2016 Election Thread

[Brock Beauchamp]

I don't see a megalomaniac such as Trump handing power to Pence. I'm sure Trump promised Pence the moon and 72 virgins but I don't see how he'd follow through fulfilling that promise. Trump's ego won't allow it.

 

If Trump somehow manages to win, I ultimately see all-out war being declared between factions within the Republican Party and their own President.

 

Most will fall in line but there will be a vocal contingent - led by people like Lindsey Graham - who won't follow Trump because it'll be disastrous to their own reelection chances.

[PseudoSABR]

 

Speaking of email, NPR posted a great article about Colin Powell ripping into both candidates after his email was hacked.

 

It's almost impossible to read that article and not think "Why isn't Powell leading the modern GOP again? He's what the party should be in 2016, not the garbage we've been subjected to in recent years."

 

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/14/493927155/powell-trump-a-national-disgrace-clinton-screws-up-everything-with-hubris

He wouldn't stand a chance in a Republican primary (not that you're arguing any differently).  But as much as we can acknowledge the validity of conservatism in American politics and find real people who embody the best parts of those values,  the Republican base is still what it is--people that think Trump-as-president is a good idea--and I imagine it will become further entrenched no matter the result of the election, rather than lesser so.  

[TheLeviathan]

As much as I hate that parts of the Hillary crowd complain every time there is criticism sent their way, i will say this:

 

The leaks that come out are almost always terrible for Clinton.  It's really lopsided.  And the weird part is that it isn't the right doing it, it's more disgruntled independents/leftists.  Which I just find bizarre given the alternative.

[LaBombo]

 

I don't know how the Clinton campaign can be this incompetent. Good lord . . . Bill referred to it as the damn flu today.

 

One would think think that Bill's "flu" stumble would be somewhere between considerably and infinitely less newsworthy and damaging than his inadvertent admission on Monday that Hillary faints "frequently". He seems to have lost a step in terms of his ability to work in the spotlight.

 

And I completely agree with your larger point. Issues aside, on a purely infrastructure level the Clinton campaign was supposed to be the more professional and polished machine in terms of messaging, ground game, media savvy, etc. And prior to last weekend, probably most people would agree that it had been, and not by a small margin.

 

Less than a week later, Hillary and her staff have managed to leave a large portion of the American public either wondering how she shot herself in the foot, where she got the gun, or, for the highly persistent 'Hillary is dying or something' folks, how she managed to conceal the gun for so long.

 

And it's not Team HRC's only issue, as they now have the lesser but unnecessary and still potentially costly "deplorables" comment to contend with, and are also having to do so when the table was already beginning to tilt slightly less against Trump as his staff seemed to have finally succeeded in convincing him that his best shot at a comeback was to stop being himself.

 

538 still has Hillary a 3-2 favorite due to the favorable electoral math, but as has been mentioned, it's hard to see how this election is anywhere near the popular vote dead heat that some polling shows. If the improbable (and unthinkable for many) happens and Trump wins, this last week may go down as a kind of political Pisarcik-Csonka handoff moment in presidential campaign history.

 

More likely, Hillary will still win, and this will end up being just one more 'What the Bleep' moment in an election that, even if I live another several decades, will probably still end up being the one that I think of as 'The What the Bleep Election'.

 

 

[nicksaviking]

 

As much as I hate that parts of the Hillary crowd complain every time there is criticism sent their way, i will say this:

 

The leaks that come out are almost always terrible for Clinton.  It's really lopsided.  And the weird part is that it isn't the right doing it, it's more disgruntled independents/leftists.  Which I just find bizarre given the alternative.

 

The Russians are lefties?!

[Willihammer]

Meanwhile Trump gave a speech broadly summarizing his economic vision.

http://time.com/4495507/donald-trump-economy-speech-transcript/

TL;DR mercantilism.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Huh. Trump seemed pretty lucid in that transcript.

 

Horribly wrong and just flat-out, well, wrong... But still pretty lucid.

 

Just one point of many: he talks about an amnesty program for overseas corporate money yet fails to address the key point: why would companies return money to the US for products/services that had nothing to do with the US in the first place?

 

If Apple builds a phone in China, uses a Korean service to ship it to England, sells it and a service plan in Scotland, what does Apple gain by bringing that money to the US at even a 1% tax rate? What's the point? The money is just fine over there in Ireland. It can be spent to market and sell more phones in the UK or maybe buy an Israeli tech company.

[nicksaviking]

 

Huh. Trump seemed pretty lucid in that transcript.

 

Horribly wrong and just flat-out, well, wrong... But still pretty lucid.

