, about infrastructure, he did say, “We’re gonna have new roads, bridges, all that stuff”.

His supporters do not care. Nothing in Trump’s platform matters. There is no policy that matters. There is no promise that matters. There is no villain, no scapegoat, that matters. If, tomorrow, he said that Canadians, not Mexicans, were rapists and drug dealers, and the wall should be built on that border, no one would blink. His poll numbers would not waver. Because there are no positions and no statements that matter to them. There is only the man, the name, the brand, the personality they have seen on television.

nobody cares & everybody is dangerously uninformed imo

Trump-as-Wally-George analog kinda beat Eggers to the punch imo

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/meet-the-archeo-trump-wally-george

nobody cares & everybody is dangerously uninformed imo

^^^ good Eggers title.

Nothing in Trump’s platform matters. There is no policy that matters. There is no promise that matters. There is no villain, no scapegoat, that matters.

enragingly untrue

dave might wanna poke his head out of the pirate shop one of these days

ever notice how wally george, and morton downey jr, and donald trump, and "stephen colbert", all have real similar politics? nah must be a coincidence they're just famous cuz famous

Otm.

Trump's campaign is about scapegoating minorities. It's not about nothing mattering.

"rushomancy - is there a nonshitty Republican"

no.

but what might theoretically be possible, if the republicans had a functioning party structure, is that they could rally behind a candidate and get that candidate nominated, even given the significant voter appeal of trump. it makes little difference who that candidate is (although, again, it needs to not be cruz because he doesn't work as a compromise candidate). instead their lack of leadership was (and is) patent and obvious. they lurched around like a two-dollar drunk for the entirety of the primary season and trump was able to use the time-honored "divide and conquer" method to get rid of all his opponents. this strategy does not, at this point, seem viable for the general.

i have to project a hologram for the king tonight

Is anyone actually surprised that Eggers would privilege appearance over substance

when the Republicans had a functioning party, they gave us George W. Bush and Ronald Wilson Reagan.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/745299161130635264

lol

One point that Eggers implies that I agree with is the essential glossolalic appeal that Trump has with his supporters, but only wrt some issues. He can endlessly waffle and spout nonsense about many things and still find favor among his hordes but the xenophobia and, more essentially, the hate is a horse that has long left the barn.

ourmecoffee
‏@pourmecoffee

@realDonaldTrump You have stood here before inside the pouring rain with the world turning circles running 'round your brain.

And to think that I hadn't even read that tweet when I was writing a post about Trump speaking in tongues.

trump's on a roll today, eh?

difficult listening hour otm. Dave Eggers is a boob.

Trump's scapegoating of Muslims, Mexicans and immigrants is a crucial factor in his appeal. He's peddling a cocktail of xenophobia and racism that resonates with the deeply held prejudices of his angry and fearful white audience. He couldn't turn his vitriol against fucking "Canadians" and get the same response (I can't believe anyone could be so naive as to think this were true).

Also, while his specific policy proposals might not matter all that much to the mob he's attracted, his manner is a big part of his core message. His manner says, "Fuck you, college boy." His manner says, "I don't care what you tell me I'm supposed to believe or say. I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want." That message, again, appeals to angry bigots who are sick of being told not to fly the Confederate flag or say the n-word in public.

It's 'being told that my desire to be an asshole doesn't Trump the desire of others to get through their day without harassment' gone mad!

there's this kind of tension in describing him, which comes out of moral judgment, and it colors the way we talk about him. because while it's obviously not true that he has no beliefs, his beliefs don't map to the way we typically talk about political beliefs. a guy like bernie, for instance, he believes strongly that the american minimum wage should be $15, and that's the sort of political belief trump doesn't have. what he believes in is, to all appearances, is the cleansing power of violence and the systematic dehumanization of the "other", and because he's running for president that has political implications, but they're not fundamentally political beliefs when placed in the context of the american political system. whereas your typical republican will stir up race hatred as a means to a political end, for trump it appears to be the end in and of itself. and i think it's this that leads people to denounce him as having "no beliefs".

Read through to the updates

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/06/21/3790715/weird-story-behind-trump-campaigns-35000-payment-draper-sterling-advertising/

contenderizer otmfm. eggers is a boob to say trump could switch his xenophobia to Canadians and his followers would still swoon over him.

xxpost I talk about Trump having no core ethos in the same way that, like, a two-year-old has no core ethos. Neither is far enough along in the cognitive development process to allow for that level of complexity, but they certainly both certainly believe that having a tantrum will get them what they want and that they are clearly the center of the universe.

Trump is all about gratifying his own ego. He never saw his campaign getting this far. I think he wants to be president now that it's within reach, but I don't think he really has any 'beliefs' beyond furthering himself and his brands.