Everyone seems to be making a huge deal about this, but conveniently seem to forget that that was before Hillary got her convention bounce, as if it meant anything that Trump was in the lead between conventions.
Where is she now? 10 points in CNN’s rolling average, 8 in RCP’s.
But that’s just it: they did nominate a candidate who was a dumpster fire. It wasn’t like Rence Preibus and a few Republican oligarchs paid operatives to stuff ballot boxes and rig the elections. The voters voted for Donald Trump. They voted for Ted Cruz second. Together Trump and Cruz represent the protest vote of the party, and it dominated the establishment wing. Protest candidates are typically risky candidates, which is why they typically might score an upset in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina before being crushed as the race enters the mainstream consciousness. That just did not happen this time.
“Had John Kasich won…”
“Had Chris Christie won…”
“Had Jeb Bush won…”
Wake up. It’s the year 2016 and republicans and conservative independents made it clear that this was just not going to happen this year. In 2008 and 2012, conservative pragmatists were merely disappointments. In 2016, they are enemies of the state.
This is not the correct way to look at this election. Engaging in this hypothetical thread of discussion supposes that this was just a mistake and that people will eventually realize the err of their ways.
And I am telling you that it is not going to happen. People on the right do not want a John Kasich. They want Donald Trump because on television, he is a nasty sonofabitch, and he says what they feel. This isn’t a ‘mistake’. This isn’t an oops, let’s reflect on what we’ve done. To the right Donald Trump is their man, and goddamnit they are right, and they are going to fucking make the rest of us realize it. And if we don’t…
No, this is some serious shit we’re dealing with here. We are at the precipice. Right here. Right now.
Eagleton didn’t run in the primaries and wasn’t vetted at all before being selected, and the Swift Boaters were part of Kerry’s story before the convention.
I’ve said before in other threads that a story can break into the mainstream late, but it is always bubbling under the surface in partisan media months beforehand. There are no October Surprises, or even August or September surprises.
If you want to demonstrate that Kasich or someone like him would be brought down by some oppo research, I guarantee you that research is already on left-wing sites and blogs. Shouldn’t be hard to find.
Kasich or someone like him would have been brought down by a disgruntled Trump and his supporters.
Just like Trump is being brought down by disgruntled Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio supporters?
Why isn’t Clinton also being brought down by the one third of Sanders voters who won’t support her?
Because Trump and his supporters are fundamentally different. He’s not just another politician, and his supporters (a big chunk of them, anyway) aren’t just regular political supporters.
No they aren’t, but Republicans have won without them before, and if anything they might be an electoral liability.
What do you guys mean? Trump supporters are regular reliable Republican voters. How can you say the Republicans won without them before?
538’s latest podcast goes into this belief and they found that Trump primary supporters are not from a secret, untapped base of non-voters, but from people who vote Republican in the general but tend to ignore the primaries. In short, he is not pulling new voters in.
ETA: I see that CarnalK made the same point - throughout this campaign, Trump’s base is GE Republicans who don’t care to vote in the primary.
14 percent is “one third”? Must be this “New Math” I remember hearing about…
Yep, and the Republican party has no chance at anything without these voters. There are some 10-20 million voters who love Trump and hate the recent behavior of both parties. I don’t believe those voters would have supported any non-Trump Republican candidate this year, as enraged as they are. They’d support a 3rd party Trump or some other 3rd party, since they’d be so pissed that the party cheated (as they’d believe) Trump.
Sure he is… just not on his side:
You could say Latino voters are a wee bit motivated to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.
I’m not that confident on this point. If Trump had lost the primaries, rather than some convention shenanigans, I’m pretty sure most of these guys would have shown up to vote against Hillary.
He seems technically correct actually, because your link describes self described Democrat supporters of Sanders not all Sanders supporters:
About A Third Of Bernie Sanders’s Supporters Still Aren’t Backing Hillary Clinton
Of course, Hillary/Dems never had a chance with some of them anyways so it’s not lost votes so much as never was. As to why that’s not “bringing her down”:
I think Trump would have thrown a wrench into it and ran 3rd party, or supported a 3rd party run. He’d want revenge.
I’ll believe that when I see it. I’m sure the margin will be pretty big, but I don’t see turnout being higher than it was for Obama.
And yes, you can call that a prediction. Latino turnout will be lower than in 2012, as will African-American turnout, and youth turnout. Actually, I think overall turnout will be down from 2012, but I’m not comfortable predicting that yet.
Latino turnout was pretty damn low in 2012 – that’s a very bold prediction.