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

can kinda foresee Carson winning in Iowa, Trump winning New Hampshire, and then both flailing from there on out as the super tuesday primaries get split between Rubio and Chuckles or others

Carson winning Iowa seems perfectly possible. Carson winning much after that? Not so much.

Jeb! seems pretty doomed! though

like what state is he gonna carry

We're all doomed.

except hillary

The only silver lining I see is that my two girls don't know Hillary Clinton has a lifetime of history and bad blood, and will only see her as the first female president, which would be far more valuable than anything she actually brings the office.

other than the expensive jewelry of her lady lovers

'90s revival has gone too far even if new Twin Peaks doesn't suck

Bootleg shirts for sale at the state fair this year: Trump for President; Straight Outta Compton

Just glad Perry Farrell didn't die in 1992 so there's no Doors movie about him.

who is the Oliver Stone of today to make that masterpiece?

prediction markets breaking for rubio

rubio would certainly fit the conventional wisdom, but the 'establishment' republicans are so damn weak this time around that one of the radical right renegades might just consolidate the angry white votes, and push their way past the CW and into the nomination. we live in interesting times.

I don't think Trump, Fiorina or Carson actually have the required endurance and organizational skills to court all the delegates they would need - the question is which one of the establishment guys can credibly collect enough of the "outrage" votes and Rubio appears to maybe be that guy at the moment. Jeb! has too much baggage and is just a shitty campaigner, Christie too corrupt/compromised, Cruz too unctuous, Kasich too much "the guy the other party likes" ... Huckabee's appeal seems restricted to southern evangelicals, I don't think that's enough (money guys won't get behind him).

if it's Rubio vs. Clinton we can look forward to some concerned grandma-scolding from the latter

imo, the angry whites won't care that cruz is unctuous. if anyone who has won real elections can inherit the trump/carson/fiorina bloc of votes when they falter, it is cruz. i think the huckabee bloc would also find cruz acceptable. that guy seems to excite the red meat radicals, however distasteful he seems to those of us outside that tribe. he also seems to recognize that the best position atm is to conserve cash and poll just well enough to stay in the race.

the party - it's elected officials, it's operators and infrastructure etc. - hate cruz, he'll never get the nom

like I would not really consider Cruz an "establishment" candidate - he has too many enemies (and powerful ones at that) within the party

seems like a possible scenario is a 3rd party run by either Trump or Carson that ends up with at least 10% of the vote (mostly taken from the establishment GOP candidate: Rubio or Bush)

once actual voting starts the establishment is going to do a lot better

^^^^^^

of course

if cruz pops up to the top in the actual vote-getting phase, the party establishment have a hard time freezing him out.

rubio does seem like the best establishment hope and the establishment has the good sense to consolidate early around their guy. jeb! has only got a short time left to prove up or they'll dump him like a hot potato and jump over to rubio. rubio at least is a pleasantly bland cipher who can be dressed up in whatever image the consultants think will win.

a 3rd party run by either Trump or Carson

honestly I can't imagine Trump wanting to waste that much of his own money, and Carson wouldn't be able to raise enough I expect

cruz pops up to the top in the actual vote-getting phase

what state do you think he could carry, South Carolina?

is he well loved enough in Texas?

what state do you think he could carry

every red state has its share of angry whites. the strategic difficulty is consolidating them around one candidate.

cruz's best chance is very heavy attrition early on among the whole field of candidates and to be the last man standing who is palatable to the angry white protest bloc. If the field whittles down fast and cruz can become the default choice for the fed-up voters who want to see blood in the gutters of DC, he might squeak into the nom.

The establishment's best chance (which is much more likely to happen) is that the protest bloc keeps milling around, not making up its mind who to consolidate around until its mid-April and they've lost all chance to have a real impact, while the establishment choice keeps gathering plurality winner-take-all victories and cruises to the nomination, as happened in 2012.

i've said this already but like 30% of registered republicans are not gonna vote for a guy with a meskin name cuz SECRET AGENDAS
you can maybe lose the evangelical vote before you lose flyover country angry wites so i have written off cruz and rubio as actual nominees more or less from jump

meskin name?

oh. had to say it out loud

the republican establishment doesn't always get its way. neither goldwater nor reagan were the establishment choices in 64 or 80. but the establishment learns from its losses and adapts.

given the current mania about OUR BORDERS THE WALL WHO WILL SAVE THE CHILDREN (fanned by Trump, hm, is it a plot?) it's hard for me to imagine the rank and file falling in behind anyone whose name evokes the potential to have to learn how to properly pronounce a tilde

hillary won't really pick bernie to be VP when she becomes president, will she? i think she'll pick some young go-getter.

cruz buddied up with trump, and his background is cuban, so he's an honorary white.

xpost One of the Castro brothers probably

Raul?

no. he's right of Bernie

Cruz, I see, has replaced Walker as the second tier candidate whom liberals love to fear.

Clinton/Booker '16

who are the first tier republican candidates?

Rubio
Bush
a ham sandwich Boehner accidentally sat on

Trump and Carson, naturellement.

The establishment's best chance (which is much more likely to happen) is that the protest bloc keeps milling around, not making up its mind who to consolidate around until its mid-April and they've lost all chance to have a real impact, while the establishment choice keeps gathering plurality winner-take-all victories and cruises to the nomination, as happened in 2012.

