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2016 U.S. General Election


Pong Messiah
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From Gingrich & Giuliani's less than coded language accusing largely minority areas of voter fraud to Trump's 3rd debate "Bad Hombres" crack in regard to the southern border, it is no wonder George Will--yes, George Will--accurately tagged & predicted the fate of the Trump campaign (and GOP) on Fox News Sunday back in May--

 

 

 

The problem is this: not only are his negatives 61%, almost double his positives--32%, but he's appealing entirely to white people. Now, in 1988, George Herbert Walker Bush got 59% of the white vote, which was high, and that translated into 426 electoral votes. Mitt Romney in 2012 got 59% of the white vote--that translated into 206 electoral votes. Romney got 17%--that's all--of the non-white vote. Trump--by every measure--would do worse than that, which means he would have to get not just the 65% of the white vote to win what Ronald Reagan got, sweeping 49 states, he would have to get 70% of the white vote. A) it won't happen, and B) it would destroy the Republican party by making it the party of white people.

 

To casual observers, Will was simply saying what was known about Trump's campaign all along, but now--in just one week of Trump & his Legion of Doom "telling it like it is", Will's statement returns to be chiseled into the cold tombstone of the Republican party in a way no Democrat would match in a million anti-Trump rants.

 

Funny thing is, the Right never learns, instead, you have bitter men like O'Reilly dismissing Will as a "hack" for daring to point out the flaws in anything Right of center.

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OMG! I just received an email from my step-mom:

 

I really fear for our future if Clinton is elected. Trump is not the perfect candidate but I believe we at least have some hope of cleaning house and changing the direction our country is going. We have already voted the Republican candidates. This is not the time to vote for candidates that don’t have even a small chance of winning. This is not the time to NOT VOTE. The future of our country hangs on the results of this election.

 

Attached is a thing from Newt Gingrich about how corrupt State Department needs to be cleaned out.

 

http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2016/10/corrupt-state-department-must-be-cleaned-out/?utm_source=Gingrich+Productions+List&utm_campaign=cc709d44d1-corruptstatedept_101916&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bd29bdc370-cc709d44d1-51817317

 

and at the bottom of the email is some suggested children's books.

 

My parents genuinely believe Trump is going to win. I guess GA will go to Trump or even the county my parents live in. But wow.

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Part of me understands that notion-- that the system is broken and we need an outlier to seriously effect some change. I get that, I even agree to some extent. But if you stop for three seconds to look at Trump's rhetoric it's painfully obvious he's not the dude for that job.

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Yeah, it's pretty much the reason my Aunt and Uncle in Scottsdale are going to vote Trump too. Originally my Uncle John wanted Cruz because he felt Cruz was way crazier than Trump and would really shake things up. My opinion is that a vote for Trump is like electing a child king based on the fact that he could not actually run businesses (four bankruptcies plus his Foundation is a sham) and he's mostly made any money on name branding as well as his almost child like names for things and ideas. It would weaken the US to elect Trump internationally.

 

If we actually look at things Trump supports though I'd almost certainly vote for him outside of his rhetoric. I think he'd leave gay marriage alone, I want parts of Obamacare repealed and a new look at healthcare and rising costs to be addressed, he won't give a fuck about transvestites in bathrooms, and he might actually scare the crap enough out of Congress to get them to think about gun control issues and vote. Which is totally the opposite of what I think my religious step Mom wants. We have checks and balances in place to protect against truly bat-shit crazy Trump ideas, for example impeachment.

 

I am the black sheep in the family though so I get a lot of emails daily like this but I loved at the end that Mom suggested children's books to put in a Little Free Library.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Part of me understands that notion-- that the system is broken and we need an outlier to seriously effect some change. I get that, I even agree to some extent. But if you stop for three seconds to look at Trump's rhetoric it's painfully obvious he's not the dude for that job.

Yeah I understand it too, because the system is broken. But Trump, and like minded people wanting to blow it all up is not the answer, either. We still have to live in the system we have.

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Part of me understands that notion-- that the system is broken and we need an outlier to seriously effect some change. I get that, I even agree to some extent. But if you stop for three seconds to look at Trump's rhetoric it's painfully obvious he's not the dude for that job.

 

Yeah, if Trump were a referendum and not a person, I'm pretty sure he'd be winning.

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My opinion is that a vote for Trump is like electing a child king based on the fact that he could not actually run businesses (four bankruptcies plus his Foundation is a sham) and he's mostly made any money on name branding as well as his almost child like names for things and ideas.

There are a lot of good criticisms of Trump, but this really isn't one of them. Trump's network of businesses include hundreds of entities. Of those, four going bankrupt isn't terribly abnormal, in fact, it's below the average.

 

Most large holding companies will have multiple entities under them go bankrupt as some point or another, it's just the nature of risk-taking on certain ventures. You have to evaluate overall return on investment over the time period instead of cherry-picking bankruptcies. Sometimes you even have top level corporations going through reorganizations. Most large businesses have at one point; take the airline industry, every major US airline went through bankruptcy after 9/11.

