Biden would have been fun but Bernie would be buried by now. Crazy old sociology professor aint winning over the centrist voters. I’m confident Hillary can grind it out.
Impossible! What about all those people at Bernie’s rallies? Obviously, that means he’d be twenty points ahead of Trump by now, if only the dastardly DNC hadn’t tampered with votes in California!
Keep whistling in the dark.
Maybe she’ll “power through”?
Bernie might have fared better in some respects, but he would have been more vulnerable to other lines of attack. Bernie would also be facing skepticism with his socialist label, and that would only intensify as the race moved past the convention phase. Trump would still be the celebrity business guy bullshitter candidate and the train wreck candidate, generating free publicity. Still, I admit, he would have advantages that Hillary does not.
My greater concern is that if he were to win, he would probably not live up to the hype. I would rather have Hillary lose and let the country get its nose rubbed in its own shit than have a weak populist president pull off an upset victory, get nothing accomplished, and have democrats blamed for a recession and events overseas. I don’t know if Hillary will get the job, but I know she can do the job. I also think she is at her finest when she is surrounded by her enemies and fighting trench warfare with congress. Unfortunately, campaigning and begging morons to vote you into office isn’t really her forte.
Sure. You keep telling everyone the sky is falling and it’ll all average out.
Keep howling at the moon.
Dude, as much gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing as you’re doing, you’re gonna give yourself a stroke. You’re an emotional yo-yo.
I’m actually doing campaign work for Hillary and down ballot candidates, so my day-in-day-out full-time job out is actually consumed by this shit, 12-hour days, morning and nightly debriefs, phone banks, door knocking, data entry, strategy calls, etc, and no one around me is freaking out at levels that we’re seeing from you. People paid to win are less anxious than you. I want to keep Trump out of the White House as the next guy, but dude, relax. It’s. Not. That. Bad. It’s. Not. That. Bad. Repeat after me: It’s. Not. That. Bad.
Ah, now I see why you think I’m a crypto Trumpist every time I venture the slightest skepticism. In asahi’s defense, he doesn’t get the regular coaching/cheerleader sessions you probably do.
Also, I had the far superior counter-idiom.
From 538. The latest odds.
Clinton 62.4
Trump 35.8
That may not sound like much, but it’s falling faster than Maggie’s drawers on payday.
August 14th, one month ago.
Clinton 89.2
Trump 10.8
Reminds me of the rabbit racing the turtle. Clinton better drop the over-confidence and get busy.
Oop. Now it’s at 64.2 for Hillary! The tide is reversing!!
I keep doing what now?
Golly gee, am I failing to communicate clearly to you again. Sigh, oh well
Wow, settle down fella.
Yes and two weeks earlier, July 30th, it was (Polls-only).
Clinton 49.1
Trump 50.1
Silver of course did the same thing in his recent post, focusing on the drop from Clinton’s post-convention peak, when it makes as much, and as little, sense to focus on the rise from Trump’s convention bounce.
Eve of the GOP convention, on July 18th, it was:
Clinton 64.2
Trump 35.8
Numbers sound familiar? Oh it’s what it is now?
Huh. Up down and back to where it was? Exactly? Who’d have thought the race was so stable?
Funny. Clinton is accused of being a workaholic who pushed herself when she had a pneumonia and now is being told that she needs to “get busy” … Oy. Run rabbit run.
Simple fact is that her team actually is executing but not everything that is meaningful execution is flashy stuff or stuff that “slams the door” in the polls. She is really like many of us here I think. People who are smart enough but who more than anything else but more willing to put in the long hours and prep work that get little flash or attention but end of day are what gets the jobs done.
Simple fact is that this electorate is not one in which polls will consistently show anyone putting anyone away. There is a group, and deplorable they are … and another, maybe slightly overlapping, group who want anything “different” … They together hopefully will not be enough voting on election day to elect Trump because there are, in addition to those who like Clinton and who those who like what she wants to accomplish, also a few who want something different but also are repulsed by the deplorable …
Uh, ok. For a guy in the trenches you are pretty fainthearted.
