3% chance of winning *Utah. * 0% chance of winning the Presidency.
The bit of conversation you jumped in the middle of was about Utah.
From the OP:
Speculate on a McMullin presidency.
*What would a McMullin presidency look like? Would he preside as a good chap? A micro-manager? A Putin-wannabe?
*
You responded to my post, not the OP, and my post was clearly talking about him winning Utah.
Just to add to your list.
He also has to beat Johnson for third place in the EC to be an option. Which isn’t super unlikely, but a world where Clinton’s support falls enough for her to fall under 270 is one where Johnson probably does a lot better than his current polling suggests. And since he’s in the ballot in a lot more states than McMullin, Johnsons a lot more likely to pick up those votes.
And in the event of no one getting the majority of the EC, the two parties actually have a six way choice, since they can effectively decide to chose one of the VP candidates as well by having the House consciously gridlock and than having the Senate chose a VP-elect, who would become President on inauguration day. Since I suspect Kaine or Pence are both more palatable compromise choices than Clinton, Trump, McMullen (or Johnson) I think even in the extremely unlikely event that the choice came to the Congress, McMullin would still be unlikely to find himself in the Oval Office.
Well, all Jill Stein needs to do to win Utah is get a plurality. But at the moment, she’s running in fifth place. So to get that plurality, Jill Stein needs to beat Donald Trump and she needs to beat Hillary Clinton and she needs to beat Evan McMullin and she needs to beat Gary Johnson. That’s four different people she needs to beat and if she misses any one of them, she loses the state.
And yet 538 puts McMullin at a 3% chance of winning Utah but no mention of Stein or write in candidates DrDeth and Little Nemo. It must puzzle you.
Honestly, I suspect what would happen if McMullin won Utah and no candidate won a majority of the EC is that McMullin would instruct his Electors to vote for Hillary. The point of his candidacy is to prevent Trump, not make himself President, and in the case where the choice went to the House, the overwhelming odds are that they would choose a Trump Presidency.
I don’t see why I would be puzzled by it. It’s what I’ve already explained.
Here’s the order of the candidates, according to recent polls:
- Trump
- Clinton
- McMullin
- Johnson
- Stein
DrDeth and I are not running for President. (At least, I’m not. For all I know to the contrary, DrDeth may in fact be Alyson Kennedy of the Socialist Worker’s Party.)
So McMullin is behind two other candidates. Stein is behind four other candidates. DrDeth and I are behind all of the five candidates I’ve listed.
McMullin would probably govern a lot like Mitt Romney would have, with a little Bush 41 mixed in given his background.
As for his chances, if he wins Utah and Clinton doesn’t have a majority of electoral votes, he’s in. Or Pence is in if the House deadlocks.
Johnson is going to beat McMullin in the popular vote, but that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how many states Johnson gets 10% or 15% in, because he’s not going to win any of them. McMullin, however, just might win Utah. In McMullin’s best state, he’s six points behind the first-place candidate. How far behind the leader is Johnson, in his best state?
He’s at 10% in his best states. He certainly is currently unlikely to win any if polls remain how they are. But than, Hillary is very unlikely to need Utah to push her over 270, so the OP’s scenario pretty much requires some sort of large national shift in polling to come true. A shift to Johnson is unlikely, but not any less likely than any of the other things that would need to happen to make a McMullin Presidency. If we’re going to list the unlikely things that would need to happen to make McMullin Prez, it seems worth noting that there are equally unlikely things that could block him.
But in any case, I think the best argument against the OP’s scenario is the one in my last post. Even in the extremely unlikely event of his winning Utah and none getting an EC majority, McMullin himself probably would take steps to keep it going to the House.
You found me out!:eek:
:D:p
Of course there are unlikely events that could block McMullin. But there are also a lot of highly likely events that could block him. Given the existence of those highly likely events, it’s not worth considering the unlikely ones.
By contrast, there is an unlikely set of events that could result in someone other than Clinton or Trump becoming President (McMullin’s path). But there is not any likely set of events that results in that. So even though McMullin becoming President is unlikely, it’s still an interesting possibility to discuss.
Folks, play the hypothetical! Let’s have some fun.
You mean, speculate about what his presidency would be like, in the unlikely event that he won? There’s not much to go on, there, based on his lack of political background, and his (thus far) low public exposure. Most likely, he’d be leaning pretty heavily on his slate of advisors. I can see three ways that could go: One, he could be dominated by a single Cheney-type, which means that his presidency would be very similar to one held by that chief advisor. Two, he could just use a typical selection of Washington Republicans for advisors, meaning that his presidency would be about as close to “Generic Republican” as it’s possible to get. Three, he might know enough about politics and about management to be able to choose a slate of advisors on his own, in which case one can hope that he might end up with a pretty decent set (which might even be influenced by the compromises and deals he’d need to make to get elected at all).
Well for fun (!? what’s wrong with me?) I watched a couple interviews. He didn’t dive deep into policy in the ones I saw but he came off kind of like a wonk. If they hadn’t introduced him as a candidate you could easily mistake him for some expert they brought on by his demeanor and careful answers. Given his time as an adviser to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and as policy director to the Republican Conference, I would assume he would have a decent idea about who he would want on his team and some sense of direction. Being a newb to the politics game he would have to leave a lot of heavy lifting to his team and not have any grand goals. So my guess would be generic, caretaker Republican presidency.
McMullin’s resume actually suggests someone who while not ready to be President, knows a lot of stuff. You don’t become head of policymaking for a faction of your party and a CIA analyst without knowing a lot of stuff about both domestic and foreign policy.
That being said, knowing stuff doesn’t make you ready to govern, but it does mean he has enough knowledge to at least build on once he’s in office.
But he will be a generic Republican if he wins.
I think that if he wins Utah and no one gets a majority of EVs, he still doesn’t have much of a shot at the Presidency.
The Republicans have a pretty large majority in the House, so effectively they get to choose the President. Given the choice between McMullin and Trump, I think that most Democrats would be willing to vote McMullin.
I think Clinton has basically no chance in that case. It would take 31 Republican representatives willing to vote for Clinton and every Democrat.
Even right now, when Trump is a total dumpster fire, most Republicans aren’t willing to distance themselves from him. And the case that we’re talking about is one where he’s somehow recovered enough to basically be in a dead heat with Clinton.
If Republican elected officials were going to reject Trump on grounds of principle, they’ve had many months to do so, and generally haven’t.
ETA: Sorry, I misread the OP, and followed the same line of discussion most others had. I think most of us don’t really know enough about McMullin to reasonably speculate on how he’d actually be as a President.
But many of them have dumped him, haven’t they?
Anyway, that’s not the point of this thread. Are there any interviews with him or articles by him on which we can prognosticate and speculate?