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

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.

being over 50% in July of his last year does put him in the category of "presidents who were popular when their terms ended," along with the three I mentioned and no one else in the post-WWII era (JFK excepted for obvious reasons). Maybe that's not remarkably high, but it's not too bad either

xp

It's not awful, it's not great. It's average basically.

I guess I wouldn't have disputed your original claim of medium popularity which strikes me as a fair assessment basically.

It's been a while since we've seen a good link of a movement Conservative being shocked, shocked to find bigotry in this casino, anyone got one

Either way you can see that presidential popularity isn't the most important factor since Nixon and Gore both lost despite be VPs for popular presidents... (or Gore sorta lost? Whatever. I guess Nixon might have won too.)

In July of their last year in office, Clinton was at 58, Reagan at 53, eisenhower at 56. obama's at 51, pretty clearly in the same league. My guess is it goes up as obama is statesmanlike until the end, and ends somewhere around where eisenhower's did.

I guess that puts Obama in the "popular presidents tier," not the "mediocre couldn't win re-election" tier or the "hated by the american public" tier. Hard to really decide what's remarkable with only 11 examples, I guess

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx

Alex in SF, that's a good point, and for sure the one I should have tried to make. It's actually pretty tough to win a third term for a sitting president's party, a certain fatigue or complacency or who knows what sets in. That's why it doesn't shock me that the GOP senate candidates in basically every toss-up state are polling higher than the Dems

nixon did win xxp

That chart also says average for US presidents is 53%... wonder what their disapproval % were though. Feels like that matters cuz Obama's are ridiculously high.

xp You mean Nixon beat Kennedy?

well obv not

Or he beat high voiced LBJ impersonator Hubert Humphrey?

Because I would say latter is a different situation... Nixon wasn't riding on Eisenhower's coattails.

i guess i was just thinking that ultimately he made good on that even tho it wasn't immediate

The wiki page for presidential approval has a breakdown for every prez

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating

There's fairly substantial "No Opinion" percentage until Clinton, so now the disapproval % is basically exactly what you'd expect based on the approval %

That eight years was a huge period of time in politics, I don't think Eisenhower's approval ratings were the driving factor.

anyway... who's looking forward to Trump's statement on the coup in Turkey!

These people have acted!

Beautiful! Sad!

please clap:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeb-bush-trump-does-not-represent-the-future-of-the-country--or-the-gop/2016/07/15/370bb6f8-49be-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--kfrNQIVr--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/cx1nxzk0ikbzns79dnql.gif

oh my God @ that bush editorial

It's pretty much what most movement conservative types are saying/doing at this point. They're in a total fix -- they want to spend all their time (as they have for the past few cycles) at this point just spending all their energy trashing the Democratic Party opponent and otherwise going "Yeah our candidate isn't perfect but it's still all good." They are spending half their energy or more of it going "AAARRRRRGGGGGHHH" at Trump's success and seizing up, all while babbling about what 'real' conservatism is as a catechism. They have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

but but but gary johnson!

if he really wants to stick it to trump he'd endorse hillary. you wonder if he really believes that nonsense about democrats tearing apart the country, maybe he spouted it so much that he really does. alternatively he just thinks that endorsing hillary will make him a pariah.

I love how Jeb goes to bat for term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and the line item veto - all bold, fresh ideas that the public is clamoring for

can someone explain to me why a /seemingly/ "normal" (by GOP standards) pol like pence would commit political suicide?

if he really wants to stick it to trump he'd endorse hillary. you wonder if he really believes that nonsense about democrats tearing apart the country, maybe he spouted it so much that he really does. alternatively he just thinks that endorsing hillary will make him a pariah.

― iatee

lol "make him" a pariah