Just grabbing a bit of a Chris Cizilla post on Trump’s ceiling:
There’s no debate that Trump’s electoral college floor is lower than that of any other possible Republican nominee in recent memory. You could also argue —as I have — that his electoral college ceiling is higher than (or at least different from) any of the party’s past nominees. For what it’s worth, here’s what a Trump best-case-scenario map might look like….
That’s Trump at 285 electoral votes, 15 more than he would need to become president….
Cilizza is arguing that Trump is the highest variance Republican candidate. I can see that argument, and rationally speaking, if the 2016 fundamentals are neutral to slightly lean Democratic with a combination of a decent economy, general peace and a Presidential year electorate that is looking more and more liberal as the conservative base is dying off much faster than the liberal base and the liberal base is getting refreshed much faster than the conservative base, a high variance strategy is not bat shit insane. It guarantees more blow-out losses but it will get a few more wins.
But assuming no colossal cock-ups, the ceiling for Republicans under the current political alignment will continue to shrink so the incentive for the GOP to push high variance national candidacies will grow, not shrink, in 2020 and beyond.
Matt McIrvin
This map is actually reassuring, since it involves Trump running the table in a bunch of states where he’s really not doing well right now.
Matt McIrvin
…I’m not at all convinced that Trump has the highest ceiling of current R candidates, though. It’s clear Kasich is a much stronger general-election candidate than he is, though obviously the resentment of Trump voters if he were somehow installed as nominee would be a serious problem.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt McIrvin: Wisconsin and Michigan, their off-year elections notwithstanding, haven’t gone for an R president in quite a while.
Paul in KY
I can see what he’s doing here. This represents Trump’s best case scenario. Nasty to see, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I personally figure Trump (or, for that matter, another Republican) flipping FL+OH+PA to win is more likely than this kind of no-Pennsylvania scenario, which involves a bunch of smaller bluish states going his way. But Pennsylvania becomes a harder get for them every year.
Maybe the PA scenario is just more plausible to me because the right-wing, Pennsyltucky part of the state is mostly what I’m familiar with.
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s the Romney map redux.
There’s basically no scenario now where a Republican can win the general without both Ohio and Florida, and still possible for them to lose after winning both.
Thanks for the new electoral map, Obama.
CONGRATULATIONS!
They get in line. They always get in line. Remember that. He could pull it off. He’s got to win the primary first, which I think will actually be harder than the general.
JPL
Although I agree they are bat shit insane, and have said so for awhile, I don’t necessarily agree with this statement. It guarantees more blow-out losses but it will get a few more wins. The Republicans know that they can run on fear alone. Ebola is going to kill us all being just one example. If one attack on home soil, no matter how small, the media will insure a republican victory in the fall.
Tim C.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I’ve wondered if there needs to be a new designation in the color scheme for states that aren’t really “purple” so much as Red and Blue based on the stark differences between turnout on presidential and off years. PA and MI being good examples. Also some states that get mentioned as “leaning” one direction are just low margin, but solid blue and red states. Oregon for example hasn’t elected a statewide R since 2002.
Edit: Though no way in H. E. double hockeysticks that Utah votes for Hillary. If no third-party “true conservative” happens at a national level, they will elect their own.
redshirt
I agree with the premise that Trump potentially has a bigger upside, if you assume he might draw voters who would not normally vote and there’s enough of those to overcome the other normally voting Repukes who won’t vote for him.
But that’s an exceedingly small proposition. The greater downside is a far more likely result.
schrodinger's cat
Did Cillizza pull this map out of his ass?
cokane
i dont think Trump’s success is actually tied to any real-world calculation about win opportunity. You could argue he’s a better gen election candidate than Cruz, but that’s probably it
AnonPhenom
? Martin
That was the thinking behind Sarah Palin as VP pick. The electoral map was too constrained for the GOP in 2008. Their ceiling wasn’t much higher than 270, while Obama’s wasn’t much lower. The odds of a GOP win were extremely low. None of the other VP names changed that calculus in a meaningful way, but Palin did simply by blowing the error bars out. She was a hail mary that didn’t work, but needed to be tried, at least in the narrow context of that one race.
But the problem with looking at the EV math is that the opportunity costs get lost. Palin did a lot of damage both to the GOP brand but particularly to downticket races. Trump might have an outside chance of squeaking over 270, but if not, the carnage downticket will the monumental.
Matt McIrvin
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Given the hypothesis that Republicans will always get in line, the best thing they could do to win would be to pull the party coup and install Kasich as replacement nominee. (Or Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney, but I suspect Kasich would do better.)
