Ralph Nader numbers (going the other way) would almost certainly swing the election to the Democratic candidate, barring something weird. OH, VA, FL, and a few other states will probably be very, very close – under 5%, and maybe under 2% margin, and if the Democratic candidate gets even one of those the election is almost certainly in the bag.
I’m not sure he’ll run 3rd party, but I really, really hope he does.
Ralph Nader numbers contributed to Gore losing, but he could have pretty easily overcome that with a little more skill and/or luck. If the voters want change, the Republican will not be beaten because Trump takes a mere 2-3% away from him. I’m not going to whine over Clinton winning with 48% of the vote. The GOP candidate just should have done better. I will cry in my soda if she wins with her husband’s 43%.
It seems implausible to me in the sense that anyone who’d vote for the Republican nominee for president could at least tolerate Trump as the running mate (or whatever other concession the party gives him).
It doesn’t matter that there are two (or more) groups of voters; what matters is the net. If he brings 20,000,000 votes, but alienates 5,000,000, that’s a net of 15,000,000. That’s his bargaining chip, and the party can decide what concessions to make in order to get Trump’s support.[sup]*[/sup] If Trump costs more than he’s worth, they don’t have to give him anything.
Now, the party may get the math wrong, as I think they did with Sarah Palin. He may bring less support than they thought, or turn off more people than they calculated. It’s in Trump’s interest to try to convince people that the numbers are in his favor. But that doesn’t undermine the basic argument.
Call his bluff. If he’s not willing to build a campaign now, he won’t then. He won’t even get on the ballot in many states, which would limit the damage, depending on which states we’re talking about.
A better question is, what would the Democrats offer him to run as an independent? Do the ballot access work for him?
Gore could have overcome it, but Bush never could have overcome Nader’s absence. Without Nader, Gore would have won comfortably.
In 2016, it will be competitive without Trump. With Trump, the Democrat will be close to unbeatable, electorally.
Yes, and according to they OP they will still lose.
Your calculus (with different numbers) is exactly why other posters said it wouldn’t work to run him as VP. If Trump running as an independent costs them the 5,000,000 votes that they need to win, and if running him as VP costs them 10,000,000 votes from independents/moderate Republicans, then running him as VP would be counter productive. This still doesn’t contradict the OP that says Trump running as an independent will cost them the votes they needed to win.
I fear you are right. I’m hoping you are wrong. Trump not being willing to spend is my hope that even if he ran as an independent, he’d get only 2-3% of the vote, which means the Republican can still win.
I’m sure they would like to, but I doubt they will. There is too much chance that it could backfire if it became public. See for example the Vincent Gray scandal here in DC
But that’s not entirely true, is it? It matters where those votes are. If Trump’s 20M positives are concentrated in Republican strongholds, that gains the party nothing. Conversely, if his 5M negatives are in, say, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio, then they’re far more important than the 20M votes he brings. In that case, Trump’s presence brings a net of 15 million votes while at the same time handing three critical states to the opposition.
I actually know a couple Trump supporters. The reasoning comes from a few things. It seems the biggest one is “he says what everyone else is thinking.” I guess they find it refreshing that he’s not afraid to say racist stuff about Mexicans and Arabs, sexist stuff about various women, etc. Even if other candidates might agree with those ideas, they’re finding more PC ways of saying it, and some people are sick of that stuff. Hell, in their view, it’s not racist if it’s true.
Second, they’re sick of the establishment. Look at McCain, but even more notably Romney. Not only were both plain vanilla establishment, but they were losers who didn’t represent the country as it really is. These are people who believe that the country is actually far more conservative than it really is, and it’s the establishment and the liberal media that’s keeping real conservatism from winning out. Hell, in 2012, the Republicans tried twelve different shades of conservatives before they HAD to settle on Romney, despite him being a RINO, because he was the most electable. They didn’t like him, but they had no choice. And the thing is, the more Trump is attacked, the more it galvanizes his support because he just reinforces that the establishment is afraid of him.
