I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

Can we kickstart an Odd Couple remake where we force Morbs and Gabbneb to live together for a year?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, February 21, 2016 3:22 PM (1 hour ago)

Throw in amateurist and I'll give a hundred bucks.

With Jeb out, I expect Trump to turn the flamethrower on Rubio full strength. It's gonna be disgusting, and I kinda can't wait.

Trump's writers are working around the clock retooling Jeb! zingers into Rubio ones.

Jeb/Trump Odd Couple skit writes itself.

Rubio!

bangarang

I look forward to trump giving Rubio the jeb treatment. Gonna be savage.

― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Sunday, February 21, 2016 2:03 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have to wonder why he hasn't already though -- don't see how "pick off the weaker enemy first" makes sense as a strategy in primary politics.

bullies bully the most easily bullied

if by "most easily bullied" you mean "most fun to bully", then i agree. (jeb takes the bait, he's awkward, etc).

Jeb may be a bully's delight, but Rubio is the real coward. after Graham and Fiorina left the stage, Jeb has been the only one to openly challenge Trump. Rubio, by contrast, has assiduously avoided any confrontation, unless you count his "I like GWB" moment in the last debate.

if Rubio had been the one criticizing Trump instead of Jeb throughout these debates, I'm pretty sure he would have been the punching bag

It has 100% been in Trump's interest to leave Rubio alone as his numbers rose to where they are now - tied with Cruz, but both of them comfortably below Trump. I don't know if Trump really is capable of scheming realpolitik or if he's just a spoiled racist shithead running on pure ego and id. But if he's been reading any analysis all along, he has to know that the last thing he wants is for the field to narrow early into a two-person race because then he loses (see the "low ceiling" argument). A large field helps him, and picking on people near the bottom risks being the straw that drives them out of the race. I think with Bush he just couldn't stop himself even though it was long since clear that Jeb was a terminal case.

Fwiw the markets have Rubio back to nearly level with trump http://predictwise.com/blog/2016/02/state-of-republican-primary-after-three-primary-votes/, with crux a very distant 3rd (presumably because of his impossible delegate math)

asking out of ignorance, why is cruz's delegate math so impossible?

He's naturally strong in v few winner takes all states iirc

Evangelicals have low sperms count

Eg http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ted-cruz-has-a-huge-math-problem/

ooooh yeah. so rubios is stronger in some of the winner take all states i take it

Rubio seems a slender reed to attach all the non-Trump hopes to, but I guess it has to be someone.

Angry conservatives, especially single-issue anti-immigration types, have no use for Rubio. What I'm seeing from the torches-and-pitchforks crowd is either "Trump or I stay home," "Cruz or I stay home," and sometimes "Trump or Cruz or I stay home."
If Rubio is the ostensibly moderate, "sane" Republican choice, I think the none-of-the-above / staying home vote becomes a significant player.

These are the dudes who feel they're perpetually stabbed in the back by the GOP; they dutifully voted for the mushy milquetoast moderates McCain and Romney, but are vowing "never again." Even against Bernie or Hillary.

rubio is really the worst of both worlds. he's not a moderate at all- he's a tea party candidate- and only gets off looking that way in comparison to cruz and trump. at the same time he lacks genuine populist appeal and hasn't done much to distinguish himself from, say, bobby jindal. as far as the angry conservatives staying home, i'm not buying it. the issue is that they won't be staying home, because we can assume that one of the candidates on the ballot this november will be trump, one way or another.

rushomancy speaks truth:

he's not a moderate at all- he's a tea party candidate- and only gets off looking that way in comparison to cruz and trump.

Agreed. Mainly he's seen to be squishy on immigration / amnesty, which in the Year of Trump is the only thing that matters. He was in the infamous Gang of 8. He's said to have been saying one thing in Spanish to Univision, but a different thing entirely in English to Fox, drawing comparisons to Arafat.

