a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

xp: Haha I was about to say I need a better editor than myself

I thought you left out an initial and meant to suggest Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

Clinton is certainly doing her best to run the shittiest campaign since oh maybe Al Gore (or perhaps herself eight years ago).

she doesn't have to run much of a primary campaign. she's going to win. I predict that her game in the general election will be of a much higher order.

I was hoping that maybe a hologram of James Thurber came out and did 40 minutes of live off the cuff illustration.

I predict that her game in the general election will be of a much higher order.

based on what?

where's all that delicious PAC money going right now anyway? probably being squirreled for the general

majority of it's going to the GOP

"she doesn't have to run much of a primary campaign. she's going to win. I predict that her game in the general election will be of a much higher order."

I've seen no evidence that she knows how to bring an "A"-game, but obv we'll see. Her opponent in the general election is probably going to be pretty weak regardless so she might be thinking no point in expending much effort period.

Gore doesn't have to run much of a primary campaign. he's going to win. I predict that his game in the general election will be of a much higher order.

main diff between Hillz + Gore is that it's highly unlikely Hillz' opponent is going to be anywhere near as broadly appealing as Dubya was

Also Hillz is not a malfunctioning robot droning on about lockboxes.

and Hillz does not wear purple lipstick

...yet

@HillaryClinton Oct 11
40 years ago, I married the cute guy from the library. Happy anniversary, @billclinton—you've still got it! -H

‏@DougHenwood Oct 11
Aww aren't they cute? Will they spend any part of their anniversary together?

okay lol

@Doctor Casino: I think as long as Sanders is in single digits it's okay to call it 'pitiable' without giving it much thought. And I'm not exactly sure what you want from 538, but they never do any polls of their own? They did actually look at recognition for Sanders recently, that was what I was alluding to above with the lines about the 'gap' forming in recognition amongst white and minority voters. Which is also a pretty good metric to use in looking at how fast Sanders' support grows amongst minority voters. Does it grow as fast as his support amongst white voters? No, for some reason it does not. Well then, does the other candidates have that disparity as well? Nope, they do not. Uniquely in the Dem primary, Sanders seem to have disproportional support and recognition amongst white voters. That is interesting. And as that gap in recognition continues to persist, while Sanders continues to claim that his main problem among minority voters is lack of recognition, I'd still say I'm unsure if he gets it.

"Ms. Crow... can Sanders get it?"

Still looking forwarding to Hillary repeatedly debating whatever mouthbreathers make it to the GOP slate. She'll be like Gore's debate sigh-fest x10. It'll be so hard to suppress her contempt and even pretend to take questions and responses seriously.

BTW, what formal title does she go with these day? Ms. Clinton? Sen. Clinton? Sec. Clinton?

Boss

@Doctor Casino: I think as long as Sanders is in single digits it's okay to call it 'pitiable' without giving it much thought. And I'm not exactly sure what you want from 538, but they never do any polls of their own? They did actually look at recognition for Sanders recently, that was what I was alluding to above with the lines about the 'gap' forming in recognition amongst white and minority voters. Which is also a pretty good metric to use in looking at how fast Sanders' support grows amongst minority voters. Does it grow as fast as his support amongst white voters? No, for some reason it does not. Well then, does the other candidates have that disparity as well? Nope, they do not. Uniquely in the Dem primary, Sanders seem to have disproportional support and recognition amongst white voters. That is interesting. And as that gap in recognition continues to persist, while Sanders continues to claim that his main problem among minority voters is lack of recognition, I'd still say I'm unsure if he gets it.

The real question you want to ask here is "would a Sanders candidacy suppress the minority vote enough to allow a Republican victory", since it's reasonable to assume that the majority of likely minority Democratic voters would not switch their vote to Republican but would instead sit out the election entirely. The answer to that has little to do with Sanders himself and much more to do with how insane his opponent is; get a Trump or Carson in there and I would not be surprised to see minority votes for Sanders within 10 points of Obama's.

otoh if there's a "non-insane" nominee i look fwd to Josh trying to figure out how Hil lost the election

they call her 'secretary' clinton on npr..

I'm still trying to figure out which ones of them seem non-insane to the general populace? I guess... Kasich, Bush and Rubio?

It seems a little ridiculous to describe this as a problem unique to Sanders when there's one other candidate who's hugely famous and a few others with minuscule support. He has a disparity compared to Webb/Chafee/O'Malley because he actually has support of any significance.