Third, he doesn’t NEED the big corporations to get elected. All the major candidates are getting watered down by the liberal media and some liberal big corporations and donors because they need their money to run their campaign. Trump has all the money he needs on his own. Of course, they don’t see that this means that he’s not really beholden to anyone other than himself, but whatever.
Personally, I don’t agree with them. I don’t even think he actually wants to be president. I seriously think he’s just pulling the ultimate epic troll, and now that he’s gotten some traction, it’s fed his ego and he’s just seeing how far he can go with it. It’s not unlike pulling a small prank on a friend, but he buys it really hard, so you just keep pushing the ridiculousness of the scenario until to see just how far it can go before he finally realizes he was pranked.
I think this whole thing started with the Birther thing and, as I recall, Trump started off pretty tame with it, realized he was getting some attention from it, and then he starts getting lawyers involved trying to get documents revealed and suing people over it and all kinds of stuff. I think he thrives, not just on the attention, but actually just messing with people. After all, I think that with billions, there still comes a point where buying more crap just isn’t interesting any more. Many of the insanely wealthy end up spending that on charity or crazy pipe-dream investments. I think Trump is doing a social experiment of the ultimate real-life troll. And the best thing is, he’s so wealthy and influential, it really doesn’t matter to him who is president anyway, so he’ll stick to it until it stops being entertaining to him.
So, with that, going back to the OP, the best thing the Republicans can do with him is to STOP attacking him, and stop giving him attention. Don’t ask him about controversial stuff like racism and sexism or his money. Instead, just ask him policy stuff and highlight his incompetence. He’s a bully, and bullies thrive even on negative attention, in the sense of being seen as a bad guy, but bullies bully because they have insecurities. If those insecurities are highlighted, they’ll quickly give up.
The thing is, though, Trump is the best thing ever for the Democrats. If Hillary, or any other Democrat, is smart, if they notice that he starts dropping in the polls, they’ll figure out a way to reinstigate him. If they CAN keep him going long enough, particularly if he runs third party, that’s a huge bonus, and they can pretty much waltz into the Whitehouse.
He’s already unable to receive votes in Ohio due to their sore loser law I mentioned above.
VA is one of the few states without a sore loser clause or a simultaneous filing deadline so Trump could jack VA up.
FL isn’t on the list without any limit but a quick search doesn’t show what exactly their limitations are. I only see one filing deadline but I didn’t look that hard. If they limit by simultaneous primary/general election deadlines it’s in December.
Simultaneous filing deadlines, which are common, will chew up his ability to get on ballots if he wait till he actually starts losing primaries. Being limited to a write in campaign in most states is a major limit on how big of an effect he has.
As you said, Sarah Palin shows this doesn’t have to be true.
Sure, that’s part of it. There could also be some other candidate that TPTB calculate would bring with them even more votes than Trump.
There’s a lot that goes in to any calculation of this sort. My point is that I don’t see a way in which Trump has the leverage to force concessions from the Republican Party, but that making those concessions hurts the party more than it helps them.
The best money the DNC could spend would be in support of getting Trump on the ticket as an independent.
Here’s at least one person who would do that.
Last election cycle was the first time I ever voted for a non-Republican. I’ll continue doing so (for federal offices at least) until the Republican party comes to its senses.
Admittedly I’m in very blue Washington state, so they probably don’t care about me, but it’s my little protest vote all the same.
Maybe you should consider the stereotypes you have about Republicans then. 
No way am I putting Trump one heart attack away from access to nuclear weapons when he has his next temper tantrum.
When, why and how has the GOP lost its senses?
IANA Dracoi - For me that would be at least a six pack conversation. Preferably there’s a fire to poke at in the dark to hide the pained expression on my face.
Even if Trump doesn’t run as an independent, one wonders how many write in votes he might get. Enough to make a difference?