Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign Discussion

Politics & Elections
1221

We’ve gone around on this several times. If folks could vote based multiple times based on their enthusiasm rather than just once, I think Trump would be well ahead. He’s certainly fired up his base in a way the more conventional Clinton has not. As well he’s drawn more historical non-voters into the ranks of the probable voters than Clinton seems to have. Some of Obama’s earlier successes in garnering non-traditonal voters will carry forward into 2016. How much carries forward matters; perhaps matters a lot.

The hazard for anyone predicting this stuff is to correctly identify the line between enthused enough to actually vote vs. not, and then ignore 100% of the excess enthusiasm above that line. That’s a tall order.

I too worry a bit that there’s a larger reservoir of angry white male voters who’ll break for Trump than current polls can see. If that does happen in the correct geographical distribution he *could *win. Many folks here, notably DSeid, have argued from good data that the reservoir simply isn’t big enough to swing it, period.
I wonder if anyone has considered the effect of mail-in ballots and the increased opportunity for dictatorial heads-of-household to vote 2 or 3x by submitting ballots on behalf of their wife & adult-at-home kids? As between the various factions within both Clinton and Trump supporters the net for that kind of thinking would certainly favor Trump.

IOW, if we augment the number of available angry white low-status men by 20+% to account for them voting or at least strongly influencing their wives’ / GFs’ ballots, how does that affect DSeid’s good argument that the reservoir is just too small?

I could certainly see a (Trump-deniable) social media campaign to talk up exactly this option. “Men: be men, command your household as is your Divine Right.” Timed right, this could move the needle a couple percent.
I also believe this is one of those classic *5 men and an elephant *scenarios. Depending on where you live and who you hang out with, you probably encounter either 95% Trump enthusiasts, or 5% Trump enthusiasts. Which audience you’re surrounded by will color how you read the polls and react to the news.
One of the scariest factoids I learned many years ago is how many voters don’t really care who wins, but they will show up late in the day to vote for whoever seems to be winning. Folks like to cheer on a winning team.

This was a very big issue 20+ years ago when I lived out West and the news media would call the election results in the eastern states during our midafternoon several hours before our polls would close.

The organized media stopped doing that years ago for the obvious reason. But to an even greater degree than in 2012 or 2008 we now have the political equivalents of the Bleacher Report which will ensure that informal exit polls are distributed nationwide within an hour of the polls opening in the east.

That alone could move the needle a couple percent in the closing 10 hours of the 2-year (ouch!) campaign.
I agree that under current projections the EV breaks harder for Clinton than does the popular vote. As we talk about every four years, if the popular vote is a statistical dead heat or goes the other way, the EV winner will have a legitimacy problem. That will be especially acute this year.

As (I think) asahi said recently, the fact Trump can gather more than even 10% of the popular vote says something very ugly about the current state of the American populace. If indeed the popular vote comes out with Trump at 48% and a thumping EV loss for him that’s still a huge indictment of American society and a strong warning of severe cultural storms ahead. In that sense anything other than a historic landslide loss for Trump constitutes a historic victory for American crypto-fascism.
My personal bottom line: Clinton will (almost certainly) win. But not strongly enough to send the crypto-fascists back under their rocks. They will be back.

1222

First off I am not so sure that undecided do often break hard one way or the other. Wang has written that they usually break pretty evenly and I have no reason to doubt him.

The issue to Wang when writing that in July was that the best data was that more undecided were GOP than Democratic. Of course by far more yet are “Independent.”

What is predictable is that undecided stay home more than do the decideds.

1223

And here’s one for the Clinton’s health conspiracy theorists, pushing a theory that will now almost certainly have some traction after falling ill at probably one of the most high profile events on the campaign trail before the election. Yes, I get that ordinary people get ill, but again, we’re talking about undecided voters here. Seriously, we’re talking about voters who are undecided and believe that a candidate’s use of an email server is just as bad as someone who’s been accused of outright fraud and who associates with people with ties to the Kremlin, sexual harassment lawsuits, an outspoken Jew hater, and other unsavory characters. We’re talking about large numbers of undecided voters after Trump has basically danced on the grave of a fallen soldier, taunted his parents, and talked about expelling large numbers of foreigners on one hand and preventing others from entering. Still undecided after reversing his opinions almost literally from day to day. Still undecided after banning reporters and promising to sue others. If anyone believes that undecided voters aren’t going to be influenced by such trivial headlines, you’re sadly mistaken.

I have another description for undecided voters: thicker than pig shit voters. And there are millions of them in this country. And I don’t trust them to make the right decision when they’re keeping an open mind about someone who admires Putin on a good day and on a bad day reminds us of Hitler.

1224

Yeah, I know even just “feeling unwell” will unleash the crazies but they’ve been out in force even before this. If she has few and far between stuff, it hopefully shouldn’t distract the non-crazy, but you know Trump will incorporate it into his spiel

1225

It happened at a pretty bad time. At least it didn’t happen before or during the debates, I guess.

1226

Meanwhile a pretty interesting combination of polls out today, eh?

WaPo/ABC national +5 in the 4-way and +8 in the 2-way. (“A+” rated by Silver with a marginal +0.6 Democratic lean).

A variety of state polls by Marist (“A” rated with a marginal +0.7 GOP lean) that show all of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and New Hampshire within 1 to 3 points one way or the other (within MOE). That’s a mixed bag!

And two state polls by CBS/You Gov (B rated +1.6 D lean), both 4-ways, with Clinton +2 on FL and +7 in Ohio.

