Ted Cruz Drops Out Of The Republican Presidential Race (washingtonpost.com) 879
rmdingler writes: Ted Cruz drops out of the presidential race after losing in Indiana. Donald Trump has become the presumptive nominee before Hillary has locked things up versus Bernie. This is huge. Cruz's decision to drop out came after losing significantly to Trump in the Indiana primary. "I said I would continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory. Tonight I'm sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed," Cruz told a small group of supporters Tuesday night. "Together we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we got, but the voters chose another path." He said he would "continue to fight for liberty," but did not say whether or not he would support Trump as the nominee. The exit comes soon after he announced former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate in a desperate move to keep his candidacy afloat.
R. Daneel Olivaw for President! (Score:5, Funny)
R. Daneel Olivaw for President!
Re:R. Daneel Olivaw for President! (Score:5, Insightful)
Giskard. He knows what's on my mind.
Re:R. Daneel Olivaw for President! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:R. Daneel Olivaw for President! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought he just dropped out.
And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Namely "Cruz for President"
Re:And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on, the org was already doomed before she was on board
Re:And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Informative)
That didn't stop her from jumping on that train, even when the imminent derailment was in sight.
Must be nobody told her there wasn't another $40 million golden parachute at the end of this failure.
Re:And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, finally a moment where Slashdotters can make a political insult without being at all off-topic.
Nazi !!!
It's a trap (Score:3)
He's not dead yet.
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Funny)
He's undead.
Re:It's a trap (Score:4, Funny)
He's pinin' for the fjords!
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, I wish I had a funny mod point to give you.
Anyway, as bad as Trump is, Cruz would have been worse. The Donald's primary identity is "con man" or "salesman" and he doesn't believe most of the crazy stuff he says. He's just saying those things because the suckers want to hear them. In contrast, Cruz's primary personal identity is "religious fanatic", supported by a secondary identity as "technically skilled liar", and he sincerely believed all of the crazy stuff he said, and some more besides.
Trump's nomination actually gives me some hope for the future of America. The so-called Republican Party has become a travesty of itself. Just an insane brand hijack of the actual Republican Party of Abe Lincoln and the pragmatic if overly business-friendly GOP of Ike and Teddy. It is overdue to follow the Whig and Federalists Parties into oblivion so the American political system can have a REAL choice. Yeah, the Democratic Party will win too easily, but it's not like they've ever been able to figure out what they want to do with political power even when they have it. I doubt the new challenger will be the Libertarian Party, but the election of 2018 may reveal which way things are actually going. Hey, it's even conceivable the so-called Republicans can reform themselves enough to earn their own name again.
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see what the rest of the GOP do now. After a year of trashing Trump, calling him all sorts of things, they are either going to have to eat several courses of humble pie or rip the party apart by continuing to oppose their official candidate.
The polls suggest that Trump will find it hard to beat Hillary, because despite some popularity he also has a higher disapproval rating than anyone in the history of politics. Then again you can never rule anyone out in a two horse race. For me a Trump win would be a nightmare scenario, but I'm also kind of curious to see how the rest of the world would react.
Re:Does the Donald stand for anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would point out that the gullible trump supporters are somewhat more complex than that. They believe that Trump means the things he says that they agree with, and they believe that he does not really mean the things he says that they disagree with. They are absolutely convinced of his dishonesty, yet they somehow think he's on their side.
NPR's This American Life did a segment about Alex Chalgren, an african-american, gay Trump supporter. In the segment, Alex explained that he supported Trump because Trump supported gay rights. Later when confronted by a statement from Trump saying that he would try to appoint judges to overrule the decision on same-sex marriage, he continued to defend Trump. He said that Trump only made the statement to get votes.
Trump rejected the one issue that Alex chose him for, and Alex continued to support him.
http://www.thisamericanlife.or... [thisamericanlife.org]
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, as bad as Trump is, Cruz would have been worse. The Donald's primary identity is "con man" or "salesman" and he doesn't believe most of the crazy stuff he says.
This is undoubtedly true; I was going to say that the choice between the two was like choosing between plague and cholera, but now-a-days both are survivable (that was a joke, BTW). In practice I don't actually think it matters enormously - the problems you are faced with, running a nation, are the same, whoever you are, and in most cases the solutions are going to be dictated by the problems; the only differences will be in symbol policies: things that don't really matter, but which look "conservative/liberal/..." or whatever colour you want to show.
A president, being the leader of the whole nation, must at least be able to care about the interests of everybody in the country, and be able to attract the respect of the international community. I feel pretty sure Cruz is too narrow minded to recognise that his policies would be beneficial to only to those who share his mindset and harmful to most of the rest, and I can't tell whether Trump actually gives a shit about the subject - he seems to change with the prevailing wind. As for international respect - I doubt anybody would trust a religious extremist, and Trump's erratic outbursts won't be easily forgotten. As far as I can see, he has cast himself in a rather bad light - he has already alienated Mexico and China, and if he holds that stance, then he won't be met with a lot of goodwill from those two or their allies in South America and Africa, among others. And of course, if he changes tack just like that, they will think that he is untrustworthy and slippery, which may be just as bad.
