This AP story about Trump’s path to the nomination is getting some attention:
A close look at the delegate math illustrates Trump’s problem. So far Trump has won only 46 percent of the delegates that have been awarded, even though he has won 10 of the first 15 contests. It takes an outright majority of delegates to win the nomination.
Going forward, Trump would have to win 52 percent of the remaining delegates to claim the nomination. That’s doable but difficult with three or more candidates claiming delegates.
This is an example of ignoring the elephant in the room, which in this case is winner-take-all primaries. The Republican schedule is backloaded with 15 of them, many of which are in big states. Let’s do a little simple math and see why all the talk of a brokered convention is so much horseshit.
Based on this table at Real Clear Politics (and who would know the rules better than them?), I put together this spreadsheet [link to a Google sheet]. It’s based on a few simple assumptions that we can all argue:
- Trump will continue to collect delegates in proportional races at the same percentage he has in the past (about 44%). Since Trump’s support in the Republican race is growing, and since there are states with thresholds and other obscure machinery that could award him more delegates to the top finishers, this is a pretty conservative estimate.
- Trump will win all the winner-take-all primaries except for Ohio, Kasich’s home state.
- Any contest where the delegates are unbound (112 delegates) is fodder for a floor fight, so those don’t count towards anyone’s totals. This assumption doesn’t matter because the rat pack of Cruz, Rubio and Kasich will keep fighting for scraps, so none of them will end up anything near Trump’s total.
Unsurprisingly, since the primaries are set up so that the leader of the pack can clean up in the later parts of the race, Trump goes into the convention with 1,472 delegates in this scenario. That’s 239 more than he needs. And Cruz and Rubio combined only get to about half of the 1,237 delegates needed to win.
I threw this model together in 10 minutes this morning, so it is crude. But it’s probably good enough for the purpose at hand, which is to show that anyone talking about a brokered convention or a Cruz/Rubio ticket needs to show why Trump will shit the bed in a pretty spectacular fashion in the next couple of months.
MattF
Oh, gosh… but math is hard.
JPL
How do you factor in the power of mitt?
lol
guachi
This thought about the winner-take-all occurred to me as well. Only I was too lazy to look up how many states it affected. It’s not like it’s an electoral concept that newspapers might think was too hard to explain to readers considering it’s the way almost all electoral votes are awarded.
I do find it ironic that the Republicans specifically changed their primary so that there would be a far less likely chance of no one having a majority come convention time.
John O
Still siding with Roy on Trump’s eventual crash and burn or the party elders just stealing it from him.
Here comes the kitchen sink, and from Trump’s own party no less. I don’t think they have past the 15th, particularly if Il Douche wins in FL and IL.
Iowa Old Lady
I’d love to see the chaos Trump creates if he’s somehow blocked from the nomination.
MattF
@guachi: Interesting how the combination of ‘deep bench’ illusions and ‘winner-take-all’ reality leads to disaster.
C.V. Danes
I’m still waiting for the Republican establishment to dig up a hooker from his past.
low-tech cyclist
You know, it’s bad enough that reporters want to talk about the horse race, and forget the issues and their potential consequences, which is what this is really all about.
But when they can’t even cover the damn horse race with any degree of understanding, what’s their excuse for existing?
mistermix
@John O: If I put myself in Republican shoes (boy, are they classy) I don’t see the win in a floor fight that nominates which guy: Cruz? Stone loser. Rubio? Rubio is going to be #3 at best when they get to Cleveland. Romney? Now we’re really in fantasy land.
Any floor fight leads to an almost certain loss. Trump, coming out of a united convention, has a chance of winning. A Trump presidency means a few conservative Supreme Court nominations and a rubber stamp for almost anything Congress dreams up. It is not the worst thing in the world for Republicans.
BGinCHI
One odd and amazing takeway from 2016: Big Money matters way more in state and local elections that it does nationally.
John O
@mistermix:
I didn’t say it was a winning strategy for them, in fact, it’s sort of a worst case self-destruct scenario as you lay out.
I’m just not sure they can stop the train at this point. If The Donald cleans the choker’s clock in FL and wins IL, he’s gonna be pretty hard to stop.
Jeffro
@mistermix:
I think they’ll do anything to avoid a floor fight, avoid installing Romney or Ryan in place of Trump, avoid creating a 3rd party (either Trump’s or a ‘pure Conservative’ party). It won’t take too much convincing for most Rs (both party leaders and the remainder of R voters) that Trump will simply bring most of the R executive-branch-in-waiting along with him and go with most of their policy requirements (to include SCOTUS nominees as you said).
(Hillary would do well to call Trump a “rubber-stamp Republican” from here on out…no good way out of that one for him)
My big wonder at this point is, what will Cruz do? Assuming the Rs get behind Trump and Trump has a clear path to winning the nomination outright, Cruz’s delegates won’t be worth much. Even being his usual skunk-at-the-party self won’t help him extort much (as I had been thinking). Maybe promise him a SCOTUS nom as the price for shutting him up through November?
Anyway, it will be exciting to see the #NeverTrump brigade have issues after March 15th…
Jeffro
@BGinCHI:
Well, for now it does…the Rs are in the middle of a civil war, very disorganized, very out of touch with their own electorate much less the general election one. Once those problems go away, big money will indeed be a huge issue.
Again, can’t recommend “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer enough. Talk about big money blowing up state and local races…the amounts being thrown around by the Koch shadow network are truly unbelievable.
Betty Cracker
The anti-Trump PACs are pulling out all the stops in Florida, let me tell ya — just carpet-bombing the networks with commercials that carry forward Rubio’s lines attack illustrated with photos of Trump with his hair in disarray. They are desperate for a Rubio win, and I suspect they’ll add new scripts to Rubio’s current “con-man-fraud-liberal” software program for tonight’s debate.
boatboy_srq
@low-tech cyclist: Maybe the MSM should task sportswriters with election coverage. They’re very good at digging into the backstory, and they’re much better with numbers.
boatboy_srq
@Betty Cracker: Well, now we know where the Unlimited Corporate Cash™ has gone. Once again Citizen United trips the people it was supposed to help.