OK - so once he breaks out of single digits it'll stop being pitiable? Just wanted to make sure we have that down. I thought because you brought up the 4% -> 8% thing that you were saying that that was pitiable progress to have made in the given span of time, which made me think there was some other number which would have qualified him for a different adjective.

Unless I missed it, 538 did not do recognition versus likability. The (bad) article just pointed out the recognition gap and started punditing from there. I didn't say they should do their own polls, just that they should do the thing they used to do well - sifting through data and drawing complicated comparisons with past campaigns and complicated number-crunching, rather than just kind of riffing around recent polling data, with one chart slapped up, making them read like, well, everybody else writing articles on the internet. So we still don't actually have his name recognition and his likability with specific groups (or everybody) on the same chart, which was my point.

"Which is also a pretty good metric to use in looking at how fast Sanders' support grows amongst minority voters. " - - Uh... why would that be true? Recognition by itself isn't much of a metric at all for someone's support among any group of voters. It could be that as people get to know you better, everybody likes you more, or less, or stays about the same, or some people's liking grows more than others. Your comparison to the "other candidates" is pretty ridiculous - - Chafee, Webb and McConnell don't have this gap because they don't have any support at all. (xpost, basically agree with JoeStork)

"And as that gap in recognition continues to persist, while Sanders continues to claim that his main problem among minority voters is lack of recognition" - - - errr.... that kinda makes sense? Like... I would definitely want to work on the gap in recognition if I were him. Again, what we'd need to support your position is data showing specifically that as minority voters learn more about Sanders, their support stays low or gets worse. I'm not seeing that and again it's the kind of thing I would normally look to 538 for but they have hacks doing the work there now. Obviously, a separate question is, what can Sanders do to increase the number of minority voters who have heard of him. I'm personally waiting for him to really step up his campaign stops and advertising - - - been feeling for a while like the idea has been for the big rallies in "safe" territory to fund other operations, but it's about time for him to start doing some of that other stuff in other places. I mean, all that fundraising is for something, one assumes.

We're also still far from the stage where you get detailed polls of anything but the first few primary states plus nationwide, because doing complicated polls is expensive. But it might be interesting if, after the debate(s), it becomes apparent that Sanders has emerging pockets of opportunity or other demographics besides white liberals that like what he has to say. Perhaps he'll start going to other states entirely.

James Taylor's mom died last weekend

Just wait until everyone realizes Sanders is Jewish.
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2009/04/tinfoil-hat.jpg

James Taylor's mom died last weekend

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius),

after hearing "Mockingbird"

"It seems a little ridiculous to describe this as a problem unique to Sanders when there's one other candidate who's hugely famous and a few others with minuscule support. He has a disparity compared to Webb/Chafee/O'Malley because he actually has support of any significance."

Yeah no kidding.

Still, by some measures — such as campaign appearances, media visibility or returning reporters’ messages — it can be hard to discern the difference between either of these former United States senators and the elusive “Other.” Repeated emails to Webb’s spokesman Craig Crawford last week — first inquiring about his public schedule, then just seeking signs of life — went unreturned. Perhaps Crawford doesn’t like Yahoo News for some reason, although a reporter for Mother Jones magazine who tried reaching Crawford last week had an identical experience. The last public utterance of Webb’s I could track down, apart from occasional tweets, was a Sept. 28 appearance on Alan Colmes’ Fox News radio show, in which he agreed with Colmes that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination but predicted that if he is the candidate, “I think we will win, and win big.”

Chafee’s aide Debbie Rich, described as his “communications consultant,” was only slightly more responsive than Crawford. After twice affirming that Chafee had no public schedule for the five days leading up to the debate, she was asked for evidence that he was seriously running for president and replied tersely: “He was welcomed by residents in Exeter, N.H., on Tuesday. Very good reception.” On Wednesday, Chafee took to Twitter to boast that Grammarly, a grammar-check website, had ranked his followers tops in grammar in their Facebook posts, and he followed up that news with a burst of commentary on issues as varied as the Mideast, mental health and trade policy, amounting to five tweets over two days. Donald Trump tweets more in his sleep. Chafee’s media coverage is so scanty that he couldn’t even raise a scandal last week when, speaking at a foreign policy forum, he came to the defense of the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, a position as idiosyncratic, and considerably more fraught, as endorsing the metric system.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/the-invisible-candidacies-of-jim-webb-and-lincoln-090047078.html

Repeated emails to Webb’s spokesman Craig Crawford last week — first inquiring about his public schedule, then just seeking signs of life — went unreturned.

ok, but in all fairness it's possible these emails went straight to spam because they came from yahoo.com

There are many ways I am a terrible person.

