# Kaine = Hillary Thinks She's Gonna Win By a Landslide **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 24, 2016, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738 "2016-07-24T01:48:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/61 "2016-07-24T12:17:32Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Trump has only one lead in a four way poll and it’s only 1 point. So root for Johnson! So do those polls take into account that Trump has no Get Out the Vote organisation? Because it’s obviously going to be a big factor and possibly is why Clinton thinks she is going to win in a landslide. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/62 "2016-07-24T12:20:27Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > This means that the polls are inaccurate–as we saw in the Brexit vote. [Not really.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_EU_referendum_polling.svg) There were a bunch of polls showing leave in the lead towards the end. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/63 "2016-07-24T12:23:36Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > So do those polls take into account that Trump has no Get Out the Vote organisation? Because it’s obviously going to be a big factor and possibly is why Clinton thinks she is going to win in a landslide. Such wishes were what kept us hopeful during the primaries, when GOTV operations are much more significant due to low turnout. If Trump wasn’t stopped by lack of a ground game in the primaries he won’t be stopped by it in the general election. But yes, likely voter polls do take into account who is likely to vote, and Trump, typical of GOP candidates, is doing better in likely voter polls than registered voter polls. But again, only in two way races, which are only accurate if we assume Johnson and Stein will get 1% or so each. If they combine for 15% of the vote as they are now, that changes things to Clinton’s benefit. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/64 "2016-07-24T12:23:41Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > [Not really.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_EU_referendum_polling.svg) There were a bunch of polls showing leave in the lead towards the end. Again I believe that was down to wrongly estimating voter turnout, they were predicting young people would turn out in larger numbers which would have swung it to remain. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/65 "2016-07-24T12:25:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I was disappointed when I first heard, but he was terrific in his introductory speech today. Funny, since I live in VA, and I think I’ve seen him speak before, but he knocked it out of the park today. I’m feeling better about it already. I agree. Tim Kaine has been my Governor and Senator–I voted for him each time, against dramatically unappealing Republicans–and have certainly seen him speak. But he seems juiced to be on the ticket. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/66 "2016-07-24T12:26:30Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > But again, only in two way races, which are only accurate if we assume Johnson and Stein will get 1% or so each. If they combine for 15% of the vote as they are now, that changes things to Clinton’s benefit. Yeah but it’s not a national popular poll, its the electoral college that counts. I’m completely fine with Trump winning the popular vote (by 1 percent if he does) but losing the electoral college. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/67 "2016-07-24T12:42:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Although the polling average favors Clinton, Trump leads in three of the last four one on one polls: > > [2016 General Election Polls: Trump vs. Clinton | RealClearPolling](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html) > > And she hasn’t led a likely voter poll in a month now. Trump has five straight leads in likely voter polls in a one on one race. > > A three or four way race shows a better result for Clinton and is probably more realistic(we hope, because I want to see Johnson do well): > > [2016 General Election Polls: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein | RealClearPolling](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html) > > Trump has only one lead in a four way poll and it’s only 1 point. So root for Johnson! Trump probably did get a boost from the convention. Clinton will probably get a boost of her own. My guess is that they will be pretty much even or perhaps with Clinton having a slight 1-2 percent advantage after the Dems convention ends. From there it will be how they appear in the press and how they do in the debates. Anyone’s guess as to how that will play out. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/68 "2016-07-24T14:52:52Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Michael Moore, like most partisan flamethrowers, does better when the party that is most against him is in power. No one cares what Michael Moore has to say when he’s attacking Democrats. But put a Trump or Bush in the WH and Moore’s going to be raking in the $$$$$. also, Democratic pols are happy to be criticized by Moore; being associated with Moore might have cost the Dems 2004, given how Kerry lost the election because he was seen as weak on terror. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/69 "2016-07-24T16:23:53Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > The selection of safe, uninspiring Tim Kaine means exactly what the selection of Joe Biden meant 8 years ago: the Democrat nominee thinks the election is in the bag, and therefore sees no need to pick an exciting running mate. > > Hillary thinks she’s going to slaughter Trump. I think she’s right. I don’t think that’s what it means. Maybe if you think you’re way behind you pick somebody that will shake everything up, and she’s definitely not way behind. But as to winning a relatively close election, which it appears now and which a cautious person like Clinton is probably assuming it will remain, Kaine is the type of person you pick. He’s from a state that will be close in a close election. He helps her with a group with whom she has special trouble: male voters. He tends to broaden appeal by making it more ambiguous whether she’s really following the Democratic party bases’s sharp turn to the left. It’s that latter point on which there’s some risk, in case those base voters are turned off by that ambiguity. And he’s strongly credible to be President immediately if something happens to her. She said that was the main thing, and I don’t see a reason to doubt it: it’s good politics to appear to be thinking that way, as well as a good idea fundamentally. It’s not to say others considered were not suited to be President, but not the same immediate readiness as older generation more experienced person, say him compared to Corey Booker. Especially in a race where one of the main themes will be that Trump isn’t fit to be President. The other reason it was safer to pick a ‘boring’ running mate was because Trump did. If Trump had picked Gingrich, though that would have had plenty of potential to backfire on Trump, it would also have introduced more risk of her running mate being overshadowed, especially in the VP debate, and she might have leaned more to somebody relatively more exciting for that reason. