US General Election 2016

Obama Signs Executive Order Relocating Congress to Guantánamo
BY ANDY BOROWITZ


THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Making good on one of his key campaign promises, President Obama signed an executive order on Tuesday relocating the United States Congress to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The President seemed to relish signing the order, calling the relocation a “win-win for America,” and indicating that Congress could be moved to its new headquarters “immediately.”

“We don’t envision doing any renovations to the facility down there,” he said. “It is ready to house Congress right now.”

The President did not specify what the current U.S. Capitol building would be used for in the future, but he hinted that it could be the setting for historic reënactments in the manner of Colonial Williamsburg.

“I think it could be fascinating to school groups,” he said. “It could really take them back to the olden days when it was a real, functioning place.”

Minutes after the President signed the order, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) called it “an outrage” and “grounds for impeachment,” but Obama appeared to take such howls of protest in stride.

“If Congress believes that this executive order is illegal, they can take it up with the Supreme Court,” he said. “Oh wait—we don’t have a Supreme Court.”

Well played, Borowitz. He's been killing it for years (think it was Baingil who introduced me to him, actually).

Centipede wins!

If his current 44% of the vote (with 8% reporting) holds up, or really anything over 40%, that has huge implications going forward, and takes the wind out of the sails of the "Trump has a hard ceiling" argument. But it's very possible it could fall back down into his normal 30-35% range.

Likewise, unless Kasich can go from <4% to like four or five times that, he really should just get out, but I know he almost certainly won't yet.

With 17% reporting Trump is up to almost 47% of the vote. Meanwhile, Rubio's strategy of never winning any states seems to be paying off as he's on track to another second place finish.

Eldorion wrote:
Likewise, unless Kasich can go from <4% to like four or five times that, he really should just get out, but I know he almost certainly won't yet.

Yeah, his home state is just 3 weeks away.

Eldorion wrote:If his current 44% of the vote (with 8% reporting) holds up, or really anything over 40%, that has huge implications going forward, and takes the wind out of the sails of the "Trump has a hard ceiling" argument.

Well, a republican primary state hard ceiling and a general national hard ceiling are two quite different things, no?

If anything the republican base seem to have aliegned themselves with tea party values. (That, or the opposition is just that underwhelming.)

Very true, Blue. I was referring to the primary hard ceiling argument. Even with GOP primary turnout being higher than usual this year, primary voters in either party are only a fraction of the full electorate.

So, Trump looking likely to win the nomination, and Sanders seemingly leading nationally?

its bloody scary

Bluebottle wrote:So, Trump looking likely to win the nomination, and Sanders seemingly leading nationally?

Mrs Figg wrote:its bloody scary

Democracy is not for the faint of heart.

I'd say at this point t Trump is "likely to win" the Republican nomination in the same way the weather service says there are likely to be showers on Sunday. The forecasters know we're expecting them to say something and that they'll get more hate if they forecast sunny weather and it rains on our picnics than the other way around, so the forecast always allows for the worst possible outcome.

Sanders is doing better than anybody expected, but he's still got a long uphill battle before there's a realistic chance of him passing Hilary in delegate votes. Basically Hillery would need to crash and burn for Bernie to pass her decisively enough to win the Democratic nomination on popular votes alone.

(or so it seems for now. Let's see what next Tuesday brings.....)

The always-reliable Matt Taibbi (veteran of The eXile and prolific critic of the financial system) has written the best article about Trump that I've read so far this campaign.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224

It's largely and excoriation of the media and their complicity in upholding the political/economic establishment in this country, but also includes a really good look at Trump's appeal to traditionally Democratic groups, mainly unions. Plus it includes gems like this:

He used a German term, backpfeifengesicht, literally "a face in need of a good punch," to describe Cruz. This may be overstating things a little. Cruz certainly has an odd face – it looks like someone sewed pieces of a waterlogged Reagan mask together at gunpoint – but it's his tone more than anything that gets you. He speaks slowly and loudly and in the most histrionic language possible, as if he's certain you're too stupid to grasp that he is for freedom.

That said, I don't agree with the title's proposition if applied to the general election, but it's certainly looking more and more like the case for the GOP primary.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/march1GOP.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/march1dem.html

RIP Bernie. It's over for Sanders. The only state he has in the bag for Tuesday is his own. But really Hillary already has this wrapped up with the super delegates.

Rubio might just barely win in Minnesota, but that latest poll is from a month ago. Cruz has a good shot at the big prize, Texas with 172 delegates. If he gets over 50 percent it will be a winner take all, otherwise it's proportionate with a threshold of 20% of the vote to receive any delegates.

Rubio really went after Trump in the debate, but it will be hard to translate that into a big delegate haul on Tuesday.

