Indeed!
It can be both 
I tell you, if Trump gets the popular vote, I think we’d better give up any pretense of being anything other than a nation of ugly Americans. American exceptionalism my hat!
I believe that the republicans are now aware that instead of looking to the right for fringe votes they will need to cross over the center line and start looking for votes from the moderate democrats. I see the republicans best strategy this election to make the sacrifice and clean up the party. They will go against Trump and he will not get elected. I am switching to democrat until such time as we rid the republican party of all the nut jobs.
Actually we’re just demonstrating our exceptional ugliness.
I appreciate the distinction you’re trying to draw, but I already covered that ground in my OP.:
So no, not really any difference in this “fuck you” and your “fuck it”.
When I learned “game theory” they talked about the “minimax” strategy: Minimize the maximum possible harm.
The maximum possible harm under Hillary. Another four years of not much getting done.
The maximum possible harm under Trump.
Sometimes, in this era of ultra-realistic video games and disaster porn movies, I wonder if some people just have a hard time separating *fake *extreme behavior from reality. Like, “What if we push this button over here. It says WORLDWIDE TERROR, but that sounds kinda cool! Wonder what it looks like!”
Hmm. If you found yourself in spitting distance of Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch, what would you do?
We know what we’re looking at, right? Forewarned is forearmed. If Trump keeps winning primaries on the back of far-right nationalism, and there continues to be racist violence at his rallies, there’s a chance someone’s going to remove him from the race—one way or another.
So you’re saying assassination is the way? Tsk tsk
Matt Taibbi is a great writer. Here’s another nice bit of analysis. I’ll add emphasis: [INDENT]In any case, Trump says he’ll call Detroit carmakers into his office and lay down an ultimatum: Either move the jobs back to America, or eat a 35 percent tax on every car imported back into the U.S. over the Mexican border.
“I’m a free-trader,” he says, “but you can only be a free-trader when something’s fair.”
It’s stuff like this that has conservative pundits from places like the National Review bent out of shape. Where, they ask, is the M-F’ing love? What about those conservative principles we’ve spent decades telling you flyover-country hicks you’re supposed to have?
“Trump has also promised to use tariffs to punish companies,” wrote David McIntosh in the Review’s much-publicized, but not-effective-at-all “Conservatives Against Trump” 22-pundit jihad. “These are not the ideas of a small-government conservative … They are, instead, the ramblings of a liberal wanna-be strongman.”
What these tweedy Buckleyites at places like the Review don’t get is that most people don’t give a damn about “conservative principles.” Yes, millions of people responded to that rhetoric for years. But that wasn’t because of the principle itself, but because it was always coupled with the more effective politics of resentment: Big-government liberals are to blame for your problems.
Elections, like criminal trials, are ultimately always about assigning blame. For a generation, conservative intellectuals have successfully pointed the finger at big-government-loving, whale-hugging liberals as the culprits behind American decline.
But the fact that lots of voters hated the Clintons, Sean Penn, the Dixie Chicks and whomever else, did not, ever, mean that they believed in the principle of Detroit carmakers being able to costlessly move American jobs overseas by the thousands.
Read more: How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable](How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable)
[/INDENT]
Politico just has an articleon the numbers, and calculates that Trump would have to have 70% of the white male voters, a percentage higher than Reagan at his best.
The catch here is that Latino voters are going to turn out much heavier than what you are playing around with. They are a growing demography and the wrong one for Trump to attack. They also are highly represented in a number of the key swing states.
He will mention Hillary’s ass during the first debate and…
A lot of truth in that.
Female candidates actually benefit from a double-standard in this area, in that things said to or about them are apt to be interpreted as having sexist meanings when similar things said about male candidates are par for the course. So their opponents need to tread very carefully while they themselves are under no constraints.
In 1984, then-VP George Bush felt he did well in his debate against Geraldine Ferraro, and he told some his supporters on the way out that “we kicked some ass”. This was widely interpreted in the media as a crude sexual reference to Ferraro’s anatomy.
On a similar note, Hillary Clinton herself benefited from this in her initial Senate campaign. Her opponent was a Republican congressman named Rick Lazio, and one central point of Lazio’s campaign was that he wanted her to pledge to do/not do something or other if elected (possibly having to do with tax increases, but I don’t recall for certain). During their debate Lazio left his podium and walked over to Clinton’s, holding his paper and challenging her to sign it. A bit of silly political theater. But this was widely interpreted in the media as an invasion of her personal space by a man, a matter that was thought to especially resonate with female voters. This dominated coverage of the race in the immediate aftermath of the debate and Lazio’s poll numbers tanked. And the rest is history …
So far this type of thing has not really harmed Trump, because his supporters are the component of the electorate which is completely fed up with political correctness. But I don’t see this holding in the general election - there aren’t enough of such people.
Why not? Clinton wanted to run, and, if there was anyone better, they would beat her. And the Republicans had horribly weak candidates.
What threw in a monkey wrench is a bad candidate who is really good at campaigning, using a strategy never used before that confounds everyone else. What techniques he uses that have been used before, he uses better.
No one anticipated how well Trump is doing.
Hillary had to run, she’s inspirational, hard working, asks constituents about their needs, and I think she’s great. She’s certainly more left leaning than anyone cares to admit on this board, she was considered a hard core liberal voting 93% of the time with Bernie and Warren. And yet even with that left of centre voting record she is considered the moderate. Okay. So none of the RNC moderates are going to vote Trump, they are even talking a brokered convention. Maybe they will hold their nose and vote Democrat because at least things will get done.
Trump is a lightweight on the issues, he doesn’t care about policy, he just does whatever he feels like, so that’s why his platform is all over the map. Moreover he’s a shitshow in business, he’s had so many failed businesses and he’s a snake who builds a building but doesn’t put money into it, he just “lends” his name. He says he’s put 25 million into his own campaign, well he’s lent the campaign money, and the website with the donate button is so Trump gets all his millions back from little old racist ladies with $10 to spare.
His kids are big game hunters and take smiling pictures with animals who have been killed illegally. No worry there. They take all their advice from Dad. They’re just animals.
So a racist xenophobic demagogue is going to win the election? Maybe. Americans hate when they are not number one. Fascist regimes are always number one. Until they’re overthrown
Trump’s favorability ratings have dropped to all time lows. And this was before last night’s debate. His favorability rating among Republicans and Republican leaners is +14. But also you can see from the graph, that while his numbers have gone up and down, he’s always the lowest in favorability. He has passionate supporters, but also a lot of people who don’t like him, including lots of Republicans. I just don’t see them all rallying around him if he’s the nominee.
Good synopsis. There was also an interesting article in the Washington Post that indicates it will be difficult for Trump to win - one of which is 80% of hispanics don’t like him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-donald-trump-wont-be-elected-president/2016/03/03/50daf
Additionally, Univision is really pushing a latino registry, saying they are pushing to register 3 million people, so we may see unprecedented anti-Trump voters.
I predict this prediction is going to end up looking very silly. If Drumpf even keeps it as close as McCain or Romney did, I will be shocked.
Your link didn’t work for me, but I’m guessing it’s to this article. If that’s the case, then this is the most interesting part in it to me:
It’s surprising to me, since Trump’s views aren’t radically different than the other candidates, just he’s louder and less polite about them. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, or it was a poorly worded survey.
Regardless, there had been a lot of talk about how the Republicans needed more Hispanic voters to win this time, and they are definitely not doing that with Trump. It’s not a sure thing, and I definitely don’t want people to become complacent, but it seems unlikely for Trump to win.