Presidential Election 2016

[lordmoke]

A little too late to edit this into the last post.

The issue so far:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/artic ... -committee

I predict a return of the #FireTheChair hashtag, and with good reason. Beyond Rybak being from Minnesota, he's right, and I'll stand behind him because of that.

Jesus, what a cluster.

So Rybak for DNC chair?

[LakeCharles]

In the 5 polls post-debate, Clinton has caught up and (maybe) passed Sanders in New Hampshire. Averaging 36.4 for Clinton, 36.2 for Sanders, with 12 for Biden and peanuts for the others. Depending on how those Biden voters get parceled out (most people seem to think Clinton will get more of them than Sanders), it might mean that Sanders has peaked in NH. Or maybe it's just a little dip.

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pol ... tic-caucus

[seanrichardryan]

Who's live streaming the Benghazi Committee circus?

[Didier]

I "watched" a bit with closed captioning at the gym. Obviously a very small sample size, but it almost seemed to be backfiring. Like instead of making Hillary look bad, it was an 11-hour infomercial in her looking competent and reasonable.

[mulad]

Reportedly, Fox News started avoiding the hearing around 4 pm Central Time, though it isn't clear to me whether they fully cut away or just muted the audio and shifted to commentary. Still, pretty damning for them considering how they keep pounding on this event -- they're even airing a special titled "13 Hours at Benghazi" tonight, which I find ironic in context of an 11-hour hearing.

Anyway, Lincoln Chafee has dropped out of the Democratic race, along with Jim Webb and Joe Biden. As LakeCharles mentioned, it will be interesting to see how the polls rebalance with Biden's name removed from the pollsters' questions. Lawrence Lessig is also in the race, but hasn't had his name polled very often and wasn't invited to the first debate. I read his book Republic, Lost and thought it did a great job of laying out the case for reforming the way we finance campaigns. His campaign is focused on changing the way campaigns are financed while also guaranteeing voter access and changing how districting and representation works for House seats -- fair representation through multiple seats per (larger) district rather than winner-take-all races in small, gerrymandered spaces.



I don't think a presidential campaign is the way to achieve that goal (since the plan probably has to pass through congress unless there was a broad enough support base to do an amendment instead), but it's a great way to advertise the idea -- if he could only get coverage.

[kirby96]

So it appears that Democrats and Democratic supported issues did poorly on Tuesday, making this a bit of a trend. Could this portend anything for the presidential election? I tend to think that the GOP candidates are of such low quality across the board as to be unelectable, but it seems that there are several planks in the Democratic platform that are mis-aligned with a big chunk of the independent electorate.

[mulad]

Care to quantify that in any way? Here in Minnesota, voters approved $1.2 billion in school levies, 60% of capital requests and 90% of operating requests. That doesn't necessarily translate to urban issues, but it's pretty hard to apply any lessons of off-off-year elections anyway. With low turnouts compared to those of major presidential years when there can be 3-6x as many voters out at the polls, substantial differences in demographics, and news cycles that barely stretch past 36 hours, things can change substantially.

[Nathan]

I think it has more to do with the fact that it's a non presidential election year and therefor (unfortunately) more conservative type people tend to get out and vote.

[acs]

I don't think the GOP is across the board un-electable, certain candidates are (Trump, Cruz). In fact, Bush, Carson, Rubio and Fiorina all currently out-poll Clinton. Write them off at your own peril and Democrats will be handed another election like 2014. As an aside I think the DNC made a big mistake only scheduling 6 debates vs the GOP's 12. More debates give more exposure to non-front runners and help their chances, but I guess that can't be allowed when HRC is preordained for 2016.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... _race.html

Side Note: the main issue this forum talks about, infrastructure, is pretty much absent from every candidate's issues webpage. If you're going to be a single issue voter I wouldn't hope for sweeping changes either way on that front from any candidate.

[Silophant]

Eh... I would like more Dem debates, certainly, but I'm not sure that would have made a difference. I mean, before the first debate, there were only five candidates, or six if you count Lessig. After the first debate, which would have been the first one whether there were six or sixty, we're already down to three. Even as a Sanders supporter, (who will happily vote for Clinton if and when she becomes the nominee), I'm not convinced that having more debates would make that much of a difference.


Note: Ignore this next part, I'm an idiot.
Also, your picks for the two electable GOP candidates out of the clown car are Trump and Cruz? Maybe I'm just too deep in the liberal echo chamber, but I'd pick Rubio and Bush for the "having a prayer at being elected in the general" slots.

