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

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

admitting that gore would've been different than gwb, esp re the Iraq War and climate change - two things the good doctor pretends often to care most about - would make his decision to vote for nader damning in its carelessness and force him to face some hard truths about the glaring deficiencies in his ideological façade

Gore was Mordylike as a senator

tbh I'm impressed he kept the weed-smoking under wraps, sounds like a cool guy

Human lives as well

No xpost notification anymore, eek oops

IIRC Morbz voted for Nader in a solid blue state (as I did in a solid red state) so I don't think that really has to enter into it.

why not? he doesn't have to be personally responsible to understand the repercussions of the nader movement. he would just have to be willing to learn from it for the future. [hint hint the future is now.]

now that i think about it tho you're right. really the problematic belief is that "they are all alike" in whatever form that takes. gore v gwb is a particularly dramatic rendering of that delusion but nader doesn't really need to enter into it at all.

Not gonna go so far as to shit on anybody who voted for Nader in 2000 (I was a fucking week too young and would have voted Gore without hesitation) - no way could we have anticipated how much damage Bush would do, and it sure didn't help the Democrats' cause among progressives when Gore selected a running mate who made Hillary look like, well, Bernie Sanders almost

it's funny tho bc one of the big arguments for why nader didn't really cost gore florida is that gore lost something like 11% of the democratic vote to gwb. putting aside the reality (that the parties hadn't been as ideologically sorted out as they are today and there were still a lot of republican voters registered democratic) it illustrates the contradiction. did he lose because he was too right-wing or because he wasn't right-wing enough? too right-wing for nader voters, not right-wing enough for right-wing dems. but like nader voters explain, way more dems defected than there were nader voters. so the lesson from that deflection isn't he should've been more progressive. it's that he should've been much more right-wing.

nb that i don't think he should've been more right-wing - i was in high school in 2000 and i remember wishing he had campaigned more to the left. i was still tremendously disappointed when he lost the election. this was around the time that i still took chomsky seriously.

speaking of chomsky btw this is super off-topic but did anyone else see this? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/ -- i was listening to mcwhorter lectures on universal grammar today and felt some synchronistic glee seeing the article.

dems who defect and vote gop are also 'worth' 2x as much as dems who defect and throw their vote out the window xp

yeah picking lieberman was really the worst move of the whole campaign, not only ideologically but also just strategically - if you have a wooden, charisma-free leading man, for god's sake get a running mate who can tell a joke or an anecdote or something. i think the importance of running mates to a ticket is often overrated (witness devastating game-changer mike pence) but in an election that close, i think it matters in terms of shaping people's overall impression of the ticket as a package. two boring stodgy robots is not a great look. one robot and one blood-stirring man of the people might make the robot look more like the cool collected helmsman. i think gore probably could have won ohio with like, a joe biden in there. or dick gephardt, which might have also helped in missouri. i guess lieberman was supposed to help in florida?

he would just have to be willing to learn from it for the future

...and the lesson to be learned from the nader movement in 2000 is: never attempt to challenge the two party system, except from within? because if the deep lesson for the future you are referring to is not that one, which seems rather an overreach to me, I can't figure out what other lesson you seem to think is self-evident.

if challenging the two party system = pushing for ranked voting + similar types of reforms: that's obv not the lesson. if challenging it means not voting for the better candidate in the system we've got - yes, that's the lesson to learn.

If a candidate appears on a ballot, does that make him or her "in the system we've got"?

I wa also a pretty big Chomsky stan back in '00. Thanks to which I found 9/11 and the subsequent response relatively unsurprising (if still thoroughly depressing) after W's 'victory'.

xp no it makes them a spoiler. you can't beat fptp w/ force of will

he repercussions of the nader movement

none, other than leading to where Clinton cheerleaders are now: Nixon Republicans

Don't remember Gore saying shit about climate change til he made it his post-surrender career.

admitting that gore would've been different than gwb, esp re the Iraq War and climate change - two things the good doctor pretends often to care most about - would make his decision to vote for nader damning in its carelessness and force him to face some hard truths about the glaring deficiencies in his ideological façade

― Mordy, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 9:00 PM (fifty-three minutes ago)

voting for nader in NY is not careless, even if all the rest of what you said were true

dnftz