As sinister as it may sound, the success of Trump, Sanders, the Tea Party movement and even suicidal maniacs like Daesh, are all symptoms of the growing resentment against the unfairness of what looks like a progressively smaller upper class, who have access to all the advantages and are determined to keep it that way, and who are unwilling to listen to even the most reasonable demands of the majority. I think the only way to really change things is for people on the ground to reach out across their differences and unite to change the way these things work. People would probably find that the things they are unhappy with are the same thing the Tea Party don't like, as well as those on the left etc. I have often been surprised to find that I agree with people who claim to dead against Socialism because, as they say, they believe in freedom, self-determination, etc; to me those things are very much part of socialism. Of course, one can discuss whether is should be called socialism or not, but the point is - we are not really that different, and we could easily work together. And change things.
Re:It's a trap (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that we'll still have a country after the Democrats are finished with it...
Ever the optimist, eh? Of course you will still have a country, even if you feel the Democrats are idiots. They may not have the right ideas in your view, but they still want to govern for the benefit of the whole of the nation - as will the Republicans, if they win. At the end of the day, both sides (or all sides, if you have more than two parties) have to trust their opponents to at least want to do what they think is right for the entire nation - otherwise, you end up like Syria or Libya. Nations fail at democracy, when the winners in an election only govern to benefit their own supporters and the all distrust each others. The point I'm trying to get across is: it is up to everybody - you and I included - to decide to trust our opponents, even if we disagree with them; that is what really determines the future of the nation.
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
As a foreigner who doesn't even live in the US, perhaps you could help me understand how the "evil" of Clinton will damage the country? From here it looks like Trump is already causing damage in international relations and domestically in terms of fuelling bigotry and hate. I suppose with Clinton we should expect a presidency distracted by the GOP going after her for an impeachment like her husband (mail server instead of Lewinsky)?
Re: It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a trap (Score:4, Insightful)
CryHelicopter more like. You sound like an emo teen blowing everything out of all proportion, convinced their interpretation of reality is infallible.
Your approach to democracy is beyond childish. For a country which espouses such love and respect for democracy, it's amazing how the democratic process has devolved to some team sport, with people like you cheering on from the sidelines. You suck at this.
Re:And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Please!
Can we hear the last of the evil Fiorona?
She's like a recurring wart.
Re: And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody would have to want to sleep with her first before she could get herpes.
It happened: she fucked HP, remember?
Re:And Carly Destroys Another Organization.... (Score:5, Funny)
He knew what was going to happen ... (Score:5, Funny)
Lies (Score:4, Insightful)
"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't say "Huge". I'd say a %$%^$ nightmare. Except that it may have done some good in showing the Republican party and their deep-pocket funders like the Koch brothers where a race to the bottom eventually gets them.
Where does this take us? Trump is going to score well in conservative White districts, and Clinton (yes, I like Sanders, but he doesn't have the delegates) is going to score well enough to beat him with less conservative Whites and everyone else. I don't know if enough people would have voted for Clinton without someone who inspires people to vote against him like Trump. But even people who would in another situation never have voted for Clinton will cast votes against Trump. Clinton just got handed the White House. Game over.
What really troubles me is what happens after the election. 40 years of anti-intellectualism and pandering to prejudice and we got a significant part of the country voting for someone who really would not have been good for the country. The historical parallels are obvious. What do we do now?
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm hoping this election cycle results in the GOP splitting in two. The racists, fascists, and religious fundamentalists can be loaded into one party while the sane Republicans who don't mind working WITH people on the opposite side of the aisle to get things done can be in a second party. The Sane GOP can take their place as one of the two major parties while the "Crazy GOP" can provide us with a few laughs at their expense as they spiral into oblivion. (The Democrats have their own extremists that need to be purged, but I don't think it's gotten to "party splitting" level quite yet.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're really asking for is a return to 1974. Th
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(The Democrats have their own extremists that need to be purged, but I don't think it's gotten to "party splitting" level quite yet.)
It has. The problem is within the democrat party, they're willing to pander to the crazies like it's 1987, notice how shrill the anti-sexual revolution, anti-speech, anti-personal responsibility, pro-protect us from stuff segment is getting these days. The crazies within and outside the party for the democrats have basically taken a page out of the religious right of the 70's and 80's. And average people, have already had enough of it. I have more friends that are democrats(mainly self-declared liberals
Re: (Score:3)
It has. The problem is within the democrat party, they're willing to pander to the crazies like it's 1987, notice how shrill the anti-sexual revolution, anti-speech, anti-personal responsibility, pro-protect us from stuff segment is getting these days
Whut? From what is apparent, anti-speech and anti-responsibility group is squarely in the Republican camp. And then there are weaklings projecting their fears on Democrats.
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The problem with protesting the Breitbart crowd's events is that when you're in a fight with an idiot, it's hard for other people to tell which one the idiot is.
Not two, four to Three (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm hoping this election cycle results in the GOP splitting in two.
How does that not happen without the Democrats splitting similarly?
I have a number of strongly Democratic friends on Facebook. I have NEVER seen such a massive dislike of the front-runner (Hillary) and support for the candidates being shafted (Sanders). I would be surprised if even half of the Democrats I know will vote for Hillary ever.