But it’d be an extreme test of the hypothesis.
Cacti
@redshirt:
That cuts both ways though. Trump as the R candidate is also likely to draw out more Hispanic people who were otherwise disinclined to vote, but want to cast a ballot against the hijo de puta.
PaulWartenberg2016
Best Case Scenario isn’t Most Likely Scenario.
Right now, the likeliest scenario is that the states who went with Obama in 2008-12 are going to stay Democratic: none of them are under major internal structural woes that can be blamed on the national Democratic Party, nor have they shown major demographic shifts towards older conservatives. Meanwhile, Trump is bound to lose a few Red states that can see major Hispanic turnouts to oppose him. Utah in particular could well vote against a Trump candidacy in the general. There’s also Trump’s historic bad numbers among women voters, which can well turn even conservative states like Texas and South Carolina and Mississippi against him. However, that’s still in the toss-up stage: we’ll need to see how things look post-convention.
MCA1
So in Cilizza’s mind, 7 months from Election Day, the absolute best possible outcome he can even entertain for any Republican nominee is a 15 point EV win. That is remarkable. That would mean that the spectrum of possibilities from the Democratic side runs from lose by 15 EV’s to something like get 375 EV’s. I think I’d take that range. Especially since in the real world, the likelihood of Trump winning Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and North Carolina seems vanishingly small. I’d give him no more than a 10% chance in three or four of those states individually, and I’d give Clinton an equal chance in each of Arizona and Missouri. I could even see a world in which she’s competitive in Georgia and Utah, in which case Trump would spend so much time playing defense in traditionally red states he wouldn’t have the time to flip places like Wisconsin and Michigan.
I think Trump would find out quickly that while there are pockets of the country with more Latinos and more disaffected middle class whites and so on, the distribution of females is actually remarkably consistent.
Kropadope
There are some odd choices on that map, like Trump winning WI, MI, and OH while losing VA and CO.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Matt McIrvin:
if there’s going to be a party coup at the Cleveland convention, it’ll likely involve a name who hasn’t flamed out during the primaries (after all, if that person couldn’t beat Trump among the voting base…). This is why Paul Ryan’s name is coming up so often as the “Establishment Savior” now. Even though the outrage among Republican AND general voters against that kind of move would cripple the GOP in November…
rikyrah
@Cacti:
ICAM
thanks Obama.
Kropadope
@MCA1:
Yeah, if there’s definitely one thing 2014 proved, it’s that hammering Republican candidates on their misogyny is tremendously effective.
PaulWartenberg2016
If Trump can lose Texas and gain none of the other big Blue states, that’s it. Game over.
schrodinger's cat
Political pundits have zero insight into the electorate, their favorite Rubio has dropped out of the race and managed to win only one primary. This map is bullshit on steroids, why would purple midwestern states flip to Trump after the most invective filled and bigoted Republican primary season in memory.
ETA: If you look at 2012 map, Obama won IA, MI, WI and OH. In which plausible scenario do they all flip to the side of Sauron?
? Martin
@cokane:
That’s not really an argument. He’s a less predicable candidate. That means he can’t be reasoned as being better, simply that due to his own internal chaos theory he might stumble into success.
Cruz is to some extent a game of skill that can be predicted while Trump is a game of chance that cannot. When you are losing, games of chance are appealing – trading determinism for probability is a sign of desperation.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Trump was doing well in some of them in polling way back in October or November. Not so much now.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t know who the candidate will be, but do believe the GOP is ready to pull the trigger on the party coup if it looks as though Trump will get it.
He’s not going to be on the general ballot no matter what. I’d bet good money on that. The GOP can afford being a minority party, albeit one with control of the House, for the next four years. They can’t afford the utter destruction of the party and downticket races that a Trump general campaign would cause.
Cacti
@Kropadope:
And as we all know, midterm election turnout is highly predictive of Presidential election turnout.
Matt McIrvin
@PaulWartenberg2016: With Kasich there’s actually general-election polling showing that if the election were held today, he’d crush Hillary Clinton in a huge blowout. That’s not true of any of the other Republicans any more. It may just be because Kasich’s lower familiarity makes him a stand-in for “generic Republican” or “none of the above”.