I was playing around with RCP's Delegate Calculator, putting in the average poll results for Tuesday's states. I noticed that Colorado's last poll on RCP was from November, so I searched for a newer poll and it turns out that the CO GOP has opted to forgo their straw poll and not allocate any delegates after their caucus, and they're looking to change to a primary in the future if the delegates are to remain bound.

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/02/25/colorados-gop-skips-presidential-preference-on-super-tuesday/

I finished putting in the poll numbers for Tuesday and an approximate estimation for a delegate count after Super Tuesday is:

Trump: 354
Cruz: 156
Rubio: 110
Carson: 32
Kasich: 23

This doesn't count for: outdated polls, polls that don't account for uncommitted voters.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/26/chris_matthews_rubio_had_plants_squealing_in_the_audience_unnatural_phony_choreographed.html

I wish I had watched the debates. Evidently it was a rough night for the Trumpster. From Yahoo:

"The 10th Republican presidential debate was a good show, as it always is with Donald Trump on the stage.

But for the first time in this unprecedented primary election, Trump could have used a little more winning. He left the stage in Houston having been pushed around for most of the night.

Standing between the two U.S. senators who remain the only obstacles between him and the GOP nomination, Trump was under assault from both Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for a large part of the two-hour spectacle.

A little more than halfway through the raucous back-and-forth, Trump was clearly tiring, and angry at being under so much duress. When the radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt directed another question at Trump, the businessman and reality TV personality snapped at him in anger.

“Every single question comes to me? I know I’m here for the ratings, but it’s a little bit ridiculous,” he complained.

Rubio was relentless. He pushed, prodded, provoked and badgered Trump as no one else during the campaign has been able to do on a stage. Rubio, smiling much of the time, interrupted and talked over Trump rather than standing by and waiting for him to insult or belittle him.

And Cruz followed up on many of Rubio’s attacks or criticisms.

Rubio went on the offensive in his first answer, saying that Trump had only recently adopted a conservative stance on immigration, and then accusing him of hiring people from outside the country.

“Even today, we saw a report in one of the newspapers that Donald, you’ve hired a significant number of people from other countries to take jobs that Americans could have filled,” he said.

He was referring to a New York Times report that showed that Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, has brought in hundreds of foreign workers with temporary visas to fill jobs, while denying or ignoring hundreds of applications from American citizens.

Essentially, Rubio was calling Trump a hypocrite, given the billionaire’s campaign rhetoric about getting jobs back for Americans who have lost them, especially to immigrants. Trump compounded this impression in an interview on CNN after the debate, arguing that “you can’t get American people” for such work.

During the debate, Rubio pointed out that the Times had interviewed a number of people who would have been willing to take the work, “if you would have been willing to hire them to do it.”

Before Trump began to counterattack, Rubio demonstrated a tactic that he employed repeatedly to great effect. He launched in on Trump from another angle, pointing out that Trump was the “only person on this stage that has ever been fined for hiring people to work on your projects illegally.”

“You hired some workers from Poland,” Rubio said. As Trump began to reject the accusation as “totally wrong,” Rubio suggested that the audience simply search on Google for the evidence.

“I’m sure people are Googling it right now. Look it up: ‘Trump Polish workers.’ You’ll see a million dollars for hiring illegal workers on one of his projects. He did it,” Rubio said. Such a search quickly leads, for example, to this July 2015 Daily Beast story, “Trump Tower Was Built on Undocumented Polish Immigrants’ Backs.”

Trump had no answer. “Be quiet. Just be quiet,” he said in disgust, waving his right arm dismissively at Rubio.

Trump did not get a breather. Cruz immediately waded in on him for not being conservative enough on immigration.

“When I was leading the fight against the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty bill, where was Donald? He was firing Dennis Rodman on ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’” Cruz said, mockingly.

The Texas senator, armed with his own file of facts, said that Trump had donated $50,000 to the politicians who helped pass an immigration reform bill through the Senate in 2013, which Cruz refers to as an “open borders” plan.

“When you’re funding open border politicians, you shouldn’t be surprised when they fight for open borders,” Cruz said, seeking to undercut another of Trump’s key claims, that he will have a wall built across the U.S.-Mexico border to stop all illegal immigration.

When the wall was mentioned moments later, CNN’s moderator, Wolf Blitzer, expressed skepticism that Trump would actually be able to force the Mexican government to pay for it.

How would he do this? Blitzer asked Trump. “I will,” Trump said, without elaboration.

Rubio once again started taking shots at Trump.

“If he builds the wall the way he built Trump Towers, he’ll be using illegal immigrant labor to do it,” he said. Trump rolled his eyes but did not respond. “The second thing, about the trade war,” Rubio went on, “I don’t understand, because your ties and the clothes you make [are] made in Mexico and in China. So you’re gonna be starting a trade war against your own ties and your own suits.”