The same is true on the Conservative side of course, with (again) probably about half not willing to vot
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I would be surprised if even half of the Democrats I know will vote for Hillary ever.
Wait until October, with the nightmarish prospect of four years under Trump just a few weeks away. They may not want to vote for Hillary, but I'd bet good money they'll do it anyway just to keep Trump out of power.
Re:Not two, four to Three (Score:4, Interesting)
I would be surprised if even half of the Democrats I know will vote for Hillary ever.
I'm a registered Democrat, and to put it lightly, I'm not a big fan of Hillary. But if it actually mattered, I would hold my nose and vote for her over Trump. As it is, though, I live in an overwhelmingly red state. We're giving our votes to the Republican nominee, regardless of who it is or what their policies are (or whether they even have any). So I might just go ahead and vote for Trump anyway. My vote is meaningless in the context of the electoral college, but I'd rather not help give the impression that Hillary enjoys more popular support than she really does.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the so-called Republican Party has already split itself into at least 5 factions, but two of them are pretty much extinct. The extinct (or possibly just extremely endangered) species were the progressive Republicans (of the Abe Lincoln stripe) and the pragmatic conservatives (like Ike and Teddy). The currently dominant species is the former Dixiecrats (AKA pre-Reagan Southern Democrats AKA "Remember the War of Northern Aggression" Anti-Republicans). They dominate the major subspecies of religious fanatics (who hoped to push their morals on everyone else) and the minor subspecies of extremely short-sighted super-greedy businessmen (who thought investing in the cheapest professional politicians to rig the rules wouldn't cause corporate cancer). Today's fake Republicans are walking dead.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:5, Insightful)
What really troubles me is what happens after the election. 40 years of anti-intellectualism and pandering to prejudice and we got a significant part of the country voting for someone who really would not have been good for the country. The historical parallels are obvious. What do we do now?
The Republican pandering to people's worst instincts has been slowly catching up on them for years. In 2006, the religious right was openly complaining that they were were bringing in lots of votes and not getting much in return. [*] Then after 2008 the Tea Party took it over the top. Traditional Republicans thought the TP was just another demographic that they control, but the inmates took over the asylum.
The Republican party is fucked. Their core wants to rule for the rich, but of course they can't get elected on that platform. So they've spent several decades suckering single-issue voters into voting against their own best interests. Now the (traditional) Republicans have mostly lost all that support, so they can't possibly get elected to rule for the rich.
My guess is that traditional Republicans will team up with the "neoliberal" Democrats (think Hillary), and the rest of the Democrats will pursue a more people-oriented agenda (think Bernie). The Tea Partier / Trumpites will limp along, relegated to third-party candidate status.
[*]Of course not; the Republicans just wanted their votes because they needed them to get elected so they could rule for the rich. The demographics that they sucker into voting for them didn't matter in the least, to pre-TeaParty Republicans.
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Good thing is that US geopolitically is as good as ever. Europe as usual is in trouble, China slows down. There is nothing else.
Even a complete idiot like Bush could not manage to do much harm to the country. Trump is not an idiot. He talks the talk, but it is not clear what kind of walk he will walk.
I would not be so sure about Hillary's win. Sure the bets are on her now:
http://www.paddypower.com/bet/... [paddypower.com]
1/3 for hillary versus 2/1 for Trump.
http://www.oddschecker.com/pol... [oddschecker.com]
gives quite comprehensive odds acr
Europe as usual is in trouble? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing is that US geopolitically is as good as ever. Europe as usual is in trouble...
Please elaborate? There is UK voting on EU membership (ironically the politicians there is probably learning the same lesson as the GOP: don't produce fear mongering using opinions you don't really share)...
Then there is some ongoing financial trouble in Greece... Economic growth isn't completely back yet (but that the same case for 99% of the Americans).
But these are likely solved given time and luck, things are definitely being addressed.
The whole refugee crisis, is not a crisis, just an under-investment in refuges... The European countries can fix that anytime. It's mostly a superficial issue, not actual trouble in any sense.
So I'm curious how do you see a Europe in crisis?
Trump is assured victory now (Score:3, Interesting)
All that really needs to be said is Hillary is powerless to stop Trump among just about ALL voting groups, read :
Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary [townhall.com]
Unless the Democrats are smart enough to actually nominate Sanders, which they are not.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason for super delegates is that the parties are private clubs and make their own rules. Geez, even the Republicans don't have them.
I'd put super delegates after the electoral college on the list of insults to democracy. One person - one vote isn't a radical idea.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd put superdelegates before the Electoral College. At least states, as sovereign entities, have some legitimacy to give input to the process. Political parties, being evil perversions of democracy [washingtonsblog.com] that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place, do not.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:4, Insightful)
I say this with respect: Anyone who says the Electroral College is an insult to democracy has never thought about how you design an electoral system.
Suppose you have a freshly-minted country that is known for in-fighting and rabble-rousing. You want to unify them, and make it clear that no matter how slim the margin of election, one candidate has been resoundingly selected above all others. Why? If someone is elected from a field of two candiates with only a very slim margin, the members of the losing party are that much more likely to split off. The country is young, you need to ensure unity and cohesiveness. So, a mechanism that amplifies small differences into large ones will help provide the illusion of landslide victories to the public, even when there are none.