MattF
I think there’s a qualitative distinction that needs to be made here. Most elections are decided at the margin– there are regular voters who always split the same way between the established parties, and then there’s a smaller group of irregular undecided voters who make up their minds at the last minute– and these undecideds generally determine who wins. The usual assumption is that undecided voters will split the same way as everyone else, but one makes that assumption out of ignorance. There’s a prior probability and it has to be set to something.
But the current situation is, arguably, different. It may be that Trump voters are just not following this model. But this creates a problem that Cillizza ignores. He conflates the old model and the possibly-different Trump-model without considering which one actually applies.
Mike J
Utah, which last voted for a Democrat in 1964, won’t vote for Trump. This is not a likely map.
Patricia Kayden
@CONGRATULATIONS!: They got in line against Obama twice and that didn’t work out too well for them. I cannot imagine that Trump could do better than McCain or Romney did in 2008 and 2012. His unfavorable rating is much higher than either of theirs.
@schrodinger’s cat: That map reminds me of the unskewed polls to which we were subjected in 2012 by delusional rightwingers which showed Romney winning handily.
MCA1
@Kropadope: Yes, off year elections are just like presidential elections, aren’t they? Silly of me to forget.
Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime, special sort of misogynist, who has in just the past several months alluded to a female journalist spurting blood from various part of her body, exclaiming disgust at the thought of a woman going to the bathroom, and blurted out that women who get abortions should go to prison. And will be running against the first woman to head a national ticket. Little different, no?
Mike J
Gunnlaugsson is out.
NotMax
“User-Generated Map”
Unicorn-Generated Map would be far more accurate.
Iowa Old Lady
TPM has a story in which Sanders’ campaign official Jeff Weaver says
What am I missing here? Surely that’s mathematically impossible with only two candidates.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat: Political pundits have zero insight into the electorate, their favorite Rubio
That’s how I see Kasich, Beltway darling who would sputter out in a GE, though I believe he’s enormously popular in Ohio. I think his long term and truly believed anti-New Deal stance would hurt him in a national campaign. And not just Trump’s immigrant haters but Cruz’s bible thumpers would view him with a lot of suspicion. Much the same for Ryan.
and my Eeyore-ish caveat: A terrorist attack in Sept/Oct could scramble the whole thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
True Belief.
Cacti
@Patricia Kayden:
Romney got the highest share of the white in 24 years and still got thumped.
Trump will almost certainly do worse than Mitt with Hispanic voters, and against Clinton, substantially worse with women voters too. Barring some black swan event between now and November, I don’t see any plausible path to 270 for Trump.
PaulWartenberg2016
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
this can be the one time the Republicans DON’T get in line.
there’s been this belief that sooner or later the Reagan coalition will fracture once the differing conservative factions turn on each other. this could be the year.
Mart
@Matt McIrvin: Ryan / Kasich 2016 + 1 billion dollars of Koch money. And they both have sad eyes when being all compassionate about the poor blahs. What could go wrong?
Paul in KY
@PaulWartenberg2016: He won’t lose Texas. LBJ couldn’t win that one now.
MazeDancer
Trump is not winning Florida. Without which, the rest of the map doesn’t matter.
Michigan is doubtful.
And any state with a lot of voting Hispanics, Women and/or Mormons is unlikely.
(Knocking wood for sanity and freedom)
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes.
There’s not the slightest chance Trump will take Wisconsin and Michigan.
Peale
@Cacti: But where? I don’t think we should be so confident that running against Mexicans draws out Latinos in general. They need to be pulled out, registered and whatnot. The participation rate is still low. Did they storm out in 2010 to take Sharon Angle from enacting SB 1070? Get Angry enough at what was going down in Arizona to elect Carmona in 2012? it seems like one can kick Mexican immigrants and win in places where there are Mexican immigrants. And I think you can kick them and win in places where there aren’t Mexican immigrants. Unless you take the time to locate potential Hispanic voters and drive them to the polls, passively hoping that they’ll overcome decades of low participation on your behalf probably isn’t going to work out in 2016 any more than in 2012.
Brachiator
@MCA1:
Yeah. More men who fear and hate women might vote for Trump. And the misogynist label may not hurt Trump as much as some might hope.
Still, this electoral map is premature, not even good speculation at this point when Trump has not even won the GOP nomination. I’m not even sure it represents a Trump “best-case scenario.”
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sam Wang has an analysis of Sanders’ path to the nomination. Basically, his conclusion is that Sanders doesn’t have one– Wang estimates a Sanders victory as a four-sigma event. His final estimate of around 5% is not based on electoral results, it’s the probability of something catastrophic happening.
dogwood
Actually read a Politico article that said the White House has had to change all of its political plans because of Sanders’ vow to stay in until the convention. This takes Obama out of the mix until August. He’s ready to go asap, but circumstances will probably keep him sidelined. Too bad for that. He’s better at this stuff than Bernie and Hillary combined.
