US Elections: FBI. F-B-I... (Comey turns the ID the right way up) FBI.

[Gorn]

I'm guessing that the tightening of the race is caused by Republicans who previously toyed with the idea of staying home or voting for third party, and now reluctantly side with Trump because "Hillary must be stopped". This kind of thinking is completely alien to me.

I honestly don't see how anyone can see these two candidates as "equally bad". With Clinton, in the worst case scenario, you get four more years of Obama's policies, with a president who is less charismatic and trustworthy and more hawkish than Obama.

With Trump, you get an actual fascist as president. Not "fascist" in  hyperbolic terms some on the left used during Bush-Cheney years, "fascist" as in "shares Mussolini's policies and behavior, treats the democratic norms and the Constitution with contempt". That Reddit link from earlier in the thread was literally bone-chilling.

This is not a choice between Kang and Kodos, or Douche and Turd Sandwich. This a choice between Edwin Edwards and David Duke, or Jacques Chirac and Le Pen.

ETA: Worse actually, since Duke and Le Pen never faced any sexual assault or rape accusations (that I know of). And Duke would not have access to nuclear weapons or supreme command of the US military if he had won.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 minute ago, mormont said:

Slick Willie handler.

I'll see myself out.

I'd go further and suggest that Trump is likely the worst candidate for any elected office I've seen in my life. Worse than Palin. Worse than Berlusconi. Worse even than those racist BNP idiots that inevitably wind up getting into a fistfight at the count.

But, apparently many millions of Americans think he's just the man to hold the most powerful elected office in the world. So what do I know?

In industrialized countries. Mugabe and some other African head of states might want to object about Trump being worse. 

[Ariadne23]

Do the polls include McMullin? 

[Fez]

4 minutes ago, Ariadne23 said:

David Duke is running for Senate. But for all I know, he doesn't tax dodge or grope women.

He's also likely to come in last in the jungle primary on the 8th, at least last of the 8 main candidates.

Also, its not likely, but I'm still hoping that the top 3 Republicans (and Duke and the others) could somehow split the vote to a great enough extent that the runoff is between Fayard and Campbell (the main two Democrats). Its mostly a pipe dream, the runoff will almost certainly be Fayard vs. Kennedy, and Kennedy will crush her. But Louisiana with a guaranteed Democratic senator would be so great.

[BloodRider]

1 hour ago, SerPaladin said:

There is a strong possibility that he is looting the RNC and their donors. As someone living near Atlantic City, I've seen his pattern before. Somehow he's going to come out the other side a quarter of a billion richer, not at all the misconception that he's "spending his own money".

Google donald trump project alamo.

I don't know how much of that is a fever dream / conspiracy theory, but it sure is interesting.

[OldGimletEye]

8 minutes ago, Gorn said:

I honestly don't see how anyone can see these two candidates as "equally bad". With Clinton, in the worst case scenario, you get four more years of Obama's policies, with a president who is less charismatic and trustworthy and more hawkish than Obama.

This is kind of like the Hindenburg Line for Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters. It's their last line of defense when everything else fails. Unfortunately for them, it's not a tenable position.

[Ariadne23]

A question for my fellow liberals: if you had to vote for either a Republican or Libertarian for Congress, and these were the only two choices, what factors would you consider?

[SerPaladin]

7 minutes ago, BloodRider said:

Google donald trump project alamo.

I don't know how much of that is a fever dream / conspiracy theory, but it sure is interesting.

Oh, I'm aware of that. I'm a data guy and produced some snazzy political source data at a local level for call lists and mailers and such. That was powerful data in a little 10,000 person town, in the hands of a guy who would prefer to leverage statistics for fantasy football purposes. I can't imagine how potent the nationwide data could be in the right hands.

[OldGimletEye]

24 minutes ago, Ariadne23 said:

A question for my fellow liberals: if you had to vote for either a Republican or Libertarian for Congress, and these were the only two choices, what factors would you consider?