Hoodie
@mistermix: All this stop Trump stuff is a pose, the GOP will largely fall in behind Trump if he gets nominated. If he gets killed in the general, it’s easy to purge him, Christie and few high profile followers. If he wins, they’ll turn him into the reincarnation of St. Ronnie. The racist stuff will get explained away, he’ll be taught proper dogwhistle, although the new version will be closer to the original German. The drooling masses will be placated because they’ll have a new strong man to worship, cowboy boots and swagger replaced with golf shoes and NYC brash. When the disaster hits about 6-8 years later, they’ll blame Obama.
rikyrah
LMAO at Romney giving a speech about Trump being dishonest.
POT.MEET.KETTLE.
FlipYrWhig
@efgoldman: Reporters and pundits seem to have been particularly dimwitted this year, getting hung up on the place that a candidate finishes (like there’s a big different between getting 17% and coming in second vs. 15% and coming in third) and habitually forgetting that a primary takes place _within a party_. “Donald Trump wins Massachusetts” sounds very different from “Donald Trump comes in first with 40-whatever percent of Massachusetts Republicans.”
rikyrah
WHAT DOG WHISTLES?
Trump doesn’t speak in dogwhistles……he’s giving full racist siren calls.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/2/16
Trump dog whistles heard loud and clear by racists
Joy Ann Reid, MSNBC national correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about a racist element that is drawn to Republican front-runner Donald Trump, and how Trump is exploiting that appeal as he campaigns through southern states
Chris
@John O:
I don’t believe Trump will crash and burn. I totally believe the party elders will try to steal it from him. It’s already pretty well established how deep these people’s respect for democracy is.
@Iowa Old Lady:
And this is why I’m hoping it happens. The establishment is fucked if they do that – he’ll run third party and throw the election to Hillary. It is, in fact, the only reason I can think of why the establishment might not try to steal it from him.
OzarkHillbilly
You win it with Dynamic Scoring ™ !!!!!
Chris
@C.V. Danes:
“Our records show you enjoy spending time with prostitutes.”
“Who doesn’t? I like sex. I like women. I’ll even get down on the floor with you right now if they’ll turn down the lights. But know this: the American people will find it refreshing to finally get a Republican candidate who isn’t a moralistic, sexually repressed, crusading hypocrite who cruises airport men’s rooms late at night. Denny Crane rides high in the saddle! I’ll go into office with my boots on, I’ll die with my boots on. What’s next?”
JMG
The only reason Republican party leaders are freaking out about Trump is that they think he’ll lose to Clinton, period. This is probably the only argument that could sway Republican voters, but the other candidates can’t make it since Trump can truthfully say, “well, I’m beating you, how’re you going to do better against her?”
My guess is that after he wins Florida the revolt collapses and its leaders welcome their new cormbovered overlord.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Reading Facebook… my Republican friend who loved the guy and was all in the tank for him four years ago: “Romney is the WORST! Why would ANYONE want his advice?”
Poor Mittens. Nobody likes a loser, not on that side of the aisle.
OzarkHillbilly
@mistermix:
Until you get to WW III after Putin laughs at the ferret on hos head.
Leo
Well, it seems pretty likely that Trump will shit the bed over the next few weeks because he is Donald Trump and shitting the bed is what he does. Problem is, Republican primary voters seem to like lying in shit.
Shell
@JPL: Oh, of all the attempts to derail the Trumpentum, the most hilarious and delusional is having Romney make a speech. Oooooh, that’ll show ‘im.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/2/16
History offers lesson to GOP on defying will of party voters
Rachel Maddow revisits the events of 1968 Democratic National Convention as an example of what can happen when party leaders defy party voters in the selection of a presidential candidate, an idea being entertained by Republican establishment figures in response to the success of the Trump candidacy.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Here’s George Lakoff’s take on why Trump is winning…worth a long read:
http://georgelakoff.com/2016/03/02/why-trump/
The two points at the end are especially worth noting: 1) Trump allows the bigots and racists to feel better, because he gets to say everything for them in this age of “political correctness” (i.e., people actually getting called out on their bigotry), and 2) it’s important to not use Trump’s framing whenever debating him, campaigning, etc. It just reinforces his positions in peoples’ minds.
JMG
@rikyrah: Nothing could be more different than 1968 and 2016. Back then the country was in the midst of two massive, polarizing and for many traumatizing events, the Vietnam War and what we’ll call the civil rights movement for brevity. Throw in a couple of murders of important national leaders to boot.
Now is in macro terms a quiet time, or should be. Our economy is neither great nor terrible. We are in a permanent state of low-level war in the Middle East in which care is taken to minimize American casualties, so the war gets relatively little attention.
Yet the political scene is dominated by a candidate whose supporters are fueled by rage and fear. They are frightened and angry because 1. They think white people are losing their privileged place in society and 2. The continued decline of the possibility of a decent middle class life, especially for people making a living with their hands and bodies.
The media has not and cannot present that analysis of Trump’s campaign, because it would require them to discuss racism and worse, the limits of “free market” (ha!) capitalism, two things our elites would prefer and pretend do not exist.
Woodrowfan
@Jeffro: interesting, thanks
Chris
@Shell:
See, this is why (amending my previous post) I actually can’t decide whether the Republican elites will try to blatantly steal the election from Trump or not.
On the one hand, like I said, it would definitely throw the election to the Democrats – whom I still think they all hate more, Trump-freakouts notwithstanding. And Trump really isn’t that different from what they’ve supported before. He’s still a 1%er obsessed with tax cuts. Shrugging and going all in behind Trump might very well be the smartest move they can make.
