This is a bit Captain Obvious but, yeah, we can expect a lot of Rasmussen polls where Trump and Hill are neck and neck, and a lot of Chuck Todd pieces about how the key Edible Arrangements moms or liquor store uncle or whatever demographic is shifting towards Trump:
Reporters will get bored writing Trump-is-going-to-lose-big stories. Some will want the race to tighten. They’ll look for angles to promote the idea. You can see some of that taking shape already. The media took approving notice when experienced political operatives supplanted Trump’s posse of fanboys, who’d been running things until recently. With a change of personnel has come a little more maturity and message discipline—or what passes for discipline in a willful, insecure, ungovernable personality like Trump’s.
I got very scared during the Sandra Day O’Palin portion of the 2008 election, which fortunately only lasted about two weeks. And I expect to get a little scared during this general election too.
Trollhattan
In 2012 we had the displeasure of the first Willard-Barack debate and Sully’s utter meltdown, so something like that, perhaps? Hills and Donald debate and he neglects to call her “a cow” or somesuch, exceeding expectations?
Frankensteinbeck
Ha ha ha ha!
Bingo. Trump will spew bigotry from his pie hole, and nothing whatsoever can stop that. He is who he is.
Rand Careaga
I would look in on Andrew “How can we miss you if you won’t go away” Sullivan during the 2012 contest, and was greatly amused each time, after some dodgy news cycle, he would get the vapors and stagger over to the fainting couch. After Obama’s purportedly “lacklustre” performance in the first debate with the Mittster, I thought the poor guy was going to slit his wrists. Let’s not be like that in 2016.
Edit: I see that Trollhattan posted this before I finished making my point.
Tenar Darell
Is there any way we could make elections shorter so we don’t bore the reporters into flinging poo? Anyone? Anyone?
Oh, and random late night thought: I was watching Up Close & Personal last night and I realized that between that movie & Dave, 20 years ago both our failed political & media experiments were being previewed in our fiction. (Going to have to stop watching late night movies on cable because I’m freaking myself out).
Bob2
Just posting this to give DougJ the vapors.
Kay
It “spells trouble for Republicans” because…
Share of the possible electorate. Not “actual voters” :)
Baud
I have a technical question. Why do polls change over the long term? Does it represent people actually changing their minds? Does the nature of poll respondents change when we get closer to an election (for example, undecideds now answering poll questions)? Does the sample size change? Anyone know?
sigaba
I want a “liquor store uncle.”
Richard Bottoms
@Kay: They’re at fucking Harvard, I think capitalism has done pretty well by them.
? Martin
Eh. I think the mechanics on the ground will win.
After wasting millions of dollars, California GOP donors close their checkbooks to presidential candidates
Trump isn’t raising money in a meaningful way and so there is no infrastructure being built to help downtickets. Donors here aren’t exactly excited to be backing candidates that clearly only exist to pander to the Confederacy. The GOP may win the ‘both sides’ narrative, but they’re going to be fucking broke long before November rolls. I wonder if this isn’t the real reason why the GOP is winning more at the state level and why all of the Republicans backing out of the convention are senators. The GOP is really down to just being a regional party. I’m expecting the CA senate seat to be effectively uncontested just like the governors race was. For the state that puked up Reagan, so have no GOP bench is a bit astonishing, and to then have no national support is absolutely deadly.
Frankensteinbeck
@Richard Bottoms:
In case you were not snarking, it’s a poll conducted by Harvard, not of Harvard students.
Kay
@Richard Bottoms:
No, it’s the Harvard Institute of Politics poll, not a poll of Harvard. They are America’s youngsters :)
? Martin
@Richard Bottoms: It wasn’t a poll of Harvard students, it was one conducted by the university of 18-29 year-olds nationally. They aren’t that self-centered.
sunny raines
The media will be savaging HRC, no question. The good thing, and one reason why she is more formidable than Bernie is Americans have heard it all before regarding her; as much as many would like a there to be there, most Americans are tired of falling for it – they know there is nothing but media sturm there. OTOH, Bernie would have been fresh meat for them to spin their lies and smears – given the sold, decent person Bernie is, it would have been thoroughly disgusting.
Brachiator
Wow, Fortunately, I missed this the first time around. “An uncurious idiot selected by McCain to be his VP pick is just like a former Supreme Court Justice who had two Stanford degrees because … estrogen.”
I don’t pay much attention to pundits, especially those incapable of interpreting polling data accurately. And I expect that this will be an extra stupid election season.
John D
@Baud: As far as “undecided”, the full answer delves deeply into social sciences territory, but it is seriously in the weeds. The simple version is: Psychologically, election far away == “undecided” indicates thoughtfulness; election close == “undecided” indicates indecisiveness. So, “undecided” shrinks as the election nears, usually. Sample sizes are all over the map, with no real correlation to distance from election. That’s mainly a function of how much money is paid to the pollster — more money, more people polled.
But the real shift in polls is people actually changing their minds. Always, always, always look at the crosstabs when they are available, though, because sometimes it’s a demographic shift underlying the change — and sometimes it’s malicious. Every time I see an outlier I look at the crosstabs (if provided) and see if there is a big shift in the respondent composition.
Kay
Baud
@Kay:
Capitalism isn’t dead yet!
rikyrah
This is about 270 Electoral College Votes.
Hillary is not Black, so someone’s gonna have to convince me that she’s gonna get LESS of the White Vote than Barack Obama.
Remember, Willard got 60% of the White Vote.
And, it didn’t matter – Popular Vote or Electoral College-wise.
And, Willard got 27% of the Latino vote.
Considering that Trump’s Positives with Latinos are in SINGLE DIGITS
Yeah, you gonna have to convince me of the states that Obama held that Trump flips.
Baud
@John D:
Thanks. And agree about cross-tabs. Much mischief there.
Mike R
Hey who wouldn’t be for voters who are suspicious of unbridled capitalism. Now the big question will they vote in numbers large enough to make a difference. Also will they vote in all elections, local, state and national. Attitude without effort means nothing.
Baud
@rikyrah:
I could try, but I don’t like to argue with a positive attitude.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
A point I had not considered. They won’t stretch things to make it look like a horse race. After watching the 2012 election, I expect the national news media to invent a fantasy land where Trump is beating Hillary handily, and have another set of on-camera meltdowns when Hillary wins like the polls always said. They will completely buy their own bullshit, and television news will become a surreal spectacle towards the end of the election where even the least informed voters can tell the Villagers have no idea what the real world looks like.
Kay
@Baud:
This is what I think the general will be like:
That would be disappointing for people, right? If it was like “oh, it’s 5 points either way again- who knows?”
Nothing is ever definitive in this country. They’re wishy-washy.
randy khan
In addition to the reasons mentioned above for changes in the polls, they change from time to time because they are random samples with margins of error. One in twenty polls will be wrong outside the margin of error, but very few of them will be exactly right every time, which means they wander a bit. It doesn’t take much wandering for what looked like a ten point lead to become what looks like a six point lead when it’s been eight points the whole time.
Also, comparing one pollster to another can make you think there’s been change when they just weight differently or have different kinds of samples. The crew at 538 has done some great work on how different pollsters skew and how consistent they are.
Iowa Old Lady
I see lots of folks on GOS who are convinced Clinton will be indicted over her emails. They’re so sure of it, that I have to blink and back away because for an instant I think how can they be so sure if there’s nothing there?
I just saw traffic come to a halt on a four-lane highway because a mama duck was leading a flock of tiny ducklings across. Made me smile.
dollared
@rikyrah: You probably should factor in a healthy dose of misogyny. And familiarity. Those couple of billions they spent attacking her wont go 100% to waste. But I’d call that a wash against the racism, and yeah, those Latino numbers mean Florida, Colorado and Nevada are out of reach, and they can tip half a dozen other states.
It’s all about the downticket now…and whether the Dems will spend enough on voter registration to male the whole country 3-4 points more Democratic….
? Martin
@Kay: If Clinton wins by 3, it’ll mean that more women voted for Trump than for Clinton since there’s a 6 point gap in genders for voting (53% women, 47% men). I cannot envision a situation in which that happens.