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/70 "2016-07-24T16:53:08Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Such wishes were what kept us hopeful during the primaries, when GOTV operations are much more significant due to low turnout. If Trump wasn’t stopped by lack of a ground game in the primaries he won’t be stopped by it in the general election. Completely disagree. Given the electoral map, winning without a ground game in those key states is nigh on impossible. A candidate with a thousand people driving supporters to the voting booth in Florida has a far stronger chance than one with nobody driving supporters to the voting booth. Hell, in 2012 I got 49 people to the polls for Obama and in our district alone we had 22 drivers: All in all, we got an additional 1,000 voters to the polls… and Romney was doing the same thing. (We won Bexar County (San Antonio) though the State was a complete loss. You do what you can.) But if you don’t think picking up disabled veterans, elderly people, and the like won’t help the Trump campaign in swing states… I won’t disabuse you of that notion. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/71 "2016-07-24T17:35:21Z")
Look, this has been bothering me since the OP (emphasis added) > [@astorian](#): > > The selection of safe, uninspiring Tim Kaine means exactly **what the selection of Joe Biden meant 8 years ago** : the Democrat nominee thinks the election is in the bag, and therefore sees **no need to pick an exciting running mate**. Say what? Er, we remember who was the nominee that picked known-quantity, competent, respected, experienced, plain-spoken man-of-the-people Joe in 2008, right? Young, black, first-term Senator, “professorial”, funny-named black dude with an unconventional upbringing bio, who whipped up a wave of youth/liberal/minority excitement? The edgy choice was already at the top of the ticket. If anyone ever HAD to pick up a solid establishment insider as running mate it was the current Chief. (And yes I said black twice. Because hey, in '08 that was a BFT that one was even nominated. And for some it remains so to this day.) ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/72 "2016-07-24T19:25:44Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > My cite: absolutely nothing except the churning feeling in my guts. > Can anybody calm my stomach for me? 🙂 Well, if you fear monsters in the closet, there’s little reasoning can do to calm those fears. But _if_ the polls hold up favoring Clinton in the Electoral College, I won’t have a lot of fear on election day. First, if there was a strong lie-to-the-pollster effect, we should have seen some evidence for it in the primary (we didn’t; Trump largely underperformed his polls) or in differences in results between robo- and person-polls, which we don’t. Second, polls are adjusted for demographics, which usually does a pretty good job reducing error (at least over a large number of polls.) Questions gauging excitement level usually lead to fairly strong likely voter models. Which isn’t to say there’s no error. Obviously there is some. But it’s relatively small. If she has a one-point lead in a state going into election day, yeah, she might lose it. If she has a four-point lead, she won’t. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/73 "2016-07-24T19:34:34Z")
Keep the calendar in mind, the one that says August, September, and October. What Hillary has to do is not step on her dick, she doesn’t have one. What Trump has to do is shut his pie-intake orifice, he absolutely won’t. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/74 "2016-07-24T19:48:02Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Hillary thinks she’s going to slaughter Trump. I think she’s right. From Michael Moore himself, [5 reasons why Trump will win](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/5-reasons-why-trump-will-_b_11156794.html). It’s not inevitable, but we progressives do need to step out of our bubble and realize this isn’t a straightforward contest of merit. It’s a debate over whether we should govern the country or blow it up and start over. Before you laugh off the idea that any significant fraction of the country would vote for blowing up the government, consider that for decades they’ve been fed the idea that the free market is a magic fairy that can fix anything. (For the record, I’m in the anti-blowing-up faction). ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/75 "2016-07-24T19:56:59Z")
Ah, I see someone’s already mentioned Michael Moore. Forgive me. After Brexit I give the so-called ‘Black Swan’ argument a lot more credence than I used to. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/76 "2016-07-24T20:40:46Z")
I heard the announcement on the radio and thought Hilary a mad genius for choosing [a Black Republican](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain)running mate. Kinda disappointed to see it’s actually yet-another-white guy. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/77 "2016-07-24T20:56:22Z")
Who the hell wants an exciting VP? You want a guy you can count on not to shit the bed. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/78 "2016-07-24T21:01:31Z")
If our political culture, in general, were what it SHOULD be, a kind of boring, competent VP pick would be preferable to something like Palin or Pence (not that Pence isn’t competent…he’s just scary). ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/79 "2016-07-24T21:40:42Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > Who the hell wants an exciting VP? You want a guy you can count on not to shit the bed. QFT ---
**Author:** ![Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Last_Glacial_Maximum)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738/80 "2016-07-24T21:58:55Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Having Hispanic’s in my family, I can assure you they bond with non-Hispanics who speak Spanish. I’ve seen it many times. They will remember the guy who speaks Spanish long after forgetting what his resume was. If Hillary airs some Spanish language campaign commercials featuring Kaine, it’s going to be a big hit. Agreed. My Spanish speaking wife was quite impressed with the snippet she heard of Kaine. . [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kaine-hillary-thinks-shes-gonna-win-by-a-landslide/760738.md?page=5)