Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

You are wearing the wrong people's skin then.

I like how you constantly jump sides and then complain when people become dismissive of you like it's some mystery. Impossible, it's one of his tells.

I'm ahead of my time. Sam Wang writes about how Trump could outright win the nomination with even a 30% ceiling to his support.
He then goes far deeper into the weeds of the nomination process than I did but the end result is that a 30% support level can deliver you 50% of the delegates and secure the nomination on the first ballot:
Not "guaranteed" and it relies on Trump's share rising as weaker candidates eventually drop out (which is a reasonable assumption) but people saying that Trump can't win because he's lacking a majority of support are either fooling themselves or just don't understand the nomination process.

Uhm, Also, he used math, which, surely you know, never ends out right.

Edited, Jan 14th 2016 11:32am by stupidmonkey

That's not a reasonable assumption at all (and frankly where I think is assertion falls apart). He's comparing historical patterns in which all of the top 4-5 candidates were traditional GOP candidates for whom the normal party machine would willingly support based on a "wait and see how things go" approach. Which is why leading in a sufficient number of early primaries can catapult one candidate ahead of the rest for the back half of the primary season. Trump does not fit that category. His negatives among rank and file Republicans are silly high. Most of the PACs will not support him no matter what.

As weaker candidates drop out, their support will flow to whomever remains who isn't Trump. Period. So while trump may pull in a disproportionate number of candidates early on, after just a few round of primaries, the party supporters will have settled on one or two others to oppose him, at which point the numbers will shift dramatically away from him. And it'll do so right as we enter the "winner takes all" states (and frankly, some of the states with the largest delegate pools as well). At which point, his cap will kill him.

I'll also point out that I don't buy at all that his real support in the primaries will be 30%. I know you disagree with this, and we could continue arguing this forever (but that seems silly at this point), but I just don't see him actually getting those numbers. He's essentially running a campaign focused on polling numbers, but not so much on primary voters. He has not expended the effort on the ground game that other candidates have (the most common term I've heard applied to his is "amateurish"), basically counting on the fact that he's "leading in the polls" to magically translate into big wins for him. Again, I know we disagree on this, but I really do think that a lot of people are going to be surprised at the numbers in the first handful of primaries. Trump will do "ok", but he wont win across the board and quite possibly might not win *any* of the early primary and caucus states.

I suppose at this point, we can just wait and see what happens though. I just don't think you can discount the absence of traditional party political organizations, which normally facilitate the ground games for candidates in the states themselves, doing so on behalf of the Trump campaign. He may think it's all just about money and advertising, and while that certainly can boost his poll numbers through the roof when all they have to do is answer a question over the phone, getting people to actually show up and vote on primary day requires having people who know the area spending the time and effort canvassing. His efforts in this area have been anemic at best. I'm sure that his polling popularity will translate into some decent primary showings, but I don't think those showings will nearly as impressive as many people think.

Yeah, that's not true. It's actually something that they even poll for. Trump isn't second choice for most voters (no one is second choice for a majority) but he definitely picks up support.

I know it's getting to be desperation season in the GOP but pulling the blankets over your head isn't actually going to solve any problems. I don't know if Trump will win or not (although he's now favored by the prediction markets which is a pretty major turn of events) but he's absolutely a very viable pick at this point and any arguments to the contrary are pretty much the product of creatively ignoring uncomfortable things.

Is that anything like "WE NEED TO NUKE IRAN NOW FOR TAKING THOSE SAILORS and sheltering them for the night before returning them the next day"?

Well, he doesn't get his news from anywhere, so....

Guess Palin has been liberal all this time as well and never endorsed by conservatives and etc etc.

Also three hours of this:


Edited, Jan 20th 2016 9:41am by lolgaxe

Palin says her son's domestic assault charges stem from the president not respecting our military enough.

Party of Personal Responsibility, everybody!

Well, I know I respect him more now that he gets drunk and punches women while waving guns around.

Of course, in this country he'd be a punk-*****

That's very self aware of you, Time.