Rubio pestered Trump eight times about why he didn’t make his ties and branded clothing line in the United States rather than in China and Mexico. Rubio then pivoted quickly to another attack, punching from a different angle.

As Trump was objecting that Rubio didn’t know anything about his reasons for manufacturing his clothing line in China, Rubio shot back: “Well, I don’t know anything about bankrupting four companies.”

Then he launched in again. “I don’t know anything about starting a university, and that was a fake university. There are people who borrowed $36,000 to go to Trump University, and they’re suing now,” Rubio said, discussing the ongoing lawsuit against the school (now defunct) in which Trump has been called to testify under oath.

“That’s a fake school. And you know what they got? They got to take a picture with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump.”

Trump tried repeatedly to stop Rubio from talking and to get a word in himself, but remarkably, failed to do so. Finally, he went after Rubio for profiting from a home sale.

“Here’s a guy, here’s a guy that buys a house for $179,000, he sells it to a lobbyist — who’s probably here — for $380,000, and then legislation is passed,” Trump said.

Rubio came quickly back with another one-liner. “Here’s a guy that inherited $200 million,” he responded. “If he hadn’t inherited $200 million, you know where Donald Trump would be right now?”

Back and forth it went for much of the night.

This all led up to the most punishing blow Rubio landed, again refusing to let Trump get away with a superficial answer on how he would reform the U.S. health care system. Casually but with a touch of disdain, Rubio pressed Trump on what his plan for health insurance reform would be, other than allowing customers to shop across state lines for a plan.

“What is your plan, Mr. Trump?” Rubio said. “What is your plan on health care?”

“You don’t know,” Trump replied. “The biggest problem — ”

“What’s your plan?” Rubio asked again.

“The biggest problem, I’ll have you know…” Trump said, before being interrupted once again.

“What’s your plan?” Rubio said.

Trump gave up, instead mocking Rubio for his near-catastrophic debate performance Feb. 6 in New Hampshire, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie badgered the Florida senator into repeating himself multiple times in a way that was subsequently mocked as robotic.

But as Trump once again invoked purchasing health plans across state lines, Rubio used Christie’s tactic against him.

“Now he’s repeating himself,” Rubio said. The audience cheered loudly and knowingly, acknowledging that Rubio was not only demonstrating a toughness that he had not shown under fire from Christie, but was using against Trump the accusation Christie used against him.

Trump was flustered.

“Is there anything else you would like to add to that?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Trump.

“No, there’s nothing to add,” Trump said.

Trump then came in for questions over whether he would release his tax returns. He replied that because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, he does not want to release them until the audit is completed, and noted that his taxes have been audited for 12 years straight.

Rubio also made light of Trump’s approach to the Middle East peace process. Even radio talk show host Glenn Beck, a big supporter of Cruz, tweeted: “Rubio is killing it.” "

Dayum.

 its like watching naughty boys in the schoolyard, its hilarious.

I'm definitely not missing the next one. Should have realized how much more fun they would be now that the lower performers have been shaken out and the clown concentration has gone up as a result.

http://nypost.com/2016/02/25/get-ready-for-president-trump-says-election-whiz-whos-scary-accurate/

Never heard of this guy before. Nate Silver never mentioned him in his very well researched book the Signal and the Noise which makes me doubt his credibility.

I will say one thing for Trump, he puts on an entertaining show.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/26/chris-christie-endorses-donald-trump/

https://gfycat.com/CornyCarefreeAnemone

I still don't believe that the superdelegates would stick with Hillary if Bernie won more regular delegates, but it seems to be a moot point since, as bungo pointed out, Bernie is about to run into a brick wall delegate-wise.

Curious to see if Rubio and Cruz's new strategy of attacking Trump works. Clearly people don't care about his not being a "true conservative". Some people have already tried attacking him for hypocrisy and having failed business ventures and it didn't work then. Neither Rubio nor Cruz strike me as the kind of guys who can present the argument in a radically different and more effective way, but stranger things have happened. Debates are a poor metric of Trump's status though; he's never been great in them and the crowds are generally pulling for Rubio already.

Never heard of Helmut Norpoth and his claims to that level of certainty sound like bullshit. Interesting that 1960 is brought up as the exception and 2000 is not mentioned at all when he boasts about his record. Those two elections were so close as to practically be ties and the outcomes of both depended in part on behind the scenes shadiness. Successfully predicting the winner of either of those elections (or failing to do so!) could mean your model is good, or it could just mean you got (un)lucky. It's more interesting to see if models can predict strength of victory, but not many seem to even try to do that.

People keep saying that the Christie endorsement is a shock, but I thought it seemed likely after the NH debate. I was basing that largely on vibes and the picture of Trump and Christie laughing together though, so it's not like I can take credit for having some great insight here.