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: If Trump gets the number of delegates he needs to win the process, he’ll be on the ticket. Other Repubs, who might one day get to that threshold, would not like that precedent being set.
Now, if he falls short, but still has majority, that’s where it gets interesting (IMO).
cleek
@Iowa Old Lady:
delegates already won by other candidates can prevent Trump or Cruz from hitting the magic number. Kasich has 143; Rubio has 171.
Anoniminous
In national (read: simultaneous state-wide) elections GOP relies on the White vote and it should fall to 69%, or less, of the total vote, down from 72% in 2012. If the electorate in 2012 matched 2000 we’d be talking about President Romney right now. The Obama coalition of minorities plus non-bigoted white voters is a winner for the foreseeable future.
scav
@Mike J: Things continue to be interesting. But I do rather enjoy an environment where I’m largely at two UK papers learning about Icelandic hashtags #cashljós and deep into the weeds I go. Guardian, despite annoying me, keeps drawing me back.
shomi
This endless masturbatory what if nonsense about Drumpf this and Drumpf that and what would a Drumpf presidency look like is such a waste of time.
Nobody ever asks the hard questions around there. Like if it is so pathetic to see Americans engage in such pathetic debates about this completely unqualified moron then why do Ball Juice bloggers constantly participate themselves? Even if just pretending to point and laugh. You people are just as invested in Drumpf as the morons who support him.
Like that Nicholson character in “a few good men”. “You don’t want the truth because deep down inside in places you don’t talk about at parties you want Drumpf on that Mexican wall…you need him on that wall.
MCA1
@PaulWartenberg2016: I think that may be right. The sorts of people Trump has in his camp right now are NOT the traditional Republican core that “gets in line.” The ones who can be counted on to do that are the people who were backing Rubio and Bush and have wandered over to Kasich. Some of the Cruz faction, too, but a lot of them are purist sulkers who may also sit out the general if it’s not their chosen savior.
I think there are actually more people who would get in line behind Trump who aren’t currently supporting him, than there are people who would move from Trump loyalists to voting for a candidate with establishment backing installed at a contested convention. There are more than enough diehard GOP mainstreamers who will refuse to vote for Trump out of principle and disgust to effectively decide the race in advance, but a lot of those claiming that’s what they’d do right now would magically convince themselves that Hillary would be even worse before November. A lot of them wouldn’t need beyond the 4th of July weekend.
Iowa Old Lady
@cleek: I can see that, but this was Sanders that Weaver was talking about.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hope to f-cking God Obama has the CIA and NSA working overtime to prevent any of that happening.
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
I think that makes at least some sense. WI, MI, and OH have a lot of the disaffected blue collar white voters that Trump is appealing to. Meanwhile, CO has a substantial Hispanic/Latino population that is likely to be fired up to vote against Trump, and VA is home to lots of members of the government establishment who will vote for an establishment Democrat like Clinton over a crazy outsider like Trump.
cleek
@Iowa Old Lady:
heh. oops.
Weaver is talking out his ass
inventor
@Iowa Old Lady:
Math? MATH? You talkin’ ’bout MATH!!!!!???? This is a rev-vo-lusion we got goin’ here! Don’t you know that neither math, nor physics, nor the space-time continuum apply to the Bern? Haven’t you been paying attention?
PaulWartenberg2016
Last I saw for overall White voters, Trump was polling at 49 percent.
Romney had like 60 percent… and still lost.
And the demographic differences between Whites to other groups – Blacks, Hispanics, Asians – is disproportionate to where Trump can’t gain enough minority voters to balance out that drop among Whites. And there is no damn way Trump will appeal to enough Hispanics or Blacks – and considering his dumping on China, even Asians will refuse him – to compensate.
We’re looking at a possibility of Trump getting under 33 percent of the General election’s popular vote.
Chyron HR
@Iowa Old Lady:
Well, if the GOP gets to nullify their primary results and have a do-over at the convention, then Sanders should be able to, also. It’s only fair!
Turgidson
@schrodinger’s cat: probably, since that’s where all his other columns come from. He basically just said “if Trump wins enough states to win, he’ll win”. Brilliant analysis, sparky.
