It’s good to see that you visit Vox (and 538) this election cycle. People jab you a lot here, but your posts are way better than they were in 2012. (You still shoot a lot from the hip, but…meh.)
One weakness in that article was that they didn’t have a control group. Basically they were running an amateurish contingent valuation study: these sorts of studies have the well known problem of generating wildly implausible valuations if the scholar isn’t careful.
In this case, I’d say a focus group methodology would have been more appropriate.
Rhetorical question: how much extra in taxes would you be willing to pay for a missile defense system? Even fans of it would have difficulty answering this question without some thought or calculation. More to the point, I’m guessing that few people know off the top of their head while cooking dinner how much they and their employer pay out combined for health insurance premiums. So the poll was interesting, but not especially meaningful.
Hard to call it “embarrassing”. Such a photo op would have been awesome but I’m sure they realized it was a long shot. Would have been pretty improper for the Pope to show such favoritism to a particular candidate.
He might also be looking ahead to Pennsylvania, where there are Catholics in major cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and also California, where there are large numbers of Catholics among the Hispanic populations.
The potential danger that I see is that it could end up looking like a political stunt - kinda like John McCain suspending his campaign during the financial crisis in 2008. Not necessarily comparing the two.
If Bernie Sanders were to somehow make it to the general election, I think that all of this love for the underdog would quickly dissipate. The republicans would start pointing to the examples of Europe and Brazil as examples of where ‘socialism failed.’ Bernie’s pretty much wed himself to his principles, which is why I think selecting him as the nominee would make it much more likely that Cruz or even Trump could somehow win one-on-one.
The good news is, it’s beginning to look a lot more likely that Trump will break away from the GOP if he isn’t the nominee – and he won’t be. You don’t go out and bring professionals into your campaign if your skin isn’t in the game.
You are misreading that badly. The professional he brought in is specifically talented in delegate strategy. You don’t bring in a delegate expert because you are planning an independent run.
I think the points are mutually exclusive. Of course Trump’s campaign will do everything it can to ensure that the GOP doesn’t have the chance to deny him the nomination. But if it happens, I wouldn’t rule out an independent run at all.
Not quite the point. asahi pointed to Trump bringing in a big time pro as evidence that Trump is planning an independent run. Bringing in this professional is not evidence of that; it is evidence that he wants to win the party nomination.
Trump doesn’t have a hope in hell of taking over the Libertarian party. They will have their own Presidential candidate by then, and Trump is almost the antithesis of a Libertarian.
Any other 3rd parties that have managed to get significant ballot access? Maybe Pat Buchanan’s old party? Now that’s a perfect match for Trump.
Well if Trump was to go third party or independent even he isn’t stupid/egotistical enough to think he’d actually win. He would just be doing it out of spite and the attention by playing spoiler, so it wouldn’t matter if he isn’t able to get on to all the state ballots. As long as he could hold rallies and get air time, he’d be happy.
It’s evidence that he’s committed to finishing the race on his terms, not the republican party’s. And that’s why there’s a very good chance he’ll run a third party campaign if he gets schlonged by the republicans at the convention.
Wow I am not a fan of this “seemless” editing of online articles the news sites do nowadays. That BBC article was titled like my link but is now titled “Pope Francis: Sanders meeting ‘not political meddling’”. And they left in the subheading “a real misstep” but took out the content that applied to (a NY commentator saying leaving NY for this was a bad move).
Eta: as I said in another thread, was pretty sure the Pope had no intention of giving Bernie a photo op.
I’ve got to say that I have to acknowledge being impressed by Sanders’ physical endurance at 74 to be keeping up this pace. No matter why he was going, having a major debate, getting on a plane to Europe, preparing a short speech (even one that is just rehashing your standard stump with a few lines specific for the crowd), flying back … yes I know that campaigning is hard work in any case, but dang, that sort of schedule is stressful and exhausting. That he can keep it up proves that at least his age does not slow him down. There are many half his age who would melt into irritable incoherent blobs trying to keep up the pace he has.
As to the campaign impact of this move … I can see it having value if he was going to be the general election candidate. In that venue his lack of a clear god belief and lack of any religiosity could be used against him and demonstrating that he has strong respect for the moral leadership that organized religion has the potential to provide helps blunt that attack. But a Pope hand-shake/hello/“nothing more” without photo op is not going to … convert … many undecided Catholics (be they NY or PA or CA) to his cause. It also does little to rev up turnout in his core White youth base: they are as a group fairly irreligious and more often unaffiliated with any organized religion than other groups.
But deep breath and dive back in for the next rally …
