Let me make an analogy to basketball. Hillary is the Brooklyn Nets. She’s a bad professional politician, but at least she is a professional. She can manage the things that all professional politicians have to manage, like raising money, giving boilerplate speeches, and appointing competent underlings. She avoids episodes of outstanding stupidity (except for that email server thing) and her campaign usually functions with reasonable smoothness, doing what needs to be done.
Trump is the Washington Generals. He’s not a professional and he’s not trying to be one. He just can’t get anything right and he isn’t trying to and in the end he’s gonna lose.
My prediction: Hillary wins the popular vote by 5% and the electoral college by about 100 votes.
I agree: advantage Trump. I was telling my wife last night that there was something not quite right when Clinton speaks that I just hadn’t been able to put my finger on. Then it clicked: she sounds a lot like she’s talking at a business conference. She comes across like a female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She’s obviously very bright, very articulate – people of all stripes can acknowledge that. She might even throw in a few witticisms here and there. But at worst, she seems scripted, with her humor forced. And at worst, she sometimes sounds like a lecturing schoolmarm. Fair or not, wise or not, that’s just not typically what Americans vote for. If this were the age of radio, maybe it wouldn’t matter. But in a time of cable television, webcasting, twittering, and facebooking…the likes, the emojis, the shares matter. Donald Trump may be her senior by a year, and he’s a horrible candidate, but God damn can he find his audience and speak to them like he’s their long lost father!
I’d call this one** even.** Clinton’s only real advantage is in terms of the fundraising, but in almost every other regard, Manafort has done a magnificent save job to date. Most of all, he has found a way to take a fractured party and use influential individuals to give at least the appearance of a coalition. Nobody else has been able to tame Trump, but he’s done it about as well as anyone and he has somehow turned him into a credible candidate. You also don’t see Trump scuttling around far-flung places like California quite as much anymore. It happens I’m sure, but there’s more of a coherent strategy now. So, while Clinton should be winning that one hands-down, I’m just not so sure that this is fact reality. Clinton has the money and the organization, but Trump has without question been more resourceful and gotten more bang for the buck. I could be wrong, but I don’t see that changing.
I disagree with you on this one: advantage Clinton. We’ve barely gotten started with the deluge of ads yet, and Trump has just given the Democrats caches and caches of self-inflected ammunition to work with - and he keeps giving. Undoubtedly, the RNC will run a few ads with James Comey’s made-for-TV moments in which he basically testifies in front of congress that Clinton is a liar. Those will hurt, especially if they are timed to coincide with Wikileaks data dumps. But Trump’s gaffes will hurt more. The question is, how much more?
Agreed, and this will be an even more significant advantage as the campaign hits the final stretch. In fact, Trump is coming perilously close to not only losing party support but I could actually see some individuals coming out in support of Clinton if he continues on this disastrous path. The last week might not have seemed disastrous because Trump’s base stands with him no matter what. But I think of moderate Senators and congressman. I think of prominent Republicans with ties to the Pentagon or State Department. Trump’s performance has to be not only cringe-worthy but sickening. Here’s where I’m going with this: while I doubt you will see Republicans, for fear of angering their base and being held accountable for endorsing Clinton, I could absolutely see more and more Republicans unafraid to say things like “Now I can’t in good conscious vote for Hillary Clinton but I have to say, she seems like she has a better grasp of situation X than Trump does.” Or “I’m not supporting Hillary, but wow, great speech she gave!” Yes, I know that 30-40 percent won’t care, but eventually the 5 or 10 percent who are still trying to make up their minds just might. They’re actually hoping Hillary wins so they can run against her in 2020.
I’ll give a slight edge to Trump. Voters want a disruptor. Trump is that guy. However, it won’t be a massive edge. He has enraged and horrified just as many as he’s captivated.
Currently, I have it much closer: Clinton 275, Trump 263. Trump will do what George W Bush did and turn Ohio and Florida red again. However, right now at least, I have Hillary winning Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. As I’ve said before, Nevada could blow this whole election process wide open, because if those states split as I’ve predicted but with Trump, not Hillary, actually taking Nevada, you’d likely have a 269-269 tie…which would send the election to the House of Representatives. And the House could indeed become the graveyard of the Trump campaign.
Totally disagree. I don’t think Trump is even running ads in swing states yet. Hillary’s ads are powerful and strategically targeted towards women who would rather not spend the next four years explaining to their kids why it’s not cool to mock the disabled even though the leader of the free world does it. I think it’s brilliant.
Yes. Hillary’s campaign started a long time ago. Trump is assembling his campaign staff on the run, and not doing that well at it.
Hillary has more money to spend on commercials right now. I don’t see Trump getting an advantage even with more money. It’s a level playing field content-wise.
Clearly
Not clear at all. They both have solid bases that will turn out. They both have turned off some voters. The advantage will be to the candidate who can best hold the voters they have now.`
I don’t know about your numbers but I agree Clinton will take advantage of the electoral system in an election with a close popular vote. Trump and the GOP can’t defend all the regions the Democrats will be attacking. It will be a purple state landslide for Hillary.
I plan to vote for Hillary and pray like a non-atheist that she defeats Trump, but I can barely abide the sound of her voice. The accent, the cadence, the timbre— I immediately feel I’m being bellowed at by my middle school gym teacher.
It isn’t her fault, really, but it isn’t mine either. I did not enjoy middle school, and would prefer not to be regularly transported back there. I look forward to consuming President Clinton’s many addresses in transcript form.
And part of that justification is that she knows she just put in a lot of hard work to figure out that diagnosis and is rightly satisfied that she now knows what it’ll take to get you better.
