I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

recall how utterly clownish and unsuited for the job Bush was, in contrast to Gore's experience and general decency

recall Bush winning despite millions having decided Gore wiped the floor with him in the debates

the fact that colin powell uses "dicking" to refer to casual sexual intercourse makes me like him a lot

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:17 PM (fifty-one minutes ago)

hehehe i thought the same thing

you realize 35% is still comparatively low odds right

Comparatively? I don't know--depends what you're comparing it to. The chance of flipping two heads in a row is 25%. I'm sure you'd be happier if Trump's chance of winning (if you accept Silver's forecast) weren't 10% better than the chance of flipping two consecutive heads.

"To Whom My Concern"

"To Whom My Concern" "To Whom My Concern" "To Whom My Concern" "To Whom My Concern" "To Whom My Concern"

PEC still shows 90% Clinton

Dubya is not Trump, i will not tolerate this comparison

Xp

dubya had a lot of things going for him in 2000 tbh, number 1 being (and i'm going off general perception as opposed to any reality) an "innate likability" and "down-to-earth persona" and that election was straight up slobs vs snobs. al gore made some huge errors to contribute to all that.

Yeah, W was oafish but not scary* during the 2000 election.

*Mind you, the goal posts have moved in these 16 subsequent years.

Dubya had a unified party apparatus, experience in government, a sophisticated campaign operation, and a family dynasty behind him. He had a fairly traditional right-wing GOP ideology. He went out of his way to appear inclusive and non-racist. He was an idiot manchild with no business being president, but he and his campaign were totally unlike Trump's in a lot of fundamental ways.

Hank Hill didn't trust Dubya's limp handshake!

http://i.imgur.com/5bE7PrT.gif

The menacing discipline of the Bush campaign was what I remember most about fall '00. They made no mistakes.

sure what i'm saying is that 'people actually watching the debate' do not decide who 'wins' it, with all the implications for the how the home stretch is framed that's implied therein

massive differences with bush's campaign obviously but it's worth remembering how totally unserious he seemed as a candidate at the time

(and then how the media connived to gin him up as a contender)

it was a weird confluence of things in that election. i remember some kind of perverse nostalgia for poppy bush, despite him being such a mediocre president. i remember this sort of exhaustion about the clinton era despite him having good approval numbers, so much so that everyone expected gore to ride the wave of contentment into the white house. but i think yeah bush running a mistake free campaign and in that way exceeding low expectations while gore just made some tactical errors that seemed and perhaps were minor but with the closeness of the election probably cost him the electoral win.

Gore giving Clinton the finger by selecting Loserman didn't help

i remember some kind of perverse nostalgia for poppy bush, despite him being such a mediocre president.

get ready for those obits the day he dies (but don't hold your breath waiting for his CIA files)

One huge strategic error Gore made was to specifically and determinedly run away from all the issues that mattered to the active base of the democratic party and trying to make the election be about safe, bland MOR issues like Social Security that wasn't really an issue at all. Picking Lieberman was part and parcel of that strategy. In doing so, he became a candidate no one was enthused about and no one knew quite why they should vote for him rather than against Bush.

Thank god this year is different!

Sorry, I'll shut up.

2000 was the nadir of liberal electoral politics. In a sense it tasted real sweet to see DLC types crash and burn -- not that it was worth putting the country through eight years of darkness.

I don't remember nostalgia for Poppy in 2000, by the way. The Dubya team's attitude, recall, was tacitly "We're gonna do what 41 did but right. I'm the real Reagan!"

The history nerd in me realized this afternoon that should Clinton win she would be the first Democrat to succeed a president of her own party in more than a century. LBJ and Truman don't count: although they became presidents in their own right, they inherited a dead prez's term. The GOP had had some practice: recall Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, and, of course, Poppy Bush, the first sitting veep to become prez since Van Buren. The closest analogue to HRC though would be former secretary of war Taft following the popular Teddy in 1908.

538 gives Trump over 35% in his polls-only, that's a high for him (outside of that RNC week)

I know electoral math and all that but this is seriously terrifying me right now, since the Clinton health thing hasn't even really hit the polls yet

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:21 PM

you realize 35% is still comparatively low odds right

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:25 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(why am I holding your hand like this)

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:25 PM

what do you mean "comparatively low odds". 35% is 35%.

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:27 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

35% is 35%.

which is zero in a zero/sum game like a national election

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:28 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ie 26 points away from victory

you think the electorate's gonna shift 26 points in 8 weeks?