Frankensteinbeck
@Iowa Old Lady:
I’m pretty sure that’s how you tell the ratfuckers and Paulites from the merely more-liberal-than-thou left.
scav
Trump knows his major contribution to the effort here, as to his buildings, wine, steaks, etc, is more the sizzle, the controversy, the thin gilt veneer of Mr Success. He won’t let the press down, just as they know they have to toss him, hide him behind their backs, pretend to lose him, find him in somebody’s ear and and then juggle him with flaming chain-saws to keep the show going.
dollared
@Kay: How do you read Ohio?
Brachiator
@Baud:
Yes.
A lot of people do not make up their mind until the last minute.
Also, you try to get people who are likely voters. Early on, people may lie or only loosely intend to vote. The closer you get to an election, the more likely (usually, hopefully) your sample consists of people who will actually go to the polls.
Sample size is more of a technical issue. One fun thing: contrary to conventional wisdom, a small sample is not necessarily a bad sample.
You might find this article useful: Harry’s Guide To 2016 Election Polls
One tip:
Sometimes it’s good to know the actual questions put to voters. And it’s good to know who conducted the poll. Some organizations do better work than others.
? Martin
@Iowa Old Lady: Hey, even callous NYC will shut down the subway for 2 hours due to kittens. Cruz’s jabs at New York values informs us that Ted Cruz hates kittens.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
If I wanted to hear about that, I’d watch Morning Joe.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Tenar Darell: Ever see Broadcast News? William Hurt is the devil.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Right. So these people are not included in the earlier poll results?
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: Pretty much. They’ll move on to a career in the media as disappointed Bernie supporters for Trump.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
What?
As of March 2016, there were 7 Democratic and 23 Republican trifectas. A trifecta is when one political party holds these three positions in a state’s government: The governorship, A majority in the state senate, A majority in the state house.
This includes not just the South, but a chunk of the middle of the country and the West. This ain’t regional.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yeah, that was a laughable premise — that Trump could turn his…Trumpness on and off like a light switch. He is what he is…a pig.
Kay
@dollared:
I thought Clinton was really strong here but I got a little rattled when Sanders won Michigan. I don’t think anyone expected him to do as well as he did when this started, although the narrative around that has changed.
I generally think she’ll do okay because she has a core of really resilient voters and supporters who feel they know her and are comfortable with her.
Trump didn’t do well where I live and that was partly Kasich but talking to Republicans I feel they’re uncomfortable with the excess of him- how he’s such an excessive person- so loud, so over-exposed, so braggy. There’s a kind of eye-roll among the people I talk to who are supposed to like him. I don’t think people who are tempermentally “conservative” find him trustworthy. I had a Republican imitate Trump’s hand gestures to me in a way that was really funny. It was interesting because there was a kind of subtext to it- like his gestures were not manly, not “serious”, excitable.
? Martin
@Baud:
A few reasons. The representative sample will change, for one. Who is deemed ‘likely to vote’ will change as pollsters learn more about the dynamics within the election. Will women turn out in higher numbers with Clinton on the ticket? That kind of thing. Another is that the internals of the sample are difficult to game out. It’s not enough to poll a sample which is representative of party registration, but also of gender, ethnicity, income, college attainment, etc. All of those cross-tabs makes the sample harder to pick because you are managing so many variable simultaneously. Huge data sets help with that, but it also means that the individuals within that set which can check a lot of boxes gets constrained. Middle class college educated gay african americans are likely to be hit harder than someone that lacks one of those traits, and so in the aggregate polls their opinion is likely to be overrepresented.
But the bigger reason why they change is that people are much more aspirational early in polling and more practical later. You see a lot of this on the democratic side this year – people admitted they are voting for Sanders in the primary to send a message to the party, or because it makes them feel good, but also because they expect Clinton to win the nom, and really prefer her as a candidate. You could call this the coefficient of shit-gets-real. A year out, you can daydream of any candidate, and focus on your single key issue, but a few days before the election, your thinking is a lot more responsible, a lot more tactical, and also a lot more informed. Most people watch exactly 0 debates. The people that would only watch one may have a very different opinion after the poll than before. There are a lot of low-infromation voters (not low-opinion, just they don’t understand what each candidate would specifically do for a given set of policies) and I think this year in particular with such an odd dynamic, you’ll see a bit more of that shifting. There’s a lot of ‘Trump is a businessman and knows how to create jobs’ that I don’t see surviving the debate cycle because he just tosses out useless platitudes that I think the disaffected voters are increasingly likely to see through.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Some news broadcasts discussed polling reasonably. But I remember one pundit on air reject the polls and talk about his political instincts. I changed the channel.
Also, polling without context does not interest me, nor do I have time for reporters who simply spout numbers, but who cannot explain their significance.
rikyrah
@? Martin:
The gender gap comes from the gap from Non-White women. I can’t see Non-White women being attracted to Trump.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I laughed because Kasich is a fraud. He’s nasty and short-tempered and what do you do with that insult? What’s the comeback? It’s just bizarre.
MomSense
The antidote to getting freaked out by polling and the win the day media blather is to volunteer for the campaign. When you are making calls, knocking on doors, organizing voter protection teams, and numerous other functions you realize that there are people just like you doing the same things in other states. It’s reassuring. We all have our part to play. I’m doing phone calls and voter protection this time around. The people you meet in the campaign offices are always a lot of fun. There are also virtual phone banking opportunities if you aren’t able to get to an office. This is great for me because I can just log in, make 50 calls (sometimes more and sometimes less) and not have to figure out dinner, homework, dog doody duty, etc.
ETA How could I forget the wonderful people who bring in food and refreshments for volunteers.
? Martin
@rikyrah: I can’t see white women being attracted to Trump. At least, not at the rate they were to Romney.
Bob In Portland
Why are the BJ villagers still worried about the ascension of H. Clinton? I thought it was a done deal after the New York primary.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
Didn’t one of the NYC mayoral candidates manage to tank his candidacy by being a grump about that?
Don’t mess with the kitten lovers. They cross political parties.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Kay: Trump continues to show everyone his weaknesses. He’s a germophobe. He’s easily “disgusted”. He can’t stand being treated “unfairly”. He can’t tolerate people questioning his “manhood”.
Hillary should show up at the first debate with him with a cold and need to blow her nose a lot. And with gloves with slightly too long fingers. And mention all of Trumps failures in business, etc., in a “poor Donnie” voice. He’ll crumble like a log cabin after a forest fire…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Isn’t there a poli sci thing that says that if you can get someone voting for a particular party starting when they’re young, it’s very hard to budge that vote later on?
I started voting Democratic at 20 and I’ve never stopped, but anecdata.
Bob In Portland
@? Martin: I can’t see anyone in the bottom 75% of the population being attracted to either frontrunner. So basically the two least-liked and least-trusted candidates will run against each other. If H. Clinton triangulates too far to the right she’ll lose some of the left who will stay home or otherwise use their votes.
The big question is how much will the average citizen feel that putting a Trump in the White House will change the status quo for the better. Wishing and hoping when there’s really no one to represent your economic interests.
Brachiator
@Baud:
RE: A lot of people do not make up their mind until the last minute.
Yep. Also, let’s say that there is a huge voter registration drive, or more people reach age 18 and register to vote. Or people learn about a hot state or local issue that makes them want to vote. These people would not have been available to be part of the earlier polling.
BR
I signed up for Hillary’s and Bernie’s mailing lists a while back and recently got fed up with them. They just ask for money.
Hillary needs to turn a corner and start asking her supporters to show up to voter registration drives and canvassing events and phone banks. I sent them a message to that end, but I hope others will do so as well. This election is going to be won with a ground game, not via the media.
Capri
At once point I watched a bunch of “The 2012 election explained” videos on Youtube, Lots of think tanks/university poly sci departments/public interest folks held panel discussions on this topic. The University of Delaware hosted one with Dave Plouffe and Steve Schmidt, and Plouffe said that they knew where the election was at the entire time, they knew they were going to win comfortably the entire time, and that the poor first debate just moved folks to Romney a little quicker than they would have otherwise. Overall, he dismissed the notion that whoever “wins the day” matters. In contrast, the post-election analysis from pundits made the race all about that. I came away with the clear idea that pundits are idiots who get paid to gossip on TV
? Martin
@Bob In Portland:
I think you are reading horserace when none of us are talking about that. I’m not worried about Sanders nor was I ever and I’m not interested in talking anyone out of voting for him. But I think it’s useful for Democrats to understand where the strengths and weaknesses are of the various candidates (either within their candidacy or their misalignment with the electorate) to inform things going forward.