I’m going to go with those saying that Trump’s going to stick his foot so far down his throat it’ll eventually going to cost him. Every time I think “wow, he’s not going to say anything worse than that”, something worse comes out. The latest, of course, being the borderline-treasonous “sarcastic joke” about Russia hacking us again.
By far, and even worse - the candidate himself doesn’t seem to have any desire to be managed.
Disagree completely. Clinton has a bunch of money, the staff to do it, and has already started. Even just the videos produced for the DNC struck me as a lot slicker and a lot more professional than the ones I saw for the RNC, so I’m fully expecting to see well-produced spots all fall long (yay for living in the Philly media range).
Also, the one commercial with the kids and the “who do you want?” question is resonating with some Trump-leaning people I know who I would not have thought could be pushed onto the fence. First time I saw it, I thought it was a great spot that’s somewhat manipulative, but can nail you right where you need it - for both the emotional thinkers (“won’t someone think of the children!”) and the rational thinkers (“that’s a really good question…”)
Hilary Clinton is not the world’s best public speaker. She knows this (“service part, not the public part”) and I don’t think will have any problem bringing out the big guns to help - President Obama, Michelle Obama, Biden, probably Bloomberg, Booker … not to mention Chelsea and the biggest gun of all - Bill.
I really, really hope in my heart that our country proves itself better than electing Trump. At this point, I don’t know and that worries me.
My hope? A huge EV landslide with Clinton getting pretty much all of the battleground states and even close-battleground states.
Reality is likely to be a little closer than that, but I still think Clinton wins with a comfortable margin, similar to Obama in 2012, maybe one more state flipped red (low 300’s).
Well, Trump got more viewers for his speech than Hillary did. I am surprised he has not tweeted about how popular he is yet. I am still worried that even with better organisation, better support and better commercial, he could win because he was able to win the nomination with none of these things.
I do think that the debates will be important and since he is a better speaker, and the expectations are so low, he may be seen as winning them (except for the Town Hall format-that is going to be interesting). Anyway, I just pity the team doing his debate prep. It’s going to be worse than prepping Palin. I find it hard to believe he would even submit to debate prep.
Trump is definitely more entertaining. It’s easier to listen to him say crap I don’t like than listening to Hillary say crap I do like. He doesn’t seem to be leveraging that very well though.
Does it say anything to you that children shouldn’t watch the Republican candidate for President unsupervised? I mean, really, this is the Republican candidate for President, and you’re admitting that children shouldn’t watch him when he’s on TV. Does it say anything to you that parents shouldn’t watch the Republican candidate for President when their children are around?
I saw this commercial and its point is a good one. Trump has said some really stupid shit and has given Clinton a lot of ammo for her sound bites. I think there are other commercials too, like Trump speaking about disabled people - maybe that’s the same commercial. But I’ve seen at least two Clinton commercials showing Trump saying stupid shit. He is far from a polished politician, and he is a brash N’Yawker. I want him to win but he better act a lot more presidential than that.
But I believe he will win, and I believe he will be much more presidential, and I believe he is only playing the campaign game now.
I hear this (and read this) a lot, and I don’t know where it’s coming from. Why shouldn’t I take Trump at his word? Why do you believe that he won’t be, as President, exactly like he is when he’s running for President?
I’m not familiar with your posting history, so apologies in advance if you’ve already answered this. But, I’m interested in why you support him. I’m a partisan liberal, and I’m aware of my heavy bias against anyone running as a Republican. It’s hard for me to see much of a case for him. And I haven’t seen many Trump supporters here on the SDMB. So, no snark or gotchas intended, I’d like to hear your reasons for supporting him.
When people like Ben Carson endorse him and say he is pleasantly surprised that DJT is a decent human being when not in the limelight (my paraphrasing), that goes a long way with me. That is one example, and a big one.
As president he will be ***in ***the limelight most of the time.
**
You are voting for a guy that then, by your definition, will be indecent when he gets his paws on the biggest bully pulpit on earth.
And knowing Carson it is clear that he does like that Trump will open the CDC to his snake oil and anti vaccine ideas, and then also to dismantle the EPA as our environment and climate change is not important. Both indecent and anti scientific ideas that will affect the lives of millions are BTW also believed by Trump.
I have not answered it. I generally try to avoid politics here, but haven’t been very successful lately. It must be an election year. You’ll find me mostly in the Trivia Dominoes Thread Game. I am a registered Republican but have not always voted GOP; I am socially moderate, fiscally conservative, and Christian but definitely not far-right - God is the one to judge, I try not to (but yeah, I am human, aren’t we all? :D).
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I like telling my wife that we’re probably not as conservative as we like to think we are. We embrace other cultures and religions, and we love and respect others. My wife is better at that than I.
One reason I try to avoid talking politics is because it has been my experience that most here on The Dope lean farther to the left than I, and many have difficulty discussing civilly without calling names. To be fair, while I think I’ve avoided name calling there have been times I’ve called bullshit, or even bull fucking shit. Not cool on my part. I’m not out to convince another that their views are errant and they should change to agree with me. I think it’d be great if we can exchange ideas, and agree to disagree if it comes down to that.
So… I support Trump here because it is either him or Clinton, and I am not keen on Clinton. Trump has a good grasp on economic reality, and he has the leadership to assemble a solid team to cover his blind spots. In Trump I see leadership, leadership that is good for America. But leading the strongest country in the world comes with great responsibility, and he had better wield that power humbly and civilly.
Yes my eyes sometimes sting trying to see through the smoke of his poor word choices when he flaps his gums. HTH, Bayard?