Presidential election, 2016

[Anthony '58]

Quote:We have a regeneracy if Donald Trump goes down to defeat by a 10% or greater margin, and Republicans lose both Houses of Congress. Such suggests that America has rejected both the fascist economy of the Corporate State (government by lobbyists) and the lure of fascistic violence as a political tool.

Is this the death of conservatism? Hardly. Democrats are winning over some people (middle-class minorities) whose demographics suggest that they should be conservative on taxes and spending -- and culture. Conservatism will revive, but with an emphasis on small business as the economic heroes, with a rejection of violence, and with the desire for some ethnic and religious concord.

Hate to sound like ETG - nah, he's not such a bad dude - but 2020 seems like a more plausible year for a realigning election based on the concomitant Jupiter/Saturn conjunction and perihelion/opposition of Mars and the Sun; or, if you're not a fan of this sort of thing, all Hillary is going to do if she wins is nibble around the edges of the Red Wall - indeed, North Carolina would be the only Romney state she wins - with the Red Wall getting torn down altogether in 2020, assuming the Red Wall doesn't tear itself down by seceding.

[Odin]

(10-06-2016, 08:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Uhh... Mays or Scully?

Scully, though it's true for both of them, LOL.

[Eric the Green]

My prediction is that Hillary Clinton will win 347 to 191. It may be 346 if Maine CD2 stays GOP as it appears now. She will win all the 2012 Obama states plus NC.

http://www.270towin.com/maps/Xd7ld

[Eric the Green]

Additional notes: If Hillary wins Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania by 3 or 4 points each, the Democrats will win the Senate. If NH and NV are closer, though, they might not. Of those 3, New Hampshire and Nevada look to be the tightest senate contests, if the Democrats win them.

Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina will be the closest wins for Hillary; Arizona and Georgia the closest wins for Trump. Texas might be closer than expected; hope springs eternal for the Lone Star State to return to sanity!

[Eric the Green]

(10-05-2016, 11:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We need to limit the number of filibusters (five per Congress?), making their use gambles. I want those who use them to obstruct legislation as a specific tool for objectionable legislation and not as a tool for obstructing everything.

That's a good idea for a rule.

What concerns me is that if Trump is elected, or some other dufus Republican, and the Republicans retain the Senate, then the "nuclear option" is likely. Republicans may be fanatical enough to vote to overturn the filibuster if they get a majority, giving the president the power to pass whatever legislation (s)he wants.

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-07-2016, 12:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-05-2016, 11:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We need to limit the number of filibusters (five per Congress?), making their use gambles. I want those who use them to obstruct legislation as a specific tool for objectionable legislation and not as a tool for obstructing everything.

That's a good idea for a rule.

What concerns me is that if Trump is elected, or some other dufus Republican, and the Republicans retain the Senate, then the "nuclear option" is likely. Republicans may be fanatical enough to vote to overturn the filibuster if they get a majority, giving the president the power to pass whatever legislation (s)he wants.

In the old days, if one wanted to filibuster, one had to get the floor and not yield it.  This meant one guy continuing to speak for as long as he has the stamina.  The majority party just has to wait for him to collapse.  One could delay a vote, but trying to block large numbers of bills was tedious at best.  Today the rules of order are such that one can filibuster painlessly.

It is my opinion that a minority should not be able to block the majority from voting on a bill.  Perhaps if a minority tries to block votes in a committee required to move a bill to the floor beyond a certain length of time, the bill automatically goes to the floor.  Perhaps once a bill gets to the floor, if no all for an up / down vote has occurred within a given amount of time, it is automatically called to a vote.  Basically, minorities should not be able to block legislation.

Some sort of filibuster might be left in place, but I believe it should have firm limits.  One might want to allow some degree of obstructionism, but not the possibility of total road blocks.

But neither party seems eager to modify the rules of order in such a way to stop road blocks.  Both parties are afraid of what the other would do if they got the presidency and both houses of Congress.

[pbrower2a]

[Eric the Green]

An edited version of the VP Debate with Seth Meyers moderating.

[naf140230]

No matter who wins the debate tomorrow, it is not going to change the course of the election. Clinton is still going to win.

[pbrower2a]

This can really mess things up for Republicans.