On the other hand… they may very well be too dumb to realize any of that. They’re using Mitt Fucking Romney as an anti-Trump weapon, for God’s sake. I can totally see them being dumb enough to try and cheat Trump out of the election, nominate Rubio or some other establishment toolbag like that, and sincerely expect him to beat both Trump and Hillary Clinton.
raven
@JMG: Rachel was explain how the Democratic party went against the wishes of the electorate and nominated Hube the Cube.
p.a.
@MattF: Not just math.
Nate Dawg
@raven: right. It was a limited comparison.
Calouste
To add to mistermix’s argument:
1) So far Trump has actually been underperforming compared to the national polls, even though the state polls were accurate. He’s gotten about 35% of the vote even though he is polling nationally around 42%. This suggests that he will do better in states that are yet to come.
2) California is not winner-takes-all overall, but it’s winner-takes-all by district, which if Trump has a decent lead, would be practically the same.
OzarkHillbilly
@JMG:
Yes there is. 2016 America versus 1922 Germany.
Jeffro
@JMG:
Probably important to note: GOP propaganda to the contrary, the media are not 100% liberal. I’m sure that writers, producers, broadcasters and other media types all skew significantly whiter than the country as a whole, too. Many of them might well agree with Trump – they have long since lost any sense of privilege they may have had, and certainly have been losing prospects for the possibility of a decent middle class life for the past couple of decades as papers fold, bureaus close, etc.
Not making excuses, just noting additional reasons why the media is not all in against Trump.
Considering those forces, actually, it has been a little surprising to see the editorials, front-page slams of Trump and Christie, and so on. It’s quite the signal: Trump really is THAT. BAD. for America.
JMG
@raven: That led to the McGovern commission and the start of the rules changes that created the proportional representation system for primaries and caucuses of today’s party. I didn’t see the show, but I hope Maddow mentioned the real dilemma. The party bosses and anti-war insurgents couldn’t unite because the candidate acceptable to both sides, RFK, had been murdered.
John O
Most of the places I hang out in like this one globally underestimate, IMO, the breadth and depth of Hillary Hate out there. I don’t think she beats ANYONE easily, no matter the circumstances, because her ceiling isn’t much higher than 52%, if it’s that high.
Jeffro
@Woodrowfan: No prob! Lakoff is kind of a two-note symphony…everything is about Nurturant Parent vs Strict Father worldviews, and everything in politics is about avoiding your opponent’s framing.
But in this case, both fit quite well.
raven
@JMG: Indeed she did. I watched the convention on the TV on our company dayroom as we prepared to ship to Vietnam. The election occurred after I got “in country” and, of course. since I was 18 I still had three years until I could vote!!
MazeDancer
@Hoodie: Absolutely accurate assessment. If they can’t stop him in the next wo weeks, GOP will embrace Trump.
The media who hate Hillary – an unfortunately large group – will use emails and “immunity” as long as they possibly can.
Mika hates Hillary so much that she makes Andrea Mitchell look like a fangirl. Mika is foaming and drooling at beating up Hillary with the emails. (Petraeus-did-worse-gpt-a-misdemeaner who?)
Some hope in that since Trump is a reality-TV show, his lack of fresh material will get boring in a few months. And in trying to keep the audience satisfied he’ll overstep to the point even Hillary hating media can’t cover for him. Slim chance. But possible.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: Nazism was a youth movement against the existing political culture. Trumpism is an attack on the existing political culture, but it’s hardly a youth movement, so its future sustainability is questionable.
Now if large numbers of BernieBros are stupid enough to join…
Chris
@MazeDancer:
Most of the memes I’ve seen on the right go the other direction on that comparison. “Petraeus lost his job over an indiscretion! Why hasn’t anything happened to Hillary?”
magurakurin
Holy Hell. DougJ was asking about DKOS and a nuclear bomb went off there today. Hmm, but that is idle speculation….seriously, the shit is hitting the fan, big time. Kos basically lost his shit with some Sanders people. A couple choice samples
then there was this exchange
Tank: Okay, what do you need?
Neo: Popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
Kos has said that March 15 is the end date. After that it’s ban hammer city. Should be interesting. In a sad, person without a life kind of way….
C.V. Danes
@Chris: Indeed! I don’t doubt that Trump would turn it around on them, although the Trump University case has the potential to grow legs.
OzarkHillbilly
@John O:
No we don’t, we are all quite aware of that fact, more than a few of us having been politically cognizant since before 1992.
FlipYrWhig
@magurakurin: Where is this happening? I haven’t been to the Tangerine Cesspool in years, popped over there and didn’t see any obvious place to begin…
Chris
@magurakurin:
I’ve never read the Daily Kos. What’s that all about?
FlipYrWhig
@John O: You mean there are Republicans? Cool story bro.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.:
Ummmm…. No. Also too, oversimplification of history is a sure way to get it wrong.
Chyron HR
@FlipYrWhig:
You don’t have to be a “Republican” to hate Hillary for murdering four American citizens at Benziggy.
Kathleen
@Hoodie: Don’t. forget major Mainslime Media worship. Let the leg tingling begin.
boatboy_srq
@Shell: Actually the GOProud public apology for introducing Trump to the GOTea probably is probably funnier. Especially since he’s least unfriendly of the GOTea candidates to LGBT volk.
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig: go to kos’s profile page and check his comments. It was in his diary about the revolution needs to start with people of color. All hell broke loose.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: But…National Republican Radio refers to it as an “undercurrent”!
magurakurin
@Chris: Kos is Salvadoran and he escaped from the war there.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: But it helps!
C.V. Danes
@OzarkHillbilly: Yup. Bringing the Sanders supporters into the fold should help, and I think Warren will be key to brokering that. However, Trump is perhaps the one person who’s more polarizing than Hillary, so it may not be as bad this time around.
