US General Election 2016

{{OK just watched Trump interviewed by a Fox reporter at a Town Hall meeting. She asked him what was going to replace Obamacare if he was President.

Here is the exchange -

Trump- We will repeal Obamacare and replace it with something less expensive, and so much better....we have so many options, so many options. We are getting rid of the lines between the states, we are going to have competition among all of these insurance companies, they want to compete. Although actually they also like the monopoly, right now they mostly have monopolies in States, but we have, if you look at health care savings accounts, there are probably nine different options. The worst option is Obamacare.....(he then goes off an a tangent saying how bad Obamacare is before being pressed on what he would do)....we are going to have great health care, for much less money.

Interviewer- What drives down costs?

Trump- Its competition. With Obamacare you get things you won't use, but you are paying for them. Whereas what we want you can tailor make it. Now you can have a lot of options this way. Now the insurance companies...(goes off on another tangent accusing the insurance companies of controlling politicians and how he is self funded before being directed back on topic)

Interviewer- So everyone will have health care?

Trump -Its going to be whoever wants it is going to have it. whoever wants it.

Interviewer- But its a money problem, people can't afford it.

Trump - You know what I said, and I took a lot of heat from Republicans for it, 'no one is going to be dying on the streets if I am President (goes off on a tangent about how republican establishment gave him stick but when he says it at rallies people cheer him and how lots of democrats will vote for him) ...We are going to have unbelievable healthcare, when people have no money we are going to help them out, whether its through Medicaid or whatever, we are going to help them out."


What?   First the only actual policy he as is to get rid of the boundary lines and have free competition among pharmaceutical companies in all states. He claims to have 9 different options at one point, but only names 1 and doesn't say how he would use it. He later claims there are lots of options, but fails to give even 1 this time.
He manages to contradict himself in the space of a sentence, first saying pharmaceutical want the competition, then claiming they don't and later using them as bogey men who control politicians to maintain state monopolies.
He is going to give health care to people without money- how is that not nationalised health care? He gives Medicaid (or 'whatever'!- has he even looked at this?) as an example of how to do it, but is that not tax payer funded? So if it was how you funded your health service, then that would be a UK style NHS? Which I am all for, for you poor US folks out there, but I don't from this think for one instance Trump has the faintest clue about how to bring one about.

And didn't he say in complaining about Obamacare- 'you get things you won't use, but you are paying for them.' what like paying the health care of people without money you will never meet, that what you mean?
Do Trump supporters put any sort of scrutiny onto what he actually says? Because I don't get how someone with no policies at all thought out beyond soundbites and who can contradict his own arguments within a sentence has got this far.   }}}

{{{ there is the theory that what people most want is to blow apart what is currently a stuck system. In this view its not policy that matters, it's the tendency to break things that makes a politician attractive. Bernie Sanders got traction because he completely wants to redo the system, not work within it. }}}

{{{You telling me Trumps really the ultimate punk?!!

}}}}

An interesting read from a graduate student who supports Trump, who in some parts supports my thesis:

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/4/11346078/donald-trump-support

Interesting thoughts on Sanders and the Panama papers.

http://uk.askmen.com/news/power_money/how-the-panama-papers-leak-will-impact-the-us-presidential-election.html

I think unless the Panama papers show Clinton firmly linked to putting money in offshore tax havens, it won't affect her. Those who vote for Hillary want somebody who's part of the system, and helping support the system is different from taking advantage of it.

I watched a documentary about the Obama years last night. What struck me most was what a thoroughly decent human being he is, and what a total contrast to Trump. I think history will look kindly on the moral compass of the Obama administration, how he fought for gun control and how much he was stymied by the Republicans at every move. His foreign policy isn't exactly a force of success but at least he started talks with both Iran and Cuba. How such a humane president should bring about the rise of something like trump is really weird.

If the BBC documentary, it brought out the obstructionism of the Republicans more than I had realized before. I had previously blamed at least half of it on Obama not trying to meet them halfway, but that's because the behind the scenes stuff wasn't really known.

I think what happened is the conservatives assumed a black president must perforce be the most liberal president ever, and painted him that way even as he continued to carry out many of the policies of the Bush administration he had said he would dismantle. He's actually a very pragmatic moderate with an eye to fix some deeply flawed American institutions like Health Care and Interventionism in less powerful countries. Coupled with his blackness those few big ticket items drove conservatives into a rage, despite his otherwise moderate backdrop.

At least that's how I read it.

I haven't seen the BBC documentary but that's been my read on things since at least the 2010 election. I mean, you had GOP Congressional leaders straight up saying that their main mission was to prevent Obama from accomplishing anything. It's not like they were even trying to mask their intentions in a cloak of respectability.

My take is that the vehemence against Obama is a mixture of straight-up racism (quite a bit of that in the GOP base, concentrated and distilled thanks to the Southern Strategy) and decades of a siege mentality that Democrats were all dirty, America-hating Commies, no matter how moderate they actually were. I know people like to blame both parties for polarization, but let's be real. Only one of the parties has rigorously policed its own ideology and worked to ostracize anyone deemed insufficiently pure (though Trump is undoing some of this). Likewise, only one of the parties (the other one) has, in the last several decades, gone out of their way to move not just towards the center but in some ways across it, completely capitulating on core issues like welfare in order to try to make itself more electable.