[TeacherinExile]

I have refrained for some time now from commenting on the 2016 presidential campaign, because some posters can't seem to get out of the way of their own naked partisanship.  That and, as both MordecaiK (Where have you gone?) and I maintained on the old forum, the 2016 presidential cycle will not be the change election that this Fourth Turning calls for, indeed what both the 2008 and 2012 elections desperately cried out for, but we didn't get. 

Since 1976 I have watched every presidential (and vice-presidential) debate, but I simply could not bear to watch the "debates" this time around.  I can read the transcripts, fact-checking, and political commentary the next day.  After the first two "debates" between Clinton and Trump, and the one-off between Kaine and Pence, Lincoln and Douglas must be spinning in their graves faster than a rotary engine.  Here are just a few of the headlines summarizing last night's farce:

"Debate #2: Breaking the Bottom of the Barrel"
"Ugliest Debate Ever"
"29 More Days in the Mud"  (I would say "in the shit," with all apologies to combat veterans who know all too well what that military slang means.)

In a country of more than 300 million people, are these two political hairballs--Clinton and Trump--the best we can cough up as potential leaders of the free world?  I'm not ordinarily given to rank pessimism, but it is hard to believe that either Clinton or Trump will prove out as the Gray Champion.  I just don't see it.  (More on that, after the election.) 

Every Monday morning, I check out the blog of author and commentator James Howard Kunstler.  He's a loveable old crank who has a way of peering around the corner and summing up the public mood and political landscape of America. (I should say that I generally ignore his predictions about Peak Oil or imminent market crashes, as he is wildly off the mark on those scores.)  Nevertheless, his post today squares with my own bleak assessment of what lies ahead after this Campaign Carnival of 2016 has concluded. 
     
"Wounded Elephant"
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/wounded-elephant/#.V_ujFP8JdpQ.email

Last night’s debate raises some interesting questions, such as: would the Romans have elected Caligula if given the chance to vote? Can the Republican party recover from Donald Trump? If the party poobahs “pull the plug” on Trump, as some are threatening to do (that is, cut off funds to his campaign), will they go down the drain with him anyway? Is the USA a nation or just the world’s biggest comedy club? Where is the Deep State when you really need it?

That odor wafting across the land is the smell of Republicans with their hair on fire. Yet the gloat of astonishment on Hillary’s face as she witnesses the Queeg-like crack-up of her rival will eventually fade as she discerns the wreckage awaiting her in the Oval Office. Weep for your country!

The only good to come out of this sordid election is the certainty that a lot of political debris will be swept away in the Fourth Turning underway. Out of the miasma of idiocy and posture that is this election campaign, the hard-edged realities of our time will emerge and the TV audience will come to the stark recognition that it is not just another mere entertainment.

The other major nations of the world are not so much ganging up on America, as Hillary would have it, but reasonably attempting to ring-fence the mad bull that the USA has become — as the two candidates vie to start World War Three with China and Russia respectively. The last resort of the scoundrels in today’s version of the “yellow press” is to blame Russia for attempting to meddle in our election. War, children, it’s just a shot away.

It is getting to be too late to sort out all the confusion sown by this horrific campaign. From here on it's really more a matter of the dust settling. In the background of it all looms the train-wreck of global finance, which will be the true determinant of what the American people will have to do in the years ahead. During the weeks of the election distraction, the European banks struggle to conceal their insolvency while the politicians of Euro-land desperately try to paper over the cracks in these fracturing institutions. Few can tell what is actually happening in China’s banking system, but it’s sending out ominous tremors that are hard to ignore. But be sure it is all daisy-chained right into Wall Street and the US banks. The potential for wrecking markets and currencies around the world is extreme at this moment. It may only be a matter of whether it happens before or after the election. 

[I have maintained in previous posts on the old 4T forum that the next shoe falls after the election, beginning sometime next year, when I expect the current bull market in stocks to peak.]


Then we’ll see what happens when financial institutions can’t trust each other. Trade stops. Economies crumble. Pretenses evaporate. If it gets bad enough, the shelves of the supermarkets go bare in three days and you’re living in a permanent hurricane disaster without the wind and rain. Believe me, that will be bad enough. Hillary, if elected, will not get to play FDR-2. Rather, she’ll be stuck in the role of [i]Hoover, the Return, presiding over a freight elevator of an economy with a broken cable. Expect problems with the US dollar. Expect “emergency” actions. Expect the unintended consequences of those actions.[/i]

If there is one outstanding upshot of these “debates” it must be their staggering failure to reassure the American public that they can expect effective leadership through the hardships ahead. There must be many others out there like myself wondering who will emerge from the rubble? I suspect it will be someone we haven’t heard of before, just as Bonaparte was unheard of in France in 1792. This is not entirely a nation of clowns, though it feels like that lately.