Iowa Old Lady
Here’s a question not about pundits but about the reporters following the campaigns. Are they likely to start rooting for “their” candidate, even if unconsciously? Or does familiarity breed contempt?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PaulWartenberg2016: Yeah, I hate to even discuss that kind of violence politically, but it’s a fucked up world
Mary
@Iowa Old Lady: Maybe he meant to say that neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to win outright? That’s the only thing that makes sense.
Tom Q
@Iowa Old Lady: The key word there is “pledged”. Their premise is that Hillary will be somewhere shy of half with pledged delegates only; that she’ll need some (possibly just a few) super-delegates to push her over. Which was true of Obama in ’08, I believe — it’s never been seen as a disqualifying move in the past, but Bernie is Special. Actually, I’d bet they’re wrong: that, as of the 4/26 primaries, her lead will be well past what it is today (even assuming she loses WI), and the June primaries will push her over the top sans supers.
Something to remember about Chris Cillizza: in the waning days of 2012, he put up an electoral map labeling Ohio a toss-up. When people queried him on this, noting all polls showed Obama ahead in Ohio, his reply was, Romney has no path to a win without Ohio, so it has to be a toss-up. I suspect he’s taking the same approach here, in multiple states — and it still only gets him to 285. That tells you how fraught the GOP path to an electoral win is in this current environment.
Brachiator
@PaulWartenberg2016:
The impact of the white vote varies with each state. And pollsters will have to separate out white women and white men. They will also have to pay some attention to age.
Monolithic white vote is a meaningless concept, even for speculation purposes.
rikyrah
@Mike J:
was he part of that leak from yesterday?
shomi
WHY don’t you people just STFU with your Sanders BS! Not going to happen and it would be a disaster for Dems if it did.
You are completely missing the big picture here. You are acting like this election is in Canada where it’s a choice between a liberal candidate and a more liberal candidate.
You do not have that luxury and frankly, there are many many unrealistic things about just about EVERYTHING Sanders proposes and you are in denial if you do not see that.
This is like the whole single payer or I’m not voting nonsense. I stopped calling myself a progressive after that fiasco because I realized that a lot of progressives are every bit as naive as Republicans on some things if not more.
PaulWartenberg2016
@cleek:
Weaver’s basically being a sore loser here. And I’m sure he’d be GLAD as hell to have Hillary tell all her supporters to back Bernie should she lose to him.
There’s a level of amorality among the Bernie supporters – this primal arrogance of theirs – that is making me wanna bring my knee up and make em wince on the floor.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tom Q: But if there are only 2 candidates, then they either split the pledged delegates 50-50 exactly, or someone has more than 50%, ie a majority, right?
I don’t know. I’ve seen such bizarre things in terms of delegate selection this time around that maybe there’s some weird thing I don’t understand. Pledged delegates who aren’t pledged?
PaulWartenberg2016
@Brachiator:
true. but again, if the numbers go down overall, the previous voting habits from 2012 tell us that he won’t be winning White voters where Romney couldn’t. It is doubtful Trump can flip places like New York or Illinois with numbers like his dropping. MAYBE Pennsylvania… MAYBE white voters in Florida… but definitely not enough across the nation. And that downward drop in white voters is a good sign he can lose close states like North Carolina and Indiana that did go for Mitt.
Anonymous At Work
Just a quick look and Trump has to win Michigan, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and the Wisconsin/Iowa combo to pull this off. Any one of the 5 flips, and it is a Democratic win. I can’t see that happening. Clinton may not excite large crowds but she does know how to play a person and get under their skin. She’ll drive Trump mad and more extreme. Again, my “expectation” for a Clinton-Trump debate is that Trump avoids the b- and c-words on live television.
Calouste
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Trump could endorse the Libertarian or Constitution Party, or some other minor party. Them taking 5-10% of the GOP vote for House seats would swing quite a few of tightly gerrymandered districts.
Mike J
@rikyrah:
Yup.
Roger Moore
@Tom Q:
I don’t think she can win enough delegates between now and the end of the primaries to be able to win without superdelegates. She needs to get to 2383 pledged delegates to win outright, and she has 1264 pledged delegates right now, so she needs 1019 to win without superdelegates. There are just 1747 pledged delegates remaining to be won, so she’d need to win just over 58% of them to win outright. She has a chance of doing that, but it doesn’t seem like a great chance.