The Electoral College was a brilliant bit of work by the designers of our political system, and helped ensure the stability of a highly fragile young country. It was also a practical necessity since communication was so slow, but the real impact was in ensuring unity.
Do we need it still? Yes. For the very same reasons. We say that a 10% margin is a landslide in a national election. 55-45 is a landslide? That sounds to me like a split populace that lacks a single voice. If you had 9 people voting on an issue (say, as you do in the US Supreme Court), it would be equivalent to 5-4 (do the algebra, it's the same), and that is called a split decision. Split, not landslide. The only reason that the media reports 55-45 as a landslide is because the Electoral College amplifies that difference into a nearly unanimous decision. We definitely still need the Electoral College, and for exactly the same reasons. After a contentious election -- and which national elections are not contentious? -- the population needs immediate unification behind a single leader.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:5, Insightful)
Bull.
The electoral college is not a democratic institution.
It is a bandaid solution for problem that no longer exists.
It's pros have long ceased outweighing its cons, the most significant of which is the possibility of a minority of the nation winning the vote, overruling the popular vote. Which was long considered unlikely, yet actually happened and gave us Bush whose effect we're still not done with.
It's a relic of a past age, a paean to a view of the relationship between state and nation that most people haven't held for over a century, and hasn't been relevant to governance for even longer.
Worse, it is possible, if unlikely (but see above), to actually win the EC with only ~26% of the popular vote.
That is not democracy.
The EC needs to go away.
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:4, Insightful)
One person - one vote isn't a radical idea.
The United States does have one person one vote. The 13th + 19th amendments established that. But we don't have direct democracy. In particular, we don't have direct election of presidents. It's actually really really easy to change this, so if it truly angers people then just do it.
The United States is a democratic republic. That means there are aspects of democracy, and aspects of a republic. Not every government office is elected via direct democracy, and that is probably a good thing for a lot of reasons too broad to cover here. This was part of the Great Compromise [wikipedia.org] when the US constitution was created. The question is: Were the authors of the constitution wrong? Is direct election of presidents really a good idea?
So there are 2 paths to changing this: first, is state by state. The other is to amend the constitution.
The state-based approach is for each state to assign its electors proportionally to the popular vote. So if your state has 10 electors, and 60% of the votes go to candidate A and 40% of the votes go to candidate B, then give 6 votes to A and 4 votes to B. Most states give all 10 votes to A. Changing that will get you 90% of the way toward a direct election. The 2 limitations would be: rounding error, unless you can give half of an elector, and the fact that electors are not exactly according to population (see "The Great Compromise" I linked to above). And better yet: If there are 3 candidates, allocate the votes across all 3 instead of just the top 2.
The constitutional approach is to get 2/3 of the people to ratify an amendment calling for direct election of president. This changes it in one fell swoop instead of state-by-state, and it would be more accurate. While we are at it, lets use a run-off instead of a plurality system. That's one area I think the founders really were wrong.
The republicans and democrats must also change the way their primaries are held. I'm not sure how the parties established that or how to change it.
But looking at the presidents in the last 50 years, I'm not sure that direct election is a good idea. We have gotten too good at marketing, so the average person is too easily fooled. Today, America elects popular, wealthy, dogmatic, liars. If we went back to the old way, of having senators elect a president, perhaps we would get a real compromiser instead of a reality TV show star.
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Personally, I think a Trump presidency would be "Huge" for SpaceX, as he'll likely stop the pork-barrel spending on the "Senate Launch System".
Elon, Jeff, Boeing, LockMart, and Aerojet Rocketdyne are perfectly capable of competing to produce the commercial capability that you so desire to flee the planet from the horrible terror of Trump.
Bruce, instead of fleeing this country because it might be led by someone you don't like, why not use that somewhat clever mind of yours, and your still somewhat relevant t
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Leaders of many other countries have been happy to work with Obama. I think they could not allow their own electorate to see them working with Trump. He's already painted himself as the sort of politician Europe has suffered from. Like KaradžiÄ or Putin.
Yes, things got better under Obama. One need only look at employment figures. But for me personally, it's health care. I have a medical issue that has never, in 20 years, had a symptom but made me uninsurable under the old system unless I wor
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"Huge" isn't what I'd say (Score:4, Interesting)
The California exchange has been pretty successful in negotiating premiums with its vendors. Unfortunately, not every state chose to take the plan to heart as California did. If yours was dragged in kicking and screaming, it might show in the rates.
Backwards (Score:3)
In 40 years the major cities will be full of 80 year olds and people serving them coffee.
Except for SF which will be entirely populated by 20 year old billionaires. (all coffee shops staffed by robots there).
The future belongs to the people that show up, and the only people having babies in significant numbers are in rural areas.
Re: (Score:3)
This is one opinion [thinkprogress.org] why. There are more online.
Can Trump win over all? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not in the US so all I get are news paper reports.
Is it possible for trump to win the presidency? From the outside he looks incredibly divisive even in his own party, but are there enough disenfranchised people that would jump on his band wagon to get over the line?
We had a similar muppet in Australia called Clive Palmer who managed to get elected to our house of reps despite all the press saying he didn't stand a chance.