[MNdible]

Also, your picks for the two electable GOP candidates out of the clown car are Trump and Cruz? Maybe I'm just too deep in the liberal echo chamber, but I'd pick Rubio and Bush for the "having a prayer at being elected in the general" slots.

I think you misunderstood what he said.

[mulad]

The Democrats should be having more debates just to keep their candidates in the headlines to the same extent that the Republicans are. The Republican debates are pretty much guaranteed to be chaotic until the field winnows down some more, and the Democrats could gain a lot of points by simply acting like adults. They'll be relative snooze-fests ratings-wise, but I get a strong sense of a disparity in news coverage between the two sides.

Here's a headline tracker from The Atlantic. I heard that FiveThirtyEight is supposed to be doing something similar, but haven't found anything yet, though they're more specifically trying to determine if news coverage drives poll numbers, or if it's the other way around. They're collaborating with NPR's "On the Media" for that project, which is a show that I should listen to more often, so I've recently subscribed to their podcast.

[Silophant]

Also, your picks for the two electable GOP candidates out of the clown car are Trump and Cruz? Maybe I'm just too deep in the liberal echo chamber, but I'd pick Rubio and Bush for the "having a prayer at being elected in the general" slots.

I think you misunderstood what he said.

Yep, I did. Apologies.

[twincitizen]

Trump 2016 = Cain 2012
Carson 2016 = Santorum 2012

IMO the only Rs that have a shot at winning the general election are Kasich and Rubio.

[mplsjaromir]

Troubling...

[Didier]

In regards to Kirby's original post, there was some skepticism about the idea that Democrats are struggling in local and state elections. The New Yorker expanded upon that trend.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cass ... -s-red-sea

[gpete]

So nobody has a growing fear that Trump could actually be a formidable general election candidate?

I'm just starting to worry that he has some of the same anti-establishment appeal that Jesse Ventura had in 1998. He isn't crazy right-wing, maybe he would pull some blue collar Democrats who feel that America is trending in the wrong direction? Maybe some people that don't normally vote would come out just to vote for a Trump candidacy? Maybe his true-to-himself personality would contrast very sharply with Hillary's stilted, stiff style?

I don't know... everyone has underestimated Trump from the beginning. I'm starting to worry.

[grant1simons2]

Trump has been sinking in the polls so no. I do not believe he will be the candidate.

[gpete]

He's come down a little in the polls nationwide, but he's neck-and-neck for the lead in Iowa, well-ahead in NH, and has a solid lead in SC. He's a legitimate contender at this point.

Here are aggregated polls, including early-state polls: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -3823.html

[kirby96]

In regards to Kirby's original post, there was some skepticism about the idea that Democrats are struggling in local and state elections. The New Yorker expanded upon that trend.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cass ... -s-red-sea

The biggest loss was the inability to take the Virgina senate despite big money injections. Additionally there were other, more surprising (at least to me), developments than those mentioned by the NYT: minimum wage increase failed in Portland ME (which I believe is heavily left-leaning), and ballot measure both reducing sales tax and requiring public vote for future increases passed in Washington state. Legal pot also failed in Ohio, but I find that less surprising. Kentucky's gubernatorial results not super surprising either, but bad news nonetheless.

We've also had the worker initiatives that went over like a ton of bricks here in Minneapolis, and a steady drum beat of financial pressure on Obamacare. Put them all together, and you get my chin scratching.

Regarding the electability of the GOP candidates, that's based on my own handicapping rather than an estimate of it realistically happening. The field is atrociously bad, but now there's at least a moment or two when I think, geez, one of these people might actually pull it off. My feeling about the GOP is that, given demographic realities and how much the party fringe turns off much of the country, they need candidates that are 'interesting but not weird' (in the eyes of the broad population) in order to win the presidency. Romney wasn't particularly weird, but he wasn't interesting either. Now we have guys like Trump who is interesting to many, but likely too weird to get elected at large. Fiorina isn't wierd but she's also not interesting (other than being female). Carson and Rubio fit the bill the best, but the more we hear about them the more we learn that Carson is weird and Rubio is uninteresting. So hence, on balance, I consider them all relatively hard to elect.

...but given the actual results on the ground, I'm not so sure the Democrats are in a much better place on balance. The candidates are better, but I think they may be out over their skis on many issues, and I wonder if that's seen in recent election results.