Tenar Darell
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: oh yes, Hurt was the announcement that the apocalypse had arrived. But it hasn’t been on late night cable lately, so it’s probably why I didn’t add it to the list. Heck, we need the roots, this year is Network & A Face In The Crowd personified, isn’t it?
Kay
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I didn’t even know that he was a germophobe but unless I’m reading the subtext of Republicans making fun of him wrong, it’s related to that. What they’re basically saying is he’s not “manly” enough- not “solid” in some way they look for. They’re just not expressive and emoting all the time, like he is :)
I was glad he was on tv so much because that’s part of it- too much…everything. Settle down, Mr. Trump.
dollared
Which reminds me- the part I’m most looking forward to in the general is going to be the moment in one of the debates where Hillary and The Donald will have to compete to make the most sincere, profound and impassioned profession of deep Christian faith. Gawd, that will be fun. It’ll make a great sample.
Bob In Portland
@Iowa Old Lady: Unless the powers that be don’t want H. Clinton, and from their generous donations in her direction it appears to be the opposite, I don’t see any kind of indictment of her going into the general.
Baud
@BR:
Judging by the primary, Hillary seems to get that. Sanders far outspent her in media. (She’s still going to ask for money tho).
Aimai
@sunny raines: Also SHE has heard it all before. Unlike Kerry, for example, or Dukakis HRC has no reasin to expect other than horrendous treatment. I think she, like batack, is going to run this campsign professionally. Not for the illusory swing voter or the pundits.
Kay
@dollared:
I think there’s been a little rewriting of the narrative re: Sanders. My son and his wife are (strong) Clinton supporters and he called me primary day in Chicago, very confident. I told him he should be confident. I underestimated Sanders support.
He was rattled. He thought she’d win Illinois by a mile. I think it’s good over-all. She won’t take anything for granted.
Bob In Portland
@? Martin: Then we agree. Kind of. Maybe. Or maybe not.
Bob In Portland
@srv: People are given a choice. True liberalism or fascism. The people of Pennsylvania have spoken.
Brachiator
@Bob In Portland:
Wow. A totally made up number.
The fun thing is that these people are hated by different groups for different reasons.
This is actually a good question. Of course, Democrats seem to think that Hillary would be better than Bernie as far as this goes.
BR
@Baud:
I’m in CA and I should be on their list — but I’ve heard nothing from the campaign — so I’m not really sure her campaign gets it. I do see a lot of grassroots Bernie support, but none of it seems organized by the campaign.
I don’t see evidence of a Clinton ground game here in CA for the primary. And while, yeah, CA doesn’t matter for the general, we have a huge population and could send folks to NV (like I did for Obama in 2007/2008) and elsewhere, and can help with downballot races. If anyone has contacts with the campaign — make sure they get the message!
Baud
@BR:
That stuff costs money that may be better saved for the GE in states that will be contested. One possibility.
Baud
@efgoldman: Even McCain had a short bump after the GOP convention.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Because we did not spend 2000 in a coma like you apparently did.
hamletta
@BR: If you go to her Web site, they have an event listing where you enter your ZIP code, and it gives you a list of phone-banking parties, GOTV thingies, etc.
ETA: There’s also a volunteer signup thingie.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Either way, the sample is supposed to reflect the average person (within the MoE).
BR
@Baud:
Maybe so, but that seems shortsighted. Obama ’08 had offices in every medium-sized town in CA, even if the office was just a tiny storefront with one or two people. It served as a rallying point for the local volunteers, and it really did make a difference in downballot races — I was in a conservative area of San Diego at the time but the turnout among Dems was high enough (I think in part due to the Obama volunteer base) to tip the balance in a few cases.
Baud
@BR:
The 2008 primary was more closely contested.
Mnemosyne
@BR:
Wasn’t our primary a lot earlier in 2008, though? That may have something to do with resource allocation.
Bob In Portland
I bet none of the true villagers here likes Michael Parenti. Or know him.
Baud
@? Martin:
I can’t say I disagree with them.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: The Iowa caucuses were a month earlier in 2008 than this year.
Mai.naem.mobile
The media may beat up on Hillary but its not like the Clinton people are going to sit by with duct tape on their mouths. Trumpster has several dumpsters full of oppo research.
hovercraft
@Bob In Portland:
As documented by several pundits today, see Vox, see Steve Benin, so far this primary despite Bernie winning the youth vote Hillary has won the under $50 k in every state except VT and NH. On top of that she is winning women and minorities who are on average in the lower income brackets. So I think you need a new hypothesis.
Baud
@BR:
Plus, we will never achieve the excitement level we had in 2008. Not if Sanders were the nominee or even if Obama could run for a third term.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: So you aren’t concerned that Sanders will win the nomination but that the Republicans will steal the general? The people the Republicans represent are the same people that the neoliberals represent, with the exception of the scared homophobes and racists, who in any case don’t have the real money that is greasing the wheels of our democracy.
So you think the Republicans are going to try to steal it? How?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne:
You’re even more unpleasant when you devolve into insults.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: If I understand the term “gender gap” as used in political analysis correctly, it exists across all demographics, including age, race, income, education, etc. So even though more white women voted for Romney than for Obama in total, there was still a gender gap since they voted for Romney at lower rates than white men did — hence the gap. And the wider that gap — across all groups — the harder for the nominee it disfavors to win. If Trump is the Republican nominee, I suspect he’ll shatter all gender gap records ever recorded.
Kay
@Bob In Portland:
My middle son is a Bernie or Buster, but he’s in the IBEW and they’re a Lefty union here, on the scale of L to R among unions. I think I remember that they didn’t endorse Al Gore.
His sibs are making fun of him on email, which he is being very good-natured about. I’m glad they’re keeping a sense of humor.
japa21
@Bob In Portland: Well, that quote you put out there starts from a false premise. So why should what it says matter to us.
Bob In Portland
@Kay: Read the quote from DownWithTyranny! above. It will give you a better understanding of the argument within the Democratic Party.
raven
@Bob In Portland: I knew him 40 years ago.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: I only saw one debate. I was slightly Bernie curious before that debate, shouty and finger wagging Bernie was a total turn-off.
smintheus
Adding Bobby Knight as a campaign surrogate should help to boost Trump’s reputation for gravitas…because he’ll look even more presidential compared to the screaming chair-thrower.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Of course the Republicans are going to try and steal it. That’s what they do. What did you think the voting problems in Arizona were about? Don’t tell me you actually bought into the Berniebros’s theory that Hillary did it and not the Republicans running Arizona from top to bottom.
The only people who think there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats are people on the left. Republicans know perfectly well that there’s a huge difference and they don’t want a Democrat to win. So they’re going to try and steal it while they point at Hillary and tell you to keep an eye on her.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
The biggest difference in the women’s vote is white married women vote R. single white women are more of a swing vote. And then women of color are the most democratic. AA women are overwhelmingly democratic and count for the largest proportion of the gender gap.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: If you’ve seen one debate this year, you’ve seen them all.
@Mnemosyne:
The Village sometimes takes that line (“Both sides!”), but I don’t think they mean it.
Kay
@Bob In Portland:
I think I understand it. I believe it’s a real divide. I just don’t think it’s the end of the world, although I get mad at a lot of the things you object to also, so I see your point.
My Bernie son is OH so he already lost. My daughter is “lean Bernie” in PA but Clinton will win there. My Chicago son is a Clinton-backer.
dollared
@Baud: Or…..Tea Partiers. Duh.
Davebo
@Bob In Portland:
Clinton isn’t disrespecting the Bernie Bros even if you’re fee fee’s are hurt.
Effective? Let the revolt begin!
Baud
@dollared: Sorry, I don’t follow.
chopper
christ, i have to give up drinking whenever bob calls us ‘villagers’. i’m going to wreck my liver.
shomi
Yawn, DougJ fearmongering again because like it says in that article the hypocrit himself posted, “Some will want the race to tighten. They’ll look for angles to promote the idea.”