OTOH, I don’t see what the plausible complaint is even if she falls well short without the superdelegates. It looks very likely that she’ll have substantial majorities in the popular vote, in the number of states won, in pledged delegates, and in superdelegates. It takes some very special pleading to claim that somebody who’s won outright by all those measures doesn’t deserve the nomination.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Paul in KY:
There’s been reports of pollsters finding that Trump is very unpopular among Texan Hispanics – gee, wonder why – and Texan women voters – gee, wonder why…
It’ll be a close one, but Texas has been on the edge of tipping from Red to Purple for a few years now: it’s THE next state to go Blue in the Demographic Switchoff that the GOP is terrified of
Shell
I always have to laugh when people say they want government run like a business. You mean like in Flint, Michigan? Where every concern was all about the bottom line? Ask the people who drink the water.
ThresherK (GPad)
@AnonPhenom: I loved him as Brickley Paiste in Bob Roberts, a movie which will never go out of style.
schrodinger's cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If the scenario does occur, it will work to Hillary’s advantage in the aggregate, just like the financial crisis did for Obama.
dmsilev
@Iowa Old Lady: The only thing I can think of, and it’s a stretch, is that Weaver is saying that neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates alone to make up an absolute majority of (pledged plus super) delegates. In other words, any lead in pledged delegates that Clinton brings into the convention, Sanders could hypothetically overcome with a sufficiently large fraction of the super delegates.
That’s nominally true, but it’s of course wildly unlikely. First off, the super delegates are very unlikely to vote against a candidate with a clear majority of the pledged delegates. Secondly, even if they would do so, the more probable scenario is the reverse, where party insider Clinton uses her deep connections to the other party insiders that make up the super delegate set to win their votes. Sanders, the insurgent who is running largely on a campaign of “The Democratic Establishment Sucks”, is …a less probable recipient of super delegate largesse.
schrodinger's cat
@Anoniminous: While losing VA, don’t forget.
F
Meanwhile, Trump is leading Clinton by 3 points… in Mississippi.
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/MS316Poll.pdf
Iowa Old Lady
@dmsilev: That’s probably it. Thanks.
Mike J
@F: Considering it went Romney by 12, that’s a massive swing.
NR
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes he did. Trump would win Pennsylvania before he’d win Michigan. And Virginia staying blue on a map like that is quite a stretch as well.
redshirt
@Cacti:
Absolutely true. That said, and I know it’s just the primaries, we’ve not seen many indications of increased Democratic turnout. Compare that to 2008.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If it’s really Trump/Clinton, a terrorist attack doesn’t even necessarily help Trump in the general election. He gets the atavistic “get tough/kill all the Muslims” response. But the majority of Americans also perceive him as a numbskull who would have no clue how to deal with a sudden crisis, and they actually trust Clinton more on that.
NR
It’s okay guys, November is in the bag. It’s not like our presumptive nominee has a history of blowing huge leads in the polls or anything.
Chyron HR
@NR:
No, we hadn’t heard about that. Thank you for sharing.
Tom Q
@Iowa Old Lady: What Weaver is talking about is Clinton getting to a convention majority (2383 votes) with only pledged delegates. Yes, in a field of two, someone will have to achieve a majority of pledged delegates, but the convention majority requires a majority of all delegates — pledged plus supers. Since there are something like 700-800 super-delegates, one would have to have essentially crushed one’s opponent — the way Gore did Bradley in 2000 — to attain a convention majority on pledged delegates alone. As Roger Moore says above, it’ll be tough for Clinton to do it, but she certainly has a far better chance than Sanders.
To Roger’s point: I acknowledge the road is tough for Clinton, but the fact that many of the upcoming contests are primaries, not caucuses, in closed states (so long, Bernie independents) with Clinton demographics, makes it at least a possibility she gets there with no supers help. And there might come a point, if Clinton pulls off a sweep on 4/26, that there’s party pressure to rally around her, causing some to vote her way in the later contests just to end bickering.
It’s been widely pointed out that the proportional nature of the Dem primaries makes it almost impossible for Sanders to catch up — e.g., even a 5-10 point win in WI tonight would only move him modestly closer to Clinton. But a look over the races so far suggests it’s the proportional thing that has Sanders even viable at this point. If every state had been winner take all, by my math, Clinton would have a lead of about 1000 delegates, by virtue of her winning virtually all the big states. Even if you assume Sanders would have contested/maybe overturned the margins in IA and MO, it would still leave him 800 or so in the hole. The proportional system giveth and taketh away,
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: The scenario where Clinton leads in pledged delegates but Sanders gets the nomination by flipping the superdelegates is just not going to happen. I thought it was implausible even that it would happen the other way around.
redshirt
@NR: Good point. I’d feel much more confident with the Socialist guy with no experience at this whatsoever.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
Historically, though, there’s been negligible correlation between turnout in the primaries and turnout in the general election.
