POTUS 2016

Push the button, pull the lever, who's it going to be?

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chewee said:
Several polls in America have in the last few days shown a rather large Clinton wobble. She's still the clear favourite to win the nomination but Sanders is gaining significant ground, some now even have him out in front. Would be a staggering turnaround if she was to lose from here given how solid her position looked following the second Democrat debate.
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Some insight for all y'all who are watching from afar.

Minorities are a key constituency for Democrats. Somewhere around 90% of Black Americans voted for Obama, and it's a similarly sky high numbers for Hispanics. They have a proportionally bigger impact on Democratic politics than they do US politics as a whole.

Currently, Sanders' supporters are overwhelmingly white. We'll need some more polling data to see if that's changed in the recent surge here, but the fact that Iowa and New Hampshire are both lily, lily white states doesn't change this.

For this to be a competitive primary at all, Sanders winning both Iowa and New Hampshire is the bare minimum of what he needs to get the press coverage and positive momentum to change that and have a go.

And even then it's still likely that he'll lose South Carolina and Nevada and then get wiped on Super Tuesday (lots of Southern states with big Black and Hispanic populations that day.)

(Disclaimer: I say all of this as a Sanders supporter. And yeah, I am white and college educated. How did you know?)
 
roydo said:
In a few words, what is the actual difference between the protagonists?
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Democrats

Sanders - a genuine old-line honest socialist, American version. Has the virtue of sincerity, and is not "focus group tested." His views are as close to those generally accepted in Merseyside as any actual American politician that you are ever going to see taken seriously for the job. Would win the English vote in a walkover. Will have serious problems with the ethnic vote and women, which will need to turn out in spectacular numbers for him to win the general.
Clinton - Tracy Flick at age 68. Married to one of America's best retail politicians ever. Hasn't said a spontaneous non focus group tested word since 1993. She believes and supports whatever she thinks she needs to believe to win - she's Blair in a pantsuit that way. Must get a huge turnout of the women's vote and a repeat of the kind of black/hispanic vote turnout Obama got to win twice. [This individual doesn't think she'll make it to the nomination for a bunch of reasons. Will likely withdraw for "health reasons" unless she wins through the primaries and dodges all the ongoing investigations. 100 agents full-time and 50 agents part-time are currently working on the FBI probe of much more than just her emails.
Obama's justice department will eventually decide whether she skips through this or not. Joe Biden will have to cure cancer and run for President all at the same time. You heard it here first... (maybe).]

Republicans

Trump - go read up on Scott Adams' (Dilbert's creator) thoughts on Trump. I think he comes closest to figuring out the mysterious (to me) appeal. Scott's not your average cartoonist.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/137089875456/the-oddest-thing-about-trump
Cruz - The thinking angry man's candidate, and the choice of Republican evangelicals and angry non-Trumpets. Alan Dershowitz says he might be the smartest guy he's ever seen go through Harvard Law. A masterful debater and creative strategist, he doesn't care what the boys in DC think, and is running against the institutional Republican party and the federal government in general. Most folks in L4 would think he's from another planet, but you'd best take him very seriously. He has gone much farther faster than I thought he would in this race.
Rubio - He's as good on the tube as some kind of Obama/Blair mashup. Looks like a combination of Slater and Zach, all grown up now. Thinks well on his feet, and has an appealing immigrant story for his own background. Is seen by the Trumpkins as an unreliable candidate due to his former friendliness to efforts to do a comprehensive immigration deal with the Democrats, in which he got his pants taken down, reversed, and the pockets cut out by Chuck Schumer. I marvel at the fact that he is now seen as the establishment candidate with the best chance, as he got into the Senate as a Tea Party insurgent while running against Charlie Crist, America's most flexible and least principled politician.

Nobody else has a chance (with the exception noted above), take it from me.

History would indicate that it will be exceedingly difficult for the Democrats to pick up a third consecutive term with Obama's popularity numbers as low as they currently are. The Trump phenomenon may blow up all conventional expectations, however.

To paraphrase what a former PM said back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we are at the mercy of "events, dear readers, events..."
 