Fair Economist
Your spreadsheet doesn’t show what you think it does. *If* Trump stays at current levels, he’ll win. But, because of the winner-take-all primaries, the Republican Establishment only needs to deny him about 2 big WTA states to keep him out. He won’t get quite as many delegates as you figure even with current numbers because a lot of the WTA states are actually WTA by congressional district, and he’ll lose a few of those. Add in 2 states with 100 or so delegates each and it’s a contested convention. A contested convention likely means no Trump nomination given the extreme hostility of the establishment and the fact that a lot of his delegates aren’t really his, but just party officials required to vote for him on the first ballot.
Another interesting conclusion is that Trump, by your estimates, won’t be able to clinch the nomination until the very last primary date, June 7. He’ll need California to put him over. That means the establishment has three full months to pull him down, which I think is fairly doable. That’s also good news for us, a 3 months on internecine warfare followed by a contested convention denying the nomination to the delegate leader is just electoral gold for us.
Germy
Proposal: replace Algebra II and Calculus with “Statistics for Citizenship”
http://boingboing.net/2016/03/03/proposal-replace-algebra-ii-a.html
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: There wasn’t an emphasis on strength thru physical activity, the indoctrination of the young, and incentives for aryan families to increase their rate of reproduction?
Also I didn’t
saymean it was only a youth movement.OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: From his wiki page:
Chris
@magurakurin:
And because he did that instead of becoming a guerrilla, that’s what warrants the “death squad” accusation, I guess? Oy.
schrodinger's cat
@Germy: You can’t really understand statistics without Algebra II. So may be Algebra II and Statistics?
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
thx.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
So he’s an anchor baby.
Redshift
This FB comment from a friend in response to someone declaring that he’s going to reluctantly vote Trump if Bernie isn’t the nominee because he “isn’t owned by company donations” is to good not to share:
max
Any contest where the delegates are unbound (112 delegates) is fodder for a floor fight, so those don’t count towards anyone’s totals. This assumption doesn’t matter because the rat pack of Cruz, Rubio and Kasich will keep fighting for scraps, so none of them will end up anything near Trump’s total.
It doesn’t matter here. If the Republicans with the fucking money want to hit Trump they should start today, in Ohio and Florida. And start in on the rest of the backloaded states. He’s up against Megyn Kelly tonight and she can ding him. (She’s done so twice. Perhaps the third time is the charm.)
The relevant issue is that they keep claiming they can hit the guy, they keep claiming they desperately don’t want him, and they’re the ones with the money and influence. So do it.
If these guys want the D’s to do something about Trump (how is that supposed to work?) perhaps they should stop blockading Obama’s Supreme court pick.
max
[‘The delegate count is not actually relevant here.’]
C.V. Danes
@magurakurin: The revolution will start with educated young males, regardless of color because:
1. They’re young with nothing to lose,
2. They’re already educated and know the system is still stacked against the non-elite with no hope of changing the system nonviolently and,
3. Testosterone fueled anger.
The dispossed are more often than not people of color, but color alone has little to do with it, other than increasing the feeling of being dispossed and fueling the anger.
Baud
@Redshift:
I hold to my view that anyone debating between Trump and Bernie will choose Trump in an election of Trump v. Bernie.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@John O: I think he’s far too savvy to crash and burn, and I think he gets an outriht majority of delkegates. And I think the establishment, at that point, simply says “no way, Jose” and hands it to someone else.
THAT will be the end of the partei.
C.V. Danes
@Germy: Interesting! I’ll be teaching at CUNY as an adjunct this fall.
OzarkHillbilly
@C.V. Danes: Yep. I have been saying for a while that this election will, like most elections, come down to GOTV. What has been going on between Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters is nothing compared to the pending meltdown*** on the GOP side. A lot of rank and file Republicans who have been holding their noses for years are finally saying “this goes too far”. While I doubt any of them will ever pull the lever for Hillary or Bernie, I do think a lot of them won’t pull it for Trump.
*** purposeful hyperbole, I don’t think in any way shape or form a Trump nomination will be the end of the GOP as we know it, rather I think it might be the first necessary step towards their much needed “come to Jesus” moment.
Bill E Pilgrim
Noticed a name change this morning:
https://www.anony.ws/i/2016/03/03/FaultyEarpieceTowers.jpg
Iowa Old Lady
I’m looking at the people on Kos’s site saying he’s a traitor to the progressive cause. They do know he owns the site, right? I mean, they know he can kick them off?
ETA: I used to post on a fanfic site where people would sometimes get mad at the owner and insult her and then scream discrimination when she kicked them off. It was like they thought they owned the site because they were there.
C.V. Danes
@Baud: I think anyone seriously debating between Trump and Sanders is either schizophrenic or one of those rare individuals who can keep two truly opposing viewpoints in their head without it exploding.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
John Cole is a traitor to the progressive cause.
.
.
.
Still here.
C.V. Danes
@OzarkHillbilly: Yep. For them the question will be who repulses them the most. They will never vote for Hillary (or Bernie for that matter), but their repulsion of Trump may just be strong enough to make them stay home.
Redshift
@Baud:
Truth.
Chris
@Redshift:
The “at least he’s not owned by corporate fat cats” is too ridiculous for words when the man IS a corporate fat cat. I mean, this is a guy who’s bragged about buying politicians.
“Hey, you know these places where the Mafia owns most of City Hall? You know what would be AWESOME? If the Mafia kingpins actually RAN for City Hall! That would TOTALLY change things!”