Note: the parenthetical expressions and boldface above are my own.


The only real change agent in the presidential primaries was marginalized from the outset by the DNC with a strong assist from the mainstream press, especially the New York Times, Washington Post, and NBC.


So now our "false choice" comes down to the two most unpopular contestants in modern American political history, which at least one pundit has characterized as the "Tyranny of the Known versus the Terror of the Unknown."  (I'll let you suss out which is which.)

Is there honestly any way that Clinton can lose to Trump at this point?  How utterly embarrassing it would be for her to somehow lose out to the Donald now.  It would certainly be the biggest political upset in my lifetime, akin to the Cleveland Cavaliers falling to the Harlem Globetrotters.  But, hey, in this most silly of political seasons, I suppose anything is possible. 

PS: I'm still with the Other Her.

[Eric the Green]

Welcome back Teach!

16 years are NEVER game-changer elections that 4Ts call for! They confirm the ship already headed for the hurricane. Bet on it. The change elections will be 2020 and 2024; I think it will take both of them. The 4T climax isn't even due until 2027. Don't worry, I keep saying to y'all. Change is a-comin.'

Game changer events during 4Ts do not happen when Neptune is in Pisces. That's the time for the likes of Pierce and Buchanan! I suspect we're electing someone like them again in 2016. I think Hillary will have a pretty good record, though; but there's only so much she can do, and she has only so much courage to stand up to the powers-that-be.

Bernie was not marginalized by a few hacked comments by the DNC chair or misbehavior by a few election officials in Nevada or Bill Clinton getting too close to a polling place. Bill Clinton gets too close to a lot of people, as we know. It doesn't matter. Hillary won the primary because she was the favorite and supported by all the Democrats; Bernie was an outsider who did magnificently considering where he started from and the fact that this is America. He moved Hillary to the left and she has stayed there. That's a good sign.

It's obvious I have a better predictive rate than Mr. Kunstler. Or most of the pundits for that matter. I think staying with the other her is a principled stand. I am leaning to the first her, because the other her's comments about Hillary are off the mark. She is not campaigning in the principled way that Bernie did. Bernie did not appropriate Republican lies about Hillary; Stein has done so.

AZ remains a swing state btw. If I lived there, I would not have any doubt about voting for Hillary myself. But CA, where I live, has a 99.9% chance of voting for Hillary, according to Nate Silver last time I checked. I can still be officially undecided enough not to contribute to her campaign or campaign for her, or not vote for her if I choose. My hope is that Trump is so repulsive that many Republicans will stay home. That could turn congress over. That's the potential game-changer, if it happens.

[pbrower2a]

Pro athletes apparently don't hear talk like that of Donald Trump about grabbing female crotches, at least not while the men are in the locker room.

Quote:Donald Trump may think that bragging about sexual assault is “locker room talk,” but professional athletes across the country beg to differ.

During Sunday night’s presidential debate, Trump was sharply criticized for a leaked video from 2005 in which he boasts about hitting on a married woman “like a bitch” and grabbing women “by the pussy.”

“It’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things,” the GOP nominee said of the statements.

LA Clippers coach and former NBA point guard Doc Rivers said that if Trump thinks his comments constitute locker room talk, “that’s a new locker room for me.”

Several other current and former sports stars weighed in to say that people don’t actually talk like Trump in locker rooms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pro-...ction=&

[pbrower2a]

Welcome back, Teacher-in-Exile!

...of course we have perhaps the weakest pair of opposing Presidential nominees. Hillary Clinton would lose most elections in which she were the nominee; Donald Trump is quite possibly the worst nominee by one of the two major Parties since the start of the twentieth century. I'd put Trump in a category with such third-party nominees as Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968. He has been caught on tape not only talking about a nasty deed of questionable legality, but also claiming that he can get away with it because he is rich and powerful. That is only the last outrage. This Presidential race was close to being tied most of this year.

One obvious reality: Hillary Clinton is brilliant. She can lure an adversary into a trap and spring it hard. That is her legal training. Donald Trump fell for her logical snares. For good reason, Boris Putin does not want her to be President.