So kinda like DougJ’s post yesterday how we should ‘fear’ (notice the recurring theme here) the Hillary zombie lies from 15 years ago. So kinda like Wrong Way Cole saying we should fear the Drumpf and his (GASP) “pivot the the left”. Because everyone will just forget that he’s an asshole and bigot with zero political experience, zero governing experience and not even that great a businessman with is multiple bankruptcies???
dollared
@Mnemosyne:
about 2% of the people to the left of you. And about 20% of the Tea Party, which somehow you “overlooked.” But then you know the real enemy – the people who want the Democrats to aggressively pursue a better, fairer, more just, more productive society. Gotta fight them tooth and nail.
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
RE: the candidate who leads after the major party conventions is likely to win.
Absolutely correct. “Likely to win” is not a prophecy. And that entire section that I quoted contains some contradictions. I would say that a poll conducted closer to an election is more meaningful than who leads coming out of the convention. The article I quoted linked to a Guardian piece written in September 2012 that predicted that Obama would win. A few tidbits:
None of this says that 2016 must follow these trends, but it is something to consider.
Also, Rasmussen does crappy polling.
dollared
@Baud: look at 107 for a bit more detail.
Baud
@dollared:
You seem to be saying that the Tea Party believes that there is no difference between the parties. I don’t agree with that, if that’s what you’re saying.
Baud
@Brachiator:
It depends on how one defines their objective in conducting polls.
schrodinger's cat
Priyanka in a full on diva mode in Gunday. A twenty first century tongue-in-cheek tribute to the 70s era Hindi gangsta movies. Irrfan Khan makes an entrance at the very end. Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor are the gangsters (gunday) in question.
dollared
@schrodinger’s cat: Ah, good point. You really need to judge all candidates by their mannerisms.
dollared
@Baud: Right. Don’t read much of their stuff, do you? Ever hear of the term “RINO?” Every time the R’s cave on a showdown, they go into exactly the “no-difference” rant.
Kathleen
@Frankensteinbeck: I fear that’s been happening for a long time now.
schrodinger's cat
@dollared: I am not a fan of finger wagging curmudgeons, who like to use slogans to score points. YMMV.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I have no idea what this poll is supposed to tell anyone. What does “believe in” Socialism or Capitalism even mean in the context of this question? Does someone who believes in Socialism want government control of the means of production or do they want a robust public sector? Does someone who believes in Capitalism want an absence of a public sector and no regulation on corporations?
Baud
@dollared:
RINO is directed at politicians, not the party. In any event, I don’t believe them to the extent they say they believe there is no difference between the parties. They are Republicans.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
The Tea Party thinks there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans? Then why are they rock-solid Republican voters?
But, please, tell me again that Trump and Clinton will make the same appointments to their cabinets, federal agencies, and the Supreme Court so it doesn’t matter which one gets elected. I could use a laugh today.
Aimai
@BR: for the primary?
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I think it’s supposed to capture how people identify themselves, rather than any deep thinking about how the economy should be structured.
dollared
@schrodinger’s cat: Nice. Openly age-ist. and devoid of any intellectual engagement with the policies and values espoused by the candidate.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: I will have to check with my low information voter sister to see if she even knows this is an election year. People like my sister are part of the equation for how it can all change really quickly.
Kathleen
@Tenar Darell: Yes!!! Those films were so prescient. Also, too, Idiocracy in its way. I keep expecting one of the talking heads (pick one) to ask, “Water? Like what’s in the toilet?”
Trollhattan
@Kathleen:
I’m all about the Brawndo.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Not quite true. In 2012 nonwhites voted in large numbers for Obama without regard to gender (in some states there was a mild Latino gender gap).
There is a significant divergence in white men and white women, and this divergence tends to increase when an election is “highly ideological.”
Yep. A couple of historical tidbits:
If, as most expect, Hillary is the nominee, this will be an extremely interesting election with respect to the gender gap.
One other tidbit:
Apart from the gender gap, much of this can also be explained by the importance of the nonwhite vote.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: NR brought up that poll in the other thread, but based on other polls over the same time period it looks like an outlier to me. Of course the race could tighten a lot by the fall.
Keith G
@Bob In Portland:
Maybe you should get out more.
I am in restaurant management and in my part of the world Hillary has a sizable following. Yes, there were many who either liked Bernie a lot or were Bernie-curious. To their credit, however, a good number of them were worried about the lack of follow up to Bernie’s large ideas. But those are battles that have been fought already.
I just want to point out that there are a lot of people who are in the lower working class quadrant of our economy who see Hillary Clinton as someone who can do right by them.
opiejeanne
@MomSense: A friend who is a Bernie Bro showed up last night just as supper was ready to bring us some tomato seedlings; he and his girlfriend have figured out there’s going to be a wedding here; they have not gotten an invitation and are trying to wangle one. I like both of them but there are reasons not to invite them.
Anyway, the conversation devolved into politics, he had no clue what a platform or a plank was, and when he tried to tell me that Bernie did so well in Washington because of organization, I laughed. WA is a caucus state. I told him there was very little organization on the ground before the caucus and he had no idea what that meant. When I told him it was phone-banking, knocking on doors, organizing people to attend the caucuses, finding people to provide rides,etc. he sneered. He actually sneered at phone-banking and the other ground-level methods of getting people to vote.
When he started to talk about polling I shut him down and told him to go look at 538.
The wedding is the weekend before the DNC in Philadelphia; I don’t think I’m inviting him.
Kathleen
@Trollhattan: I’d like to hear Baud’s position on water.
Baud
@Kathleen:
I prefer it on the rocks.
(Haven’t seen the movies you’re discussing.)
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: There was a formula, a questionnaire that would predict with a large degree of accuracy how a person would vote and a lot of it was based on how your parents voted.
Dave & I both had Republican parents. We moved away from the Republican party before 1980 and I think what the Rep party has done since then has shown that the formula needs tweaking.
schrodinger's cat
@dollared: Well I like some of Bernie’s ideas but he has not one clue how to implement them. Screaming at people to get what you what you want may work for toddlers, I don’t think its going to work with the Congress.
dollared
@Baud: @Mnemosyne:
Really? I told you that? Link, or accept that you behave beneath your own standards when you argue. I will accept an apology.
As for Tea Partiers versus Bernie Bots, we know that they don’t all vote Republican. They primary mainstream Republicans and win, in direct opposition to the party. And if they don’t win the primary, about 5-10% vote for another candidate, usually a libertarian, which is why libertarians frequently win 3-5% of the vote, depending on the race and year.
And of course, your fundamental premise, that only people to the left of you vote third party, is completely laughable. Left side 3rd party candidates usually get less than 1% of the vote, which means 98+% of the people to the left of you vote Democratic. And so they are your allies, while you lie about them and insult them with easily disprovable assertions.
Trollhattan
@Kathleen:
I’m sure Baud! will weigh in on his Brawndo vs. water platform, presuming he’s not busy “batin’.” Like a lot of folks, I’m assuming President Baud!’s first term will effectively be President Camacho’s third (or fifth, they really don’t count well), only with moar gunz..
Cat48
Dems have a better chance of winning since Obama is at 52% today. He has bounced between 49% to 53% for the last 3 months. It should help.
dollared
@schrodinger’s cat: “Screaming.” Link, please.
raven
@WaterGirl: Ever heard of Parenti?
Baud
@dollared:
As you said
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Republicans will rally around Trump. If they have to create him, they will. That’s why I think it will be more normal than abnormal.
Their new thing is how ALL the choices suck. They only say that when they don’t like their candidate.
Doug R
@Kay: This is how you get “close” contests. Pollsters adjust for expected balance in dems vs repubs ignoring actual numbers and voila- neck and neck horse race.
WaterGirl
@raven: Holy fuck. I had not heard of him, but I’ll bet my sister has – she is 5 years older than me and she was involved in all he protests. Yikes. I had no idea it was that bad here.
Baud
@dollared:
Such low numbers are outliers which isn’t sufficient to refute the idea that Tea Parties are Republicans.
chopper
@dollared:
OMG, this is just super dorky.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator:
Got a link to stats on that? Not that I disbelieve you, but it contradicts the data I’ve seen, which indicates that there was a fairly significant gender gap even among Latino and black voters, who went overwhelmingly for Obama in 2012.
schrodinger's cat
@dollared: You can do your own homework. Kthx bai.
raven
@WaterGirl: I can’t dig up the picture of him being dragged by two Illinois State Police Officers in front of the Alma Mater with his face bashed in. In his story the guy that got his teeth knocked out is a great pal of mine. . .introduced me to my first wife on the Quad.
dollared
@Baud: as for Memn;
As for you:
Baud
@dollared: That fails as proof.