We really need Trump to win, just to see what happens next. and after the 4 or even 8yrs we would see that it doesn't really matter who is the Prez.
 
degsy said:
We really need Trump to win, just to see what happens next. and after the 4 or even 8yrs we would see that it doesn't really matter who is the Prez.
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yeah it would be fascinating to see if he actually enacted any of his policies, or as i suspect ...he's just saying stuff to get in and will be happy bumbling along with all the prestige/power but without actually doing anything
 

mezzrow said:
Democrats

Sanders - a genuine old-line honest socialist, American version. Has the virtue of sincerity, and is not "focus group tested." His views are as close to those generally accepted in Merseyside as any actual American politician that you are ever going to see taken seriously for the job. Would win the English vote in a walkover. Will have serious problems with the ethnic vote and women, which will need to turn out in spectacular numbers for him to win the general.
Clinton - Tracy Flick at age 68. Married to one of America's best retail politicians ever. Hasn't said a spontaneous non focus group tested word since 1993. She believes and supports whatever she thinks she needs to believe to win - she's Blair in a pantsuit that way. Must get a huge turnout of the women's vote and a repeat of the kind of black/hispanic vote turnout Obama got to win twice. [This individual doesn't think she'll make it to the nomination for a bunch of reasons. Will likely withdraw for "health reasons" unless she wins through the primaries and dodges all the ongoing investigations. 100 agents full-time and 50 agents part-time are currently working on the FBI probe of much more than just her emails.
Obama's justice department will eventually decide whether she skips through this or not. Joe Biden will have to cure cancer and run for President all at the same time. You heard it here first... (maybe).]

Republicans

Trump - go read up on Scott Adams' (Dilbert's creator) thoughts on Trump. I think he comes closest to figuring out the mysterious (to me) appeal. Scott's not your average cartoonist.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/137089875456/the-oddest-thing-about-trump
Cruz - The thinking angry man's candidate, and the choice of Republican evangelicals and angry non-Trumpets. Alan Dershowitz says he might be the smartest guy he's ever seen go through Harvard Law. A masterful debater and creative strategist, he doesn't care what the boys in DC think, and is running against the institutional Republican party and the federal government in general. Most folks in L4 would think he's from another planet, but you'd best take him very seriously. He has gone much farther faster than I thought he would in this race.
Rubio - He's as good on the tube as some kind of Obama/Blair mashup. Looks like a combination of Slater and Zach, all grown up now. Thinks well on his feet, and has an appealing immigrant story for his own background. Is seen by the Trumpkins as an unreliable candidate due to his former friendliness to efforts to do a comprehensive immigration deal with the Democrats, in which he got his pants taken down, reversed, and the pockets cut out by Chuck Schumer. I marvel at the fact that he is now seen as the establishment candidate with the best chance, as he got into the Senate as a Tea Party insurgent while running against Charlie Crist, America's most flexible and least principled politician.

Nobody else has a chance (with the exception noted above), take it from me.

History would indicate that it will be exceedingly difficult for the Democrats to pick up a third consecutive term with Obama's popularity numbers as low as they currently are. The Trump phenomenon may blow up all conventional expectations, however.

To paraphrase what a former PM said back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we are at the mercy of "events, dear readers, events..."
Click to expand...

As far as I can figure out Trump's appeal, it's this: Low information voters, who normally aren't tuned in to politics at all, are upset with the current situation they're in, and have finally found a candidate they're at least somewhat familiar with that actually talks like them. But they're not politically experienced enough to actually adopt a political philosophy, or to understand what's wrong with Trump's platform and why a presidency based on that would be disastrous.

I think the changing demographics and "unintentional gerrymandering" I'll call it means this one's basically on lock for the Dems. In most other contests, approval ratings in the mid 40's (where Obama's is now) is basically a lock for re-election. Catastrophe may happen, but I don't think the Clinton FBI inquiry is going to be the trigger, either.

Short of a miracle of a Supreme Court decision, the House will stay GOP. The Senate might flip, but I don't feel confident enough to call it. In order to retake the Senate Dems will have to win all of the where they have a Cook PVI edge (IL, NH, PA, WI, and CO), defend all of their seats, and get the presidency. That's 50 and the tiebreaker. Their defenses though are all really easy (CA, WA, OR, NY, HI, CT and MD), so it's definitely doable, but it's gonna take some serious needle threading.

Consider these my official predictions and vault the everloving daylights out of me.

You have a horse yet in this race @mezzrow lad?
 

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