Re:Can Trump win over all? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it possible for trump to win the presidency?
From this site [realclearpolitics.com] (which summarizes a bunch of national polls), 5 out of 6 polls have Hillary beating the Donald. And it is 6 out of 6 for Sanders beating him So it looks like he most likely won't win.
From the outside he looks incredibly divisive even in his own party, but are there enough disenfranchised people that would jump on his band wagon to get over the line?
There is going to be some really weird dynamics going on for the election. Everything from how much Trump and Cruz have divided the GOP, through to how much of the GOP see Hillary as an extension of Obama and Dem voters staying home because they think they have it in the bag.
You also have to remember that voting isn't compulsory and that for every Federal election since 1972 less than 60% of eligible voters have turned out.
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From this site (which summarizes a bunch of national polls), 5 out of 6 polls have Hillary beating the Donald. And it is 6 out of 6 for Sanders beating him So it looks like he most likely won't win.
That is true, if the election were held today...
Keep in mind, NOONE expected Trump to end up the Nominee, so keep in mind lots can change over the next few months.
Clinton might not even be running, if she is indited... but even if not, what if Trump comes out and picks off Bernie's supporters by taking some of his positions?
$15/hr min wage
Free state college
Universal health care
???
If he came out and offered those three things as the "move to the middle" for the Reagan Democrats, he could win it in a landsli
Re: Can Trump win over all? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Obama has issued the lowest number of executive orders per year of office since William McKinley in 1901.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Can Trump win over all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like her husband, she can't seem to do anything without breaking some type of law.
Except that in 25 years of accusations not one has stuck. At some point a rational person has to start wondering if there is anything there there. Or you can continue parroting partisan talking points that as I said, haven't panned out in 25 years.
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It should be abundantly clear by now that Trump is immune to such tactics. Remember, he's been a celebrity asshole just as long as Hillary has been a politician!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a second...
Rafael Cruz AND Glen Beck both said Ted Cruz was "anointed by god" to be the next president. How could god have gotten it so wrong??
And here's how he did it (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been following Scott Adams' blog [dilbert.com], and he has some insightful things to say about Trump and how he manages to win.
Scroll back a few entries in the blog and they're pretty interesting.
With that background, I've just this morning figured out how Trump managed to pull it off: he's been using "sad" as a verbal kill-shot.
Check out any image [google.com] of Ted Cruz, and the most notable feature is his sloping eyebrows. He's definitely got that "sad puppy-dog" look.
Trump has been using "sad" in his speeches for months, and associating it with all sorts of slightly pejorative things. He's never made it specific that he's doing this as an association to Cruz, and "sad" is not extreme rhetoric so it escapes peoples' notice. (He sometimes calls Ted sad, but I'm talking about all the other "sad"s over the past few months.)
Furthermore, he masks it by giving people a more transparent and direct kill-shot: "lying Ted Cruz". People are distracted by the extreme moniker and reject it, and all the while they don't notice that they are slowly building an association between "sad" and a wide range of slightly bad things.
So when they see Ted on stage or in the media, that association is what they feel.
I think it's a case of priming [wikipedia.org], and Trump has masterfully arm-wrestled Ted's reputation to the floor without him realizing it.
Pundits are quick to point out that Trump's unfavorability is at 70%, and all polls show that Hillary would beat Trump in an election.
What they *don't* say is that Hillary herself is only 12 points lower (56% unfavorability), and that's bound to change over the next 6 months.
In fact, Hillary's unfavorability seems to be creeping up of late, and Trump's is falling.
It's starting to look like he might win.
And that he's winning on purpose.
Who'd of think it?
Now watch Trump air Hillary's dirty laundry (Score:5, Interesting)
Now watch Trump air Hillary's dirty laundry 24x7 all the way until the election. I would not be that she would win, especially if he starts acting more "presidential" so to speak. There are a shit ton of very bad skeletons in her closet, some of them chucked there by her husband.
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The election will test the validity of that presumption.
Can you win the national election on pure PC virtue signaling? Because... Hillary has a lot of problems as a candidate as well.
She's a robotic speaker that is not especially charismatic. Not good in a president.
Just as Trump has problems with women, Hillary has problems with men... including Democrat men.
Just as Trump has a harder time with older voters that find his vulgarity off putting... hillary's corruption scandals have hurt her amongst younger v
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I don't think those problems are congruent, though. Trump has problems with women directly because of his sexism. In contrast, Clinton's problems with Democrat men aren't because of her feminism, but rather are because of all her other issues as a candidate, which men are less willing than women to give her a pass for.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
To the contrary the "war on women" campaign backfired in the congressional elections and it is not polling well as a political concept. Look at the number of college age women that self identify as feminists as well. There is a preception whether real or not that the PC thing has gotten out of control. It has become "uncool". Whatever women believe, when queried they are openly less willing to associate with these things because they're seen as divisive.
This perception is largely the result of males generally seeing modern feminism as hostile to men. Whether that is true or not is not really the issue here because we're talking about politics and politics is about perceptions. Those are the perceptions.
So it is a wash. The numbers were so bad that the Hillary Campaign or their proxies went so far as to claim male democrats voting for Bernie were merely doing so because they don't like women in power. THAT sort of behavior has consequences.
