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

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

I assume Sid Blumenthal was chippy as fuck during his testimony and made them look like assholes and thats why they refuse to release it publicly.

is he well loved enough in Texas?

― Οὖτις, Friday, October 23, 2015 1:30 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Most of the love he has here is strictly because he's a Republican. Between straight-ticket voting GOP-ers, the focus issues of the Texas Dems, and the fuckedness of our election cycle (most major positions are voted on in off-years), an elected Texas Republican is set for life, bar an Earthshaking fuck-up (see: Tom DeLay), or a poorly advised career move (see: Rick Perry).

After all, the state just elected this jackass as Governor For Life...

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/08/Greg-Abbott-Blue-Bell-640x480.jpg

short life, once he dies of listeria

(most major positions are voted on in off-years)

I used to enjoy this about my state back before Democrats started winning national power. Clinton in the 80s. Then we got Huck in the 90s. Mike Beebe in the 00s, but now Asa.

I spent last weekend in Louisiana, and noticed that they vote on Governor and some other major offices in off-off years (between Mid-terms and Presidential years).

On Saturdays...

Virginia has off-off year gubernatorial elections as well.

MS also. 12 days of misrepresentation and character assassination left to go, then the crying and recriminations can start.

jeb's got a hot chick waiting for him in bed so let him just say this
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/657954623202963456

"I like Ben, but he cannot do with trade like I do with trade," Trump said. "He can't do with a lot of things like I do. So we'll have to see what happens."

"trade" a hot topic

needs Tom of Finland logo

If it's true, I'll vote for her -- for Yoko.

http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/yoko-ono-i-had-an-affair-with-hillary-clinton-in-the-70s/

did alfred just get borowitzed

I want to believe this!

That site has lots of cool headlines:

http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/adolf-hitler-was-a-woman-claims-new-harvard-study/
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/activist-spends-one-year-in-freezer-to-denounce-global-warming/
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/hairy-man-killed-by-hunters-believing-he-was-a-sasquatch/

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/yokohillary.asp

let's follow Guatemala's example and draft Carrot Top

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/comedian-claims-victory-guatemala-polls-151026015012372.html

love this dude:

As Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) continued to defend his tendency to skip votes in the Senate on Sunday, he revealed that he is simply sick of trying to get anything done in the Senate.

"I don’t know that ‘hate’ is the right word," Rubio told the Washington Post in an interview published on Sunday evening. "I’m frustrated."

A friend of Rubio went further, however, telling the Post that Rubio "hates" the Senate.

When asked by the Post if he would run for the Senate again if he loses the presidential race, Rubio said he didn't know. He then explained that his time in the Senate has been consumed by a waiting game. He said that since he was elected, Republicans have been hoping that each new election will allow them to successfully push a conservative agenda.

"For two years, we just tried to slow-dance and wait for the 2012 election," Rubio said. "And then, when that didn’t work out, we spent two years trying to position ourselves for ’14."

"Now it’s [2015], and the argument is, 'We’ve gotta wait to elect the president,'" he continued.

hahaha so he's been waiting for... himself! but if it doesn't work, he might keep waiting. but he's not sure.

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

― a llove spat over a llama-keeper (forksclovetofu), Friday, 23 October 2015 19:59 (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This includes Bush as well though? Perhaps Christie's time will come!

"At the time of the wedding, she did not speak English; therefore, a part of the wedding ceremony was conducted in Spanish." - WHO KNOWS what he has promised to her in the sight of God? No-one, that's who.

a slightly deeper dig into fundraising numbers:

Compare Carson to the other major grassroots candidate in the race: Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator has also put up fundraising numbers that dropped jaws, and he’s also doing it almost entirely with small-dollar donations. But Sanders’s overall burn rate is less than 45 percent, and he’s spending very differently—by far his largest expense is on digital consulting and advertising, and he spent less than $100,000 on postage. Sanders’s trick is that much of that money is coming in through ActBlue, an online platform for making donations to liberal causes. It’s highly useful because it provides candidates an off-the-shelf tool, it tends to hook donors by, essentially, gamifying giving, and it’s extremely cheap—in general, it charges less than 4 percent commission to candidates. So while Ben Carson is netting around half of every dollar he raises, Bernie Sanders is taking in 96 cents of each greenback. (So much for the free-spending socialist.)

