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Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #225 –
Now Trump pretty much has the nomination in the bag I wouldn't be at all surprised to see something of a mellowing and rapprochment with the GOP.
Reality always wins in the end.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #227 –
From the above link...

Quote
One of the most striking—and disturbing—takeaways from Tuesday’s West Virginia Democratic primary were exit polls that found large numbers of Bernie Sanders supporters saying if not Bernie, they would actually vote for Donald Trump next fall.

A little known fact is that the West Virginian state rock is in fact....coal ;D
Clinton's not the flavour of the month with coal miners ;)

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #228 –
Why would Clinton worry about what WVa voters have to say about anything?  That's very much a Red State.  In 2008, McCain won it by 13% and in 2012 Romney won it by 27%.  As its 5 Electoral college votes all go to the winner, there's no point bothering about cutting Trump's margin. Clinton merely needed to cut Sanders' margin as the Democratic primaries aren't winner-take-all - pledged delegates are awarded proportionally.  Now the primary is over, she couldn't give a damn about WVa. 

If you want to figure out how Sanders voters will behave in swing states, you don't analyse exit or other polls in a conservative State.  You look at polls in swing states.  Even then, why bother doing that before the Democratic nominee has been chosen?  Of course, Sanders voters are still hoping for a miracle and will say they'll vote for Trump if they don't get their way.  In the highly-likely event that Clinton is the nominee, that emotional blackmail will no longer have any point.  Clinton voters in 2008 were vociferous about refusing to vote for Obama if he became the nominee but came back to the fold when she lost.  Especially if Sanders wins concessions from Clinton regarding her platform, he'll be happy to campaign for her and call on his supporters to vote for her and against Trump.  Senator Elizabeth Warren has a good chance of becoming Clinton's running mate and she's Bernie Sanders in drag.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #229 –
The point though is this...There are regional issues that influence results.
The states are very diverse.
To apply a reason for a result in an exit poll in one state nation wide and make a prediction is really fruitless
The USA is more like a group of independent countries.



Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #230 –
I know that politics and hypocrisy go together, but really ...

Sanders tries to position himself as an outsider and not a politician, a man of principle.  He has been railing against the superdelegate component of the Democratic primary system.  He says it is anti-democratic and allows the will of the voters to be overridden.  Of course, there is truth to this.  It allows the party to prevent an unelectable radical becoming the nominee as happened when George McGovern won.  Influential party members are thus appointed as superdelegates and make up 15% of the delegates at the Democratic Convention.  They vote as they wish and are not bound by who won their state primaries.

If he were consistent in his views, he would look to the pledged delegates alone to determine who wins the nomination.  But there's no joy in that method for him.  Clinton has a lead in pledged delegates of around 300 and he's not likely to make much of a dent in her lead.  This is the most faithful reflection of the popular vote.

He is therefore resorting to anti-democratic methods to overcome the popular vote.  For instance, his supporters have gone mental at the Nevada convention because it resulted in Clinton winning a slight majority of the pledged delegates.  They say the establishment robbed Sanders of a majority.  Yet Clinton won the vote in Nevada handily.  It appears that Sanders "out-organised" Clinton and managed to ensure that more of his supporters ended up being elected to the convention even though Clinton had more votes.  This is the sort of thing that Cruz did to turn the tables on Trump who won the popular vote.  When the party disqualified a number of Sanders' delegates because they were not registered voters at the time required by the rules, Sanders lost the ability to thwart the popular vote. 

Yes, if there's a system in place, a candidate has a right to take advantage of it.  But by attempting to subvert the popular vote, it becomes difficult to complain that the opponent is denying the popular vote.

He is also trying to argue that the superdelegates should consider themselves bound by the vote in their states.  If all of a state's superdelegates are bound to vote for the winning candidate, then the delegate count will no longer be proportional to the votes each candidate received.  If the superdelegates vote to reflect the proportional vote, then Clinton wins.  I doubt that Sanders would win even if all of the superdelegates went to the winner in each state.  But Sanders has an answer to this.  He says that Clinton's wins in Red States, particularly in the South, should be ignored.  On the other hand, he never seems to discount his wins in states like Alaska and West Virginia which he almost certainly would lose in a general election. 

If Sanders argues that he's entitled to play the system in Nevada as them's the rules, he can't credibly argue that Clinton shouldn't be able to take advantage of the superdelegate system as it is written - unbound delegates who vote as they see fit regardless of the popular vote in their states.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #231 –
Sanders' criticism of closed Democratic primaries has some merit.  He says anybody, not just registered Democratic voters, should be able to pick the Democratic nominee.

Some states have closed voting and others have open voting.  Some states such as New York require voters to register as Democratic voters well before a primary.

