US General Election 2016

rip jeb

Oh, man. I may not like everything he says, and he is crass, but I do like Trump sometimes.

The entire "Can't Stump the Trump" series on that channel is amazing. Just don't read the comments, it's mainly guys from /pol/. I mean, the one who makes the videos presumably is too, but he at least keeps it toned down. The only thing stopping Trump from being the perfect /pol/ candidate is his relative lack of anti-semitism.

This is one of the best election parodies I've seen yet.

The Trump Mainifesto

Racism
Sexism
Multi-marriage to pretty women much younger than yourself
Greed is Good
Xenophobia
Guns for All

And he's a chance! You Americans are a worry, you know...

Wait, when did he promise multiple marriages to younger, pretty women? I must have missed that one. Maybe that's why he's getting so many votes? I mean, if people will blow themselves up for 70 virgins, you'd think a young wife or two must be worth a vote at least.

halfwise wrote:Wait, when did he promise multiple marriages to younger, pretty women?  I must have missed that one.  Maybe that's why he's getting so many votes?  I mean, if people will blow themselves up for 70 virgins, you'd think a young wife or two must be worth a vote at least.

That's what he promises, but you have to take the other items with it, and, let's face it, you might not be able to afford those money grubbing beauties, Halfy. You know, I think you should think these things through more thoroughly.

chris63 wrote:

ho ho ouch !

There's whisperings that if Trump and Sanders win the nominations, Michael Bloomberg will throw his hat in the ring. The writer below predicts that if he gets Colin Powell as VP, he would win.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/23/here-s-how-michael-bloomberg-becomes-president.html

I'd feel comfortable with Bloomberg as President. He does care about the little people, even if he sometimes blows it with them. And the national stage may rein in his loonier tendencies like a soft drink size regulation.

chris: I'm oscillating between and

halfy: I'm inclined to think that the inherent disadvantages third-party candidates face is gonna be too much even for Bloomberg, but he'd certainly have a major impact on the race if he decides to run. I think he'd take more voters away from the Dems than the GOP, given that he's generally fairly moderate to liberal, but that depends on how many GOP voters are too disgusted with Trump to fall in line behind him. I actually think the Dems are more likely to consolidate behind Sanders, socialist label and all, than the GOP behind Trump. So now I'm reconsidering my initial assessment of who Bloomberg would hurt more.

Meanwhile, Hillary's breaking out the big guns in her social media campaign:



I admit, if he brings back the sax, it would be kinda tempting. But still no.

I personally would prefer Bloomberg to Sanders, who is so unrealistic with his ideas that congress would never get behind him. Bloomberg might have a much easier time.

Sanders is a politician like the rest of them, he'd obviously have to moderate and compromise to do anything, and I think he knows that. But Bloomberg would presumably be able to achieve a much greater percentage of his campaign's promises.

Reading through the Daily Beast article a little closer, it's "path" for Bloomberg involves faithless electors in the electoral college going against Trump. I cannot even begin to imagine that fallout from that. We thought the 2000 election was bad? We'd have a full-blown constitutional crisis on our hands. Especially since many states have laws against faithless electors, even though the constitutionality of those laws is unclear.

Eldorion wrote:


I admit, if he brings back the sax, it would be kinda tempting. But still no.

I read "sex" the first time

Eldorion wrote:Sanders is a politician like the rest of them, he'd obviously have to moderate and compromise to do anything, and I think he knows that. But Bloomberg would presumably be able to achieve a much greater percentage of his campaign's promises.

Reading through the Daily Beast article a little closer, it's "path" for Bloomberg involves faithless electors in the electoral college going against Trump. I cannot even begin to imagine that fallout from that. We thought the 2000 election was bad? We'd have a full-blown constitutional crisis on our hands. Especially since many states have laws against faithless electors, even though the constitutionality of those laws is unclear.

Hmm...but the electors are not chosen until election day. I don't see they'd have to switch if the popular vote was clear enough.

I could be having a (dirty) blonde moment, but I'm not sure I get what you mean, halfy.

If Trump wins a plurality of the popular vote and the electoral college, there would be immense pressure on the House of Representatives to make him the next President. I'm a little puzzled as to why the article brought up electors at all, actually. It proposes that no candidate received the necessary 270 votes to win, but also mentions electors abandoning Trump and thus emboldening the Representatives, and I don't see how it follows that electors would do that.

I mean, if Trump wins 270 votes in the electoral college outright, even if he did not win a plurality of the popular vote, there'd be no case for denying him the Presidency. No one winning 270 votes would put us in the situation of 1800 and 1824*, moreso 1824 since 1800 was done under the original rules of the electoral college, repealed as a result of that same election. In 1824, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay did indeed conspire to put someone other than the plurality winner of both the popular and electoral votes in the White House, but that was controversial even at the times and haunted Adams his entire Presidency. For that to happen now, in an era when backroom politics has been mostly removed from our electoral system, and especially in the anti-establishment environment of the current season, would be a tremendous gamble.

*There's also the election of 1876, but that's a bad comparison because of the role played by the then-ongoing Reconstruction and that the core issue was three states sending competing sets of electors, which is highly unlikely to reoccur at this point in time. Plus it largely played out in the one-off Electoral Commission rather than being settled solely by the House of Representatives.

The writer supposed an electoral tie would happen, to be settled in the house. He mentioned the chance of faithless electors to avoid the tie, but envisioned it not happening.

I don't think either scenario would happen: I think Bloomberg could win the election outright.

The 2016 election was reminiscent of 2000—too close to call. With no candidate receiving the necessary 270 electoral votes, the first post-election test was whether “faithless electors” (electors who vote differently from their states, as allowed under the Constitution) would emerge to tip the balance. That didn’t happen, but in December enough electors did buck their states’ preference to set a precedent for members of the House to do so when the election went there.

This is the paragraph that was giving me difficulty. Bloomberg winning outright almost seems more likely, though in other ways that's an even longer shot cause it'd require even more defections by voters from the two main parties.

Well, if the two parties lines up Trump and Sanders maybe they will.

The fact that we can even have this discussion seriously is a testament to how weird this election has already gotten.

That said, I think Bernie's un-electability is sometimes exaggerated. Sure, the socialist label is gonna put some people off no matter what, but the more media exposure he gets and the more people listen to him talk, the clearer it becomes that most of his ideas are not all that radical and many are actually fairly popular. IMO his biggest weakness is that he seems to actively reject every opportunity to be something other than a single-issue candidate.

And I guess that's what Obama's election showed. A majority of the US population want a change. Perhaps if Bernie can sell that idea.. for real this time..

Bernie does seem to be gaining traction. But if Obama couldn't get his agenda pushed through Congress, no way can Sanders do it. I know people are trying to show they mean it this time by not supporting a moderate, but the other side isn't anywhere near amenable to caving in.

Any possible saviour would have to come from outside the deadlocked party system. If Bloomy throws in his hat, I'd line up for him.

If you want to avoid deadlock, then vote for a President and Senator/Representatives from the same party. Obama got plenty of shit done in his first two years when he had huge majorities in both the House and Senate behind him. That the next President is gonna have at least one Supreme Court nominee to appoint will make a difference in terms of allowing his proposals to get through too, given the number of legal challenges Obamacare and marriage equality faced.