1. Foreign Policy

2. Economic Policy

3. Civil Liberties

4. I'd say race and gender issues too. But, quite frankly I don't see libertarians and Republicans being better than each other on this issue, except for libertarians being better on abortion rights and on criminal justice matters that affect minorities.. Both have a simplistic market fundamentalist view, that refuses to see that discrimination or historical discrimination affects economic outcomes. Barry Goldwater, after all, took a very libertarian position on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And while I don't think Goldwater was particularly racist, for his time, the racist in the South sure did take notice.

ETA:

Also, I'd say that libertarian positions can seem often appealing to lefty sorts. But, a lot of their economic stuff is just appalling. Plus, while I dislike military interventionism greatly, I'm not in favor of pure isolationism either.

[mormont]

34 minutes ago, Notone said:

In industrialized countries. Mugabe and some other African head of states might want to object about Trump being worse. 

I thought that was implicit in 'candidate for elected office', but I guess that depends on how one interprets things: there's a veneer of 'being a candidate for an elected office' that is often applied to situations like Mugabe's.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

1 minute ago, mormont said:

I thought that was implicit in 'candidate for elected office', but I guess that depends on how one interprets things: there's a veneer of 'being a candidate for an elected office' that is often applied to situations like Mugabe's.

What about guys like Duterte or Zuma? Lot's of shadiness, but as far as I can tell, those were contested elections.

I know I'm just nitpicking at this point and there's a very good argument that Trump is worse than either of those guys.

[Maester Llama]

Mormont,

 

I didn't want to get too hyperbolic -- I don't follow international politics closely enough. "Worst for public office" sounds reasonable to me, though, at least in the western world -- though Nigel Farage and MLP in France have got to be in there contending.

 

Tesla, Fez, Boris,

 

Thanks for the perspective. I know paying attention to individual polls is a mistake and an easy way to stress needlessly; I think I'm overreacting just because I see the stakes as so high here, because it feels as though Clinton's margin for error has shrunk so precipitously over the past couple weeks, and because -- bias time -- a vote for Trump is so incomprehensible to me, so obviously unwise and retrograde, that I don't understand what's driving the electorate in a race that looks at least somewhat close. It's the fact that he has a real shot that scares me and sends me careening into overreaction territory; if we're in the zone where Trump has a real shot after all the shit he's said and done, we're in a nightmare realm where truly anything can go wrong. This shouldn't even be close.

 

Wow, I did realize that Nate Silver's model was much more cautious than many others, and in a way I do appreciate that caution, but I didn't realize he'd futzed around with it to that extent. Clinton's WI poll from the other day moved their model toward Trump? That's just nuts. I do find more cautious projections to be a good way to keep myself from becoming too complacent, as someone who doesn't understand stats well -- if the only place I looked was, say, Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium [which is great], I would probably be very "it is all one; all things shall be well and Trump is but a foul breeze" about the whole thing, and bad news might throw me even more. Still, I didn't know 538 was tilted that much and will take it under advisement; thanks Fez.

 

Seeing stuff about the Dem lead in early voting in Nevada being around 5.5 today. Reps have cut into Dem early vote lead in CO -- it's down to 1.0 now, though apparently Reps need a lot more than that to have a real shot in the state, which is good.

[Little Scribe of Naath]

7 minutes ago, Maester Llama said:

Mormont,

 

I didn't want to get too hyperbolic -- I don't follow international politics closely enough. "Worst for public office" sounds reasonable to me, though, at least in the western world -- though Nigel Farage and MLP in France have got to be in there contending.

 

Tesla, Fez, Boris,

 

Thanks for the perspective. I know paying attention to individual polls is a mistake and an easy way to stress needlessly; I think I'm overreacting just because I see the stakes as so high here, because it feels as though Clinton's margin for error has shrunk so precipitously over the past couple weeks, and because -- bias time -- a vote for Trump is so incomprehensible to me, so obviously unwise and retrograde, that I don't understand what's driving the electorate in a race that looks at least somewhat close. It's the fact that he has a real shot that scares me and sends me careening into overreaction territory; if we're in the zone where Trump has a real shot after all the shit he's said and done, we're in a nightmare realm where truly anything can go wrong. This shouldn't even be close.