From the Australian perspective, however, the notion that anyone can vote in pre-selection battles is ridiculous.  If you're a Green voter, good luck to you if you want to cast a vote for who should be the Liberal candidate for Isaacs.  Our view is that each party should be able to select the candidate it believes will best represent it at elections.  The thought that a Green candidate could be foisted on the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party would then have to fund his or her election campaign is laughable. 

The Republican Party failed to have any effective method to stop a non-Republican taking over the party and it now has Trump as its leader who is not particularly Republican in his views.  At least the DNC has a system which gives the party a say.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #232 –
Is Trump in the process of blowing up his campaign?  HERE'S an interesting article from Salon.  Of course, Salon is a progressive site, probably somewhere between the ALP's left wing and the Greens in terms of political leanings but it's a pretty reasonable piece.

Why on earth would he stake his shot at the White House on a vindictive and racist campaign against the judge hearing the Trump U case?  It seems his skin is so thin that he can't resist going nuclear over attacks concerning his business ability and ethics.  Just as he has a weird thing about comments regarding the size of his hands.  That doesn't bode well for the vicious sort of campaign he has initiated and which Clinton is well positioned to fight.  She will be well-funded and there will be a mountain of material for her to exploit.  Remember, the general election campaign doesn't start for another month and it will last 4 excruciatingly-long months.  They haven't even started on his Mafia connections in the 70s.  How will he react when they call him "The Don" rather than "The Donald"?

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #233 –
It's Time for Hilary to Concede

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/its-time-for-hillary-clin_b_9555422.html

Quote
With Bernie Sanders now slightly ahead of Clinton nationally in the latest Bloomberg poll, it’s time to reevaluate the meaning of pragmatism. Hillary Clinton might be ahead of Bernie Sanders in delegates, but Vermont’s Senator has a monopoly on political momentum. Sadly, his opponent has a monopoly on controversy, and will face FBI interviews in the near future

Quote
It’s time for Democrats to deal with reality, not just allegiance to a political icon, and rally around the only candidate not linked to an FBI investigation, and other controversies. With recent victories and future wins ahead, Bernie Sanders has all the political momentum heading towards Election Day. Most importantly, Bernie Sanders is the only leading candidate with positive favorability ratings in 2016.

Hillary Clinton has negative favorability ratings in ten national polls. When people forget about Trump’s rallies, and the billionaire pivots to his former identity as a Democrat (“I probably identify more as a Democrat”), then the Clinton campaign is in big trouble.

In terms of these favorability polls, Hillary Clinton holds negative ratings by an over 10-point margin in 9 of these polls.

The fact that in 9 out of 10 national polls, Clinton is viewed in a negative manner by an over 10-point margin should worry anyone fearing Trump, or a Republican White House.
2012 HAPPENED!!!!!!!

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #234 –
H.A. Goodman is a Bernie Bro from way back.  That doesn't preclude him from having an opinion of course.  And I wouldn't mind seeing Bernie become President.  The funny thing is that he wouldn't be at all out of place in the ALP.  But over there, he's probably too left-wing.  He is a self-described democratic socialist and for Americans that reads as Soviet-style Communist.  He's done America a favour by helping to rehabilitate the democratic socialist tag but I'm sure Trump would love to do a Joe McCarthy on him.

There's a common line of thought that Hillary is a poor campaigner but would make a good president if she were to win the election.  She's lucky she's up against Trump as he may well blow up his campaign.  She's lucky Trump took out Rubio.  He is an impressive debater (in conventional, non-Trump debates at least) and his Latino background would have helped him.  In addition, there would have been a young/old and smooth/stilted disparity that would have helped him.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #235 –
Quote from: Mav – on
There's a common line of thought that Hillary is a poor campaigner but would make a good president if she were to win the election.  She's lucky she's up against Trump as he may well blow up his campaign.  She's lucky Trump took out Rubio.  He is an impressive debater (in conventional, non-Trump debates at least) and his Latino background would have helped him.  In addition, there would have been a young/old and smooth/stilted disparity that would have helped him.

Don't rule Rubio out as a Vice presidential candidate.
He's been very quite since he pulled out of the contest.
For the reasons above he'd be a good "sidekick"

He's not seeking re-election to the Senate.
Despite their differences during the campaign it appears Rubio would be willing to speak in support of Trump at the convention....and although he's said he wouldn't serve as Vice President nothing is a sure thing in this election this far out.

One thing holding him back may be that he wants to have another crack at the top job in four years...and if he's part of a Trump campaign that goes "pear shaped"..... which, as mav points out, is always on the cards....then he might be damaged by any association this time around.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #236 –
He won't get a crack at Hillary, though.  He would only debate the Democratic VP candidate.  Other than that, VP candidates are confined to attending rallies in States other than the ones covered by the Presidential candidates and being a bit of an attack dog to allow the Presidential candidate to stay above the fray. 

