US General Election 2016

halfwise wrote:Good point Blue.

Cruz is worse than Trump even if Trump ups the ante because you know Cruz actually believes what he says.  With Trump it's likely he's just saying whatever will get him votes - straight talker my ass.

There was an article here saying that alarmism over Trump is unfounded as he will be no worse than Reagan. There again we had Berlusconi for 20 years so y'know.

"No worse than Reagan" is like saying "No worse than Thatcher". It depends on which side of the table you were sitting at the time.

I just read an editorial that suggested googling "hated senator". It's true.
All the hits are about Ted Cruz until the bottom of the 2nd page when Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunting in the 1950's came up.

To even be in the same league with McCarthy is exceptional for a first term senator, but to have surpassed the master in less than 4 years is truly impressive!

Reagan was a peach compared to what's popped up in the last decade.

I checked into the debates - they decided to behave themselves. After a boring half hour I called it quits.

Didn't watch the debate cause I was busy last night but from the reports that it was more civil and rumors in the press it sounds like Cruz is basically pulling out of Florida and Ohio with the implication that Rubio and perhaps also Kasich are not going to stick around even if they win their home states. Presumably a deal was made in the offing. Still shocked that the way this election has turned out, Cruz somehow became the GOP mainstream's acceptable compromise.

There's definitely some interesting gamesmanship going on.

Washington Post wrote:With rumors swirling that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) may officially drop out of the Republican race in advance of Florida's vote next week, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant made an unexpected request to a reporter from CNN.
   BREAKING: @marcorubio communications director @AlexConant tells us Rubio supporters in Ohio should vote for @JohnKasich.@ThisHour

   — John Berman (@JohnBerman) March 11, 2016

It is highly unusual for a campaign to ask its voters to vote for another candidate, to say the least. But the calculus here is simple: For Rubio to possibly get the nomination, he needs Donald Trump not to get a majority of delegates before the convention. The 66 delegates that will go to the winner of Ohio are 5 percent of the total that Trump needs to achieve that goal. Rubio is polling in fourth in the state, down in the single digits, so his team is asking voters to cast a ballot for Ohio Gov. John Kasich instead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/11/why-marco-rubios-campaign-just-endorsed-john-kasich-but-only-in-ohio/

{{{{{I commented a while ago that there was a reason the professional political classes did not go for the cheap nasty rhetoric that wins easy votes- because you cant control the consequences of what you drum up. The violence at Trump rallies are a prime example of it. Trump of course blamed everything and everyone but himself and his own words (incidentally if a politician in the UK had done what Trump did at a rally when a protester was being thrown out and he said he wanted to punch the protester in the face he would have been arrested for 'incitement'. I did not know in the US that the freedom of speech also protected incitement to violence.}}}}

It doesn't, but U.S. law has a narrow view of what counts as incitement compared to some countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

Up till now, I've tried to keep a sense of humor about Trump's theatrics, however racist and crazy, but this is where my humor stops.

Trump said one 78-year-old supporter who sucker-punched a young black man being led out of a rally last week "got carried away" and told NBC he had instructed his staff to look into paying the man's legal fees.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN0WF0H5

Will lead to more votes and more violence.

From Politico:

The First Time Party Bigwigs Tried to Stop a Front-Runner From Becoming President It Backfired—Big-time
What the GOP can learn from the story of Andrew Jackson in 1824.
By ANDREW SAUNDERS March 13, 2016


America has never seen a presidential candidate like this before. Detractors point to his lack of political experience, his poor grasp of policy, his alleged autocratic leanings and his shady past. They believe this man without much of a political platform (but with interesting hair) has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to be president. Yet in defiance of conventional wisdom, he is leading his three main rivals in the race for the White House, and party bigwigs are at a loss how to respond. No, it’s not Donald Trump. His name is Andrew Jackson, and the year is 1824.

Andrew Jackson was one of America’s first political outsiders. Born to impoverished immigrants in the backwoods of the South, he was tough, thin-skinned and fiercely confrontational—a brawling Jackson once took a musket ball in the chest before killing a rival in a duel. Resolute and strategically brilliant, Jackson rose through the ranks to become the greatest war hero of his generation. Known by his supporters as Old Hickory, Jackson stirred passions in the American people that his presidential rivals John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay could only dream of. Tens of thousands flocked to the charismatic outsider who positioned himself as a steadfast defender of the Republic. Jackson’s rallies dwarfed those of his rivals. Yet he had little political experience and plenty of baggage. Jackson was, his rivals believed, more of a celebrity than a serious candidate.