Fortunately the Beltway press isn't referring to Rubio as a moderate anymore – they refer to him as the electable one.

By and large my Facebook feed is pretty nut-free, but occasionally I come across some real loons when I read comments on friend feeds. This morning I saw someone post a recent article by some Harvard person sort of comparing Trump to Hitler as a means to describe how dangerous demagogues can slip through the cracks of a relatively civil society to positions of powers. I think the title of the piece was something subtle, like "Trump Must be Stopped!!!!' Anyway, the third comment down was from this apparent friend of the friend who wrote (I'll just quote, more or less): "I'm not for Trump but will hold my nose and vote for him over Hillary or Sanders any day. That being said, it's amazing how you could replace Trump with Obama and read it and think the same thing. I guess it's just what side of the fence you're on." And this kind of equivalency really gets to the heart of what is probably a crisis of national psychosis, that someone could really see tread-carefully Obama as every bit as bad as Id-unleashed Trump, so much so that it's Obama who is considered the Hitler-level threat, so horrific that it's Trump - Trump! - who appears the only hope. It's like black is white, up is down world. You have one guy literally saying we should build a wall between us and Mexico, deport millions, ban Muslims from entering the US, bomb our enemies indiscriminately and torture their families. And the other who brings about better health care, doesn't want kids shooting each other, tries to be fair-minded to immigrants and minorities, and he's the Hitler? It's just insane. Like, clinically so.

this is why America deserves its own Trump hell

yep. i think clinton would trounce trump in the general, but if it does come down to those two, there's a non-zero chance it could be trump. crazy stuff happens, a scandal could pop up, the economy could crash and a bunch of people would think "trump is a businessman, he's the perfect person to handle this!", etc. and there's the fact that nearly everyone claimed with certainty (warning sign) last year that trump had no chance and would be gone by september. so yeah, the odds are stacked enormously in clinton's favor, but it's by no means a certainty that she would defeat trump, and that scares the living shit out of me

this is why America deserves its own Trump hell

I think we're already in it, and Trump is basically the ugly boil popping up its head.

I am starting to think America'll get it.

What Karl said times a billion. I'm already creating a potential exit strategy, hopefully to be implemented before the country is completely walled-in.

Josh in Chi refers to this piece:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/moment-of-truth-we-must-stop-trump/2016/02/21/0172e788-d8a7-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

that someone could really see tread-carefully Obama as every bit as bad as Id-unleashed Trump, so much so that it's Obama who is considered the Hitler-level threat, so horrific that it's Trump - Trump! - who appears the only hope

Yeah and it can be bracingly instructive to alt-tab from that world over to sites where Obama is seen as excessively timid, or as just another warmonger bought by corporations.

See also "What a Divided America Actually Hears"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-a-divided-america-actually-hears-when-obama-speaks/2016/02/13/b3c020a2-ce9a-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html

tries to be fair-minded to immigrants

all-time champion Deporter-in-Chief

#MorbsBaitWorks

http://snoreandguzzle.com/images/parallax3.jpg

I'm having my bathroom remodeled, and over the weekend there was a guy who came in to do the tile work. We were chatting, and he told me he's voting for Trump or nobody, and that Clinton is a murderer. Then he told me that evolution was bullshit and that the nephilim were responsible for almost all of the technological advancements of mankind, but they've been breeding with humans for so long that they are no longer giants and incapable of miraculous invention nowadays. He wasn't even excited about any of this, just casual chatting like we were discussing the weather. I really wanted to know what he thought about Obama, but not as much as I wanted him to finish tiling the bath.

Then he told me that evolution was bullshit and that the nephilim were responsible for almost all of the technological advancements of mankind, but they've been breeding with humans for so long that they are no longer giants and incapable of miraculous invention nowadays.

same

would love a Trump platform focused on restoring nephilim to their previous giant and miraculous state

I'm increasingly certain that this is not a world that I can, in good conscience, continue to live in.