The Attraction of playing the woman card is that you want to get 50 percent of the voters on your side. The risk however is that you may turn off half the voters in the process. What is more, women have very interesting voting patterns depending on whether they're single or not. Single women tend to vote very differently from married women. To a large extent... Hillary is going after single women... that is the demographic that responds to this sort of thing. But the risk is that she can turn off men and even married women in the process which could easily be fatal.
The ultimate fallout here is unknown to either of us. Its all speculation. We won't know what happened or why until after it happened.
Various groups on the internet are over represented and under represented. Judging things based on activity in social media is unreliable.
Re: (Score:3)
Unlikely, or he would not have the lead he has.
I.e., around half of all Republicans motivated enough to participate in caucuses/primaries. Doesn't sound promising for the general election.
(Except for the fact that Clinton may have a substantial popularity problem on the Democratic/independent side.)
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect it won't matter. If the choice comes down to being between somewhat-disliked Clinton and outspoken-bigot Trump, a left-leaning voter will still pick Hillary, just to keep things from getting too bad.
The Clintons have a PR problem. Bill was friendly, and eventually that was a liability. Hillary has had mostly bad PR since becoming a controversial Secretary of State, and the Republican party has consistently amplified that controversy, exaggerating real problems and inventing conspiracies. However, Hillary's stated policy positions aren't too bad. Sure, she has ties to the right, and isn't as far to the left as Bernie Sanders, but if she gets the nomination, she's still a Democrat.
In the general election, though, that's exactly what would happen. It will become us-versus-them, and both sides will be sure to keep that in the public eye. If you're a Republican and you don't vote for Trump, the dirty Democrats will win. If you're a Democrat and you don't vote for Clinton, the rotten Republicans will win. I expect mud-slinging all around.
Re: Hillary vs Trump (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It's kindof scary that the most likely next president is hated by 75+% of the population. At least with Sanders or Kasich, the other side of the aisle tolerates them. I'm a republican/libertarian and disagree with most of what Sanders believes but I still think that he is a decent human being. I can't say the same about Hillary or Trump. If it was Kasich vs Hillary, I would vote for Kasich, if it was Trump vs Sanders, I would vote for Sanders, but Hillary vs Trump and I have no idea who to vote. We're either going to have one of the highest turnouts or lowest turnouts in voting history and most people are going to be voting *against* a candidate instead of for a candidate.
Re: (Score:3)
You speak the truth.
This is going to be a scary election.
Decency is a lost value in the U.S.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
What in the world? Hillary Clinton's two biggest "controversies" are Benghazi, which is about as much of a controversy as global warming, and this whole email scandal where she used a private server instead of the State Department one. Given how many government servers have been hacked in the last ten years, the emails were probably safer there than they were on the government system anyway.
Pretending that Hillary Clinton is anywhere in the same zip code as despicable a person as Trump is to ignore basic facts about the two people and their history. The only reason people even think stupid things like this is because we've been taught by the 24-hour news cycle to look at the constantly-updating horse race statistics rather than the actual policies and histories of the candidates.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Hillary has no real accomplishments short of getting her husband and herself elected to numerous offices and then using those offices to make as much money as they possibly can. How much do they charge the secret service rent? Is it really enough to pay their mortgages? I bet it is enough to pay the average American's mortgage. Probably the average 10 Americans. How much do they charge to speak? How many foreign governments and companies have they taken money from? What exactly does their non-profit do besides pay for their travel expenses to speaking engagements?
She talks about giving the average American the same chances she had. How is she going to do that? Seminars on trading in cattle futures? Maybe how to setup a large scale chicken farm with her moneyed friends?
Her term as secretary of state was a disaster. She chose to intervene in Libya and not to confront ISIS. She made a big deal out of pressing a big red reset button with Vladimir Putin, who reset Russian expansionism.
As far as her policies, it would be better to look at whatever Bernie Sanders said two weeks ago. That's assuming she really means what she says and what the definition of is is.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also pretty centrist from an American historical perspective, and from a policies-the-general-American-populace-actually-support perspective.
It's only "extreme leftist" from a myopic, mainstream-media-manufactured view of the political spectrum.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, as a European, the whole cold war just seems to have increasingly polarized the former USSR to the extreme left and the USA to the extreme right.
In the US, any mention of the word "social" seems to be interpreted as "communist" to the point where "anti-social" has become a positive.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Richard Nixon was so far to the left that he would have made Hillary look like a Republican!
I wish it was a joke but with the EPA, his health care proposals and a few other things he would be called a Communist by some Republicans if he was pushing such things today. That was of course before Koch and other similar donors made the demands that shaped current politics.
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:4, Informative)
Trump will need 70% of the white male vote to win the election without votes from every other voting bloc that he so far had managed to alienate. Not happening.
The overwhelming fact about American general elections right now is that white male voters just aren't as powerful as they used to be. In 1980, when the electorate looked very different than it does today, Ronald Reagan cruised to an easy victory by winning 63 percent of white males, according to exit polls. In 1988, George H.W. Bush took 63 percent of that group in his rout of Michael Dukakis. By 2004, however, winning 62 percent of white men barely got George W. Bush past John Kerry in a squeaker. And eight years later, Romney won 62 percent of white men—and lost to Barack Obama by 3.5 million votes.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-needs-7-of-10-white-guys-213699 [politico.com]
It doesn't help that 70% of women don't like him either.