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:28 PM

xxp 538's election simulator doesn't work like that though, it simulates the election 10,000 times (or whatever) and determined that Trump wins 3,580 of those. The popular vote numbers are something like 46/43. I'm not sure if Trump can make that up but it's within the margin of error

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:32 PM

just flagging frogbs' correct explanation one more time for shakey because i didn't see him acknowledge it and knowing how 538's projections work might make the 35% number seem slightly more terrifying. more than a 1/3 of the time, a simulated election, at this point in time, accounting for today's "state polls" and the electoral collage, donald trump is elected president.

at this point in time

this is only true about the nowcast. the other two models are based on the election happening in nov (and all the things that could happen before that)

re Powell's use of "dicking" -- he's been in the Army for decades. Maybe you should reread his history with My Lai. and about how he KNEW he was lying about Iraq at the UN, before you decide how much you like him, you amoral twits.

recall how utterly clownish and unsuited for the job Bush was, in contrast to Gore's experience and general decency

Gore wouldn't have been THAT different.

recall Bush winning despite millions having decided Gore wiped the floor with him in the debates

We definitely saw different debates. "I agree, I agree..."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a48593/colin-powell-hillary-trump/

map, i'm sorry if i was rude, but how do you expect me to react when you say you've FP'd me for the 50th time? When i just posted a parody of Nixon?

"With every new poll that is released, I comfort myself with the knowledge that Donald Trump is not willing to put in the hours to be a competent authoritarian, which is cold comfort, I know, but you take what you can get."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a48604/donald-trump-tyranny/

lol @ "gore wouldn't have been that different." do you actually believe this stuff?

I'd honestly love to hear about what dr morbius does for the causes he supposedly cares about... besides patronizing posters itt

i die real slowly of cancer while waiting to be laid off

Is there another thread for the 'Gore wouldn't have been that different' debate? Because I'm certain we've gone through it thoroughly, and not that long ago, and it'd be handy to have somewhere to link to whenever anybody offers this imo mindboggling and inexplicable opinion.

Also, suggest ban on reposts of Nixon twitter.

fair enough

xp

the recession would probably still have happened

maybe would have made a little headway on climate change

No fucking Iraq war

Gore was Mordylike as a senator

as ex-poster bb once said to me about posting on politics threads, "Are you crazy?"

ugh wtf dude

this is only true about the nowcast. the other two models are based on the election happening in nov (and all the things that could happen before that)

They're all over 35, though - the polls-plus is the only one that's over 2/3!

The Supreme Court is the great counter to 'no difference.' Sotomayor and Kagan may not be progressive heroes judicially but Democrats don't put people like Scalia and Roberts on the bench

not to mention the heads of OSHA, NLRB, the EPA, and hundreds of federal administrative agencies, That's my positive case for a Democratic president.

shhhhhhhhh

not HEAD of NLRB but you get the idea

yeah i mean we're right this second fighting a huge union-recognition battle on campus, which would have been a moot point eons ago except for Bush's NLRB inventing/buying into the idea that graduate students can't possibly be workers. alito and roberts are also both huge bummers, though those were second-term and so not necessarily a matter of a bush vs. gore question.

the iraq war - a labor of love for cheney that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything - is the big, big, big thing. it's basically like if bush had decided to invade mars in search of the terrifying human-animal hybrids, and people ten years later were like "oh yeah, you know gore would totally have done the same thing." like.. . what?

ive never typed/said "no difference"

it's idiotic to waste time here when people never stop with the strawmen

"oh yeah, you know gore would totally have done the same thing."

i'm disappointed in you, Doc

c'mon, Doc, you said "Gore wouldn't have been THAT different." when we're talking about a war as destructive to human life, safety, liberty, etc. as that, someone submitting "wouldn't have been THAT different" might as well be saying "would be the same" because all other possible similarities/differences between them pale in comparison. sez wiki:

Various scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq War estimated that between 151,000 and over one million Iraqis died as a result of conflict during this time.[1] A later study, published in 2011, estimated that approximately 500,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the invasion.[2] Counts of deaths reported in newspapers collated by projects like the Iraq Body Count project found 174,000 Iraqis reported killed between 2003 and 2013, with between 112,000-123,000 of those killed being civilian noncombatants.

That's really disingenuous, I don't think Iraq really constitutes "not that different". You know how much money we spent on that shit? Of course you do.

xp to morbs

it's idiotic to waste time here when people never stop with the strawmen

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 14, 2016 6:51 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So quit wasting time here, idiot