Nate Silver warns that Trump could become president

Gotta tell it like it is - Hilary is a real conservative without the crazy. Say it loud!

Even if that doesn’t keep her from being nominated, it might help her steal some votes from republicans who fear the madness of Trump.

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I’d agree and also note political assassinations dating back to the Eisenhower administration.

None yet have run for high office on an explicitly pro-torture, pro-murder platform. Even on the question of torture, in Trump, the extremist GOP is saying that waterboarding does not go far enough.

Asking openly that people vote for war crimes is a new GOP low in a 50+ year slog. It’s a GOP confession of bankrupt policy and morals.

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Oops, that wasn’t what I thought i was quoting!

Maybe.

I’m just concerned that supporters of Team Red will not vote for a Team Blue candidate ever, even when that candidate (Hillary in this case) is an almost perfect fit for their beliefs.

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This is why Clinton is a crappy candidate.

I’ll be generous to her and say only 1/3 of Democrats think she’s a warmongering corporate stooge and don’t want her. Independents think she’s an establishment stooge and don’t want her, and to most Republicans she’s the antichrist, regardless of her positions.

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Yes

/6char

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It actually surprises me that people are saying, “We must stop Trump! Therefore Hillary!”

These are not the same thing, not by a long shot. Bernie Sanders has way more crossover appeal than Hillary ever will. People are making the mistake of thinking this is an establishment election. The reality is that’s it’s going to be about anti and pro establishment candidates, rather than D vs. R. It’s a mistake to pick the “safe choice.”

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It’s possible though. There were plenty of LBJ and even Thurmond dems who were fine with @daneel’s button in '68 and '72.

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Hillary Clinton is no Richard Nixon.

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Some of them might be reassured by how Trump conducts himself during the general election campaign or whom he picks as his running mate.

I do have a conservative friend or two, and have heard the running mate thing. Very scary.

Thanks for doing the phone banking for Bernie!

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People are angry, and he is (appears) angry, also. People relate to him.

Even though he talks a lot, he hasn’t said very much that is really substantive. He hints at ideas, which keeps his options open.

He’s a cheerleader, a motivational speaker, well-versed in how to manipulate our culture. People who are not immediately turned off by his mannerisms can project their own desires on him. Pro-choice people have heard him say he’s pro-choice. Racists have heard him display his racism. Budget hawks have heard him talk about fiscal responsibility. Union members have heard him talk tough about trade deficits.

He’s Schrodinger’s Candidate, and people latch onto whichever sound bite appeals to them and extrapolate from there.

With Clinton, you know you’re getting pro-wall-street, pro-cop, pro-prosecutor, pro-establishment, pro-choice. With Trump, you don’t know for sure, so some folks think “how could he do worse?”

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BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, yesterday created a campaign controversy when he suggested that Donald Trump told New York Times editors – in an off-the-record portion of his January candidate interview seeking the paper’s endorsement – that he would be willing to negotiate the more hard-line aspects of his immigration platform, including mass deportation. Trump’s rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, immediately called upon Trump to demand the release of the recording of his off-the-record discussion with NYT editors, insinuating that Trump was deliberately misleading voters.

Everything’s negotiable - the art of the deal!

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I’ll make a brief list of presidential candidates who were not risky:

Al Gore,
John Kerry,
John McCain,
Mitt Romney

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LBJ’s agonizing, though. In terms of the good he did, he’s a giant, but he also was horrible on many fronts. He was the last of the New Deal presidents, signed/forced through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, appointed Thurgood Marshall, massively increased education funding, got Medicare and Medicaid passed, created Head Start, signed the Gun Control Act, made more progress on pulling people out of poverty than anyone since FDR, and accomplished a lot more than most presidents in terms of policy and much of it were things that most others could never have accomplished. But he was also a conniving bastard, doubled down on Vietnam, pursued horrifying foreign policy, and was generally inept in dealing with the crises he faced.

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She’s as tough as Texas though. :slightly_smiling:

You may want to rephrase that.

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I like this argument but struggle to reconcile South Carolina and Nevada dem primary results. If it’s an anti-establishment election, then Latinas and African American percentages should’ve been better for our DSA candidate, right?

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Not necessarily, minorities don’t always vote against the establishment candidate for a variety of reasons. This country has a long history of people voting against their own interests. But also because the primaries aren’t the general. These are two different races. The primaries are weird enough that it’s actually hard to poll crossover appeal with any reliability. My hunch is a hunch, but good luck trying to find actual data that will be reliable a month from now. I think the primaries inspire “strategic” voting in a way that skews everything. I put strategic in scare quotes because most people don’t have the necessarily numerical data to make it actually, literally, strategic.

Trump v. Hillary will become about three things very rapidly: SCOTUS, establishment politics, and Hillary-scares. Right now, a lot of salient issues are kind of up in the air. There is an astonishing number of Latinos who view Trump favorably, not the majority, but a significant minority. A lot of this can still change, and obviously what’s salient in an election year is in part driven by current events. Looking at some of the figures available for Super Tuesday, I think it may be coming down to a race between Drumpf and Hillary. In which case, in my opinion [lebowski.gif] we’re about to live in some interesting times.

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