07-08-2016, 06:54 AM
(07-05-2016, 01:58 PM)playwrite Wrote:(07-05-2016, 12:03 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:(07-05-2016, 11:11 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 51 Clinton -- 39 Trump -- 10 Johnson.
Obama 2008 with the addition of Missouri, Georgia, Montana, Arizona, Alaska, South Carolina, and Texas. Maybe the Dakotas, Nebraska (except for NE-03), and Kansas as well. Close to a mirror image of Reagan 1980.
We are really seeing the Johnson effect now. Unlike Anderson in '80 or even Perot his couple of times, this time around, some in the GOP need an analgesic to address the ill feeling brought by their unfortunate GOP choice, but one that allows them to say they are not voting Dem. Of course voting Dem is the safest course, but for those who just can't bring themselves to do it, Johnson allows a clear conscience. I predict he will rise to strong upper teens by Election Day, robbing Trump of any semblance of a showing.
Not a big Libertarian fan, obviously, but Johnson is a pretty smart guy. If he can get to 15%, he will be in the debates ala Perot. He and Clinton will make the Donald look really really stupid. Clinton and Johnson are not the lightweights that were in the GOP primaries, the target audience will be swing voters (I wonder if Trump even understands this), and by October, most people will be pretty hip to Trump's schtick if it doesn't make them visible ill.
As you said, this could be a historic drubbing of the GOP that they may not recover from as a national political power. Fingers crossed for good luck!
I'd like to see them lose their gains of 2010. Such would be adequate. The Republicans quickly entrenched themselves in power with a mandate to serve -- and they ended up serving the greediest and most superstitious at the expense of everyone else. The bill comes due this year.
The solution to economic hardship is not even more hardship. Republicans have tried to bring back the early-capitalist, late-agrarian ethos that no human suffering is in excess so long as it turns, enforces, or indulges elite gain.
Donald Trump is creating a mess for the GOP, dividing it between those who support him and those who want nothing to do with him. At this stage in this campaign I see something much like the results of the 2008 election, a regional landslide for Barack Obama that spills over into some seemingly-unlikely places. But at this time in 2008 the consensus was that the Presidential race of 2008 was going to be very close. Could he take some Republican incumbents down with him? Absolutely.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.