 

Not targeting you specifically, this is just one of the dumbest attacks on Trump. There is plenty of good material out there, this isn't it.

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Those are just his highest profile easiest to target business venture complaints I have thrown out. Closer in he's sued and been sued numerous times and some smaller ventures have completely gone under. The tax loss is probably another indicator I feel concerning him as well as Trump University and the recent closing of the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City (which to be fair is more about Atlantic City becoming New Detroit City). While business has fluxes there is an emerging pattern which does not bode well. His continued bleating about rigged voting makes me think he knows the writing is on the wall and he's already started shifting blame. And Hillary played him right into that melt down.

 

However as I mentioned next I could almost still vote for him for the reasons I gave as well.

 

We'll see. Some interesting polls concerning states out there.

 

In an interesting what if... What if Hillary didn't say anything in the third debate? Would it have garnered her more votes? Because seriously that woman is not appealing to the Bernie losers. It's BLAH BLAH BLAH but nothing about her reaches across to millennials which Bernie seems to get. Pope pantsuit in the last debate made me think she was going to throw holy water at Trump.

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So Bexar county had a record breaking turn out for voters for the first day of early voting. People who never voted before turned out. Texas is becoming an actual battleground state. My idiot governor and his dumb attorney general could find themselves in tight spots soon!

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I have a feeling its voter error. Two close friends who went through training on the machines to work the booths said that the "new" electronic voting machines are harder for older people to understand. Even though they are given instructions on how to use the machines the proctors aren't allowed to remain behind and so the dummies are freaking out and stuff. You can review your votes before you submit and ask questions though. Personally I've never seen voter fraud in San Antonio. What I've read is that the machines aren't accepting their choice for president when they say they want to vote straight party ticket but there's a way to fix it and review before submitting.

 

I was kind of worried because my school is a voter station and I want kids to see the positive aspects of voting. As I type this another line of people are wrapped around our building and everyone is being being pretty nice and respectful.

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You seem to be painting an overly rosy picture of how this would play out. No, I do not think it would resemble 1912, and the party would not simply 'merge back' together. In 1912, most people didn't even know a convention was happening. For goodness sake, you're talking about an era before the television when the only people involved in the process were insiders in the party machine. You're conveniently ignoring my earlier point, that this is a world where every single ballot would be live-cast on CNN, complete with round the clock insta-blogging, tweets, and so on. Talk radio, Limbaugh, Hannity and the like would be commenting on every single person that votes, and my god would the pitchforks be at the ready. It would be absolute chaos, an unmitigated disaster, the likes of which we haven't seen in our entire lives, and the bad blood generated between factions would be deep and real. It is likely a serious third party would run, and not only would Clinton win (probably in a landslide), but the GOP would probably cease to exist shortly thereafter.

 

I keep coming back to this sentiment and it's truly mindboggling shortsighted. Paralysis based on tweets and a bad news cycle? Worry that the GOP would somehow cease to exist (how?). It's so... small and weak.

 

And it's no minor thing. We're talking about the presidency here. It's not something to mess around with because Laura Ingraham will say unkind things.

 

It's no wonder the Democrats always win on policy. Republicans have no ability to do the right thing if you wave the specter of bad press in front of them.

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I generally don't stray in here too often when I visit but I couldn't help myself. This election has been a circus. heh.

 

Yeah, I love it. People in my family rave about how great Sheriff Joe is in his jail policies but I'm like, "he's a dick and costing more than he saves". If I lived in AZ still I wonder if I would have voted for McCain this election too because I believe in term limits. We almost moved to Casa Grande when I was a kid but instead we ended up in Marana. I have family in Glendale, Cave Creek, Tucson and Scottsdale right now. My brother married a chick who works at the nuclear facility out near Casa Grande. You can see Maricopa County Jail from the road.

 

In presidential topic, I can't believe that it took a old video hot mic to really get people riled about Trump.

 

It's a really easy test in my family to tell who the racists are based on how big their support of good ol' Joe is. I live in Pinal so I can't vote against him but man I despise that guy and am glad he's on his way out. I think yesterday they officially charged him with criminal contempt.

 

There was a time back in August, fresh off the dem convention, when I thought 400 was a realistic goal for her. At this point I think her max is 375, with 350ish the most realistic. I don't think she wins Arizona, but from this election in its moving firmly into swing state territory. Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada are almost completely part of the blue wall now.

 

It's hard to say here, I think she's polling ahead of him last I checked but only by a small margin (think it was an AZ Republic poll). Trump has had some big rallies but the steam has really tapered off, at least among my right leaning relations. Most of my family seem to be turning to write ins and 3rd party options. So I think Republic apathy will play a bigger role in Arizona.

 

Those are just his highest profile easiest to target business venture complaints I have thrown out. Closer in he's sued and been sued numerous times and some smaller ventures have completely gone under. The tax loss is probably another indicator I feel concerning him as well as Trump University and the recent closing of the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City (which to be fair is more about Atlantic City becoming New Detroit City). While business has fluxes there is an emerging pattern which does not bode well. His continued bleating about rigged voting makes me think he knows the writing is on the wall and he's already started shifting blame. And Hillary played him right into that melt down.

