Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

Silver:

Several times so far in the campaign, we’ve witnessed the following cycle:

1. Trump says something offensive or ludicrous.
2. Some pundits loudly proclaim that it could bring about the end of Trump’s campaign.
3. Instead, Trump’s position remains steady or even improved in ballot-test polls.
4. The same pundits therefore conclude that Trump is indestructible and impervious to criticism.

This is not a ridiculous interpretation. But there are some potential problems with it.

One is that most Republicans are still not paying all that much attention to the campaign. Some controversies that garner wall-to-wall coverage from the political press may only reach one-quarter to one-fifth of Americans at home. That mutes the impact of most things the candidates are doing. And any actual effects can easily be overwhelmed by noise in the polling, making it hard to make inferences about causality.

The second big problem is that in a field that still has 14 candidates, more media coverage — even negative media coverage — potentially helps a candidate to differentiate himself and thereby improve his position on the ballot test. In general, there has been a strong correlation between how well a candidate is performing on the ballot test and how much media coverage he’s receiving, although the causality is hard to determine. Trump seems to understand this; indeed, he seems to issue his most controversial remarks and proposals precisely at moments of perceived vulnerability.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-republicans-and-polls-enable-donald-trump/

Who has the leadership skills
to actually make the tough decisions to fix the things
that aren’t working right now that are holding people back?

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/14/14-JEB.w1200.h630.jpg

You're daaaaaaaaaarn right.

You're darn tootin

I would think it's crystal clear that Trump understands that coverage = poll numbers and that he times his "announcements" accordingly. This has drowned out all talk of Cruz being ahead in Iowa, for ex.

xp

I hear this cat Jeb! is a bad mutha...

this is hilarious:

In a poll conducted by Gallup last year, the most admired male politician among Republican voters was … Barack Obama, who was chosen by 8 percent of Republicans. (George W. Bush was next, at 3 percent.) Condoleezza Rice (9 percent), Hillary Clinton (5 percent) and Sarah Palin (4 percent) were the most admired female politicians among Republicans.

It's worth noting that insight into Trump's insanity has been a cumulative reveal for people who have been paying attention. Once they get around to sorting through their options, many of those potential republican voters who haven't been paying much attention up to now will likely see Trump as the unhinged demagogue that he is. I can't imagine many of the republicans I've been acquainted with being okay with most of the shit he spews.

My going baseless theory re: Trump's bait-and-switch presidential run is that he's secretly building an enormous underground prepper complex somewhere in the mountains where he's gonna try to get his followers to move after the completely debased US government forces him to concede the nomination. He has some plan to monetize this hate movement he's amassed, surely on as large a scale as possible.

Donald Trump is nowhere near smart enough to successfully do this, come on.

It's his long game to rebuild Atlantic City.

I find these "what is Trump's REAL plan" theories about as convincing as theories about how Jar Jar was secretly a Sith Lord

Every time Trump talks about sorting out the good Muslims from the bad ones and similar talk, he should have the Central Park Five thrown in his face. Every time.

Jar Jar really was a Sith Lord, though

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVuUNa5UYAELK0d.jpg

I mean, yeah, it's probably more likely that Trump will capitalize on a new book or tv show post-defeat. But also he's a Sith Lord so who really knows.

Old Lunch otm upthread: aggrieved white people may be a vocal faction right now, but they are not a winning coalition (and will never again be one).

See also Dr. Casino's poll-dissection post from Dec. 5.: you can just as easily read the poll numbers as "Trump's negatives doom his candidacy" - for the nomination, let alone the general.

Progressives I know are freaking out that his Hairness has any traction whatsoever, and are curiously parroting the right-wing "what has happened to my country?!?!? Why are people so stupid!?!?" language so popular on the right in 2008 and 2012.

I remain sanguine. Get all this nativist shit out there in the open, and see it decisively rejected. Lance the boil.

Trump is not capitalizing on a new book because the people he's currently appealing to obviously don't read.

also as far as I can tell, America has been packed full of stupid people since I was a child

these remarks are not a dog whistle, any kind of ears gets it

byron york had a similar analysis of the trump cycle that's basically open outrageous, the media freaks, add 'nuance', the media wonders why it hasn't hurt him, previous outrage becomes new normal, the moment media moves on or the polls dip do a new outrage

i've already heard pro-trump spin that this is just like what fdr did w/ the japanese which everyone agrees worked and was good and the liberals are hypocrites (as well has losers obv) for pretending to be outraged

...b b b but he does have a new book

I thought Trump wanted to sabotage his campaign, but his yelly interviews making the news-rounds make him sound totally invested in this lunacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFu_Owth5sw

I just meant that thinking about Trump is similar to thinking about the prequels - neither is particularly well thought-out, it's not worth expending mental energy on. What you see is what you get. There's no three-dimensional-chess being played here.

imo best case scenario is Trump wins some delegates but not enough to win the nomination, claims it's been stolen from him by the GOP establishment, runs on a third party ticket, GOP fields huge election losses as a result, giving the Democrats the WH and the Senate (super-optimistically I would say the House too but that's really unlikely)

xxp

A little after 4:20 is when they basically hang up on him.

