Presidential Election 2016

[amiller92]

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

Not really, no. And I'd still be pretty surprised if he won the nomination.

I'm just starting to worry that he has some of the same anti-establishment appeal that Jesse Ventura had in 1998.

Jesse would not have won in a two-way race. And Trump is not Jesse.

[gpete]

Jesse would not have won in a two-way race. And Trump is not Jesse.

Obviously the situations are different and a presidential election has different dynamics. What I said was that he has some of the same anti-establishment appeal of Jesse. And Jesse drew folks from both sides of the aisle (which Trump could do, too), and he brought out voters who normally don't vote (which Trump could do, too). That's the comparison I was trying to make.

[Didier]

For a while I looked at the Republican field and for the life of me couldn't predict who could possibly be the nominee. Now, if I had to put money on it, I think I'd bet first on Rubio and a close second on Jeb!.

Of the people who seem like legitimate candidates, Rubio seems like he's been the most effective in the debates. He also offers a unique narrative. There are knocks against him that won't go away, though, such as his lack of experience. That's why I put Jeb! second. Even though his campaign has underperformed, he has more going for him long-term than Chris Christie and John Kasich. (Huckabee, Rand, and Carly don't count)

From what I read, the system seems set up so that that it will likely come down to Jeb!/Rubio vs. Trump/Carson, while Ted Cruz could stick around as well. If this is the case, I still think that one of the establishment picks will end up being the nominee, and I have a very hard time believing Carson lasts much longer. Fivethirtyeight also outlined how blue state primaries tend to skew the delegates so that the GOP nominee ends up being a bit left of the party's base, which work against Trump, Carson and Cruz.

Hillary vs Marco would favor Hillary, I think, because you'd have a similar dynamic as when Joe Biden and Scott Walker debated. Biden came off as the experienced candidate who knew how things worked, while Walker looked like an idealistic kid in over his head. So I think Jeb!, if he can get there, mounts the most formidable candidate.

Of course, this is a year before the election, and a surprise result in New Hampshire could change everything.

[MNdible]

(Biden debated Paul Ryan, not Scott Walker.)

I'd agree that Rubio would seem to be the best positioned at this point.

[Didier]

Jesse would not have won in a two-way race. And Trump is not Jesse.

Obviously the situations are different and a presidential election has different dynamics. What I said was that he has some of the same anti-establishment appeal of Jesse. And Jesse drew folks from both sides of the aisle (which Trump could do, too), and he brought out voters who normally don't vote (which Trump could do, too). That's the comparison I was trying to make.

I was too young to really know what was going on when Jesse was elected, but my perception is that Jesse shared Trump's charisma but not his divisive policies.

Any discussion of Trump has to be hyperventilated, but there are some interesting aspects of his candidacy. He's supported progressive ideas in the past, and his financial independence has allowed him to point out some of the absurdities in the Republican party and its talking points. However, his opinions on other issues are so extreme and/or absurd that he's hard to take seriously. So there's part of me that thinks an honest and truly independent Trump campaign could have attracted people on both sides and had Jesse-like potential. But at the same time, you can argue that Trump probably never would have been taken seriously had he campaigned the way he has. The only was he got momentum was by being bombastic enough to rile up the Tea Party.

So back to Jesse, he was obviously a nontraditional politician and didn't fit into either party's ideology, but I'm pretty sure the truly weird, extremist, conspiracy-theory Jesse didn't come out until he needed some extra income after his governorship.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Didier]

(Biden debated Paul Ryan, not Scott Walker.)

I'd agree that Rubio would seem to be the best positioned at this point.

Actually I believe it was Paul Walker.

[twincitizen]

Too soon.

[amiller92]

What I said was that he has some of the same anti-establishment appeal of Jesse.

I follow you, and I don't disagree. I'm just saying that that doesn't work as well when you don't have two uninspiring candidates who will nonetheless get big chunks of their party's votes so you can win with 37%.

[amiller92]

I was too young to really know what was going on when Jesse was elected, but my perception is that Jesse shared Trump's charisma but not his divisive policies.

I was in college and did some volunteering first for Mike Freeman in the primaries and then for Skip in the general.

Jesse would say some bombastic things from time to time but generally was a centrist "common sense" moderate. As in he'd be wrong in all the ways that common sense tends to be wrong, but he his ultimate positions were not at all extreme, just as his policies as governor were pretty much straight forward Dean Barkley Independence Party.

Although, full disclosure, I fled to DC for law school while Jesse was in office so I was following less closely.

[mulad]

Well, we've finally made it to one year (366 days, since '16 is a leap year) from the election.

[Tiller]

That was an interesting debate. I was worried Bernie could have gotten creamed on foreign policy, considering the Paris attack and all, but it seemed like Hillary got a walloping. While one could expect Hillary's use of women donors as a shield for her record on wall street, I can't believe she used 9/11 as an excuse.

[Nathan]

Clinton's $275 billion infrastructure plan offers modest spending and contains few specifics. Contrast that with candidate Bernie Sanders, who has proposed a highly detailed, $1 trillion plan.

http://huff.to/1NoafHS

[David Greene]

I cannot for the life of me understand what possible benefit there would be for Black pastors to meet with Trump. Other than maybe some solely personal benefit. It certainly doesn't benefit the average Black person. Trump made them look like fools by simply saying, "I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing because it's working," right after the meeting. I mean, did these pastors really think they would have any influence at all? Trump's gone full-on fascism and they think he worries about how he talks about race?

[grant1simons2]

This also happened today...

[twincitizen]

When I saw that yesterday, I had critical thoughts on both sides:
1. Hilary's social media / graphic design people need to stop trying to be so fucking cute all the time.
2. People saying it looks like Rosa Parks is sitting in the back of the bus are being ridiculous and trying to create controversy where there is none. It would look stupid if she was seated on the right half of the "H" - she'd be driving! (the right-most edge of the H being the windshield)

[David Greene]

My first thought was, "Really, Hillary?"

[mattaudio]

Any surprise that we're now seeing more hate crimes against Muslims, including this arson of a business in Grand Forks?
http://www.dglobe.com/news/3899550-fire ... rshals-say

[mulad]

I'm pretty pissed off at the news media's handling of things lately. They're obsessed with Trump and basically only talk about him unless someone else suddenly "surges" in the polls. Even when other candidates come up, it's mostly to respond to whatever he's been saying lately. There are still 13 other Republican candidates, three Democratic candidates, and even two third-party candidates who have sufficient ballot access that they could amass the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

In reality, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both have more support than Trump, but Trump is getting way more coverage. Here's an article for Washington Post's The Fix which notes that Trump gets twice the coverage of Clinton in nightly newscasts, and a whopping 23x the coverage of Sanders.

I've also been regularly keeping an eye on this project on The Atlantic which tracks TV coverage from a broader variety of news outlets. In the last 7 days, Trump has gotten 5.3x the mentions of Clinton, and 20.7x the mentions of Sanders. That's utter insanity and just breeds more insanity.

Anyway, before I go, I'll also point out a couple places for getting averaged information on polling data: Real Clear Politics and Huffington Post's Pollster section.

"Surprise" poll results usually aren't really surprises, so those two are really useful to have handy.

[MNdible]

What newsworthy things have Clinton and Sanders being doing lately, though? Should they really be getting front page coverage for giving the same stump speech in some Iowa gymnasium?

While I agree that the amount of coverage Trump is receiving is preposterous, I don't particularly view it as some grave injustice. It's not like the press has been positive.

[grant1simons2]

Sanders was supported by Working Families recently. So there's one off the top of my head.

The media literally is feeding Trump. The sooner the general public learns this, the sooner it can stop.