U.S. Elections: The Safe Space For People With Good Brains

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@TrackerNeil

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/marco-rubio-reelection-carlos-lopez-cantera-224388

 

[TrackerNeil]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@TrackerNeil

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/marco-rubio-reelection-carlos-lopez-cantera-224388

 

What a zero. Marco Rubio has to break his promise not to run for reelection because some gay people got killed? Please. That guy would dance on the blood of the slain if he thought it would get him a promotion. He's just contemptible.

[Mexal]

Richard Armitage, deputy Secrety of State under Bush, endorsed Hillary Clinton. One of the higher ranking Republicans to split from Trump.

[Guess who's back]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How can Trump win?

Easily, just wait for the debates

[Kalbear]

Trump promises Priebus to call 24 donors personally. Calls three, gives up.

[mormont]

11 minutes ago, Guess who's back said:

Easily, just wait for the debates

Those debates are going to be a reflection of the campaign as a whole. Trump supporters will be ecstatic at his performance, and completely unable to understand why his poll numbers plummet after each one.

[SpaceChampion]

It's looking like the neoreactionaries like Thiel is planning to use Trump as a useful idiot to push their nightmare, dystopian agenda of a authoritarian fascist technocracy.  (NYMag)

Quote

Trump has awoken the mainstream media to the “alt-right” and its cousin neoreaction (a.k.a. NRx or the Dark Enlightenment) — loosely related, web-based “movements” that combine internet culture with far-right politics. The alt-right is associated with Trump, 4chan, and anti-Semitic Twitter trolling (think Gamergate and Microsoft’s Tay debacle), while neoreaction, which is smaller and centered on a few major blogs, tends toward intellectual defenses of hierarchy, race science (“human biodiversity”), and the virtues of nondemocratic government. Both exist in opposition to the broadly “liberal” values, like anti-racism and democracy, shared by both sides of the mainstream political spectrum.

I think the worry with Trump is the moron idiot man-child would unintentionally push the country into a fascist nightmare, but the truth is from his supporters it would be deliberate.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

11 minutes ago, Guess who's back said:

Easily, just wait for the debates

[James Arryn]

17 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

It's looking like the neoreactionaries like Thiel is planning to use Trump as a useful idiot to push their nightmare, dystopian agenda of a authoritarian fascist technocracy.  (NYMag)

I think the worry with Trump is the moron idiot man-child would unintentionally push the country into a fascist nightmare, but the truth is from his supporters it would be deliberate.

No, I think a lot of his supporters fall into the category of bigots-in-denial. They tell themselves that they aren't racist, just tired of unfair political correctness that leaves them disenfranchised or w/e. And I mean, some of that's real and sincere, but a lot of it's plain old prejudice. What they fail to realize is that most bigots tell themselves variations of the same thing. Your actual 'I'm a racist!' racist is relatively rare.

But they are real too, and the more Trump echoes them and appeals to them, and they openly support him, the more it will cause issues for the ones in denial, and he risks losing their support, once the initial rush of thinking they have a reclaimed voice wears off.

But we're getting into post-game analysis way too early. Yeah, he's historically unlikeable...but so is Clinton.

 

[SpaceChampion]

I was referring to his neoreactionary supporters who fund him.

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

I was referring to his neoreactionary supporters who fund him.

I know, sorry, I kinda used your post as a diving board. My bad.

[IheartIheartTesla]

51 minutes ago, Guess who's back said:

Easily, just wait for the debates

Even if Trump wins the debate (not an easy task given the incoherent gibberish he spouts at those events, and with just two people debating), the bump from it tends to be temporary and you then have "regression to the mean". In other words, the debates dont matter a whole lot usually.

Then again, this election may be an outlier.

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Even if Trump wins the debate (not an easy task given the incoherent gibberish he spouts at those events, and with just two people debating), the bump from it tends to be temporary and you then have "regression to the mean". In other words, the debates dont matter a whole lot usually.

Then again, this election may be an outlier.

This election would be incredibly entertaining if it didn't have distopian overtones.