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: I absolutely agree. I think Bernie’s biggest problem with the potential for crossover that we keep hearing about is that he’s righteously angry about banks and Wall Street and billionaires, economic fairness, etc. But he has such ennui about _everything else_. And those economic issues are only part of the story if you get to be the president. He’s not Mariano Rivera making a career on one amazing unhittable pitch.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.:
OK, that’s what I thought you were saying. My point was that Hitler’s support was across a far broader spectrum of German society than just the “youth”, also that there were many different motivating factors behind the rise of Nazism. Been too long since I read any of that stuff so I really can’t discuss it any detail, but I can assert that there are big differences between now and then, and us and them.
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: It’s entertaining in a horrifying way.
p.a.
@Baud: “I try to be as progressive as I can possibly be
as long as I don’t have to try too much”
Lou Reed
Fair Economist
@Chris: That Mafia analogy is good.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
I think his biggest hurdles would be the old standbys: taxes and racism.
Trump will make America great again by lowering your taxes and not giving away your money to those losers. Who can compete with that?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: And a Chicago thug, just like the Kenyan usurper.
Baud
@p.a.: Ha! Lou Reed would love blogging. No effort involved whatsoever.
Fair Economist
@Baud:
FTFY
Peale
@Redshift: Yep. That awkward moment when the progressives find out that just hating the banks passionately isn’t really enough to form an alliance with Trump voters because they hate the banks for different reasons.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: Richard J Evans trilogy from early 2000’s is excellent.
Again to oversimplify by just looking at rhetoric: Make America Great Again. Return Germany to its rightful place among nations.
OzarkHillbilly
@Redshift: That is good. If I was on FB I’d steal it.
p.a.
@Baud: Later today I’m scheduled to twirl my moustache and foreclose on a widow with 17 kids. But here I espouse all the proper opinions.
raven
@p.a.: I had forgotten that that was one of the storylines of “Remains of the Day”.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris:
If they want him to lose, they’ll find a way to make him lose “fair and square”, I think. Or try to. They’ll cut his legs off before a floor fight becomes necessary.
There was talk about Trump’s taxes earlier. I expect that to be hammered on by the remaining dwarves before the end of the month. As David Cay Johnston said, it seems quite likely that Trump was (legally) claiming negative income in his federal taxes. He would be a “bad businessman” if he didn’t. It may be legal, but it looks horrible and I would think it would look horrible to just about every Teabagger and GOP voter. It’s really hard to finesse that. It’s hard for him to claim to be a champion of the little people when he’s pulling the same stunts as the 0.01%.
Rmoney had a problem with his taxes, but he was smart enough to not claim all the deductions he was Entitled to for a couple of years before he ran so that he would have something to release. It’s not at all clear that Trump planned that far ahead. His federal taxes may be his Achilles Heel.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scot.
Matt McIrvin
I think the brokered-convention scenarios generally assume that Kasich will take Ohio and Ted Cruz, or maybe a shocking swerve Mitt Romney insurgency or something, will take several of the other winner-take-all states and become a major player in the later proportional primaries.
It’s pretty unlikely. Maybe still not completely impossible.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady:
They like to say “Well, you invited me into your living room. Who are you to object if I sh!t on the couch?” People with the tolerance level of our beloved blog host are truly rare.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: It helps that he’s never here.
Ready
Romney to hit Trump today on his various frauds– Trump U, Trump Mortgage, tax returns and etc!
Combine it with the all out assault by the Ricketts family, as well as Singer and the Hedge Fund Boys, and things don’t look good for Trump!!
#NeverTrump
#HFB
mdblanche
@C.V. Danes:
I don’t think that would work, unless you mean “dig up” literally.
Matt McIrvin
@C.V. Danes:
“Reeeed! The blood of angry men! Blaaaaack! The dark of ages past!”
OzarkHillbilly
@C.V. Danes: I think they’ll still vote, just not for Trump. There’s the House, the Senate, the state govt house and senate, Govs, AG, etc etc. They know how important those other races are, that’s why they reliable turn out in off year elections.
Eric U.
@Iowa Old Lady: I was on dKos before they came up with the current user system, so I remember quite a bit of history about the place. One thing I know, if you cross Kos he will get rid of you. The mass banning of 9/11 truthers comes to mind. My guess is that most of the Bernie supporters don’t think this applies to them or have never seen Kos act in anger. The site goes on without the banned, that’s for sure
Heh, RtR is back? Got a new job? Nice. eta: actually this just reinforces my suspicion that RtR is actually JEB?
Chyron HR
@Ready:
Do we have to send the Rickets family, Byran Singer, and the Hedge Fund Boys separate thank-you cards, or can we just give you one and you’ll pass it around to them?
Nate Dawg
@Ready: Is this good news for JEB? Brush?
Iowa Old Lady
@Eric U.: That’s my recollection of 2008 too, though I wasn’t a commenter or anything. He kicked the PUMA people off in the name of supporting the Democratic nominee.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.:Whatever else you might say, Lou was didn’t have many illusions about himself.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist:
I’ve been wondering about California. The last poll I could find there was around New Year’s and showed Ted Cruz jumping into a narrow lead. But there’s nothing recent.
Goblue72
@BGinCHI: This is not new. This has been known for quite awhile. Money has far less influence on Presidential elections than on state legislative races, or Federal House seats.
Nate Dawg
@magurakurin: What thread is kos joining? I wouldn’t mind seeing that, but don’t have time to wade through the “Hillary is a CRIMINAL BEHNGAZZIA!!!!” shit.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Vote Baud! 2016! Less of a traitor to the progressive cause!
p.a.
@mdblanche: Edwin Edwards: “the only way I can lose the election is to be caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.”
“My opponent (David Duke) and I have one thing in common: we’re both wizards under the sheets.”
Calouste
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Trump won’t see any loss as being “fair and square”.
Nate Dawg
@Matt McIrvin: White!!!! The color of Bernie’s hair!!!!!!!!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Well that’s obvious, how else would I be allowed to comment still?