Bartholomew
@PaulWartenberg2016: There’s a level of amorality among the Bernie supporters – this primal arrogance of theirs – that is making me wanna bring my knee up and make em wince on the floor.
Yes, tell us all about the primal arrogance and violencey ways of the, um, Sanders supporters. You’d like to show them huh, big man. You elevated, humble peace-seeker you.
It was inevitable, probably, since your nasty yappers can’t possibly get along with anyone else anymore. You’ve lost the plot. After taking over the liberal Progressives by slandering and smearing Ralph Nader and his supporters, it was inevitable that any would-be ally would be mercilessly attacked–it’s your style now, it’s all you know. Such is the fate of scapegoaters.
Poor wrong-way Cole, pissing his political standing away on his original arch-enemy, and after he sold out his original tribe of righties, too. Less is best said about the pretender coterie he assembled. He is a known traitor now, and for what. LOL.
All you folks had to do was keep playing pet-pics and swilling it in front of the teevee … Hillary’s corrupt network had it made, the fix was IN baby. But instead ya’s had to get nasty. Had to keep dealing the guff, thinking Bernie was Ralph, and now those mean rocks are shattering your glass house.
I’m glad I came here and tried to be nice, though it wasn’t much fun at that sad time, now it has given me a great seat for the view. I have popcorn. Especially if she wins, that will be the most fun … I’ve seen the Clinton scene in action, though somehow it escaped notice of many: you will not enjoy this edition.
Here is your hero … it’s all very fitting. I’d say it was justice but I hear ya’ll are godless ‘leftists’ so you wouldn’t understand that.
JMG
A long time ago in another life, it was my sportswriting assignment at more than one Super Bowl of the late ’80s and early ’90s to write one story explaining how the hopelessly outmatched AFC team (’85 Pats, ’89 Broncos, ’92 Bills, etc.) could win the game. I didn’t necessarily have to believe my reasons, but I had to come up with them. That’s what Cilizza’s map is. It’s the best reasons he could come up with.
NR
@Chyron HR:
I’d pretty much figured it out by now, yes.
redshirt
Paging Bob in Portland, Bob in Portland, please report to your keyboard.
NR
@redshirt: Well since the only experience Hillary has as a presidential candidate is losing the 2008 primary, I’m not sure you want to play the experience card here.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tom Q: This all really clarifying.
dogwood
@redshirt:
I think the Panama papers are going to keep Bob in Portland quiet for awhile.
Iowa Old Lady
@redshirt: Thank god you only said the name twice.
Uncle Cosmo
@Iowa Old Lady:
You’re missing the need of Sanders’ senior campaign staff to pad their bank accounts as fat as possible for as long as possible before the wheels come off. Weaver, Devine & the rest of the grifters are probably laughing their arses off at the gullibility of the small donors, not to mention the candidate himself.
redshirt
@NR: She’s clearly learned from that experience, and from being SoS.
Uncle Cosmo
Banhammer needed at post #95.
And anyone calling for the return of Boob in Putinland are cordially invited to STFU. It’s relatively nice & quiet around here without his logorrhea splattered over the threads.
redshirt
@dogwood: But but but the corruption of public officials is his main concern!
cleek
@Bartholomew:
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/58813747.jpg
gwangung
@redshirt: Gets way too close to corruption in games journalism for my taste. (Though I do think it provides cover for ratf*ckery).
Peter
Cilliza dismisses the possibility of Texas going blue out of hand, but while I’m certainly not holding my breath for it, I’m a little hopeful on that point. Thanks to demographics, Texas has been slowly leaning towards purple coloring for a while now, and with Trump as the nominee this could be the year.
And if Texas finally becomes competitive, that’s pretty much it for Republicans ever getting into the White House.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Peter: one of those wonky young things had a post a while back that Georgia is more likely to turn purple, at least in the short term, than Texas.
dogwood
@redshirt:
We’re also going to find out that European socialism isn’t corruption free by any means. Bernie might have to stop mentioning a few European countries as models for America.
Brachiator
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Lots of ifs here. Right now, we still don’t know whether Trump’s abortion gaffe has weakened him. Makes speculation especially shaky.
But we didn’t know, could not know, how voters would internalize racial factors in 2008 and 2012. And we don’t know how gender factors might affect the 2016 election. There could be a significant gender gap, and increased voter turnout among white voters.