This isn’t a problem unique to the Carson campaign. Ted Cruz also had a high burn rate, for example. Republican candidates are at a disadvantage because there’s no GOP equivalent to ActBlue. Democrats are just farther ahead on the digital game, much to the frustration of forward-thinking Republican strategists.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/where-is-ben-carsons-money-going/410839/

Even with the best of intentions, a heavy reliance on direct mail has sometimes led campaigns and PACs to squander their muscle and money—including some staffed by the same people who are now working for Carson. One of Carson’s chief fundraisers is Mark Murray, who’s also president of TMA Direct, a direct-mail firm. TMA Direct was one of the top vendors to the Carson campaign in the third quarter, along with InfoCision and Eleventy Marketing, two companies based in Akron, Ohio, that have long worked with TMA Direct.

Murray was previously treasurer of American Legacy, a PAC affiliated with Newt Gingrich. As Mother Jones noted at the time, American Legacy’s spending in 2013 looked questionable. As of July 15 of that year, it had raised $1.4 million while contributing only $27,500 to actual candidates. The biggest recipient of American Legacy’s cash was InfoCision. TMA Direct also took in about $14,500. American Legacy’s mid-year report for 2015 is even worse. It raised $1.25 million but spent $1.38 million, and gave just $2,500 to candidates.

Carson’s national finance director is Amy Pass. She was previously the national finance director for Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign, and before that she was the director of major gifts at American Solutions, another blandly named Gingrich-affiliated PAC. Pass was apparently good at her job—American Solutions raised some $50 million over four years. But in 2011, the PAC went bankrupt. “Campaign finance reports showed that much of that money went to pay for charter flights for Mr. Gingrich as he traveled the country, keeping his political profile high,” The New York Times reported.

The 2012 Gingrich campaign and the 2016 Carson campaign share staff, and they share candidates who have proven they are able to rise to the top of the field—though the former speaker’s campaign showed that such success can be fleeting. Both campaigns have also been accused of using a campaign as a tool to sell books. Late in 2011, Gingrich and his wife Callista seemed to be combining a tour for their various books along with his stump appearances, requiring a delicate balancing act to adhere to the law.

To be blunt: Carson's campaign is a scam.

tbf this is a perfectly legitimate response to a USA Today reporter

Stumping the Palmetto State a day after his campaign announced staff reductions and pay cuts, Bush dismissed critics who said the changes reflect a struggling campaign that is losing ground to any number of rivals.

"Blah, blah, blah," Bush said. "That's my answer — blah, blah, blah."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2015/10/24/jeb-bush-campaign-tim-scott-trey-gowdy-charleston/74525090/

lol, he really dngaf

sorry for all these copy+paste quotes but they keep making me lol. it's like that one part in the matrix where the guy realizes that he's actually one of millions of people trapped in a pod, providing energy to his overlords in a future dystopia machine hell

"On our side, you've got the No. 2 guy tried to kill someone at 14 and the No. 1 guy is high energy and crazy as hell," Graham said. "How am I losing to these people?"

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-ben-carson-kill-someone

There are 14 candidates? Oh wait, he means 14-years-old. That makes more sense.

kinda wonder how bush would be doing in an imaginary universe without trump. probably still poorly but everyone's numbers look so bad when trump and carson suck up 50% of the support.

also think trump coulda similarly undermined romney if he were doing this 4 years ago. he actually would be in a good position to pick at romney's business career, taxes etc.

This year's batch of republican candidates have my grudging respect for collectively abandoning any pretense of adulthood or propriety or trying to sound at all presidential. I guess when Trump sets the bar...