In many ways the general election of 1824 mirrors the Republican primary today. Following the collapse of the Federalist Party some years earlier, America was effectively under single-party rule, and all four candidates were members of the same political party, the Democratic-Republicans. In that way, 1824 was more like an extended primary campaign than a general election—a primary that would determine not just the direction of the nation, but also the fate of the party. And, as is the case in the GOP today, voters in 1824 appeared restless for change, and the most popular candidate was viewed as unacceptable by many in the party establishment.

In the election, held in December 1824, Jackson stunned his rivals to win a clear plurality in the popular vote and Electoral College. With 99 Electoral College votes to Adams’ 84, Crawford’s 41 and Clay’s 37, Jackson was short of an outright majority, but undoubtedly had the strongest claim to the White House. However, with no overall winner, the decision was put to the House of Representatives, which was then under the speakership of failed candidate Henry Clay. Clay threw his support not to Jackson but to second-placed John Quincy Adams. When Adams became America’s sixth president he returned the favor, appointing Clay his secretary of state.

To Jackson’s many detractors this was a legitimate move. The old general, who Clay referred to condescendingly as a “military chieftain”, was a polarizing figure who had fallen short of an outright majority. Adams, meanwhile, was a highly capable politician—indeed in the words of historian Daniel Feller he was “probably the most qualified man to be president the United States has ever produced.” Clay and his allies believed Adams could be a consensus choice, a man with the integrity and experience to unite the nation. A furious Jackson, however, blasted the deal as a “Corrupt Bargain.” From his perspective, Clay and Adams had conspired against him, putting their own interests above of the will of the people.

Whatever the truth, the deal backfired. The snub steeled Jackson for revenge and allowed him to paint the administration as corrupt and out of touch. What’s more, it fired up Jackson’s supporters and united a broad coalition of politicians and voters including many who had not supported him the first time round. This coalition would grow into a brand new political entity—the Democratic Party. It would also catapult Jackson to the White House just four years later, where he became one of America’s most consequential and controversial presidents. John Quincy Adams, however, would serve one unremarkable term, hamstrung by his minority status and dogged by claims of illegitimacy.

After the controversy of 1824, the election of 1828 was surely the most ill-tempered presidential campaign in history. Jackson’s supporters slammed Adams as effete and elitist. In an assault that puts Trump’s insults to shame, they claimed, falsely, that as minister to Russia, Adams procured an American virgin for the Czar. They were, in effect, calling the president a pimp. Meanwhile Adams and his allies hit back, attacking Jackson as barely literate, as a bigamist and as a murderer who had executed several of his own soldiers for minor infractions. Astonishingly, all these accusations were true, and yet—in a sign that should worry Trump’s antagonists—none of them stuck. Instead, they seemed to make Old Hickory even more popular, underscoring the fact that he was quite unlike most politicians. Jackson won the 1828 election in a landslide.

Back in 2016, and Donald Trump is well on his way to the Republican nomination, having solidified his delegate lead with clear wins in Tuesday’s primaries in Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii. (And he’s ahead in the polls in the two big winner-take-all states of Ohio and Florida.) Yet signs suggest that some Republicans are planning to follow the Adams-Clay playbook and do all they can to deny him the nomination. Establishment favorites Mitt Romney and candidate Marco Rubio have suggested that primary voters should vote tactically to deny Trump a majority of delegates. Meanwhile, other party leaders are dreaming of a brokered convention in Cleveland in July.

At this point, the best Trump’s detractors can hope for is to deny him the 1,237 delegates needed for outright victory, and then pressure delegates to dump him and unify behind an anti-Trump at a contested convention. While such an approach is perfectly legitimate, the same was true of the disastrous deal struck between Clay and Adams in the general election in 1824. What matters is perception. An aggrieved Trump would likely—and with some justification—denounce it as a “Corrupt Bargain” for the 21st century.

The 1824 election has been called “a political turning point in which none of the old rules applied.” According to historian Timothy Naftali, “the shift that occurs … is that the American people don’t want their representatives to choose presidents anymore. They want to choose presidents themselves.” For GOP insiders, it’s worth remembering this. Whatever you think of Trump’s politics or his temperament, like Jackson, the candidate has energized a significant section of the electorate. As he said in Thursday Republican debate, “Millions and millions of people are going out to the polls and they’re voting. … Some of these people, frankly, have never voted before.” The facts appear to bear this out with combined turnout at the Republican primaries higher than any year since 1980.

If the lessons of 1824 are to apply today, denying Trump the nomination if he remains the front-runner will likely make his supporters angrier and more determined. It might even position Trump as the leader of an even broader coalition of America’s disaffected and marginalized, as it did for Jackson—propelling him to the nomination or even the White House four years from now.

the whole thing is horribly fascinating, bit like a rabbit staring mesmerised at a snake, you know its gonna kill you but you cant stop staring.