 

However as I mentioned next I could almost still vote for him for the reasons I gave as well.

 

We'll see. Some interesting polls concerning states out there.

 

In an interesting what if... What if Hillary didn't say anything in the third debate? Would it have garnered her more votes? Because seriously that woman is not appealing to the Bernie losers. It's BLAH BLAH BLAH but nothing about her reaches across to millennials which Bernie seems to get. Pope pantsuit in the last debate made me think she was going to throw holy water at Trump.

 

Yeah the less she talks to/about my demographic the better. I am not a "liberal" I'm a progressive and all the policies I've seen come out of that pantsuit just make me want to vomit. Neither of the mainstream candidates talk about anything that remotely sparks my fervor, instead I just feel dread.

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I dunno. I had a great experience voting after school today. I didn't vote at the school I work at because I wanted to leave work. I voted at the library by my house. Every time a first time voter was signed in the proctor said FIRST TIME VOTER and people in line cheered. People were civil and nice even though they had to wait in line. I waited 30 minutes to vote in line but some areas have had two hour waits. They have drive up polling too in some areas which is good for people like the elderly who maybe can't stand long lines and didn't mail in their ballot. I didn't see any of the issues reported in Texas concerning electronic voting where the votes were flipped. We are breaking records in Bexar County for voters and I saw a ton of young people. I feel good about America right now. :thumbsup:

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You seem to be painting an overly rosy picture of how this would play out. No, I do not think it would resemble 1912, and the party would not simply 'merge back' together. In 1912, most people didn't even know a convention was happening. For goodness sake, you're talking about an era before the television when the only people involved in the process were insiders in the party machine. You're conveniently ignoring my earlier point, that this is a world where every single ballot would be live-cast on CNN, complete with round the clock insta-blogging, tweets, and so on. Talk radio, Limbaugh, Hannity and the like would be commenting on every single person that votes, and my god would the pitchforks be at the ready. It would be absolute chaos, an unmitigated disaster, the likes of which we haven't seen in our entire lives, and the bad blood generated between factions would be deep and real. It is likely a serious third party would run, and not only would Clinton win (probably in a landslide), but the GOP would probably cease to exist shortly thereafter.

 

I keep coming back to this sentiment and it's truly mindboggling shortsighted. Paralysis based on tweets and a bad news cycle? Worry that the GOP would somehow cease to exist (how?). It's so... small and weak.

 

And it's no minor thing. We're talking about the presidency here. It's not something to mess around with because Laura Ingraham will say unkind things.

 

It's no wonder the Democrats always win on policy. Republicans have no ability to do the right thing if you wave the specter of bad press in front of them.

 

Well putting aside the fact that I don't think the resulting convention fight would've been nearly as clean as you think (neither of us are going to convince the other on this, so we'll have to agree to disagree), for argument's sake, let's say it was relatively seamless.

 

Who do you think actually had a shot to beat Clinton? Only Cruz and Kasich were still in at that point, and I'm not sure I see either getting enough support at the convention (much less winning against Clinton). I guess there's also the dark horse possibility, that a compromise candidate emerges to win on the 50th ballot or whatever.. but it'd have to be someone who is generally acceptable to all factions, unblemished from the primaries, and already had name recognition, money, influence and ability to quickly build a national organization. There's really only one person that fits that description- Mitt Romney.

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OMG, yeah, CM.

 

No one who ran out of the more than a dozen who threw their hats in were remotely interesting to me. I have to hand it to you, though I seriously thought about Trump because of you. Can you imagine what the GOP might be like in a few years and or decades? They've gone through the growing pains and should be stronger.

 

Interestingly on my ballot for voting today there was very few GOP candidates to chose from for judge of some districts. Some Democrats were completely unopposed.

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OMG, yeah, CM.

 

No one who ran out of the more than a dozen who threw their hats in were remotely interesting to me. I have to hand it to you, though I seriously thought about Trump because of you. Can you imagine what the GOP might be like in a few years and or decades? They've gone through the growing pains and should be stronger.

 

Interestingly on my ballot for voting today there was very few GOP candidates to chose from for judge of some districts. Some Democrats were completely unopposed.

 

I could write tons on that (and already have), so instead of repeating myself, I'll just link you to this thread I recently started here. You'll get bored before you finish all my posts there, but that thread encapsulates my current opinions about where the GOP is and where it needs to go.

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Okay, so my parents are starting to face reality that Trump is not going to win. And a nugget of truth came out. They were hoping that Trump had a heart attack or bailed and Pence would move into the slot because they actually like Pence much better than Trump.

 

I really think Two Term Hillary has to count on a lot of ifs. I can see it happening and I can see it not happening. It all goes based on what voters in the next two years do about Congress and what comes out of the ruins of the GOP. I just know I want to see Cruz tarred and feathered and oustered.

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