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
Alas, those guys were all dead the morning after General Lamarque’s funeral.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s missed. Does anyone do rock & roll for adults anymore? Bombastic Bruce?
Amir Khalid
@Nate Dawg:
Is Les Mis reference.
Matt McIrvin
I think the most likely scenario is mistermix’s: Trump just takes it outright. The Republicans yell and scream but they mostly fall in line by November. The anti-Trump forces are not going to coalesce behind anybody because there’s not a lot they have in common aside from being Republicans. There’s no Reagan figure to pull together the establishment types and the Ted Cruz fans; Mitt Romney may actually be the closest thing to a unifying figure they’ve got. Most of them probably prefer Trump to the other guys’ favored candidate(s).
p.a.
New thread up! race u there to see who can fuck it up first…
magurakurin
@Nate Dawg: http://www.dailykos.com/user/kos/comments
You will find the fights here. The thread is over 1000 coments long and there are two of them now
Applejinx
@C.V. Danes: Not really. The point there (I mean in a case where the person REALLY TRULY was balanced between Trump and Sanders) isn’t nearly as schizzy as you think.
The message there is, must destroy the system! at all costs! and it’s a message I can sympathize with, but not the ‘at all costs’ part.
People like that believe that, undestroyed, the system is STABLE. It’s very much not stable. It’s collapsing much like Soviet Communism, in extremely obvious ways. People like that think just because it’s The System, it’s all-powerful and un-collapsible and therefore must be destroyed no matter what it takes to do that.
So yeah, it’s not Bernie or even Trump who are driving the ‘destroy the system’ forces, because both of them have grand ideas for how to fix everything and if you believe that you’ve already bought in to the idea that it’s fixable.
It’s actually the people who are continually posting things like ‘YASQUEEN!’ and insisting that the system is impregnable and can’t be destroyed… so therefore only little incremental things should be done and we should be really excited about any scrap we get, because the world is far too big and complicated to alter… and I’m pointing at BOTH the Hillary people here, and the Jeb people who I guess are also here but are pushing for Mitt Romney now… it’s THOSE people who are generating the ‘Bernie or Trump’ voter.
I completely understand the mindset. It’s basically the logical conclusion of that message. If things are this bad, and you’re being told loudly to shut up because nothing can be changed, the obvious thing to do is throw electoral bombs, and it doesn’t matter that much what you paint on the shell. It’s going to be tangled shrapnel anyway, but it just might take out the tank that’s running you over, and that is ALL that matters.
I prefer the lefty electoral bomb, but then I also believe the system is collapsing. If I really seriously believed the system wasn’t collapsing, I too would be a ‘Bernie or Trump’ voter with my only interest, wrecking the Establishment. I think I can be a BIT more nuanced than that.
Nate Dawg
@Amir Khalid: I know. “The color of despair” rhymes with “the color of Bernie’s hair”.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: One thing that could mitigate the effect of a revenge third-party run by Trump is that, starting that late, it would be hard for him to get on the ballot as an independent in many states (and impossible in a few, like Texas). It might be largely a write-in campaign, and write-in campaigns never take a large fraction of the vote.
Just One More Canuck
@Redshift: @OzarkHillbilly: I’m going to paste that into every pro trump feed I see (even up here in Canuckistan, there’s some Trump curious lunkheads)
Nate Dawg
@Applejinx: Things aren’t that bad. They suck, yes, but people in the U.S. by and large don’t have a good grip on how bad things can *actually* get.***
***The only people that it is that bad for are dismissed as “not progressive enough” for the Sanders crowd. That is, urban blacks.
Nate Dawg
@Applejinx: See, I personally don’t want an economic collapse to happen, again. We have sapped our resources on the last one, and with interests late remaining low, we would go under, Soviet Union style bad.
Let’s not have that happen, okay?
Trump is a big risk for that sort of situation. Sanders and Clinton are not. So I’m happy with either of them.
Matt McIrvin
@Nate Dawg: And Native Americans! But it’s been that bad for ages for them.
C.V. Danes
@Applejinx: I agree that they’re both insurgent candidates, but they represent diametrically opposed factions. If you put a group of Trump supporters in a room with a group of Sanders supporters and locked door, there’s gonna be blood :-)
Technocrat
@Applejinx:
I don’t agree with all your positions (for example I think the system is stable), but I appreciate how well you express them. It’s very illuminating.
Nate Dawg
@Matt McIrvin: Truly. I shouldnt’ have said “only”.
Main Point: It’s not that bad for WHITE LIBERALS–the ones who are so intent on tearing it all down.
Guess what, folks? If you tear it all down, the ones to suffer the most are the same ones you are alienating for not supporting your quixotic effort to tear it all down.
It’s not a coincidence.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: er
Scot.Scott.Cheers,
Scott.
Applejinx
Oh, I think you’re mistaken. One can’t reasonably compare say, rural Vermonters living in a declining neighborhood with Somalian peasants, and say ‘you see? everything is fine’.
It’s more about how people are doing now, with what their parents and grandparents had, combined with what expectations are placed upon the present-day people. By that metric, we’re doing REALLY bad because back in the day America kicked serious ass and was really an extraordinary place. The bar’s a lot higher, and thanks to extensive poverty-demonizing by both Republicans and Third Way Dems, it’s deeply deeply shameful to not strive like a mofo as an American.
This while prominent Dems are trying to deregulate payday lenders, while the so-obligatory college education costs staggeringly more than ever before and is increasingly a private-sector, not public-sector thing, and school debt is exempt from bankruptcy. It’s stunningly rigged, breathtakingly cynical and evil, and the people benefiting from it aren’t even happy because it’s crabs all the way up and they feel very overstressed and put-upon, picked on, for anybody to be complaining about them. Aren’t they just trying to get ahead?
Things are too that bad. If our grandparents were Somalian farmers, maybe not. But these things are relative and local, and the system’s collapsing from bottom to top. Don’t believe me? Start a business.