Let us not forget that Obamacare, aka Exhibit A in the "Democrats hate 'murica" line of argument, was the "conservative alternative" to single-payer health care and was developed by conservative think tanks before being initially implemented by a Republican governor at the state level. So not only was the conservative 180 on the concept of Obamacare massively hypocritical, not only was the insistence that it was a nefarious manifestation of socialism blatantly untrue, but the very fact that it was all that Obama got through despite having supermajorities in both the House and Senate is a testament to how far from old school 20th century liberalism, much less actual goddamn socialism, the Democratic Party has gotten.

But let's not forget the racism part too, including the "Obama is a Muslim" attack (or the fact that this attack came from Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign; I should be clear that despite my distaste for the dynamics of the modern GOP, they certainly have no monopoly on racism and/or pandering to racism).

EDIT: this rant has been brought to you by having been woken up too early and by years of political ennui brought about by studying and observing American politics.

Following Cruz' impressive win in Wisconsin (13 points above Trump!), it's probably worth remembering his record as a flip-flopper. Rubio was generally the one who got raked over the coals for this, but Cruz has been really bad too, especially with his strategic waffling on immigration even while he was ostensibly taking a stand during the 2013 debate.

http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/the-trump-ification-ted-cruz-15665
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/02/ted_cruz_is_still_lying_about_his_immigration_record.html

It will be an interesting convention. I believe there was a brokered convention a couple of times in the late 20th century, but not with the rancor that will attend this one. Has there ever before been two frontrunners that their own party leadership loathed?

I don't imagine so. The modern primary system (ie, roughly 1972-present) has made it a lot easier for candidates who don't get along with the party leadership to get further. Though Trump (and perhaps Cruz as well now) has/have made it further than any similar candidate in a long time.

{{{Not short but brilliant in places- both impersonators are good, but the Trump guy just nails it }}}

Bill coming alive, I like it.

This is a convincing argument that the Republican convention will put forth a Kasich/Rubio ticket:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/john-kasich-will-be-the-r_b_9638598.html?

It also notes that Bernie Sanders would beat Trump or Cruz while it's not clear Clinton would. It seems the technique of nomination by votes within the party is flawed.

RE: the Bill Clinton video, interesting to see pushback coming from the old '90s moderate wing of the Democratic Party. I agree with much of the BLM/progressive critique of the crime bill, but I do think that some people, especially younger people, have refused to acknowledged why it was passed (other than "white supremacy") and refused to engage with the issues that resulted in people, including many black people, coming together behind it.

RE: the convention, I think Cruz will make more of a play than some people are expecting. He's a savvy operator and his ground game has been really strong so far. I imagine he'll be seen favorably by more delegates than just the ones pledged to him. In other news, Roger Stone has been making threatening noises regarding the possibility of a contested convention.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-convention-strategy-the-fix-is-in

More of the same 'Republicans made a deal with the devil by accepting right-wing media', but I'd like to see a direct Republican rebuttal to this. Or maybe they have no rebuttal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-cain/how-fox-news-destroyed-republican-party_b_9644594.html?

A peek into the awkward life of the Zodiac Killer.

Cruz ground game too stronk. In the increasingly likely event of no candidate winning a majority of pledged delegates, Cruz looks more and more like the smarter choice to win any later ballot at the convention when delegates are no longer bound. He seems to have actually remembered that primaries are not normal elections but rather part of the party's own internal decision-making process.

In Georgia fight for GOP delegate slots, Cruz loyalists prevail over Trump backers - LA Times

For once in my life, I agree with Rush Limbaugh:

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Limbaugh-GOP-Establishment-Will-Vote-Hillary-to-Keep-Their-Fiefdoms/2016/04/18/id/724581/

Limbaugh: GOP Establishment Will Vote Hillary to Keep 'Their Fiefdoms'
Image: Limbaugh: GOP Establishment Will Vote Hillary to Keep 'Their Fiefdoms' (Wire Services Photo)
By Greg Richter | Monday, 18 Apr 2016 10:50 PM

The Republican establishment would rather put Democrat Hillary Clinton in the White House than Republicans Donald Trump or Ted Cruz because it would keep them in charge of "their fiefdoms," talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said on Monday.

"The Republican establishment is prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton if it means holding onto their fiefdoms," Limbaugh said, adding, "The Republican Party is prepared, if Ted Cruz gets the nomination, to not care whether he wins or loses."

"In fact," Limbaugh said later, "if Ted Cruz is the nominee and loses the general, the party will be happy. They’ll be able to blame the loss on conservatives and conservatism and be done — once and for all — with conservatism in the party."

The GOP's "primary objective" is self-preservation, not winning the White House in this cycle," Limbaugh said. "Given the vagaries of this cycle, the Republican Party's primary objective is maintaining its own power structure and base for the current people that occupy it."

The dead giveaway, he said, is when some in the party openly say they will vote for Clinton over Trump.

"And some of them have even said that they'll vote for Hillary instead of Cruz," he said. "It means they don’t think the country’s in crisis. They don’t think anything of the sort."

I suspect there's some truth to that. I'm really curious to see what would happen if Cruz is nominated (and loses as he almost certainly would) since the conservative base has been insisting that the GOP lost the last two elections because they nominated insufficiently conservative candidates. Can't really make that excuse with Cruz but if the impression that he was sold out sticks it could get ugly moving forward instead of resolving the issue.

Trump taking almost all of the NY delegates so far on the GOP side. Hillary winning by a very respectable margin on the Dem side too.

Would love Trump to win it all.