― Aimless, Friday, October 23, 2015 2:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is more or less the likely scenario, with a couple wrinkles:

(1) it's very likely at least of the three current big protest bloc people is out of the picture by february. fiorina was a nobody before she was suddenly a somebody and that kind of change could happen again. so far carson and trump have proven unusually gaffe-proof so i wouldn't say "oh they might screw up and say something terrible" but they might screw up and have a reeeeally bad debate performance or an "oops" moment, and fiorina hasn't yet demonstrated the same teflon effect so maybe she ends up saying something awful, dropping her back into christie territory. that would narrow the number of wackadoos and make it that much less likely that the establishment person actually can seize winner-take-all primaries in a plurality. i probably should stop here, as i really don't think it's that likely that we'll really have this huge, multi-tiered field come february, meaning everything below is really alternate universe fanfic. material.

but....

(2) the winner-take-all primaries are all later, though the're the big-ticket states. the only place i've found that actually breaks this down clearly is this Time article which despite its weird tea-leaf reading about what will happen at each phase, is helpful for just fucking listing them all. there are some oddities along the way that may actually come into play if nobody drops out: missouri is winner-take-all but only if the winner has a clear majority, otherwise it's winner-take-all by district, or pennsylvania, where only 14 of its 71 delegates are 'taken' by the winner. several of the proportional states have thresholds around 15% or 20%, so they won't necessarily benefit everybody if the race is still this divided.

anyway, if i have this right, the winner-take-all states offer up 907 delegates, not counting unbound delegates. but you need 1,236 delegates for the nomination. on the one hand, and maybe most likely, it's totally possible that halfway through march the race looks really spread out, with lots of people having accumulated shares of delegates, but if there is a clear front-runner at that point, or at least someone pulling a plurality in a range of different kinds of states, then that person can start to rack up a really disproportionate delegate lead very very quickly. ON THE OTHER HAND, if the winner-take-all states start getting split up, with the 30%/25%/20%/20% positions changing up from state to state (one appeals to southerners, one appeals to the rustbelt, one appeals in the far west), then there still won't be a clear delegate frontrunner, and everybody who racked up anything in the all-proportional phase will believe it makes sense to stay in, as each reaps a different winner-take-all jackpot and they continue to appear neck-and-neck.

however, this is also the phase where money/organization matter the most. it's conventional wisdom, but, can all of these people really mount thirteen simultaneous get-out-the-vote mobilizations for one tuesday, and then turn around and do another fifteen over the following week? it may be that the importance of ads and "ground game" is overestimated sometimes, or that it's less relevant for someone like trump, who has huge name recognition and a following that really likes him. but it matters. and while we're months away, it is kind of hard to imagine someone like cruz being able to swing that 25%/30% leading position in any number of winner-take-all states, AND keep up a respectable presence in all or most of the proportional states, given that him doing well anywhere is already hinging on some of the red-meat characters dropping out and their supporters embracing cruz. he kind of needs that to happen before the primaries, so he can get into the action. it's a huge field, a big country, a lot of people to win over and not enough attention or air time coming your way.

(3) bear in mind also that if trump were to accumulate a good number of delegates and then drop out, it's really really unlikely those people are going to switch over to jeb! - if the race remains competitive, you might have to assume they will vote for the last remaining wingnut alternative. that would force a jeb or a rubio to keep fighting desperately til the end of the primaries, lest they enter the convention with a plurality but no majority, and no mandate.

iirc that winner take all thing really helped Romney, who kept winning by small margins but pocketed a huge amount of delegates nonetheless

yeah, but that's the thing - he was a clear front-runner, so he kept winning, usually by large margins. where he did win narrowly was in what were proportional states anyway, like ohio. winner-take-all definitely helped him, but he would have been a lock even if every primary was fully proportional. santorum ended up with 11% of the winnable delegates after winning 20% of the votes, where mitt had 65% of the delegates with 52% of the votes. santorum was losing winner-take-all states where mitt was winning with 60, 70%.

so the question is more what happens when there's not an evident coronation figure who's leading everywhere. the winner-take-all states are supposed to lock in that coronation once the early primaries sort of shake out the field and shed candidates who clearly have only a niche/regional base or who aren't ready for prime time. but suppose a 2012 where there is no romney, and newt and ron paul have real followings in addition to santorum. it could be a really different animal. i guess you could say "or what if trump is now romney, the guy everybody wants to take down" but too many things are different for that to be useful.

The lesser establishment figures are going to be pressured to drop out and pledge the delegates they've won to whoever has a chance to take down Trump. This may not work with Bush who really doesn't have a future in politics beyond this, but the other guys won't want to alienate the party

Taibbi:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/trey-gowdy-just-elected-hillary-clinton-president-20151023

effective use of the Haldeman line

I didn't realize how big a bust that Hillary testimony was for GOP until I visited drudge and there was almost no mention

effective use of the Haldeman line

Had the same reaction. I can hear it in Hal Holbrook's voice, the way he emphasizes (with disgust) the word "sorry."

I'm not really sure what gotcha moment Gowdy et al expected to get tbh