C.V. Danes
@Nate Dawg: The issue will be if the U.S. can backstop the finance industry again when, and I do mean when, it happens. There’s going to come a point where even our government can’t float the system, and then things will get very ugly very quickly.
Nate Dawg
@Applejinx: Not the comparison I’m making.
We can compare to the other developed countries’ recoveries.
Our recovery was the best in the world. We have suffered the least. We don’t have it “that bad”.
By we, I mean “white liberals” generally. Unemployment is very low where I live, and everyone who wants a job has one. Rents are not that high, and people can by and large afford housing.
They have little savings, and if you have anything go wrong–health problems, single parenthood, etc.–you are screwed, but this isn’t *that* bad, compared to the alternative.
This is the problem with revolutions. They rarely result in something better, and risk losing what we do have. Tread lightly.
Nate Dawg
@C.V. Danes: Indeed.
C.V. Danes
@Applejinx:
DWS really needs to get the boot over that one. Trump is gonna connect that with Hillary lecturing the banks and get a lot of mileage.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
Unless you were black, or brown, or Jewish, or gay, or a woman, or disabled. But if you were white and straight and male and Christian and able-bodied, everything was just fucking awesome. Then there was a sudden fall when The Corporations paved paradise and put up a parking lot, I think, by the Bernie Sanders theory.
Applejinx
@Nate Dawg: I think the biggest collapse might happen under a President Clinton. Or a President Jeb! which now can’t happen and thank fuck for that.
Either Trump or Sanders would be so alarming that it’d set up ‘soft landing’ conditions. All the expectations would be for disaster, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we’d be constantly hearing about problems, and things would sort of spin down.
With a Jeb! or Clinton, the message would very powerfully be that the system is stable, and it’s some of the voters that are bonkers and need fixing. That’s a recipe for further bubble-inflation and ‘optimism’ and the system is not stable. It has to be spun down and reregulated (I’m thinking global finance, mostly, but that has captured nearly everything from pensions to government). Give it an excuse to go ‘everything is dandy!’ and expand further, it WILL expand until it bursts, again.
It’s for this reason that I’m very disinclined to even contemplate Trump as a ‘burn it all down’ choice. Really want to burn it all down? Vote for Hillary Clinton and make damn sure she wins, especially if this ‘payday lender’ thing isn’t a kabuki stunt to make a Warren endorsement look good.
Give them more rope and the whole thing will blow up. Clinton could preside over the most appalling collapse of living standards since Hoover, through no specific fault of her own. The system is NOT stable.
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: Do you/we know that anyone other than Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made any effort to do anything on that score? Because this is pretty hyper to get over one Congressman’s cosponsorship of a bill, then sending a letter in the hopes of getting others to vote for it. Is anyone else receptive? That was kind of left out of the original HuffPo clickbait.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
Still with this? Christ almighty.
FlipYrWhig
@Technocrat: Raise your standards, Tech.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: That’s the saving grace of a Clinton presidency. I don’t think she’ll fail to continue the progress Obama has made on these fronts. I’m genuinely enthusiastic about that.
I’m a Berniac, I tend to be talking purely about macroeconomics.
@C.V. Danes:
THIS. This is exactly what I’m saying. It’s no joke, and much like climate change, refuse to see it or deal with it and it will quickly become THE big issue, the only thing that matters.
Nate Dawg
@Applejinx: I don’t think it’s fair to pen the payday thing on Clinton.
Trump’s winning the general would allow the crazy house to have their crazy legislation passed.
Federal land back to states. Gut the EPA. Trash Obamacare…..and where does it stop? Will they cut Medicaid entirely? Will they cut ADAP? What about Disability & Medicare?
This could get nasty in a really, really bad way with a President Trump.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: It had bloody well better be a kabuki stunt. It’s like handing Donald Trump ammunition, and painting a big-ass bullseye on yourself.
People genuinely like Elizabeth Warren, and people genuinely like Barack Obama. This is unthinkably bad optics, potentially damaging beyond all calculation because of the ‘betraying both Warren and Obama’s hard work’ factor. It’s literally the opposite of what’s needed coming from the single most exaggerated boogeyman of the anti-progressive Dem establishment, at the worst possible time.
That’s why I think it’s a setup, meant to fail. Either it’s DWS falling on her sword in a kabuki stunt to aid Clinton, or the Clintons are everything that even I didn’t believe they are. It’s appalling and the stupidest possible politics I’ve ever seen, unless it’s the cleverest politics I’ve ever seen.
Applejinx
@Nate Dawg: The hope is that the payday thing is specifically there for Clinton to publically come out against it.
The optics for that would be GREAT. (but I’ve outlined that scenario before)
Technocrat
@Applejinx:
I have to point out that even here you’re speaking metaphorically – “burn it down”. When people are actually angry enough to burn things down, cities actually burn. They aren’t Twitter fires.
What we’re seeing now is people who want something better, not people who have nothing to lose. Unrest, certainly, but everyone wants to be able to log into Facebook tomorrow, and buy something from Amazon, and watch Netflix. Those things are the system, and even Trump voters want them to continue.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Oh my God. It is Debbie Wasserman Schultz kissing a local interest’s butt. It is not more than that. The Clintons and guilt by association and Elizabeth Warren… where are you coming up with this? Over and over and over and over again you do this. Why do you build these castles in the air with every news item? Is it your hobby? Is it what you do instead of fantasy football?
Technocrat
@FlipYrWhig:
What can I say, I have a big tent ;)
FlipYrWhig
Dale GribbleApplejinx : then the Cuban robot soldiers have only Steve Wynn standing between them and Wichita.liberal
@Nate Dawg: I’m really worried about them giving most of the federal land away. That’s irreversible.
