US Presidential Candidates

Both Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton have threatened to leave the country if Donald Trump is elected president.

If their intent is to discourage people from voting for Trump, they're going about it all wrong. Four years of Trump might be worth getting rid of those two.
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Why do so many idiots believe that the way to solve our problems is to keep voting for the same shitheads that caused them?

Scott Adams (Dilbert) has an extended series of posts on his blog, hypothesizing that Donald Trump will win the general election. Adams has significant professional admiration for Donald Trump's skill of persuasion and since those skills are better than the rest of the field he postulates that Trump will carry the presidency.

He has dozens of posts analyzing Trumps persuasion techniques. A few of the most recent ones are linked below.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1403339402 ... der-series

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1402726158 ... ion-series

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1400283269 ... sman-trump

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1395419756 ... ading-list

biochem wrote:Scott Adams (Dilbert) has an extended series of posts on his blog, hypothesizing that Donald Trump will win the general election. Adams has significant professional admiration for Donald Trump's skill of persuasion and since those skills are better than the rest of the field he postulates that Trump will carry the presidency.

He has dozens of posts analyzing Trumps persuasion techniques. A few of the most recent ones are linked below.

Those posts all sound like Trump all right...

100% messaging and branding, 0% substance or principle. The used car salesman taking the GOP electorate to the cleaners.

gcomeau wrote:

biochem wrote:Scott Adams (Dilbert) has an extended series of posts on his blog, hypothesizing that Donald Trump will win the general election. Adams has significant professional admiration for Donald Trump's skill of persuasion and since those skills are better than the rest of the field he postulates that Trump will carry the presidency.

He has dozens of posts analyzing Trumps persuasion techniques. A few of the most recent ones are linked below.

Those posts all sound like Trump all right...

100% messaging and branding, 0% substance or principle. The used car salesman taking the GOP electorate to the cleaners.

And if Adams is right, once he has the GOP nomination in hand he'll switch the direction of the messaging to appeal to the general electorate with the same success (or at least enough success to win the general).

biochem wrote:

gcomeau wrote:Those posts all sound like Trump all right...

100% messaging and branding, 0% substance or principle. The used car salesman taking the GOP electorate to the cleaners.

And if Adams is right, once he has the GOP nomination in hand he'll switch the direction of the messaging to appeal to the general electorate with the same success (or at least enough success to win the general).

Well I would like to proclaim this to be impossible, we are talking about the electorate that looked at 4 years of Bush Jr and decided that giving him another 4 to see how much damage he could *really* do sounded like a plan. (Turns out the answer was a lot)


So, I'll grant the hypothetical possibility.


That said, the general electorate is at least a little less easily bamboozled than the GOP base... and there is a downside for Trump of him being Mr. free air time whenever he wants it just by opening his mouth. All those general election voters have actually been watching this clown show. Which is hopefully sufficient to inoculate them against infection by whatever the hell is spreading through the ranks of the GOP voters when Trump tries to change his spots if he makes it through the convention.

If you want a sleepless night read Joe Steel by Turtledove. Basically what might happen if Stalin's parents had migrated while he was in the womb.
He uses similar tactics as Trump to get the great unwashed to vote for him, then step by step dismantles all the democratic safeguards.
After the Supreme Court is arrested by Hoover for treason there is no restraint, and the US becomes Stalinist Russia.

Trump Needs 270 electoral votes to win

191 votes from solid Republican states (will vote for him to vote against the Democratic candidate if for no other reason)

Needs to win 79 votes of 146 from the following:

15 North Carolina (leans R)
6 Nevada (toss up)
9 Colorado (toss up)
6 Iowa (toss up)
18 Ohio (toss up) Rust Belt
13 Virginia (toss up)
29 Florida (toss up)
4 New Hampshire (toss up)
10 Wisconsin (leans D) Rust Belt
20 Pennsylvania (leans D) Rust Belt
16 Michigan (D) Rust Belt

If Clinton is the candidate the Rust Belt states move from the current D/lean D to toss up (assuming Trump is the candidate). If he wins the rust belt, that's almost all of the additional votes he needs.