Huh.

Net impact on 538’s projections pretty much washing out, but interesting.

1227

First, we went and nominated two rather elderly candidates, so this kind of thing is to be expected.

Second, to hell with all of you who cynically capitalized on McCain’s age despite no evidence of health problems and are getting all morally wounded because Clinton’s getting similar treatment.

Well both candidates are too old. Vote Gary Johnson.

1228

Who here went after McCain because of his age? There was plenty of material to use before that.

1229

I went after him because of his age because he named a moron as his understudy.

1230

My old man, Air Force lifer and just to the right of Otto von Bismarck told me that he was voting for Obama because he saw McCain as someone in the mold of Curtis LeMay. Such men may be necessary but they must not be President.

1231

There are just too many polls out there right now. I suspect the more credible estimate probably has Hillary up by about 4-5 points nationally and that she is probably barely winning in Ohio and Florida. Anything within 3 points is in the potential danger zone for her, IMO. She needs to be winning by this same 4-5 margin on November 7 for me to get some good sleep that night.

The Arizona polls are interesting. Wondering what the impact of a potential criminal prosecution of Sheriff Joe might be having. Are people finally realizing that this guy is a complete clown now?

1232

He is, but when he’s the only guy actually trying to enforce the law it’s going to get him some sympathy. His plan to go after illegals through identity theft laws is brilliant and so easy you know exactly why no one else is doing it. Because it’s too easy to catch illegals that way and few actually want to catch them, even if they are victimizing others.

1233

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Sure, I begin to see how the laws are seen by the authoritarians that love Trump and/or Arpaio, if they are inconvenient they will try to get around them.

It is really gross to continue to ignore that Arpaio and goons are trying to get around many laws, the law you’re talking about is only just a part of what they are doing, the point has been made many times, by the courts too; what Arpaio was doing was way over what was reasonable to enforce the law. And this goes to the bigger point:

Personnel is Policy. Since Trump is not repudiating one of his biggest supporter and advisor you bet that that is not being ignored by the Hispanics of Arizona and elsewhere.

And regarding the identity laws, its clear that you are not seeing the news, Arpio dissolved his ID theft department when the courts were beginning to notice how abusive he had become. And it was clear that his biggest target were the immigrants and while identity theft is a serious problem the dissolution of his ID group showed that it was geared to get only immigrants** and not help most of the people affected by that crime.** Just like Arpaio showed when lots of rape and abuse cases were not investigated properly, his priorities do not make much sense unless bigotry is added to the mix.

If his office had been geared to fight ID crime it would not had been ended as there is plenty of work to do in that front, as it is in investigating rape and abuse cases.

But we know what priorities Trump has too, huh?

1234

I didn’t question that Arpaio was a goon, only that he’d have few fans if he wasn’t the only one doing the job the people continuously elect officials to do but which they steadfastly refuse to do.

Hillary Clinton’s view is that we shouldn’t enforce the law at all, except against felons, and often not even then, given that she doesn’t regard identity theft as a “real” felony, or document fraud, or working illegally in the US. Too bad Americans don’t get that same benefit of the doubt.

1235

:rolleyes:

And there is again, like if nothing what I said and what the courts decided was not made. AGAIN: Arpaio was abusing of his power. And the courts did agree.

[full stop] [snip]

As usual: do you have a big fat cite for that?

As it was pointed out many times before, “tell me with who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”. Trump and Arpaio are peas to a pod.

1236

Let’s see if you still think so when you’re 70.

Is he going to go get the next round of munchies?

1237

She only wants to deport felons. That is her stated campaign position:

The problem with even that statement is how full of deception it is. By “commited crimes” she means violent felonies and by “pay back taxes and fines” she means “at my discretion”, since the immigration bill passed by the Senate does not actually require back taxes and fines. The “back taxes” provision is just a “get right with the IRS” provision and it is understood that the iRS won’t be auditing anyone under this program. The fines can be waived at will.

That’s the Democrats’ immigration policy in a nutshell. Satisfy the “deplorables” with tough talk then go easy on the downlow.

1238

Nope, that is your spin, as Hillary has supported what Obama has done and Trump has used the fig leaf that he follows that too it means that indeed, more than just criminals are being deported. And many human rights groups do continue to complain about the children and family members that are being deported from Central America. So no, the Democrats are not being deceptive, the Republicans that are telling you how to see the issue are.

And what else one can make of Trump’s final point that he would indeed help the immigrants that remain after doing what Obama has been doing? You are only omitting that

1239

And as I noted, you continue to ignore why is that Arpaio got in trouble with the law.

The fact that you think he deserves praise is only possible by ignoring how abusive he has been and his deceptions made to justify his priorities have undermined many other important law enforcement issues. The sympathy that many right wingers have expressed can be only be described as an addition to the dictionaries to the definition of “cutting their nose to spite themselves” when one takes into account the many millions of dollars the state had to waste to defend that yahoo. And the bleeding is not stopping.

Yes, let that very nonconservative item sink in: Money that could be used to enforce the laws better has been wasted to keep this guy elected and out of legal trouble and to keep him out of his own jails.

And Trump loves what he sees.

1240

This is one woman who not a fan of Hillary ! I wish she had never ran a second time . She lost the first time and with poor health and now having
pneumonia and falling off her feet I really can’t see how she can be up to being a president ! She is a damn mess and she making it too easy for Trump to win ! Damn I am pissed off for the fool running a second time !