The problem is that Trump doesn't want his running mate to do much.  He's already shown that he wants to be his own attack dog and doesn't want anyone else messing things up.  Chris Christie is a stand-in running mate for him atm and all he does is introduce him at rallies and then stand around as the butt of fat jokes.  As someone said, Trump is like a hunter who hangs his prey's head on the wall to display his dominance - a form of ritual humiliation.  Even if Rubio were to go on a whistlestop tour, what would he say?  Trump's supporters don't want to listen to Rubio or anyone else.  They just want to listen to Trump the entertainer.  Trump doesn't have a stump speech Rubio can read out.  The crowd just wants to hear Trump talk about the wall, hurl insults at Hillary, mock protesters, journos and women, and possibly come out with a new outrage.  It's like crowds going to a car crash derby.  Rubio would be a pale imitation.

The other problem is that Sen. Elizabeth Warren may be the Democratic VP candidate.  She's like the smart version of Sanders.  She is also a harsh critic of Wall Street and corporate excesses without being as easy to characterise as a Commie.  She has already taken on Trump on Twitter and Trump hasn't been able to lay a glove on her.  His lame attempt at branding her has been to call her goofy.  She's more than capable of winning an economics twitter storm with him and she would probably just ignore Rubio.  In the VP debate, she may well wipe the floor with Rubio.  But she doesn't have to do so.  No one really pays attention to that debate unless one of the VP candidates makes a howler.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #237 –
Trump will be the next president of the USA, barring an absolutely stupendous crash (which of course is also possible with Trump), he will kill Clinton.

He is hated by many, especially women and that was meant to stop him in the Red Neck primaries, but it didn't.

Hilary Clinton is just about as loathed as Trump, but nowhere near as loved. There are a lot of people that believe Trump can be the next Reagan. They believe he can come out strong and take on all the challenges facing America the next 8 years and they are significant.

The economy (apparently because he is a billionaire he will have all the answers here)
China's expansion
Russia's Militarization
ISIS, the Middle East, Worldwide & Domestic Terrorism.
Immigration Controls (legal and illegal)

These are just a few of the issues America consider to be threatening the existence of America... or A Great America.

I think Bernie had a chance against Trump, I don't think Hilary has any. I might end up eating my words here, but Trump was still paying $5 - $6 when he was in front in polls in The Red Neck Primary because people expected the joke to end and people to come to their senses, now they are starting to realise he can win it.
Goals for 2017
=============
Play the most anti-social football in the AFL

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #238 –
Quote from: Lods – on
Don't rule Rubio out as a Vice presidential candidate.
He's been very quite since he pulled out of the contest.
For the reasons above he'd be a good "sidekick"

He's not seeking re-election to the Senate.
Despite their differences during the campaign it appears Rubio would be willing to speak in support of Trump at the convention....and although he's said he wouldn't serve as Vice President nothing is a sure thing in this election this far out.

One thing holding him back may be that he wants to have another crack at the top job in four years...and if he's part of a Trump campaign that goes "pear shaped"..... which, as mav points out, is always on the cards....then he might be damaged by any association this time around.

Rubio didn't hold back in his criticism of Trump's latest gaffe, but then he was only one of the Republican heavyweights lining up to have a crack at Trump today.  Newt, who was supposed to be Trump's running mate, and Arnie got stuck into him.  Criticising the judiciary is just not part of the American system and I suspect that Trump has finally delivered his own knockout blow. 

If I was a betting man, I wouldn't be backing Trump for the Republican nomination.  Delegates are being asked to withdraw their support in what has to be the most divisive and destructive Republican campaign in recent history.
It's still the Gulf of Mexico, Don Old!
 

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #239 –
If its based on Politics then I fancy Trump to win as no one rates Hilary's political opinions , if its based on popularity then Hilary Clinton will probably sneak over the line as more people hate Trump...providing they all rock up to vote...
Trump can win some people over with his mad ideas but its seems Clintons best chance is for Trump to shoot himself in the foot .....
My major interest is what the result does to the economy here....the dollar is predicted to fall under 60c next year, house prices will soar and we will have a volatile economy....Trump will have Wall street plummet, drive Chinese trade away from the US and its friends and create massive borrowings in the US to pay for his tax cut policy as he cuts revenue.

His business skills are overated ...he inherited a fortune from his father, has had a series of failed business ventures and relied upon risky property development and a tV show to make money.....we cant afford a US president who runs an economy like he runs his own businesses...