Donald Trump's image among U.S. women tilts strongly negative, with 70% of women holding an unfavorable opinion and 23% a favorable opinion of the Republican front-runner in March. Trump's unfavorable rating among women has been high since Gallup began tracking it last July, but after rising slightly last fall, it has increased even further since January.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/190403/seven-women-unfavorable-opinion-trump.aspx [gallup.com]
You misunderstand who is disliked more (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump has a lot of negatives, yes.
And that might matter - if he were not running against Clinton.
Read Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary [townhall.com]
It's pretty amusing how much your posts parallels all of the people claiming Trump had no chance of winning the Republican nomination... The fact is you simply do not understand the vast majority of voters, women and men, white and black, hispanic or any other racial groups.
You've not even factored in how much more strongly Trump is against big banks than Clinton is (not hard to do since the Democrats have for some time been deeply intertwined with the likes of Goldman Sachs, which Trump has taken very little money from banks and has a natural animosity towards them having had to go through them in dealing with business ventures).
Re: (Score:3)
Read Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary
You did read the link that you posted?
When Pennsylvania was called for Trump, Hillary was on her second bourbon. When Ohio went red, her consultants ran up to Bill's suite and pulled him off an eager blonde campaign staffer to have him come downstairs and pry the bottle out of Hillary's clutches. They hoped to keep her from completely embarrassing herself during her concession speech.
That's very insightful political commentary — LMAO.
Re: (Score:3)
When you realize just how wrong you were about that, then and only then may it down on you how wrong you are about Trump's chances.
Not likely. The historical record and presidential statistics don't favor Donald Trump or the Republican Party in this election cycle.
Re:You misunderstand who is disliked more (Score:4, Insightful)
That is so funny! it's pretty much madness to think there is historical precedent of any sort for what is about to transpire.
Let's look at the 2016 electoral map, which is identical to the 2012 and 2008 electoral maps. Hillary needs 28 electoral votes to win. Trump will need 168 electoral votes to win.
And here's the underlying math. If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida's 29 and you get 271. Game over.
The Republican map — whether with Trump, Cruz or the ideal Republican nominee (Paul Ryan?) as the standard-bearer — is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/republicans-have-a-massive-electoral-map-problem-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump/ [washingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Trump has a lot of negatives, yes.
They said the same about Ansel Adams. And just look how his career developed.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hillary vs Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Checkmate (Score:5, Interesting)
So, you are convinced that yours is the lesser of two evils? Are you sure?
There appears to be a choice between someone who is conniving and self serving, and someone who is nasty and under handed.
Can you tell which is which?
Will be interesting to watch from a distance, but is there enough distance? hmmm..
Re:Checkmate (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much. Clinton is delusional if she thinks after all the insulting things she's said about the Bernie supporters and the various dirty campaigning practices that she's going to get all of us to toe the line. I for one will not vote for that woman. If that means President Trump, then so be it. We can survive 4 years of Trump, I'm not sure we can survive the precedent of letting somebody as pathologically dishonest as Clinton to win.
Just the other day it came out that she's been using the Hillary Clinton Victory fund to funnel donations well above and beyond the legal limit into her campaign coffers. Roughly 99% of the money that was donated, ostensibly for the party and other Democrats has been funneled back into her campaign.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
Is that really better than what Trump can do for us? I doubt very much that he really believes most of the inflammatory rhetoric.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3rd party (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless you live in a swing state, voting for either major party is the real waste of your vote.
Let's say you live in California. No matter how you vote, California's electors are voting Democrat, and you and everyone you know voting one way or another isn't going to amount to a drop in the bucket in that matter.
So say you're liberal and you vote Democrat: you didn't actually help get a liberal into office and keep a conservative out, you just confirmed for the Democrats that they're doing the right thing to keep liberals voting for them, so they're going to be less likely to change because of your vote.
Now say you're a conservative and you vote Republican: you didn't actually get a conservative into office or keep the liberal out, but you confirmed for the Republicans that they're doing the right thing to get conservatives voting for them, so they're going to be less likely to change because of your vote.
But say you're liberal and you like the Greens' policies better than the Democrats, so you vote Green. You didn't keep a liberal out of office or let a conservative in; the Democrats still won. But when they look at the polling numbers, if enough liberals felt like you did, they will see that they lost some small percentage to the Greens, and start adopting Green policies to court those voters.
Likewise, say you're a conservative and you like the Libertarians' policies better than the Republicans, so you vote Republican. You didn't let a liberal into office or cost a conservative their chance; the Democrat was going to win anyway. But when the Republicans look at the polling numbers, if enough conservatives felt like you did, they will see that the lost some small percentage to the Libertarians, and start adopting Libertarian policies to court those voters.