But that has nothing to do with the usual economic and geopolitical hazards of a 4T. Barack Obama may have kept America from spiraling into a replay of the Great Depression, but he got little chance to reform the financial order. The bankers and other plutocrats got their way after the 2010 election. They have learned nothing.

Donald Trump is shallow, reckless, abrasive, and -- worst of all -- ignorant of his intellectual limitations. He has said that he knows more than the generals, something that a draft-dodger who became a militarist could not say except as a fool. We are better off with a President who knows his own limitations and has to be convinced of something. Barack didn't need to know everything about intelligence-gathering and how Special Forces operate to preside over the whacking of Osama bin Laden. He had to know whether he could trust the CIA and the military, and he made an excellent choice.

Can Donald Trump know more than the generals? Barack Obama would have never made such a claim about himself. But he could cultivate trust. He could make wise decisions based upon what they know.

Of course any bull market has its own lifespan, and this one shows no exception. This is not a speculative boom, but we are running out of potential for prosperity through 'enhanced consumption' and the manufacturing behind it.

Donald Trump would of course be a horrible President. He appeals to mass ignorance, to greed, to hurt. He shows contempt for vulnerable people. t feelings, and to intellectual laziness. Communication at a grade-school level is one thing; that is the level of understanding that one needs for Disney cartoons. Thinking at a grade-school level demonstrates why we have high schools and colleges -- in part so that Disney cartoon epics can have some sophistication under the level of the words. Rarely must we think at the level necessary for understanding Kant or Hegel. We do need to be smart enough to not get snookered, and we need someone able to apply such knowledge as is available to the needs of the time. At that Donald Trump would fail.

Donald Trump could be so incompetent a leader that the Grey Champion of this Crisis Era might be the leader of a foreign enemy. You do not want a D'Israeli, Lincoln, Juarez, Churchill, FDR, or even Mannerheim as your enemy in a Crisis Era.

[Bob Butler 54]

I'm not as much into chasing polls as many contributors to this thread.  Rather than building my own maps, I've been visiting 538's who will win the presidency page.  At this point I'm pretty happy with what I'm seeing.

The page features a list of 14 swing states that were and are considered up in the air.  Right now only two -- Arizona and Georgia -- are leaning for Trump, and Arizona is getting mighty close.

Is 538 s as good as anyone if one wants to keep an eye on the race without doing too much work?

[pbrower2a]

(10-11-2016, 09:38 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I'm not as much into chasing polls as many contributors to this thread.  Rather than building my own maps, I've been visiting 538's who will win the presidency page.  At this point I'm pretty happy with what I'm seeing.

The page features a list of 14 swing states that were and are considered up in the air.  Right now only two -- Arizona and Georgia -- are leaning for Trump, and Arizona is getting mighty close.

Is 538 s as good as anyone if one wants to keep an eye on the race without doing too much work?

Nate Silver has a model that worked well in 2008 and 2012. Yes, his predictions jump around much, but they jump to reflect the political reality. Trump has gone from enticing to appalling for many people.  He has appalled me throughout this year, but I can't judge that as a model for the rest of America.

2012 was easy once four states seemed likely to decide everything. Barack Obama got solid leads in states with about 260 electoral votes, with Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia showing about even chances for both. Colorado and Nevada were going to vote together, but neither this pair nor Florida, Ohio, nor Virginia was similar to the other state or pair of states. Any one of those could clinch the election for Obama, and they were far enough and dissimilar enough that they couldn't fall for the same appeal tailor-made for one but not the others. A special appeal that could win all of them would pull several states from reasonably-sure states for Obama to reasonably-sure states for Romney. Romney had to win all four and Obama needed win either Colorado and Nevada or one of the other three states.

One can ignore a state like Indiana (he wasn't going to win it without also winning Ohio), Arizona (he wasn't going to win Arizona without also winning Colorado and Nevada), or North Carolina (which he wasn;t going to win without also winning Virginia).

I called those states "independent events". Multiply the chances for Romney in each state, subtract that from "1" and you get the Obama chance. If the pair and the three others have a 50-50 chance of going either way, then the chance of Obama being elected would be .50*.50*.50*.50 =  1-.0625, or .9375. So what happens when the chance becomes 30% in one and 70% in the other? 