C.V. Danes
@FlipYrWhig: That I don’t know. I was reading about it over at Charlie Pierce’s joint and thinking that its little tonedeaf things like this that Trump will use to inflict the death of a thousand cuts on Clinton.
KithKanan
I can’t have been the only one thinking this. It was a better speech than Romney’s, though it didn’t end well…
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: It’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz fighting advances made by Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, popular progressive legislation, while she is the head of the Democratic National Committee.
We’re waiting to see how Clinton responds to this because it really could go two different ways, but it’s the most polarizing thing imaginable. If your own spin (that undermining and dismantling what progressive achievements we HAVE MADE with the assistance of the only Barack Obama we’ll ever have the luxury to elect twice, is a nothingburger and should be lightly dismissed as not important) is actually how things stand… and I hope to GOD you aren’t some Clinton campaign person trying to establish that narrative… then there is literally no reason not to vote for Trump and deal the Democratic party a death-blow.
Because if you side with predatory lenders against Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, you are on the other side. Full stop. This is inexcusable. It needs to be swatted down.
If that’s true nobody should trust you on racial justice or anything else.
jl
Seems to me that mistermix’s admittedly crude model shows that it may be closer than expected, and Trump does not have it sewn up. Which, underneath the over-hype in the title, is all that article is was saying.
IIRC some of the article’s conclusions depended on polling evidence that Trump was starting to lose support close to Super Tuesday. Mistermix assumes Trump retains it. So a conflict in assumptions, which depend in length of time used to estimate a trend, which may cover a period over which the trend changes.
So, serious and sincere thanks for doing the modelling. My interpretation differs. I think it shows that there is a reason that the Establishment GOP thinks it has a shot at stopping Trump, and may give it a reason to try. Though on the other hand, I heard about similar joint force attacks on Trump that didn’t amount to much before, so not sure this new one will actually exist, or if it does, that it will amount to much. Democrats don’t really care whether it would work, but just hope that it makes a bigger mess, anyway.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: I see no evidence of weakening Trump support in the national numbers, beyond the random fluctuations you always see from poll to poll. If anything his support shot up into the 40s at the end of February (that one CNN poll looks like a high outlier).
This offensive from within the Republican Party could have some effect, but I doubt it’ll put a big dent in him. I think a lot depends on whether he can stay where he is for the rest of the primary campaign, but nothing Republicans have tried has taken him down so far.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: The inside of your head must look like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Alan Grayson is a Bernie Sanders supporter. Does everything Alan Grayson does become an immediate liability for the Sanders campaign? Does the fact that Alan Grayson has a hedge fund instantly negate anything Bernie Sanders has said or might ever say about the financial sector? If not, why not?
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Let Hillary intercede for Elizabeth Warren, then.
Very simple. It’s either one thing or the other, and you don’t get to tell me not to care about the Elizabeth Warren/Barack Obama initiatives here.
Sheesh, all of a sudden it’s FINE to stomp on Obama’s legacy, when it’s the head of the DNC doing it…
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about? A member of Congress did something obnoxious. You have somehow convinced yourself that it’s all part of an elaborate wheels-within-wheels double reverse conspiracy having to do with the diabolical Hillary Clinton. You also thought the fact that the phones in your campaign office were on the fritz one day was ALSO part of a coordinated campaign of DNC/Hillary malfeasance. Maybe it’s your ability to process reality that’s the problem.
Matt McIrvin
…The polls are probably going to stop asking about Ben Carson pretty soon now that he’s sorta-kinda dropping out, so it’ll be interesting to see where his support goes. It’s not a lot of voters, but when we’re talking about whether Trump can make it to 50 percent of delegates it could turn into a game of inches.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: The article I read made the case of weakening on internals of tracking polls, not top line results that would be data points in trend line graph you use.
I agree the case for weakening is speculative. But mistermix’s analysis shows a swing of less than 5 percent of committed delegates can stop Trump from winning.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
He’s admittedly on the spectrum. So, yeah, reality is a problem.
C.V. Danes
@FlipYrWhig: In a sane world, I would agree. But in the insane world of the Clinton Rules, DWS’s pushing of a bill supporting payday loansharks will be linked back to a dead body in Whitewater :-)
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Oh, right. I guess I shouldn’t get so frustrated.
Barry
@C.V. Danes:”….although the Trump University case has the potential to grow legs.”
It’s pretty clear now that even people with 10% of Teump’s money don’t get taken down by mere criminality.
Applejinx
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: You do realize I’m honest about that sort of thing to let people show their real selves in places like this? You carry on with the ad hominem. It’s sure to play super well among everybody that isn’t a self-absorbed, cursing, name-calling Hillary partisan, and we’ll all have tons of fun.
The thing with trying to gut Obama/Warren legislation put in place to protect Americans from usury, is that it can’t be both a “elaborate wheels-within-wheels double reverse conspiracy” and “having to do with the diabolical Hillary Clinton”. Either it’s a fancy, eleven-dimensional chess ploy to have Warren endorse Clinton while paying no penalty among the progressive left, OR it’s evidence that Hillary is totally fine with gutting progressive legislation if it’s her cronies doing it, and it doesn’t matter how ‘diabolical’ they are.
It’s only one or the other. Not both. I’d like to believe it’s the former, perhaps schemed up by Obama who is capable of working moves like that out. But either you and Whig are going to look very silly, or Hillary and her people are worse than I’ve been saying they are.
Cheers :)
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: What do you think is the number of people who will ever hear one whisper about Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s attempt to lobby support among Democrats for a bill undoing regulations on payday lending? That’s already an infinitesimal number of political obsessives. What do you think is the proportion of that number who will attribute Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s position on that bill to Hillary Clinton’s attempt to extract an endorsement from Elizabeth Warren? What do you think are even the odds that this bill becomes the law of the land? I think I have a pretty good idea of who looks very silly. Very, very, deeply, silly.