And the other who brings about better health care, doesn't want kids shooting each other, tries to be fair-minded to immigrants and minorities, and he's the Hitler?

You gotta remember that in their world, Obama is e.g. imposing a school curriculum that requires their kids to subscribe to Communism and Islam. I mean, if there really was a federal government that required all public schoolchildren to convert to Islam, or was preparing concentration camps for believing Christians, or covertly murdering Supreme Court justices, that would be pretty bad!

Trump has no chance of winning the general election guys, the demographic math is totally against him

do you think it's 0%, or more like 10%?

and if the economy crashed in September, or there was a terrible terrorist attack in October, would it still be 0%?

nothing's 0%. huge earth-shaking crises are generally v difficult to predict and obviously render anything possible - IN ANY ELECTION - not just this one. I think there's still a chance he doesn't get the nomination, but that window is closing and either Rubio or Cruz has to go.

it's like sarah palin running for president imo. trump is the die-hard candidate of ~30% of republicans and maybe 50-60% of republicans dislike him strongly. he's also anathema to key groups any republican would have to win to have a shot at the electoral math. go back into the shadow, flame of atlantic city. you shall not pass.

really surprised Trump's palling around w/ Clintons, Sharpton etc, not to mention his phone call with Bill last spring hasn't gained any real traction with a demographic so susceptible to conspiracy theories.

I'm with Karl on this. Treating something as an impossibility as opposed to a low statistical probability implies different approaches for any democratic campaign going up against Trump. I always feel nervous saying something can't happen because it implies it can simply be ignored. The reality is that any democratic candidate needs to have an actual strategy to win no matter how much the odds favor them. Also, if the democrats have an advantage, they should press it as much as possible rather than just sitting back and doing nothing.

Yeah, but doomed or not, Trump's campaign can instigate a organized white nationalist front who's up & running stronger within 2-4 years. It's not necessarily(or even necessary) how fascist the dude is, but how proto-fascist the elements that he winds up activating.

This won't lead to some BNP-type(ANP?) running a national campaign, but it sure as shit can galvanize state activity, esp in places like Idaho where you have a sufficient portion of the population.

well yeah, and they'll do that, i assume! even if clinton knows the winds are in her favor, she'd rather win by a landslide than by a solid margin, and rather win by a solid margin than in a squeaker. just saying it may not be necessary to go into panic mode at this time. non-zero possibility sure but i mean, there are lots of horrible non-zero possibilities out there.

agreed with kingfish though - this is much more the thing to worry about and fight against, and has been since last summer.

it's an unconventional election and donald is an unconventional candidate and so far no one has accurately predicted his current success so i'm wary of anyone saying it's an impossibility that he would win.

agreed

in fact, I think we had the same conversation regarding the primaries and it's looking more and more likely that he'll get the nomination

if things keep proceeding more or less as they have, it would be a landslide victory for clinton over trump.

i guess i worry too much about things like this, but if you were part of a terror group, wouldn't it seem obvious that fall 2016 would be the perfect time for a prominent attack on the U.S., preferably in a way that seemed to support Trump's views on border security and immigration and the like? you'd hope that in the wake of a terrible attack we'd all kind of take a deep breath and take time to mourn and respond with dignity rather than bloodlust, but iirc in the wake of 9/11 the defining theme wasn't "forgiveness" or "rationality" or whatever, it was "REVENGE". we can collectively react in a terrifying way when prompted to do so, and has there ever been a better candidate for revenge than Trump? it would be like handing the election to him. that's the scenario i worry about, or something along those lines that temporarily tips the scales toward vengeance and violence.

Let's remember that in 2008 the world-shattering event was the collapse of the financial sector, and the Republican with the proto-Trump on its ticket suddenly looked moronic and glassy-eyed. I was saying in November that Trump would likely get the nomination but I can't figure out how he's suddenly going to convert Hispanics and blacks should another AIG collapse.