And now we don’t know whether Trump will regain momentum or whether the GOP will still find a way to self destruct.
So, overall, although speculation is fun, I am not sure that t means much until we get to the GOP convention and know who the candidate and running mate are, and then start tracking voter reaction. And then, more than previous elections you have to look at gender and age independently among white voters.
gwangung
@dogwood: Hm. That reminds me of something. Sanders and his supports talk about a revolution…but in economic terms, that’s awfully close to disruptions. That’s something a certain class are trained for, and are looking for constantly….and they are certainly not Democrats or socialist. Disruptions are opportunities for exploitation by the very people that Sanders (and, actually, a lot of non-Sanders Democrats as well) opposes. Does he have plans to prevent that?
boatboy_srq
By “high variance national candidacies”, you mean b#tsh!t-crazy candidates, yes?
Paul in KY
@PaulWartenberg2016: I’ll believe it when I see it. Sure do hope I see it!
Peale
@dogwood: Yep. Its not really an issue that the Saudis have money that they are parking outside the country. I mean, they are an absolute monarchy and looting the treasury isn’t really a concern. They are the treasury. Its not surprising the the Saudi royal house is rich. How Iceland’s PM got so wealthy that he needed to spirit away funds to Panamanian companies – well that’s a better question. Since I’m sure the PM’s salary isn’t one that requires that kind of set up. It does pay to ask how he got so wealthy.
Paul in KY
@Iowa Old Lady: Gotta use a mirror too, I hear…
Paul in KY
@Peale: His wife is rich, heir to the only Toyota franchise on the Island, among other things.
rikyrah
tell it, Mr. President.
Obama: It’s Not Just Trump, Cruz’s Proposals ‘Draconian’ Too
By TIERNEY SNEED
PublishedAPRIL 5, 2016, 12:52 PM EDT
In brief remarks to the press Tuesday discussing new Treasury Department regulations, President Obama also commented on Donald Trump’s recently-released plan to make Mexico pay for a U.S. border wall, and he argued that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) supported “draconian” proposals, too.
Obama was asked whether Trump’s proposals — including his latest, to use the remittances Mexicans immigrants in the United States send back to Mexico as leverage to fund a border wall — were doing damage to the U.S. image abroad.
“I’ve been very clear earlier that I am getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made. I do have to emphasize it’s not just Mr. Trump’s proposals,” Obama said. “You’re also hearing concerns about Mr. Cruz’s proposals, which, in some ways, are just as draconian when it comes to immigration, for example.”
dogwood
@rikyrah:
As I said earlier in the thread, too bad Bernie’s gonna keep him off the campaign trail until the fall.
joel hanes
@shomi:
WHY don’t you people just STFU with your Sanders BS!
You’re not helping.
Citizen_X
@Bartholomew: Shorter: “I hate everybody to the point of incoherence, and have since 2000.”
Steve in the ATL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
People keep saying that but we keep voting R. Not just for president–we currently have -0- elected statewide Dems.
randy khan
@dogwood:
Probably not a big deal, actually, since very few people pay attention to election campaigns until the fall anyway.
The Lodger
@Iowa Old Lady: Reporters don’t want their assigned candidates all that much, but they’re dying for a horse race. See the Chriszilla quote about Ohio being in play in 2012 because it was the only way Romney could win. This is why no matter what the GOP nominates, it will be treated in the media as the serious candidate of a serious political party until November 8.
The world is an eyeball market, and we’re all unwilling participants in it.
The Lodger
@PaulWartenberg2016:
@Iowa Old Lady: And when you draw the two circles around the pentagram, don’t forget to use plenty of chalk.
randy khan
@The Lodger:
I may be wrong, but I suspect that the media would be just as happy to cover a total Trump implosion as a close race. I think they’d get pretty similar ratings.
Just One More Canuck
@randy khan: And probably more likely to happen
George Hayduke
@shomi:
Oh FFS.
SUPPORT THE ANNOINTED ONE OR SHUT UP! HILLARY WILL GIVE US ALL PONIES!
George Hayduke
Does anybody here really think tRump is going to be the nominee?
Do we not recognize that Hillary fares worse in every GE poll than Sanders?
Do we not recognize Clinton’s negative approval numbers are worse than any other major party candidate going into a GE?
If it’s anybody but trump against Clinton, we are in trouble.
This place has become as bad as MyDD in 2007
J R in WV
bnbnbn