 

Just one point of many: he talks about an amnesty program for overseas corporate money yet fails to address the key point: why would companies return money to the US for products/services that had nothing to do with the US in the first place?

 

If Apple builds a phone in China, uses a Korean service to ship it to England, sells it and a service plan in Scotland, what does Apple gain by bringing that money to the US at even a 1% tax rate? What's the point? The money is just fine over there in Ireland. It can be spent to market and sell more phones in the UK or maybe buy an Israeli tech company.

 

You must have stopped listening before he said he had plans to invade and plunder Ireland.

 

[Willihammer]

We are a nation of entitled brats. I'm sorry but that's it. On the right, people want to tilt the playing field in our favor. On the left, well, they want more *entitlements." One offers a hot lunch, one offers a cold lunch, but they're both free!

[LaBombo]

 

He wouldn't stand a chance in a Republican primary (not that you're arguing any differently).  But as much as we can acknowledge the validity of conservatism in American politics and find real people who embody the best parts of those values,  the Republican base is still what it is--people that think Trump-as-president is a good idea--and I imagine it will become further entrenched no matter the result of the election, rather than lesser so.  

The Republicans who nominated McCain and Romney didn't wake up one morning, flip out en masse, and nominate Trump.  The Trump movement brought in a whole bunch of people who were not traditionally Republican and not even necessarily conservative, under the unifying theme that Trump is the consummate Washington outsider.

 

Gallup has, for better or worse, polled for years to determine what Americans see as Our Nation's Biggest Problem, and "Government" has gone from finishing fourth or lower in 2007-10 to third in 2011-12, second in 2013, and first ever since then.

 

In many ways it's an absurdly broad term, but it may indicate that 'government' is a generic fall guy for another, even more widespread tendency across a broader swath of Americans to say that they feel the country is 'headed in the wrong direction'.

 

But that message/plea/protest vote appears lost on fellow citizens, media and politicians alike when the candidate nominated by 'country-is-headed-in-wrong-direction' folks is a guy who at times appears bent on making the case that the 'wrong direction' the country is headed in could loosely be summarized as 'sanity'.

[LaBombo]

 

 

We are a nation of entitled brats.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I'm not only in no position to dispute it, I'm at least vaguely supportive of the notion. But it may be a temporary state brought on by the guilt and self-loathing incurred by feeling entitled to eat many Nutter Butters to tide myself over until dinner. Has any person ever eaten a half dozen of those things in ten minutes and then thought 'I'm extremely pleased with that decision'?

[twinsnorth49]

Huh. Trump seemed pretty lucid in that transcript.

 

Horribly wrong and just flat-out, well, wrong... But still pretty lucid.

 

Just one point of many: he talks about an amnesty program for overseas corporate money yet fails to address the key point: why would companies return money to the US for products/services that had nothing to do with the US in the first place?

 

If Apple builds a phone in China, uses a Korean service to ship it to England, sells it and a service plan in Scotland, what does Apple gain by bringing that money to the US at even a 1% tax rate? What's the point? The money is just fine over there in Ireland. It can be spent to market and sell more phones in the UK or maybe buy an Israeli tech company.

You just take the money, he's going to just take the money.

 

Simple.

[LaBombo]

 

 

You must have stopped listening before he said he had plans to invade and plunder Ireland.

 

One envisions certain foreign crew members being ushered off his pirate ship with a lusty "YARRR, walk the plank, ye scurvy undocumenteds!"

[TheLeviathan]

 

The Russians are lefties?!

 

Kind of?

 

Either way, Assange and this last leak certainly weren't right-wing driven.

[ashbury]

Hillary's team thought they could run out the clock. You can't play four corners for months. Now it's going to come down to making free throws. Ugh.

 

They did the one thing they couldn't do: leave a vacuum in which Trump could portray himself as being plausible, as a president.

[gunnarthor]

 

Trump takes umbrage with the slightest offense, you don't really think he's going to let the RNC make policies and decisions for him after he spent the past two years embarrassing them at every turn and rubbing their nose in the fact that the conservative supporters chose him over the party itself?

 

First time Pence says something contradictory or different than what Trump wants, Trump would be looking for a new VP. If he somehow won, Pence would almost surely be the most neutered VP ever.

Trump will SAY lots of stupid things.  Trump won't do the work.  President isn't king.  He can't wave his hand and change things.  He'll sign conservative bills if they get through Congress.  He'll pick a few conservative justices that the right suggests to him.  He'll do tons of photo ops. 

[jimmer]

Trump gets the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. Clinton declined to even fill out the required questionnaire to be considered for endorsement.

