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

'san dimas high school football rules!'

Yeah, there's gonig to be a lot of coded "This is going to be an apocalyptic disaster, but we can come back in 2020, and we still have a chokehold on the Senate"

the house maybe. they're going to lose the senate i think.

yup

assuming they retain the House, will be interesting to see what Ryan has to do to hold his caucus together

pat toomey is running these totally bullshit "i'm a courageous warrior for sensible gun control" advertisements in PA. he has an A rating from the NRA.

lol what a doucehbag

I doubt the GOP is going to lose the Senate. Even more would have to go wrong for them than already has. And if they do lose it, they're getting it back in 2018.

the house maybe. they're going to lose the senate i think.

― Mordy, Friday, July 15, 2016 11:09 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

obviously i hope this is what happens, but i think they have a decent shot of only losing 3 seats and keeping the senate.

Or, god forbid, losing 4 seats but trump wins the presidency so they keep the senate, but I don't really want to think about that right now.

It looks like one of those horrible Nike signature logos.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/36/5c/ce/365cce02597370d31db5d3dc722077fa.jpg

Or, god forbid, losing 4 seats but trump wins the presidency so they keep the senate, but I don't really want to think about that right now.

― intheblanks

losing four seats while trump wins is a pretty big longshot.

do wonder how much behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing the dem national leadership is doing to take the senate. the whole bayh running for senate thing, for instance. one suspects they have some sort of plan.

lack of coordinated organization is gonna fuck GOP gotv efforts, I don't see how that doesn't have disastrous downticket consequences in swing states

they're underfunded, understaffed, and with a top ticket that doesn't give a fuck about or understand turning out gen election votes - overcoming those odds means a *whole* lot of Trump voters come out and swamp the more coordinated Dem efforts + minority voters

yeah, rushomancy otm, if trump wins there's no way that the senate lost 4 republicans.

I think it's fairly safe to say that dems will pick up the illinois and wisconsin seats, but in a lot of seats that are considered "toss-ups," the GOP candidate is leading in the polls.

Republicans who don't already are going to hate Trump soooo hard after November.

I mean, they'll wait ten years to admit it, but still.

McGinty's up +3 in PA

Polls for Rubio in FL are all over the place, but I'd be shocked if he won

xp

in other news

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/ivanka-rabbi-haskel-lookstein-no-convention-225618#ixzz4EVG2WFUO

gop post-election will be like noel gallagher in interviews between oasis albums: 'the last one was shit but the new one is fookin' amazing' xxp

the Jerusalem Post reported that 600 Ramaz alumni had written Lookstein a letter, condemning his decision to speak at the convention. “This is the single action history will remember you by, and history will not be kind,” it read.

damn straight

xp

https://twitter.com/FullFrontalSamB/status/754005058786910208

both huffpo and rcp's aggregators have toomey up, by 4 and 2.5 pts, respectively

rubio also seems a longshot to me once the race gets going, but he is also up in the polls fwiw

Bee tweet is beautiful.

Lookstein’s email concluded with the prayer the rabbi intended to deliver, which reads in part: “We thank you for our constitutional government that has created and fostered the American ideals of democracy, freedom, justice and equality for all, regardless of race, religion or national origin. Almighty God: We know that we are living in very dangerous times, when all of these blessings are threatened from without, by forces of terror and unimaginable brutality, and from within, by those who sow the seeds of bigotry, hatred and violence, putting our lives and our way of life at risk.”

These RNC speakers are for sure going to be pass agg as fuck.

i'd be shocked if toomey won but PA is weird this year - i would've never thought it would be a competitive state for a republican either but i guess the rusty belt parts and trashy NJ-adjacent parts really respond to trump

Yeah, it's been interesting to see the GOP assertion that "Pennsylvania is in play" actually be true for the first time in 25 years

Bah, sorry, foreigner fucks up the different halves of Congress.

Is there a thing where the convention will provide a lot of material for "Your Senator supports Trump and/or the RNC platform" or are Democratic challengers already banging that drum pretty loudly? Or are they possibly too incompetent to do so?

Yes to all 3

GOP assertion that "Pennsylvania is in play"

More like Penceylvania now, right?

"...the GOP pencively convinced themselves, staring longingly at a 2012 electoral map."

why is the trump pence logo so low-res?

still waiting on Adelson to fund the creation of a hi-res version

I dunno, it looks pretty good for something cobbled together in WordPad.

McGinty's up +3 in PA

Polls for Rubio in FL are all over the place, but I'd be shocked if he won

xp

Rubio's up by double digits over Murphy. I can see Trump losing Florida but Rubio keeping his seat.

The one he didn't want and told a national audience that he was tired of occupying?

honestly i think it makes sense that rubio, as well as literally every the other "toss-up" republican, are up in the polls. The fundamentals of this year--8 years of dem presidency ending with medium popularity, the okay-but-not-incredible big picture econ situation--point to this being a republican year, it's only the GOP decision to nominate someone with remarkable unfavorables and no organizational skills that puts that in jeopardy.

trashy NJ-adjacent parts--Mordy

You mean the non-elites!

obama has remarkably high popularity atm fwiw

medium popularity

wrong

point to this being a republican year

almost everything in the GOP platform is unpopular at the national level

like, Trump is terrible and a huge liability but there are other reasons the GOP is not positioned well, (demographic factors for ex.)

Looking at some actual data, you are all totally right that I understated Obama's popularity at this point. On Gallup, he's just below where Reagan, Clinton and Eisenhower were at this point in their terms, which admittedly is pretty great.

particularly in the current hyper-polarized era. I should have checked the historical numbers before posting.

"obama has remarkably high popularity atm fwiw"

It's basically at 50%. I wouldn't say that's remarkably high.

http://i.imgur.com/61r8cga.png

historically it is

xp

weird that Ford had a 53% approval rating after he lost the election

No it's right in the middle basically between a bunch of presidents who were really hated (Truman, Nixon, Dubya) and bunch presidents who were really liked (Reagan, Clinton, Eisenhower). It's the same as Johnson basically with much higher disapproval #s.