I think you are overestimating the effect of money. Certainly it makes a difference, but history is fully of candidates with large bankrolls losing to insurgents.
I honestly don’t know how to read Fiorina yet. She did very well in her debate, continues to do well in interviews, but she has HP hanging over for, both for good and bad. But you’re right that she’s still down in single digits after being almost universally declared the winner of the debates, so obviously there’s some negative reaction to her from the voters.
Biden shares one big problem with Sanders: he’s old. He would be 73 when sworn in as President. Reagan was 69 and that was a major campaign issue. There’s also the fact that he’s kind of a buffoon with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease. I think he’d have a hard time winning the election unless the Republicans put up Trump or some other idiot (entirely possible).
The Republicans usually flirt with extreme candidates at this point in the election, but they almost always settle down and vote for the mainstream establishment. This could very well be a different year, though. All around the world you’re seeing established orders being upset, and the establishment is running scared in a lot of places. Expect the unexpected - from both the Democrats and Republicans.
Biden is playing an interesting role here. Obama has to remain totally neutral until Joe makes up his mind. He probably wouldn’t make a formal endorsement during the primaries anyway, but he can’t even appear to favor anyone if Biden is still a possibility.
He has no reason to say no yet. And he’s the runner-up in the beauty contest. If for any reason Hillary is unable to fulfill her reign as the establishment candidate…
She has two major high profile losses (HP and her Senate campaign) which are offset by exactly zero wins. Her campaigning is a one-trick pony of negativity towards Clinton. She’s not hard to read, and she has no chance.
Trump’s getting around 20-25% in the poll numbers and leading. It looks impressive but that means a substantial majority prefer someone else as a number one choice. It really comes down to whether he’s a high ranked choice for the other candidate’s voters when they drop. It doesn’t look like he is. He’s still below water on favorability (cite) The majority of republican voters view him unfavorably. In IA 55% of Republican voters that watched the debate said they were less comfortable with him after the debate. His yougov net favorability dropped 14 points after the debate. After a period where his favorability was on the way up the debate started to push it the other way. Some of the analysis I’ve seen (minus cite) tends to tie his supporters to groups that don’t traditionally have high primary turnout. Unless he can get out the vote that’s a recipe for underperforming the polls. That’s before we even consider the effect of unpledged RNC establishment delegates on the selection. He likely doesn’t get many of them so he needs even stronger wins for the primary awarded delegates.
25% of delegates don’t get him a nomination. He’s going to have a tough time expanding outside his current supporters though. He certainly can’t afford many more debates like the last one.
The bigger concern is that the total support for the craziest and nastiest of them added together does form a solid majority. The candidates running as sane and responsible (whether their records support that or not) are *losing *support, or have never had much.
The nominee is going to be the one who can best coalesce all of that support - IOW the party’s base - into a single candidacy.
The bigger concern is that Americans are so tired of being lied to and government being unaccountable that they are close to rejecting anyone associated with the establishment.
He is doing something. He’s saying he hasn’t decided yet.
When Obama was elected with him as VP. The VP is the presumed nominee for the incumbent party. He’s only the runner up because he hasn’t announced. If he announces he’ll be in 3rd place. Which is a very sad thing to say about O’Malley, Chafee, and Webb.
I mentioned his interesting position in being able to hold up Obama’s endorsement. I didn’t say he was interested in running, or doing anything else. However he definitely has not said that he is out of the race. And he’s part of the dynamic until that happens.
They generally won’t formally endorse anyone in the primaries, but they can make it known what they think. Obama has been playing it cool, Hillary’s been begging for a handout.
I’m not the one who has Hillary in my obsessions.
This is shoe-leather politics. Either the Clinton campaign is dealing with these issues on a daily or they will lose.
That’s dated August 5, actually, which is pretty significant since that was a day before the Fox News debate.
Here’s one of the comments from your link:
By this weekend, it’ll be two months since the first poll that had Trump in double digits.
So by Enten’s own analysis, we haven’t had this show before.
Nate Silver says even if Trump’s support stays over 20% all the way through Iowa, we actually have seen this before:
That last sentence is already outdated, of course, not in terms of it being true, but in terms of the degree to which it matters. Fox News, which is a bigger player than the GOP itself at this point, tried to kill him off, and we’ve seen how well that worked.
But “Pat Buchanan did, Steve Forbes did.” I say, so what? Buchanan and Forbes were basically pulling in the protest vote from people who wanted to say they were less than thrilled with Bush Sr. and Dole, who were going to win the GOP nomination in 1992 and 1996, respectively, no matter what. Comparing that with a real, up-for-grabs race is like comparing apples with begonias. That comparison wasn’t one of Nate’s finest moments.
And while I’ve already addressed the consolidation assumption above, (a) I’ll note that McGovern was able to win the Dem nomination in 1972 with 25% of the vote in the absence of a single strong opponent, and (b) if there’s a consolidation, who consolidates with whom, and who comes out ahead? If you combine the support for the ‘moderate by GOP standards’ candidates (Bush, Rubio, Kasich, Christie) you get 25.6%, per RCP’s current averages. If you think that Walker’s support would also join that coalition (I’m skeptical, to say the least, you’re up to 33.3%. Toss in Rand Paul (whose dad never dropped out, so again, skeptical here), and you’re up to 37.8%.
Meanwhile, if Trump gets Cruz’ and Huckabee’s supporters when they drop out, that pushes him up to 33.6%. And if he picks up half of Walker’s and Fiorina’s supporters, that pushes him up to 40.6%. Give him 1/3 of Carson’s support, and he’s up to 44%, which may not be a majority, but it could easily be a commanding plurality.
At this point, to save the anti-Trump, whoever it may be, you’ve got to assume the 15-20% of GOP voters who don’t indicate a preference in recent polls go heavily for the anti-Trump when the primaries come around.
Now that doesn’t mean I think Trump is the odds-on favorite for the nomination. If it’s an even bet on Trump against the field, I’ll take the field. But I’d say the same for any other candidate. But if someone says Trump has only a 4% chance of winning, my attitude is, “where can I get a bet down on Trump at those odds?”
Basically, I think Trump has a plausible chance of winning the nomination. I’d say he’s got a better chance than anyone besides Jeb, Rubio, Walker, and maybe Cruz. (Of course, that isn’t saying much: as I go down the rest of the list, the only remaining name I regard as merely a longshot, rather than someone with zero chance, is Kasich.) It’ll probably be one of those other guys in the end, but I’d give Trump at least a 10% chance of winning the nomination.
Who does Trump gain votes from, other that the other two “non-politicians”, Fiorino and Carson?
Trump will not be the nominee for one simple reason. The people who run the Republican party would rather lose a single election, even to the hated Hillary, than permanently lose their control of the party.