One of these is that when an older person (i.e., a person that I perceive to be comparatively old) has a parent die, my first thought is not "how sad" but rather "yikes, that Extremely Old Person still had living PARENTS? Geez!"

One can be sympathetic on a private individual level, but: If you're 70 and your parent dies at age 95? We can be forgiven for being grateful for the good run you've had, not sorrowful that it didn't last longer.

If you're 60-something and you're mourning someone who dies at 90-something, that's a relatively recent contemporary luxury, not a tragedy. In the past you'd have been lucky to make it past infancy; luckier still to not get eaten by a sabertooth (or whatever) before you were 20.

Can always count on ILX for hot takes on death.

"OK - so once he breaks out of single digits it'll stop being pitiable? Just wanted to make sure we have that down."

Nope, didn't write that. Just that it's all academic while he's pretty clearly far from unpitiable territory, no?

Also, we're not talking support, we're talking recognition. Here are the numbers on people who don't know from yougov:

Sanders: White 21% Black 42% Hispanic 41%
O'Malley: White 57% Black 60% Hispanic 57%
Chafee: White 62% Black 63% Hispanic 54%
Webb: White 59% Black 61% Hispanic 52%
Clinton: White 5% Black 11% Hispanic 13%

For what is worth, he has perfectly fine favorability ratings with black respondees who actually know him, it just doesn't translate into support. Not as good as Hillary, though, who has 44% Very Favorable (and 49% Very Unfavorable with white respondees, though that probably has a lot to do with her 78% Very Unfavorable amongst republicans).

And with 58% recognition and 8% support, Sanders is clearly not going to change the course through more recognition alone, no?

The real question you want to ask here is "would a Sanders candidacy suppress the minority vote enough to allow a Republican victory", since it's reasonable to assume that the majority of likely minority Democratic voters would not switch their vote to Republican but would instead sit out the election entirely. The answer to that has little to do with Sanders himself and much more to do with how insane his opponent is; get a Trump or Carson in there and I would not be surprised to see minority votes for Sanders within 10 points of Obama's.

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), 13. oktober 2015 19:29 (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, sure, that is the most important, since the presidency is kinda useless anyway. But there's another question, what would the consequences be for minorities in US, for immigration reform, police reform, the fight against racial wealth inequality, etc, if Dems realized they could win the presidency through white populism, without minority support.

if "the presidency is kinda useless anyway" then why do you care who runs and who wins?

i want to meet this mythical 1 in 20 white person / 1 in ten black or latino person who has never heard of hillary clinton

He, yeah.

Sanders is clearly not going to change the course through more recognition alone, no?

Since all this is speculation about the future based on a very slender set of facts about the recent past, I'd say it's hard to tell. If there were something in Sanders' positions that's obviously fundamentally repellant to most minorities, such as Trump's positions on immigration, then it would be easier to predict, but I don't think that Sanders is taking any positions that would lead blacks or Hispanics to automatically reject him. Your certainty about these things seems poorly founded.

Your certainty about these things seems poorly founded.

^^^

always important to remember that like 2/3rds of the electorate is paying zero attention at the moment

xx-post

But there's another question, what would the consequences be for minorities in US, for immigration reform, police reform, the fight against racial wealth inequality, etc, if Dems realized they could win the presidency through white populism, without minority support.

See, this is where I don't think you get Bernie Sanders. That is the kind of question a pandering, calculating closet racist candidate would ask themselves. What has he ever done to make you think he is this cynical? And "white populism" is what Trump is up to, not Sanders!

it's a stupid question because no candidate can win the presidency without minority support, those days are over.

https://twitter.com/JimWebbUSA/status/653997961551192070

there's always Voter ID laws to "disincentivize" the unwanted

the crucial endorsement of Carl "The Dig" Diggler

Was hoping that tweet was just "I'm alive! Really!"

I hope that Jim Webb thoroughly read that article before retweeting it

lol

But there's another question, what would the consequences be for minorities in US, for immigration reform, police reform, the fight against racial wealth inequality, etc, if Dems realized they could win the presidency through white populism, without minority support.

About the same thing that's happening now?

ie, the issue would be used as a wedge differentiator to appeal to white voters who lean left and practical advancement on it would be blocked by the power stalemate in Washington

Clearly Obama's executive orders are inconsequential, Frederik