Brachiator
@Baud:
RE: Rasmussen does crappy polling.
Conforming to reality?
ruemara
@BR: She has a much stronger ground game than Sanders, with less money. So, there’s that.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: It’s been interesting looking at the state polling. The traditional swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania aren’t that lopsided; it’ll be a close race there. But a bunch of Romney 2012 states look competitive: Hillary leads Trump not just in NC, but in Georgia and Missouri, and Arizona and Utah were tied up last I saw.
I doubt she’ll win all these states, but it’s interesting to see the possibility that she (or maybe it’s really Trump) might change the map a little.
Miss Bianca
@Keith G: So it’s not just me! BiP seemed unable to believe that I might be making close to poverty-level wages and still want to vote for HRC.
Bobby Thomson
@? Martin: it doesn’t mean that at all. It more likely means that a minority bloc (men) broke extremely heavily for Trump but were countered by a not quite so dominating advantage among a majority bloc (women).
BR
@ruemara:
Agreed, but it’s a shadow of Obama’s… Sanders seems to have no coherent ground game. The stakes seem to get higher in each election as the GOP goes more crazy, so we need some serious ground game to keep them from stealing it in a swing state or two (many of which have GOP governors.)
Chip Daniels
@rikyrah:
This right here. All the breathless polling and gaffes and WinTheMorning stuff wont matter unless we see movement in battleground states that move them from “Lean Blue” to Lean Red”.
Chris
@Baud:
Can you support both?
dollared
@Baud: Can I send you a link to an online logic course? If you say people to your right never vote third party, then you are saying that people to your left are the only ones that do.
WaterGirl
@raven: Wow, what a difference just a couple of years makes. I came in the fall of 1972 and all the protests were over.
feebog
National polling, even as the election draws near, is pretty meaningless. We elect our Presidents via the Electoral College. Thus, state polling is the key. FL, OH, NC, CO and NV are the five states to watch to determine who is going to win. If you are looking for a Democratic blowout, add GA, AZ, IN, MO and MT. In particular, a large latino turnout in AZ and GA could make the difference.
Chris
@BillinGlendaleCA:
… or, this.
raven
@WaterGirl: Shit was up for grabs for a while there.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: He lost me when he blamed Hillary for all the military deaths in Iraq. He forgot who was President at the time.
WaterGirl
@raven: Next time I talk to my sister, I’ll have to ask her to tell me more about what it was like back then.
She was political while in college and described herself as a radical back then. Then she met her first husband and they found religion and suddenly she was all about “god says the guy gets to make the decisions”, etc. We weren’t very close for the next 20 years. Thankfully, he’s out of the picture and we are close again.
dollared
@Baud: Of course they are Republicans. Just as Bernie Sanders supporters are loyal Democrats, actually even more loyal than Tea Partiers. Which Memn was denying.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Some of the states are so odd. I saw a WI poll where Cruz was w/in 2 points of Clinton. I think Democrats are weaker in the Great Lakes than they let on. That worries me a little but Clinton is a known quantity, so I’m fatalistic about it. Either they’ll vote for her or not. I don’t think they’ll be huge swings in her support. With Obama I was always wondering if they’d bolt there at the end :)
Baud
@dollared:
I promise to take it if you promise to apply it.
@dollared:
Which was my original point. I’ll await your apology.
Villago Delenda Est
@Rand Careaga: The problem was Sullivan did not follow through logically and put the rest of us out of our misery by removing himself from the scene.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: RE: Not quite true. In 2012 nonwhites voted in large numbers for Obama without regard to gender (in some states there was a mild Latino gender gap).
I sit semi-corrected.
I used the NBC Exit Polls
Nationally, the breakdown shows consistently that women voted for Obama over Romney, with the following gender gap:
White women/men +7 percent
Black women/men +9 percent
Latino women/men +11 percent
In the South, results were more like Alabama, where 96 percent of black women and 95 percent of black men voted Obama.
However, the data set I used has odd gaps. For Illinois, it only breaks down exit poll results for white men and women voters, but only for black women.
And there are obvious gaps (and no gender breakdowns) for Asians Americans, since they are only a small or nonexistent portion of the electorate in most states
dollared
@Baud: Nope, I told you they voted third party and you denied it. They do vote 3rd party in greater percentages than people on the left.
MomSense
@opiejeanne:
It takes 7 or 8 contacts with a voter to get them to vote and the completion rate for phone calls is a by lower every election. The thing I really appreciated about the Obama campaign was the absolute insistence on meeting the dials, doors, and vols targets every day. Sanders himself said the other day that everyone knows poor people don’t vote and I wanted to punch his face through my computer screen.
I have spent so much time in poor neighborhoods doing voter registration and GOTV. I’m still in touch with people I met doing voter registration. You don’t just campaign for the votes. I think we have a responsibility as Democrats to honor our values by registering people to vote. You have to be on he ground and you have to figure out what the obstacles are. It’s incredibly rewarding work.
BR
@Kay:
This seems like why ground game is going to matter so much…
BR
@MomSense:
This.
Bobby Thomson
Clinton’s going to need to improve her ground game. I’ve gotten two cold texts from Sanders supporters and zilch from the Clinton campaign. No call, no door knock, not even a mailing. I’ve gotten tons of mail for the state legislative elections, most of it from the Republicans.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@hovercraft: Which means your average Republican is smarter than Bob in Portland.
raven
@WaterGirl: Strike to Become More Human!
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Anti-Vietnam War Protests
May, 1970 – Document Archive
Well done site by kids at Urbana High, Vic and Vern Fein were big time radicals and then became jesus freaks with the New Covenant whatever.
Baud
@dollared:
You said 5-10% vote third party (without citation, I might add). So the overwhelming majority support Republicans and recognize that the two parties are not the same.
FWIW, I did not say anything about Bernie’s supporters. I have always assumed that the vast majority of them will support Hillary in the GE.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
You owe me a new keyboard.
Davebo
@Baud: On the internet 78.3% of all statistics are made up.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
Uh, that wasn’t my premise. We seem to have a fundamental disagreement about which people we’re talking about.
Every survey I’ve ever seen shows that the vast majority of “Tea Party” voters are Republicans who vote Republican. They win Republican primaries and run as Republicans. There is no “Tea Party” running separately from the Republicans on any ballot.
There are plenty of people on the right who vote third party, but they don’t identify themselves as being part of the “Tea Party.”
I don’t really give a shit which non-party members vote third party, except to the extent that they claim that Clinton and Trump will take exactly the same actions if elected. I was stupid enough to fall for the “Republicrats!” bullshit in 2000 and I’m not going to fall for it again, or let my fellow liberals fall for it.
Baud
@Davebo:
Fixed.
Applejinx
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Actually, it’s a good question. Here’s why: people are expected to vote on policy as if things like capitalism and socialism are religions. It’s become pretty meaningless except to denote mental axioms people won’t question.
You could safely say ‘I believe in capitalism’ means ‘I think rich people should get tax breaks because they create all the wealth and jobs’ (or, ‘many/most’ wealth and jobs). You could say ‘I believe in socialism’ means ‘massive redistribution will lead to a middle class and then eventually a bourgeoisie who no longer respect socialism and don’t remember how they got there, LOL’.
I believe in that definition of ‘socialism’ but it’s OK that people generally don’t because it’s true, they don’t even remember their history.
I am thrilled that most people ‘don’t believe in capitalism’. Because on the one hand, the obvious retort is ‘Capitalism believes IN YOU!’ because we are nothing but grist for the mill of capitalism, we are the substance to be ground to powder beneath its rollers, and all the nonvaluable parts to be discarded as trash. That’s capitalism.
On the other hand, the fewer people ‘believe’ in capitalism, the more of them will take action against its abuses.
I’m not sure there even IS an ‘ism’ that can actually work. More likely it’s just an endless cycle of oversimplifying, erring, and then correcting.
Capitalism is WAY overdue for a correction. Hopefully not too catastrophic of one.
Brachiator
@MomSense:
Yeppity yep.