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Trump is becoming a more, dare I say, “real” candidate. He is still a live one every time he gets near his smart phone’s twitter app and anywhere within earshot of a camera, but he’s been showing remarkable restraint. I think we’re betting that he will eventually melt down in prime fashion - and maybe he will. But clearly there has been some major retooling and it appears to be a successfully redeployed Trump.
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Information about the candidates is being disseminated and consumed by voters in ways that we probably don’t really have a full grasp of. Someone posted today about Newsweek unloading on Trump and my first thought was, “Who cares? Who reads Newsweek?” Unless other outlets pick it up, and unless it really lights up social media…it ain’t a story. It could be a video of Trump bringing a suitcase of cash to an AG’s office – if it ain’t being shared or retweeted, it doesn’t exist.
In order for any scandal to get traction against Trump, it has to be a man-bites-dog type of event. Trump is the man biting the dog, which is and will continue to be the advantage he has over Hillary. If things continue on their current trajectory, if he can keep it together and not troll someone lying in a casket or mock some child with Down’s Syndrome, and if he can hold his own in the debates, he will defeat Hillary Clinton. Of course he could melt down and run out of time to recover, but as I pointed out back in August when we were taking delight in Hillary’s post-convention bounce and then Donald Trump repeatedly vomiting in front of the camera with every mention of the Khan family…Hillary never got more popular, Trump just became less so – and that was momentary. And as I had pointed out at that time, Trump had already once before erased a 10 point deficit within a month. He did it yet again.
There has been throughout this election a desire for a disruptor. Trump is that guy. Hillary is not that gal. I know a lot of you want to believe that this nation just isn’t that stupid – we’re historically a strong and stable democracy after all.
Well, democracies do fail. And this is one is perilously close to being an epic failure at that.
What are you even talking about? If you have a problem with me, kindly take it outta this thread.
I have not been agreeing with you often but I agree with you here.
Of course there is that desire every election. Obama was all “Be the change” and “The Change We Need” … go back to 1872 and “Turn the Rascals Out” against Grant, or more recently Humphrey’s “Some People Talk Change, Others Cause It” in 1968 or even Carter’s 1976 “A Leader, For a Change” or Bill Clinton’s "It’s Time to Change America and “For People, for a Change” in an election that was not only against GH Bush but against a bigger change, Perot …
Selling change and disruption is a common sales pitch and always find some not insignificant audience. It works best when incumbents are very unpopular of course. When the incumbent is not intensely disliked it has tended to work less well. Still resonates with many though even then.
Of course there is also a desire some voters have for stability, as Lincoln’s slogan was “Don’t trade horses in midstream.”
No question Trump is disruption and Clinton is, relatively stability. And that some prefer to choose disruption, any disruption.
Perilously close? Maybe. Sad but true that there are so many deplorable people in this country. But I do give this country’s voters a small bit more credit than you do.
Yeah, the elite always think they know best. The liberals keep harping that college educated support Hillary and the dumb white guys support Trump. The funny thing is that in these Communist revolutions they always end up jailing and executing the elites. Isn’t that what happened in Cuba, Russia, and China? When things get bad, the people will revolt. Is this economy really a house of cards? The Fed is floating the idea of negative interest rates. Hillary isn’t running as Obama’s third term. Who will they blame? The elite control the media. But not all of it. When the news doesn’t match up to what they see with their own eyes i.e. Hillary’s robust health, they will look for answers elsewhere.
I know I keep returning to repeat the similar themes … mainly about how overall inelastic the voting pool actually is and the sophisticated GOTV machine that Clinton has (having taken on and invested more in what team Obama built) … one thing to add to that though: the data analytics that a sophisticated campaign creates not only tell you who to target to come and vote, knowing that they are likely to vote for your candidate … they can tell you who to target with messaging that makes them a bit less likely to come out to vote against you … advanced GOTV tools can and likely is used to KATV (keep away the vote) to no small degree as well. That sort of analytics is more than just demographics; it is very granular. And it matters.