I could ignore such a state as Indiana (Obama wasn't going to win it without also winning Ohio, which would clinch) or North Carolina (which Obama was not going to win without also winning Virginia).  the Romney chance goes to 5.25%. Having one state become a 90% chance for Obama whbile another become a 90% chance for Romney is even worse, cutting the Romney chance down to  2.25%. One becomes a sure thing for Obama and the other becomes a sure thing for Romney? 0% chance for a Romney win.

The model was simplistic enough, and it seemed to fit reasonably well. Reality forced adaptations that caused me to state that Obama had practically won it by taking out the random chance of a Romney victory. Romney was in deep trouble in his Presidential bid.

[Mikebert]

Um folks, the only way 2016 would be significant is if Trump won.  If Hillary wins, it will just be supporting evidence for a critical election (analogous to 1968) in 2008.  In the 1968 the dominant party was the Democratic party (having controlled the presidency 78% of the time since 1932; the Senate 89%, and the House 89% for an average value of 83%) yet a Republican was elected who had pioneered a strategy to welcome disaffected Democratic cultural conservatives into the GOP, which had traditionally been the culturally progressive party. Although Nixon in many ways ruled as a moderate and even a liberal on occasion, his electoral innovations helped pave the way for future conservative dominance--as the Democratic coalition began to fray. I believe that had there been no Watergate, Reagan would have been elected president in 1976 and overseen the implementation of the Nixon Revolution.  Instead he had to start the revolution and it was left to a Democrat, Bill Clinton, to implement the Reagan Revolution.

Forty years after 1968 the dominant party was the Republican (having controlled the presidency 70%, the Senate 43%, and the House 30% of the time for an average value of 53%), yet a Democrat was elected.  If Clinton wins and the Senate goes Democratic it will begin a 10 year era in which the Dems will have held the presidency for 100% of the time, the Senate 80% of the time, and the House 20%, for an average value of 75% (this is better than the 53% value they had over 1991-2000.)

In other words, if Clinton wins she is just a continuation of a process begun under Obama, not the start of anything of herself.  And I think this suits her.  By all accounts she is a workhorse.  If you think of Clinton as Sisyphus in Camus's Myth of Sisyphus, the presidency will be her rock.

[Bob Butler 54]

Just a brief report on the state of the gender gap.  538 put up an article reviewing recent gender related polls.  The summary chart...

538 threw up a couple of electoral maps that supposed that men only had the vote, and women only.  Both maps resulted in landslide majorities...  but for different candidates.

This supports a hypothesis I threw up the other day.  A demagogue might be able to get places with racism.  One can build a stronger majority base if one is willing to lose the minority vote.  This assumes that there are more majority racists than there are minorities, which is a questionable assumption these days.  A lot of Establishment Republicans are not happy that Trump is using racist tactics to strengthen his hold among white voters at the expense of losing votes that he absolutely needs to get to 270.

But there are definitely more women than there are sexist males.  If one is rationally logically sound when planning racist and sexist political strategies, one might play the race card while being very careful with the women's card.  Still, how often are sexists and racists rational and logical?  Well, often enough if one is Establishment Republican.  The rejection of Trump was rejected firmly by a lot of Establishment Republican as obviously a bad idea.  Yes, rejecting one's party's nominee for president is unprecedented.  However, a lot of them just couldn't see the party turn off such a big demographic.

[Bob Butler 54]

CNN is reporting concern among Hillary's campaign that The Donald is pushing a strategy of disgust.  He is allegedly deliberately turning off voters in the hope that a low turnout will enhance his chances.

It is possible, but I haven't had the feeling that he is making campaign choices rationally in a well thought out manner.  Throughout the campaign he has lashed out at anyone who gets in his way, from Gold Star mothers to Miss Universe.  The Establishment Republicans abandoning him now are being treated in the same way.  My feel is that the upcoming storm of ugliness will simply be The Donald being The Donald.

But the reason for the ugliness seems less important than the voter's reaction.  Will people get disgusted and stay home, or will people resolve that this guy absolutely cannot be allowed to win?

One concern is that if The Donald keeps going low, Hillary will have to answer in the same vein.  I'm kind of hoping she follows Michelle Obama's call to stay high.

[Eric the Green]

(10-11-2016, 08:57 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Just a brief report on the state of the gender gap.  538 put up an article reviewing recent gender related polls.  The summary chart...

Seeing these I have to echo Zorba the Greek. "Is not a Man, STUPID?"