 

Wow, I did realize that Nate Silver's model was much more cautious than many others, and in a way I do appreciate that caution, but I didn't realize he'd futzed around with it to that extent. Clinton's WI poll from the other day moved their model toward Trump? That's just nuts. I do find more cautious projections to be a good way to keep myself from becoming too complacent, as someone who doesn't understand stats well -- if the only place I looked was, say, Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium [which is great], I would probably be very "it is all one; all things shall be well and Trump is but a foul breeze" about the whole thing, and bad news might throw me even more. Still, I didn't know 538 was tilted that much and will take it under advisement; thanks Fez.

 

Seeing stuff about the Dem lead in early voting in Nevada being around 5.5 today. Reps have cut into Dem early vote lead in CO -- it's down to 1.0 now, though apparently Reps need a lot more than that to have a real shot in the state, which is good.

As a fellow outsider, you've expressed my sentiments almost exactly.

Apart from the blatant racism and sexism on display in this election, it's also very disconcerting to see the depths human stupidity can plunge - how can a thinking person believe that a man who evaded paying taxes for years, who lies almost every time he opens his mouth, who runs a university currently being investigated for duping people of their money (I'm sure I've missed a lot of other stuff) - how is this guy going to "weed out the corruption in Washington and change the system" ?? (a common refrain I've seen for the justification of voting him.) It's pretty astonishing to me.

It's good to know 538 is the most cautious of all the predictors as well.  The Upshot, which aggregates a lot of these statistical models, seems to be more optimistic. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Unbelievable when you stop to think about it. 

[Zorral]

57 minutes ago, Ariadne23 said:

A question for my fellow liberals: if you had to vote for either a Republican or Libertarian for Congress, and these were the only two choices, what factors would you consider?

Create a new party with different candidates.

 

[DunderMifflin]

Does that mean we have a candidate so awful that those 3 must unite to try to stop it.  Or that we have a candidate so awful that those three must unite to support them?

Its probably happened a bunch of times actually.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

The Voltron electoral model? I can dig it.

KKK, you form the ass! KGB, you form the head! FBI, you form the beef whistle!

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

As for 538, you really shouldn't pay attention to Nate Silver this time around. Through some combination of wanting to hedge his bets after getting the Republican primary so wrong and feeling pressure from ESPN (who owns the site) to generate more click-bait, he has over-engineered his model to the point of it being worthless. Case in point, the poll yesterday showing Clinton winning Wisconsin by +6 actually improved Trump's chances of winning the election by 0.5% in the model.

His model hasn't changed from 2008 and 2012 to now in any way. If you didn't have a problem with it then, you shouldn't have a problem with it now. And the poll that showed Wisconsin by 6 meant that Trump's chances were actually improving relative to what they were before. 

[Dr. Pepper]

1 hour ago, Ariadne23 said:

A question for my fellow liberals: if you had to vote for either a Republican or Libertarian for Congress, and these were the only two choices, what factors would you consider?

Are you saying these are the only two viable candidates in the particular race?  Or the only two parties and platforms available all the time?  Is there no progressive available ever? 

I'm not a single issue voter.  Lots of things are very important to me and in no particular order:  Women's and LGBT issues, civil liberties, the environment, the economy, children's issues, social safety nets, quality affordable healthcare, education, foreign policy, criminal justice.  The Libertarian might not be rabidly anti woman or anti LGBT and maybe not rabidly bigotted or the like but s/he's probably wanting to dismantle half of the infrastructure that maintains everything we need to function as a responsible society. 

So, I don't know.  That's the grossest, worst choice anyone can have based on the two parties platforms. Maybe it depends on your state and the electorate for your congressional district.  A politician can do a lot of damage in two years, but it IS only two years and it's only one congressman.  Which one is most likely to annoy the population and inspire better challengers in two years time?  There, that's the factor I'd consider. Who will be easiest to challenge. 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ariadne23 said:

A question for my fellow liberals: if you had to vote for either a Republican or Libertarian for Congress, and these were the only two choices, what factors would you consider?

Good question, @Raidne. My major factors would be length of experience in office, specific choices on voting for or against voting, minority, and women's rights, and how much the person uses their religion vs. pragmatism and science in making their choices.