And it's only been getting worse. Every country has a nationalist mob; Trump has been the only one to fully tap into it in recent US history. Since W Bush the Republicans have been increasingly run by the religious mob, under Obama the white-bread nationalists have stolen the Republican party. No idea if the Democratic wing of the country will overpower them or not.

@ 0:41

High Energy Voter: "I'm voting for Trump because I want jobs not welfare. I don't want to be a slave anymore to the government."

BLM: "You're going to be a slave when you're working."

But we can discount the black Trump supporter because he doesn't go along with the popular opinion amongst the black community, right?

I just read a pair of articles that pointed out first that the situation of Blacks took a terrible downturn during Bill Clinton with the limits on welfare and 3 strikes you're out crime policy, and Hillary continues to give tacit approval to much of this failed policy. Then another article pointed out that American foreign policy has been a catastrophe for decades, and Hillary represents more of the same.

The republicans of course can claim no better. Perhaps putting Trump in to tear the entire system apart might not be such a bad idea?

bungobaggins wrote:
But we can discount the black Trump supporter because he doesn't go along with the popular opinion amongst the black community, right?

I don't know what you mean about discounting anyone. There seemed to be several legitimate opinions on the floor at once.
Yes they may have been talking at each other rather than listening to each other, but taken all together it still struck me as a lot more respectful than the last Republican debate I watched.

I forgot to indicate sarcasm in that sentence.

~MSM discounts black trump supporters.

{{All that Duke stuff etc is just froth- the problem with Trump is what are his policies?- at the start of the campaign in the first debate he was happy for America to stay out of Syria and for Putin and Russia to deal with it- then he completely U-turned on that and started saying at rallies bomb them! and take the oil- how? The reason we cant bomb them is they are surrounded by civilians who can't get out. If it was as easy as just bombing them we would have by now. We bomb everything we can- ammo dumps, supply lines, and we drone target individuals- but you cant blanket bomb unless you are talking about murdering thousands of civilians as well.

But its ok because Trump seems to have changed again- now he says Generals are telling him he needs ground troops- thousands of them- but today in an interview he couldn't name who these Generals were (he appears, like so much else he says at rallies, to have made them up because it made what he said sound better and more authoritative), but dont worry as now its all ok again as he claims now he never said he would send those troops at all, just that's what you needed to send.

In the first debate he espoused the Scottish health care system as a model 'that works' now he is talking of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with god knows what- he says people cant die in the streets, but refuses to answer if that means the state pays for them or not. What is his health policy?- is socialist or capitalist? Does anyone know? Does he know?

On international policy- god knows- he thinks he can order China to redo their trade deals so America comes out of it better, does he know how many US bonds the Chinese hold, and what happens to the Us economy if they dump even a fraction of them on the world economy? Same goes for Saudi- the US owes them a fortune.

He is also going to rip up the deal with Iran- except he cant as it isn't a US deal, the US is just 1 country on it- if the US pulls out and reimposes sanctions- who cares? Noone that's who- the rest of the world will continue to deal with Iran and continue diplomatic channels with them unless they breach the deal- all it will do if the Us withdraws is cut the US out the loop and if they are the only country left imposing sanctions on the Iranian people still then relations with Iran will remain bad for the US. US actions would seem just as they might expect of the Great Satan (Deceiver).

The weird thing is people who support Trump (so maybe you can help me out here Bungo) don't seem to care that he has no solid policies, or that they shift faster than quicksand are mainly just as dangerous, or that what he says one day he will probably retract the very next, if not on some occasions, within hours of saying it. }}}}}

Interesting article in politico about why evangelicals are voting for Trump.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/the-huge-cultural-shift-thats-helping-trump-win-evangelicals-213729

"Though it’s common to talk about the Republican Party having been captured by white evangelical activists, if you really look at the way the two groups have interacted over the years, it’s more accurate to say that evangelicals have been captured by the Republican Party. They ape its talking points about welfare cheats rather than the Bible’s compassion for the poor and the oppressed...

...Today, when born-again Christians hold up posters at rallies that read, “Thank you, Lord Jesus, for President Trump,” when they say they are sick of false promises from supposedly pious presidents on abortion or gay marriage and just want a strong man in the White House who can stop illegal immigration or keep us safe or just “smash things,” what are they saying? They are saying that their political identity has trumped their religious identity. They are saying that they are conservatives first and Christians second."

That evangelical/Republican marriage didn't really exist until Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority lobbying efforts in the 1980's.

Amazingly, the talking points on everything from abortion to gay marriage to Islam that Jerry introduced back then are still being preached from the pulpit today almost unchanged.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a new evangelical edition of the Bible with a new appendix called "The Epistles of Saint Jerry".

CNN decided to reward the man who bum rushed Trump the other day by putting him on the news. Absolutely disgusting and sad, and will only encourage more"protesters" to do the same.