[Kalbear]

Debates also haven't been a particular game changer in elections for a while now. Probably the last big changer was Reagan/Carter. There just aren't that many people who aren't informed about someone or think that their personal view is going to be that much better.

That said, Trump's performance at debates has largely been a negative factor for him in general. It was during the primary. If Clinton gets him to talk about his dick again, I don't think that's going to go well. 

[James Arryn]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Debates also haven't been a particular game changer in elections for a while now. Probably the last big changer was Reagan/Carter. There just aren't that many people who aren't informed about someone or think that their personal view is going to be that much better.

That said, Trump's performance at debates has largely been a negative factor for him in general. It was during the primary. If Clinton gets him to talk about his dick again, I don't think that's going to go well. 

The GOP has handled the pre and post-debate period much more effectively than the Dems in recent elections, which is actually where IMO opinions actually can get swayed. First they've been good at effectively portraying their candidate as the underdog going in, thereby lowering the bar.  They have also been much more aligned right after debates, their talkers all get and hit the same bullet points and and repeat them with conviction so that viewers believe that they believe they won, which can shape/harden perceptions on those not that engaged.

That's all been true with candidates playing team ball, though. Not sure how effective the machine will be for Donald.

[Kalbear]

Just now, James Arryn said:

That's all been true with candidates playing team ball, though. Not sure how effective the machine will be for Donald.

From what I've seen it's precisely ineffective. When his campaign tells other surrogates to not talk about the Trump university thing and then Trump goes and talks about it more - they're working at odds with each other. I suspect that you'll see more of that, especially in a debate where Trump can be fairly easily goaded into talking about all sorts of random things. 

I mean, this is a guy who said publicly that Curiel can't do his job, that abortion should be illegal and that anyone who gets an abortion should be prosecuted, who thinks Japan and South Korea and Saudi Arabia should have nukes - this is a person who you can get to say all sorts of things just by steering the conversation that way. And those are in fairly soft, one on one situations. How on earth is anyone going to get him to stick to talking points?

[James Arryn]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

From what I've seen it's precisely ineffective. When his campaign tells other surrogates to not talk about the Trump university thing and then Trump goes and talks about it more - they're working at odds with each other. I suspect that you'll see more of that, especially in a debate where Trump can be fairly easily goaded into talking about all sorts of random things. 

I mean, this is a guy who said publicly that Curiel can't do his job, that abortion should be illegal and that anyone who gets an abortion should be prosecuted, who thinks Japan and South Korea and Saudi Arabia should have nukes - this is a person who you can get to say all sorts of things just by steering the conversation that way. And those are in fairly soft, one on one situations. How on earth is anyone going to get him to stick to talking points?

The other thing is the underdog advantage. All the recent Republicans...especially Dubya, much as I loathe him...were pretty ego-less in the lead-up to debates, quite willing to play along with the narrative that they were rhetorically overmatched. That served them all well, regardless of how they actually performed, by softening Dem hits and amplifying their own.

But I don't think Trump can do ego-less.

[Kalbear]

It's hard for me to imaging the underdog advantage given how many people seem to be...well, against Trump.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Emre Mor-mont said:

Those debates are going to be a reflection of the campaign as a whole. Trump supporters will be ecstatic at his performance, and completely unable to understand why his poll numbers plummet after each one.

Think he'll do all 3? If he does bad at the first one I have my doubts he'd do the rest.

[Fez]

There's an argument to be made that the first debate in 2012 helped Romney a great deal. Pre-debate he was down almost as much as Trump is now in the polls, post-debate he basically pulled even and then eventually settled back to the basically the margin he ended up losing at. This could've been regression to the mean that was happening anyway, or it could be that Obama was so bad in that debate and that it was the first look a lot of people had at Romney that it dispelled misgivings for a pretty large chunk of people.

Obviously it wasn't enough for him to win, but that could be chalked up to Obama correcting course and the Romney campaign not doing enough to capitalize on it.

I don't see that happening again though. Clinton's a very good debater (Obama is too; that was just an historically bad fluke performance) and Trump is Trump; his fans will love whatever he does, everyone else will hate it.