Kay
@BR:
Trump is going after Kasich on NAFTA, so she’ll be hearing that in Ohio. Again.
Obama is now comparing his trade deal favorably to NAFTA (NAFTA was bad, his is good) so that’ll make it harder for her. They used to say NAFTA was good but people just didn’t “understand globalization”. Now NAFTA is bad. Bad deal. I can’t keep up :)
Bill Clinton was NAFTA (actually it was George HW Bush) but it doesn’t matter. It’s like shorthand for “low wages”.
NR
@feebog: And I say that in a Clinton vs. Trump matchup, not only will all the red states from 2012 stay red, but OH and IA are lost, and we’ll have to fight like hell to hold on to PA, NH, MI, WI, and MN. Hillary is a terrible candidate and voters in the Midwest still remember NAFTA.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Technically, there are very, very few socialist countries left — Vietnam is one. Even the “socialist” countries like Sweden are based on capitalism, but they have a whole lot more safety nets set up for when capitalism fails.
IOW, the choice between “capitalism” and “socialism” is an inherently false choice. As many European countries have shown, you can successfully balance both things and use socialism to smooth out the bumps of capitalism.
Frankly, our current laissez-faire capitalism was already proven a failure in the late 1920s and it urgently needs to be dialed back, but there’s more than one way to be capitalist. Don’t let the right wing pretend otherwise.
redshirt
@Baud: “Be excellent to each other”
– Socrates
goblue72
Fuck fear. Fear is what the establishment wants. Fear is the Shock Doctrine in action. Fear drives voters to turtle up and play it “safe” – where safe involves a few crumbs thrown to the masses but otherwise doing little to upset the status quo. 8 years later we should not be fucking happy to have merely achieved a Republican healthcare plan, stagnant wage growth with social inequality worse than anytime since Robber Baron era, and that the LBGT community can now go die in foreign wars along with the rest of us. Go Team! – we’ve survived the Great Recession and aren’t all homeless – Yay us!
I’m reminded of what Bernadette Devlin said in the day after Bloody Sunday, when she punched the Tory Home Secretary in the face and was asked to apologize, and instead responded – “I’m just sorry I didn’t get him by the throat.”
I’m not afraid of Donald Trump. He’s a fool and a distraction. The entire Republican party apparatus wants to drop the guy down a bottomless pit. The guy is Barry Goldwater without an actual movement. While there are plenty of sociopathic racist whites out there – there aren’t enough to elect a President. There weren’t enough in 2008 or 2012 when the GOP ran “not scary” semi-competent politicians, let alone with a dumpster fire running.
patroclus
I’m not all that concerned as to whether the vast majority of Bernie supporters will support Hillary, assuming she gets the nomination. Most of them are even more loyal Democrats than Hillary’s supporters (with the exception of African Americans, who have been more loyal than anyone). There’s a small percentage that were Ron Paul fans, but I don’t see them going exclusively to Trump or Cruz; some will vote for a third party candidate, some might vote for Hillary; some might not vote at all. There’s also a small percentage that hate Hillary so much, they might go third party or not vote either. Hillary’s challenge would be to keep that percentage as small as possible. It isn’t Bernie and his supporters that need to do all the work – unifying the party is more the nominee’s responsibility that anyone else’s. She’s begun to do some of that – she (and her supporters) need to do more.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: Did you buy your dress, yet?
ThresherK
“Sandra Day O’Palin” lasted two weeks (in the media)?
I don’t remember it as that long. She was like a flowerpot on a windowsill in an old Mutt & Jeff: You could see it coming but there was pleasure in the act nonetheless.
NR
@goblue72:
They were running against a much better and more competent politician in those years than they are now.
patroclus
@NR: Well, here in Illinois, which is also in the midwest, we’re solidly blue and will remain so. Cruz would have no chance whatsoever; Trump might fare a little better but nowhere near enough to win. Obama being from here helped a lot in the contiguous states in ’08 and ’12; we won’t have that in ’16, unless Hillary picks someone from the area (like Al Franken) to help out as her V-P. Michigan and Minnesota are the easiest Dem holds; Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio will be purple as usual. Hillary will likely beat Cruz in all; Trump is a little more of a wild card (because of his views on trade) and might make a challenge if he successfully pivots from his awful positions on some other issues.
Bob In Portland
@Keith G: Like Bill?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Baud: rofl. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
NR
@patroclus: Illinois will stay blue of course, but I think Trump’s stances on trade and immigration put the entire rest of the Midwest at risk. Oddly enough we might have an easier time holding Florida than Pennsylvania this time around. We’ll see.
redshirt
@patroclus: Let’s all take a vow: No Senators for VP! We need each and every Dem Senator, and more.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
In other words, flip your State of Disbelief? lol
I agree totally. Trump or Cruz at the top = big HRC win and flipping the Senate
Bob In Portland
@hovercraft: Actually, I’m not concerned. I expect if Hillary gets the nomination, and I expect her to get the nomination now, that she’ll win. Because of her and the DNC if there is a bump in Democrats elected to Congress they will be neoliberals who will do little to ameliorate the plight of the average American but will not be as punitive as a Republican. Essentially, H. Clinton will preside over the status quo of the slowly diminishing status of the working class.
WaterGirl
@raven: Really? I know Vic from volleyball and he did my kitchen a decade or more ago. If he got religion, he kept it to himself. Will look at the link.
Bob In Portland
@efgoldman: You guys can’t help yourselves, can you?
Jeffro
@redshirt: I’m sure that’s already been factored in (at least where it would mean a GOP governor making the appointment). That’s why Castro, Perez, Warner, and Kaine seem like pretty much it to me, unless HRC really wants to reach and go with one of the female Dems in the House. Even then, not a whole lot of great options…
Oh and just for laughs (although I’m sure some bored talking head will eventually get around to it): while Michelle Obama has already said she’ll never run for president, why not bring her on as VP? The all-FLOTUS ticket? Clinton-Obama at last? lol What a landslide it would be, though…
FlipYrWhig
@NR: @patroclus: Trump has no “views on trade” other than that his deal would be a great deal, the best. I put “Trump’s views on trade” in the same box as “Trump’s views on war in the Middle East.” And that box is labeled “shit Trump has said just enough about to dupe well-meaning Hillary-skeptical liberals into thinking he’s heterodox.” He has nothing to say on trade other than that Obama sucks, and nothing to say on war other than that someone should do a better job of fighting it.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: Oh my ever-loving God, Bob, look up what “neoliberal” actually means, please, and then attempt to understand it, harder than you have for the past very many months.
patroclus
@NR: Well, that’s why Bernie running and pulling Clinton to the left on trade and other issues has helped so much. If Hillary had run unopposed, she never would have switched on TPP or the $15 minimum wage (or other issues). Bernie forced her to, because if she hadn’t, she would have lost some of these states (and even more votes in Wisconsin and Michigan) to him. And Trump would have been opposed to trade policy after Hillary had not switched. Now that she’s staked out positions in opposition, it’ll be tougher for him to make headway. Here in Chicago, Trump’s positions on immigration are anathema – he will never do well here because he’s so intolerant and apparently wants to deport half the city. There are fewer big cities in some of those other midwestern states, but I don’t think they’re nearly as anti-immigrant as you are suggesting.
Jacel
@Mnemosyne: The California primary in 2008 was held much earlier, on February 5, 2008. In 2012, the California primary moved back to June, where it is this cycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_California,_2008
redshirt
@Bob In Portland: Bob is slowly moderating, thus abandoning the Revolution.
Bob In Portland
The bubble is strong at BJ today.
@Davebo: I agree. She isn’t. Her surrogates are. To include the villagers here at Balloon Juice.
patroclus
@redshirt: Well, that’s what I thought about my Senator – Barack Obama – when the rest of the country wanted to steal him from us. And, that didn’t turn out too badly. So no, I like Al Franken a lot and think he would be a great V-P (and Hillary’s in her 70’s, so a possible President as well).
redshirt
@Jeffro:Hmm. Clinton/Obama. That would be fascinating, as there would also be two former Presidents as husbands in the mix but in charge.