[Willihammer]

The question I've been asking myself lately is, which is better: a single Trump term followed by a better D than Clinton in 2020. Or, two terms of HRC...

[Mike Sixel]

 

The question I've been asking myself lately is, which is better: a single Trump term followed by a better D than Clinton in 2020. Or, two terms of HRC...

 

No Trump term is a good idea, even it means electing a moderate Republican like HRC.

[gunnarthor]

 

The question I've been asking myself lately is, which is better: a single Trump term followed by a better D than Clinton in 2020. Or, two terms of HRC...

I'm not sure that happens.  Even if he wins, I don't think Trump would run for a second term anyway.  (But I've been really wrong on guessing what happens this cycle).

 

If Trump wins, I think that means the GOP does reasonably well in the Senate elections and then kill the Dems in 2018 midterm elections which are titled badly against the Dems.  After that, I'm not sure the Dems have much on their bench. For all the talk about the GOP being a regional party, they've won a lot of elections lately.  

[gunnarthor]

 

Trump gets the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. Clinton declined to even fill out the required questionnaire to be considered for endorsement.

In all honestly, was this a surprise?  Cops should be in Trump's wheelhouse. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

No Trump term is a good idea, even it means electing a moderate Republican like HRC.

I've had the same internal debate several times and yeah, Hillary wins every time and it's not close.

 

A Trump/Pence presidency is just too dangerous.

[Squirrel]

 

I've had the same internal debate several times and yeah, Hillary wins every time and it's not close.

 

A Trump/Pence presidency is just too dangerous.

This, absolutely. For all the raps that Hillary takes, justified or not, she is still by far, BY FAR, a much better choice. Of all the republicans who ran, she was still the far better choice.

[Mike Sixel]

This week, Trump has basically said the 4th, 6th, and 8th amendments are bad for the country.....after last week saying the first is bad....what does that leave, other than guns?

[TheLeviathan]

 

This week, Trump has basically said the 4th, 6th, and 8th amendments are bad for the country.....after last week saying the first is bad....what does that leave, other than guns?

 

I'm confused, there were other rights other than being able to arm oneself like the Punisher?

 

The split among the right and the left on the issue of rights is easily my biggest frustration with either side in terms of how they misrepresent things.  One group is clutching so tightly to one verbally mangled right it can't see anything else and the other group walks around declaring every damn thing a right someone is entitled to.

 

Ugh, just....ugh.

[Craig Arko]

 

This week, Trump has basically said the 4th, 6th, and 8th amendments are bad for the country.....after last week saying the first is bad....what does that leave, other than guns?

He could bring Prohibition back.

[Mike Sixel]

 

He could bring Prohibition back.

 

Then I'd have to move.

[twinsnorth49]

 

The question I've been asking myself lately is, which is better: a single Trump term followed by a better D than Clinton in 2020. Or, two terms of HRC...

[ashbury]

 

"I don't always get piss-eyed drunk, but when I do, it's over this election."

[Bark's Lounge]

What have we become as a nation? We are throwing out cartoon characters as our prospective presidents.

 

This is not a joke post and I take it very seriously.

 

On one hand you have the privileged Donald Trump, who is the worst candidate of all time. I don't know who he really is, but he clings to the mantras of fear, bigotry, and nationalism. Tomorrow his game might be different. He is not a chameleon. He is dog **** on the sole of my shoe, yet he seems to inspire a whole hell of a lot of people. This is real and definitely the case. Somewhere along the way, we really ****ed up as a society... really ****ed up.

 

On the other hand we have Hillary Clinton. So many controversies. Her leaked emails, her health, her connections between the Clinton Foundation and the Government State Department.

 

For crying out loud, just come clean. Tell us about these situations. If they are bad, I think people would appreciate the truth. It is sure as hell there would be backlash, but as it stands now, your candidacy is in doubt, the truth in the media's eyes becomes boring really fast.

 

Neither of the candidates are attractive and this time around I will vote out of fear like I have done in the past. This time it is especially awful.

 

I agree with Levi that this POTUS race could fall in Trump's favor, that horrifies me.

 

The media focuses on extreme things, aka - Trump is in the news every day. Overall intellectual knowledge is at an all time low with the majority of the citizens of the U.S.A.

 

We should have never come to this place where we are dumbed down so much. Our hope should fester within the void of our disappointment and new methods and ideas need to be brought to the table and forced into the establishment like a sharp knife to the heart.

 

I don't know what is going to happen, but I do hope it benefits our future... My doubts lay heavy on me on this subject.