Trump sounds like an angry right wing radio call in loon.

either conservatives didn't get the memo that history hasn't judged fdr kindly for that or they think michelle malkin said it was ok so it's an open and shut case. or, occam's razor, based on erick erickson's dumb as fuck tweet yesterday, they're just complete bigots.

hey if FDR didn't do what he did, the Nazis would have swept straight into the heartland and we'd all be speaking russian now

politico says that hillaryland thinks cruz is gonna get the nomination

WFP endorses Sanders (87% member vote)

http://www.thenation.com/article/working-families-party-endorses-sanders-for-democratic-nomination/

I thought Trump wanted to sabotage his campaign, but his yelly interviews making the news-rounds make him sound totally invested in this lunacy.

That's his thing, though. He always doubles down and never admits to being the slightest bit wrong or in any way overstepping. He's entirely fueled by baseless confidence, and his bluster would putter out completely if one iota of doubt or self-reflection crept into the mix.

which brings me back to something I've been pondering for months - what would it take to puncture Trump's bluster? What could you do or say to make him cry onstage, for example?

or just make him lose his composure and physically attack somebody or something like that.

with Jindal, Huck, Santorum, I get the sense that they're running to increase leverage when they negotiate their FOX News consultant contracts; with Trump, I get the sense that "winning" is all he knows.

A decent interviewer would help. That Morning Joe clip is pathetic.

which brings me back to something I've been pondering for months - what would it take to puncture Trump's bluster? What could you do or say to make him cry onstage, for example?

"We're seizing all of your assets."

"You're fired"

"usfl"

apparently spy calling him short-fingered still bothers him all these years later

A third party run by Trump would ensure a democrat in the WH, but wouldn't much hurt the GOP candidates down the ticket, because there wouldn't be any slate of Trump Party senate or house candidates to take votes away from the GOP. Once it was safely obvious from opinion polling that neither Trump nor the eventual republican nominee would be president, it might even suppress democratic voter turnout.

Meanwhile Trump could lure a lot of usually disenchanted fringe crazies into the polling booths to take their best ever chance in decades to vote for a racist loudmouth, and while they're already standing in the booth they might go ahead and vote for some republicans down the ticket, too.

not exactly surprising but it's a fun tour through the sewer

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/white-nationalist-and-anti-muslim-fringe-embrace-trump-propo#.ncA2EjdL6

hmm you might be right Aimless. Maybe best-case scenario to ensure GOP losses is for Trump to somehow actually get the nomination.

which would depress turnout, hurt downticket candidates etc.

does he ever actually debate in debates, or just do his boastful grandstanding?

open outrageous, the media freaks, add 'nuance', the media wonders why it hasn't hurt him

the thing that's funny about this is that it involves continuing to pretend that trump supporters are some free-floating cloud of general republicans. how strange it is that republicans aren't turning on him after all these horrible statements! well, republicans generally are turning on him! as noted, he's hated by as many republicans as like him, and i suspect the hate-number is only going up. the analysis refuses to admit this hard-core of Aggrieved-Americans who have been prepared to vote for Trump no matter what since june or july, who are excited about him because of all the crazy stuff he says and especially anything that treats stigmatizing and casting out racial Others as "common sense." that's his appeal, so wondering why him doing more of it isn't hurting him with that group is like...umm... duh? the useful story to track here is not "are trump's first-choice numbers going down?" but "are trump's absolutely-not-that-guy numbers going up?"

aimless is right about down-ticket candidates in the unlikely trump third-party scenario. it could help republicans as much as hurt them, though there is certainly some possibility that trump's die-hards really WANT to walk in and vote only for him, to 'send a message' to all the RINOs. i think there would have to be a real campaign of urging them to do this, though.

just do his boastful grandstanding

this is all any of them do, for the most part

you've got me there

Aimless re: "it might even suppress democratic voter turnout." Now THAT scares me in a way I hadn't thought to be scared before. Dems thinking hey, it's in the bag, why bother.

Or, if the nominee is Hillary and she appears to be on an easy path to victory, perhaps diehard Bern-feelers would feel free to write Sanders in. I know of some Nader supporters who did so in ought-four, believing that if Gore was safe in their state, they might as well vote their consciences.

Of course that was, and is, their right to do so. However I continue to believe that smacking down the current right-wing looniness is the priority.

Hillary and she appears to be on an easy path to victory

she will not have an easy path, this is gonna be bloodsport

Clinton-Sanders race isn't going to get any traction in this thread until 3 days before New Hampshire, right?

I had forgotten WFP is a multi-state entity.

has a lot of traction here, I see a lot more Sanders signs than Clinton ones, even if she's polling higher

the NYC public advocate (someone i was happy to vote for) is grumping about the Sanders endorsement

http://observer.com/2015/12/top-working-families-party-pol-is-not-happy-they-just-backed-bernie-sanders/