I wonder what level of possible this hits at? 2%?
redshirt
@Bob In Portland: Do you know what the phrase “Villagers” actually applies to, Bob?
redshirt
@patroclus: Running for President is different than VP. Anyone can run for President; you have to be chosen to be a VP. Thus a political calculation. We need all the Dem Senators we can get and shouldn’t sacrifice a one unless it’s 100% assured they’ll be replaced by at least an equally good Dem.
Bob In Portland
@redshirt: It depends on what you mean by revolution. Am I going to vote for Bernie next month? Yes. Am I going to vote for H. Clinton in November? Probably not. Almost assuredly not.
And come January I will anticipate the next ratcheting in the new cold war. I will mark down the various points where H. Clinton chooses the wealthy and their wants over the general population. I will strive not to become a full-blown alcoholic as the country further dissolves into an oligarchy.
1. Will Clinton work to pass more trade agreements?
2. Will Clinton use military force?
3. Will the separation between rich and poor continue?
Of course. It’s baked in the cake.
redshirt
@Bob In Portland: Never stop fighting Bob.
BR
@Bob In Portland:
I’m no Clinton fan but this is a joke.
Quiz — who said this?
Bob In Portland
@redshirt: I know how I use it, redshirt. I don’t see a copyright on it. I use it to describe the neoliberals here at Balloon Juice. If my use of “villagers” offends you, then tough shit. Words are still free.
I imagine there being a community of BJers living in a virtual village. They are liberal enough to be offended by what Republicans do but not by what they or their neoliberal icons do. Sometimes they get upset that someone says something about their icons or their personal belief system. Mostly, they’re self-satisfied. And they don’t cotton to opposing opinions.
Miss Bianca
@MomSense: Yeah, right, I saw that too. I guess Sen. Sanders isn’t above claiming that we need a better class of voter. Blaming The Poors doesn’t seem like a terribly valid socialist stand to me, but whatevs.
Bob In Portland
@BR: Of course, it’s a joke. Of course she will use military force to further benefit corporations. Right now they are creating a market for energy in Europe. Whether they get a cut from the Qatari gasfields or they can boost energy prices enough to make those LNG terminals along the Atlantic Coast somehow profitable, the plan is right there for all to see.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: Yes, if you’re looking for a candidate whose supporters are the _opposite_ of self-satisfied and the _opposite_ of easily offended by remarks about their icons, the quest ends with one Bernie Sanders.
redshirt
@Bob In Portland: You didn’t answer my question, and instead resorted to insults, as usual. Do you know what the term “Villagers” actually refers to? I ask that clearly in hopes you’ll answer.
redshirt
@Miss Bianca: I’m sure Bob has an explanation as to why Bernie thew the poor under a bus.
Bob In Portland
@Miss Bianca: You are truly a piece of work. There are many reasons why the poor are less likely to vote than the rich. And, in fact, an examination of polling records over the last century confirms that the poor are less likely to vote than the rich. Only you and the most ferocious Hillary supporters here in the BJ village would take a statement of fact and make it into Sanders insulting the poor.
You must drink bile by the gallon.
Bob In Portland
@redshirt: He didn’t. Why did Bill throw the poor under the bus?
BR
@Bob In Portland:
Wrong answer — Sanders said the quote “We will crush and destroy ISIS.” Tell me, does that not involve the military and crazy amounts of ordinance? I’d like to see you respond rather than dodge. It’s fine if you admit Sanders is the lesser of two evils.
FlipYrWhig
@redshirt: I think Bob has one of those secret twin languages only without a twin. Also known, appropriately enough, as idioglossia.
geg6
@srv:
Gawd, you’re stupid. These are my neighbors. I’ve known them all my life. They haven’t voted Dem for national office in at least thirty years. The lazy asses finally decided to change their registration so they can vote for the short fingered vulgarian in the primary. They are no loss to my party because they haven’t been with us in decades. We are glad they are finally out of our house.
Miss Bianca
@Bob In Portland: Dear Kettle,
You are so very, very black. Filled with such black, black bile. Shame on you!
Signed, Pot
patroclus
@FlipYrWhig: Well, I certainly understand what you’re saying – all of Trump’s “positions” are just basically “sh*t he says.” But to treat him seriously, he’s opposed to TPP, he wants to put tariffs and other trade barriers in effect against Mexico and China and he wants to penalize China for manipulating its currency. No, I don’t think he understands those “positions” very well, if at all, but if he goes into Ohio in October and keeps repeating that stuff, voters might take him seriously. And if Hillary were on record as supporting TPP, it might have an effect on some voters. But because of Bernie, she’s on record against it; hence, less potential Trump traction. I realize here on BJ we’re just going to mock him (because we’re all snarky neoliberal Villagers – man, even Bob has gotten me saying that!), but the Clinton (or Sanders) campaign would need to take him more seriously than that.
redshirt
@FlipYrWhig: Perhaps he’s speaking some revolutionary code that only his handler can understand.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: Bernie Sanders sure has a lot of theories about why he’s losing. The poor people who don’t vote would support him if they tried, the people in the South are too conservative and voted too soon (excluding the poor ones, apparently), long lines at polling places where Sanders voters were already outnumbered but it totally would have been the opposite of that, the media was mean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz something something. Everything but “people have a choice of two and like the other one better.” Curious, eh?
raven
@WaterGirl: Vern was more evangelical than Vic. Here’s pic of them with the notorious Irving Azoff of the Eagles and Live Nation.
Audio of Vern and Vic here.
https://will.illinois.edu/community/production/beyond-the-tie-dye-counterculture-in-champaign-urbana-1965-1975
patroclus
@BR: Good luck with getting Bob to respond substantively! A realistic answer, of course, is that any C-in-C is going to “use” the military – even Sanders, as he has pledged to do (thus indicating no real substantive difference with Hillary), but Bob is unlikely to recognize that.
FlipYrWhig
@patroclus: My take has been that people on the left and right have latched onto the word “trade” when they really mean “job losses,” kind of like how a lot of people say “deficit” when they actually mean “bad economy.” So IMHO a lot of poll results about “trade” per se are measuring something that’s a proxy for something else, rather than signifying a position pro or con on anything that actually exists. Which doesn’t mean that it should be entirely discounted, but that we shouldn’t put too much stock in what the polls tell us about it. (I take it Kay feels differently.)
grandpa john
@feebog: Yes, this. That is why the ones of us who followed the state polling in 2012 were never worried about the outcome , it always showed Obama with more than 270 EV.
Bob In Portland
@patroclus: So any new wars, police actions or regime changes you see on the horizon?
redshirt
@Bob In Portland: So, dodging simple questions again, Bob? And you expect to have any credibility here in the “Village”?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
The problem isn’t “copyright.” The problem is that “neoliberal” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. If you’ve made up your own personal definition of an existing word like “neoliberal,” you need to tell people what your new definition is rather than saying, “I’m heading out for dinosaur” and getting pissed off because people don’t realize that your new word for “lunch” is “dinosaur.”
Bob In Portland
@BR: I didn’t answer, and yes, I believe I heard Sanders say it in one of the debates. How do you crush ISIS? You stop providing them with guns and ammunition that they get through Turkey, Saudi Arabia and from the Sunni princes along the Gulf.
Which means that you go after the House of Saud. But that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for H. Clinton. Quite the opposite.
If, since using bin Laden and friends to undermine the Russian-friendly Afghan regime in the 1970s, you haven’t seen the relationship between the House of Saud and the spread of Wahhabism, then there is no point in continuing the conversation. If you understand that then you know what H. Clinton will do.
There’s no draft anymore, so no one’s kid here is going to die wherever the next country is unless he/she volunteers.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
New ones? No. Continuing attempts to clean up the disaster W created in the Middle East? Probably. But any action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or Yemen is by definition NOT a new action, because we’re already there and have been since at least 2002.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: My definition of neoliberal is in Thomas Frank’s LISTEN, LIBERAL. If my use of the word doesn’t correspond to common usage in the Balloon Juice village, then you maybe need to expand your reading. Or not. Villagers tend to be very insular, and very neoliberal.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
So you actually want Hillary Clinton to start a new war, but you’re pissed off that she’s not going to declare war on your preferred bad actor. Got it.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Technically, we’re not in Libya. Technically, we’ve only bombed the bejezus out of it and allowed the free market of arms and wild-eyed radicalism to do what it will with Libya.