If you live in a state where the margins are so close that your vote might actually make a difference, then by all means, vote strategically for the lesser of two evils. If you live anywhere else, a vote for either major party is wasted; it makes no difference in who gets elected in your state, and it makes no difference in the policies of the major parties. A third party vote also makes no difference in who gets elected in your state, but at lest it makes a difference in party policy. And if enough people realize this and start voting that way, then not only will third the major parties align more to voters' true wishes (instead of just thinking they're going the right way as they are), and not only will third parties actually get more support and possibly come closer to being real contenders, but more states will become swing states, and then your vote will actually make a real difference... and the major parties will really have to make sure to adopt the policies of the third parties encroaching on their demographics or they (e.g. California Democrats) might actually lose / they (e.g. California Republicans) might actually have a chance to win.
Re: Checkmate (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
Re: Checkmate (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
The great majority (if not all) of wars was caused by self-serving leaders, and never by incompetence. Psychopatic minds only interested in their own benefit, financial and political, have been the motive force behind practically all wars in recorded history.
Re: Checkmate (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of the two which one was inept enough to use a private email server potentially exposing national secrets.
She won't need to get us into WW3. They will blow us up with out own nukes by stealing nuclear launch codes from her iPhone.
Re: Checkmate (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
Yep, Clinton is the status quo. If she gets elected then things will likely be exactly the same 4 years from now as it is now. The problem with this is that the majority of the population is not happy with the status quo which is why Trump, Cruz, and Sanders have been getting so many votes. I know many die-hard democrats that voted for Sanders in the primaries but if Sanders doesn't get the nomination they plan to vote for Trump. People want change and Trump/Sanders are campaigning on change. Clinton is campaigning on keeping things the same and I'm not sure that's a winning strategy in this election year. Trump is a loose cannon and unpredictable but he is promising to shake things up and to create new jobs both things that appeal to a large part of the population on both sides of the aisle.
Re: Checkmate (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal identity is important! (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't say I like Hillary that much, but there is one major aspect I do like: She has excellent taste in enemies. Not saying that the enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend, but her loudest and most prominent enemies are on the scale from "despicable" to totally "despicable". I'm liking her more and more just for the nasty things the flagrant bastards say about her.
The second thing I rather like about her candidacy is that she is obviously vastly more qualified and competent than Trump (or Cruz) and significantly better than any of the other prominent candidates the so-called Republicans were considering. If they had found a candidate like Abe Lincoln, Teddy, or Ike, today's fake Republicans would have booed him out of the first debate.
The main reason I still prefer Bernie is that his primary personal identity is "idealist", and I think they are basically harmless compared to most of the alternatives. Hillary's #1 identity is probably "corporate lawyer" and "idealist" probably isn't in her top 10. I'm not sure "politician" is in the top 5, but she has Bill on her side, and his clear #1 is "politician", so I think she's covered there. (President Obama is also a primary politician, if you ask me, and I regard that as a bad (but evidently almost absolute) requirement for the office these years. I think Carter and Ford were the last exceptions.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Lesser of two evils"
That's funny as hell. Look at what you left yourselves after generations of picking the "Lesser of two evils". Who ever dreamed that Bush could make the suit look good?
Re:Checkmate (Score:5, Insightful)
No....I'm not really a fan of Trump, but he pretty much seems to be an open book. How many politicians do you know of that will have reservation against a certain religious group and openly speak about it? With Trump, what you see is very much what you get. Obama can't claim that (compare his campaign promises vs what he actually did) and Hillary will make Obama look like a saint in that regard.
Wrong mate (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is literally going to plaster the walls with Hillary, after the first debate that all become apparent even to you... I doubt Hillary will do more than one open debate, and then where will the reclusive sulking get her? Exactly nowhere.
Re:Wrong mate (Score:5, Informative)
Trump is literally going to plaster the walls with Hillary, after the first debate that all become apparent even to you... I doubt Hillary will do more than one open debate, and then where will the reclusive sulking get her? Exactly nowhere.
She stood face-to-face or toe-to-toe against her interrogators in the eleventeenth Benghazi! investigation and didn't break a sweat from what I heard.
Trump got a couple tough-ish questions from Megyn Kelly and had a tantrum.
Unless he buries her with a Gish-Gallop(?) stream of conscience bullshit from start to end (which is entirely possible), I wouldn't count her out yet in any debates.
Re: (Score:3)
and she has just as much money, if not more than Trump
Have you been paying attention? Clinton's campaign has out-fundraised Trump by over 5x: Trump 50M, Clinton 265M.
Re:Wrong mate (Score:5, Insightful)
I think one thing we've learned from all this is it's not about money, it's about airtime. And if you can get that for free, it no longer matters which side the Koch brothers are on - which somehow is kind of reassuring, despite the obvious negative consequences in this case.
I've watched a lot of CNN throughout all this, and they're clearly biased against Trump. Yet they've fueled his campaign with the wall-to-wall free airtime they give him. (And yes, as a CNN viewer, I'm part of the problem.) In fact, on their "Reliable Sources" program the other day, someone mentioned that CNN's ratings were up dramatically throughout all this, which isn't surprising. It's a win-win for both: Trump gets airtime, CNN gets ratings. I guess we could call that the "media-troll complex."
Re: Good (Score:3)
Yeah, what ARE we going to do with that Kasich guy?
Re: (Score:3)
Couldn't you at least have waited until an article came along about how people were using 3D printers to replicate model Trump hair to wear in support or something?
Hey, we did get the story about how Trump's hair shorted out the LHC.