Now, on the down low there are British special forces there, and if the Brits are there we’re probably there too. But officially we’re not there. Just like we’re not in Ukraine.
But however you want to justify the bloodshed, go right ahead.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Stop acting delusional.
Aimai
@Bobby Thomson: maybe you need to reach out to her? Apparently you are giving off a republican vibe.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Oh, well, if Thomas Frank used it incorrectly, that must mean it’s now correct. Because Thomas Frank is never wrong.
redshirt
@Bob In Portland:
For those of us who haven’t read that book, could you summarize that definition, Bob?
Also, what is your definition of neoliberal?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
You said you want Hillary Clinton to “go after” the House of Saud. I quoted you. What did you mean by that?
But, hey, I realize you think all of our problems in the Middle East are Obama’s fault because Reasons. Are you sure you weren’t in a coma from 2000 to 2008? Because you seem to have a lot of trouble connecting the dots between the events of those years and the events of today.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland:
Ah, so you also have an idioglossic usage for the word “crush.”
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: Finger wagging will solve all the world’s problems.
Aimai
@patroclus: on what planet are bernies voters more loyal Than even hillary clintonsTo the democratic party as a party? At all? Dkos is rife with people who will tell you they are greens, or progressives, or independents who do not identify with or support the demicratic party.
FlipYrWhig
@redshirt: @Mnemosyne: Bob thinks “neoliberal” means “new and sucky quisling liberal, not like the good fighting populist liberals of bygone days.” And if you didn’t know any better, you’d think that was a decent definition. It kind of looks like that’s what it should mean. But if you do know better, you know that “liberal” means something else in the context of political science and political theory, and that “neoliberal” is related to that instead. Bob hasn’t tried to do acquaint himself with this yet, because Bob is very, very, very stubborn.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: Because we know better than th ignorant masses.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Bob is Russian, and doesn’t get the nuances. He calls Tunch blog commenters, Villagers.
ETA: After Putin’s budget cuts, KGB is not as cutting edge as it used to be.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Bob is Russian, and doesn’t get the nuances. He calls Tunch blog commenters, Villagers.
ETA: After Putin’s budget cuts, KGB is not as cutting edge as it used to be. Instead of Keri Russell they have to settle for Bob in Putinland.
Central Planning
Semi OT – I once sat next to one (only?) guy who went around and opened up the Edible Arrangements stores. He was a drunk and a tool.
patroclus
@Aimai: That’d be Planet Earth; more specifically, the United States of America. The GOS is the GOS; not necessarily representative of Bernie voters generally. The ones I know, here in Chicago, are quite loyal Democrats. And they didn’t vote for either Bruce Rauner or Mark Kirk. Nor would they have ever even considered it.
But I’m more interested in Bob advocating “taking on” Saudi Arabia. Wow! For someone who criticizes others for warmongering, that sounds pretty bellicose. Why would we want to start a war with them? That’s just bizarre – I’m going to remember that one. Thankfully, neither Hillary nor Bernie advocate that and I think it’d be a terrible idea.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared: Ask people how they feel about “the deficit” and see how many say “excellent, we love the deficit because it means we’re borrowing money to build necessary things!” And IIRC from polling, when you ask people how they feel about “trade” they’re generally positive. So the terminology is often taking off at an angle when it comes to the way people in the loop use it vs. the way people not in the loop hear it.
It’s the coupling of trade and job losses, especially NAFTA–which means a lot of things to a lot of people–that sets people off. Foreign trade is a real issue, and both trade qua trade and sloganeering around trade can obviously hurt Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, but I’m pretty sure that “trade” in the political media is a shorthand for something else, basically the struggles of the industrial white working class. So fight the right fights about the struggles of the industrial white working class, knowing that some of those have to do with trade, and others have to do with “trade” because “trade” is a slippery synonym for other things. YMMV.
FlipYrWhig
@patroclus: We can just use that disappearing-airplane weapon that Ukrainian fascists have been trying to perfect, and point it at Saudi Arabia. Easy peasy.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
As far as I can tell, these days “neoliberal” basically means “libertarian.” I could only find one online article where Thomas Frank used the word, but he seemed to be using it in that sense and claiming that Democrats have bought into libertarian economic policies, which has very little to do with the sense BiP seems to be using it in.
But Thomas Frank also seems to think that Trump’s supporters are totally not racists despite the things they do and say at his rallies, so grain of salt here.
Sibelius
Song always sticks.
Everybody was kung fu fighting…those cats were fast as lightening…
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Yep, that’s basically why I was asking above “can it be both?” The most successful economies invariably involve a healthy mix of free markets and strong government.
Unfortunately, I think the point above about capitalism and socialism being “religions” is accurate.
Chris
@Sibelius:
SERIOUSLY!
Balloon Juice: the greatest source of earworms on the Internet.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: When Bob has you looking up things on the internet, he wins.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Neoliberal economics is the economics favored by the Chicago school. They think macroecon should have a basis in micro principles and they reject Keynes and his general theory as ad-hoc and not “scientific”. Like Lucas and Friedman, both Nobel Prize winners in econ.
Bob in Portland
@Mnemosyne: If you want to know, read Frank. If you don’t want to know, don’t.
Bob in Portland
@redshirt: It’s win or lose with you, eh? Sad.
Bob in Portland
@patroclus: Try again. I didn’t call for war against the House of Saud. I believe that was every presidential candidate to include Sanders.
Saudi Arabia is the source of almost all Wahhabism in the world. It should be treated as such.
redshirt
@Bob in Portland: You still haven’t answered the direct questions you’ve been asked. What’s a neoliberal, Bob? What’s a villager?
Go ahead and dodge again. You just cement your troll status with every avoidance.
Bob in Portland
@FlipYrWhig: Whig, who had the missile batteries in Ukraine that could take out an airliner? The Ukrainian army. Who else? Nobody.
But thanks for showing your true devotion to the fascist government there. And here.
redshirt
@Bob in Portland:
Jeez. You’re like the BRINKS TRUCKS! guy, except from Russia.
Bob in Portland
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s not a precise translation of how Frank uses the term. So, no, you are also wrong. Read the book and keep guessing what Frank means.
Bob in Portland
@FlipYrWhig: Why do you segregate the working class? It’s not like that in any place I’ve worked. Is that how you do it in your village, or don’t you think that of all the workers of various ethnic or racial backgrounds only the white working class is concerned about their jobs going overseas? Whig, you would like to make it a racialist argument but you’re only fooling the village, and they only want to be fooled.
Applejinx
@Chris: Let’s try to get people talking about it as ‘lawful’ versus ‘lawless’ markets.
‘free’ is useless, it’s like calling them ‘happy’ markets. Who the fuck wants stifled, sad markets? But you wouldn’t want ‘lawless’ markets, you’d want there to be rules. I think ‘lawful markets’ is a good way to frame this.
schrodinger's cat
@Bob in Portland: Why should I care what Frank says?
Anonymous patient
@Bobby Thomson:
If you haven’t heard from the Hillary Clinton campaign yet, then you need to reach out to them, and let them know you want to hear from them.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/
You can make a tiny contribution, like $5, or just sign up to help. There’s a link to volunteer to do phone calling, to do canvassing, all the sorts of things volunteers do for candidates. If all you do for now is give them your email address and phone number, that’s a start, and you will be connected to the campaign for the rest of the race.
But you sound almost like you intend to hide from them, and make them search for you. They can’t do that, they have too much else to do to spend time searching for people who act like that aren’t interested in Hillary’s work.
patroclus
@Bob In Portland: Yes, indeed. If “Bob in Portland” gets his way and we “take on” the House of Saud, I foresee a new war with Saudi Arabia on the horizon. Fortunately, both Hillary and Bernie oppose such a new war, but there is apparently some support for such a new war/police action out there, so we should be on the lookout for it.
Bobby Thomson
@Anonymous patient: I actually just wanted to run the experiment and see how hard the campaigns contested the state. And I’m unimpressed. I’m a registered Democrat who votes in literally every election and no one reached out. They’re both coasting at this point.
FlipYrWhig
@patroclus: Bob is such a neoliberal neoconservative villager fascist. Read Thomas Frank and you’ll understand why.
horatius
@Bob In Portland: Take your meds Bob. What’s with all the projecting?
horatius
@Mnemosyne: This Thomas Frank sounds like a moron.