He'll have a more difficult time winning the Rust Belt if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination. The rust belt states are the states which have suffered the most from the lousy trade deals the US keeps signing. They are basically agnostic in the conservative v liberal war. They just know that the current system of Republicans & Democrats has failed them badly. They don't care which outside the box ideas are tried, they just want something to be tried. Which is showing up in the second choice stories. For many Sanders voters their second choice is Trump not Clinton (and vice versa).

biochem wrote:Trump Needs 270 electoral votes to win

191 votes from solid Republican states (will vote for him to vote against the Democratic candidate if for no other reason)

Needs to win 79 votes of 146 from the following:

15 North Carolina (leans R)
6 Nevada (toss up)
9 Colorado (toss up)
6 Iowa (toss up)
18 Ohio (toss up) Rust Belt
13 Virginia (toss up)
29 Florida (toss up)
4 New Hampshire (toss up)
10 Wisconsin (leans D) Rust Belt
20 Pennsylvania (leans D) Rust Belt
16 Michigan (D) Rust Belt

If Clinton is the candidate the Rust Belt states move from the current D/lean D to toss up (assuming Trump is the candidate). If he wins the rust belt, that's almost all of the additional votes he needs.

He'll have a more difficult time winning the Rust Belt if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination. The rust belt states are the states which have suffered the most from the lousy trade deals the US keeps signing. They are basically agnostic in the conservative v liberal war. They just know that the current system of Republicans & Democrats has failed them badly. They don't care which outside the box ideas are tried, they just want something to be tried. Which is showing up in the second choice stories. For many Sanders voters their second choice is Trump not Clinton (and vice versa).

Clinton is clearly the weaker of the two candidates... which makes the entire process so confounding. On one side you have the GOP establishment desperately trying to prevent their weakest candidate from grabbing the nomination and failing because they're reaping the whirlwind of their actively cultivating voter ignorance and incoherent rage for so very long in a cynical effort to ramp up voter enthusiasm and not caring how they did it... and on the other you have the Democratic establishment dead set on making sure their weakest candidate gets it and doing everything they can to put a damper on voter enthusiasm and drive away all the new voters Sanders is drawing in because they're "not real Democrats" (because who needs voters in an election right?)


I sometimes despair that US politics will ever sort itself out into something sane. This country is desperately in need of viable third, fourth and fifth parties.

gcomeau wrote:I sometimes despair that US politics will ever sort itself out into something sane. This country is desperately in need of viable third, fourth and fifth parties.

Unfortunately, preventing that is the only thing the two "major parties" agree on.

The Washington Democrats have their fair share of blame for the Trump mess. The Washington Democrats have abandoned their working class base in the last few years to focus on a blend of Wall Street crony capitalists, urban liberals, Greens, and Hollywood wack a doodles. They made the false assumption that this base would vote for them no matter what because they have no other option, who else would they vote for...(answer Trump/Sanders)

The interesting thing will be how much of the African American vote Trump will be able to steal if he starts to focus on them. They have many of the same grievances against the Washington Democrats as the working class whites do. The Democratic establishment has been playing them for fools for years. Sanders has been making some inroads here. He's been too nice though. When Trumps (true) anti-Washington insults start to fly, it will be interesting.

Actually because he puts the rust belt into play Trump may not be the weakest Republican candidate electoral voting wise, especially since the Democratic party seems bound and determined to select Clinton. It would not surprise me at all if he lost the popular vote but won the electoral college.

Most of the Republican opposition is that they hate the guy because he isn't a true conservative etc. But look at the electoral numbers if he's the nominee. Some of the more idealistic traditional Republican voters may stay home, but at the end of the day enough will hold their noses and vote for him over Clinton to put the traditional red states in Trumps column (191/270 votes). Given his appeal to the long neglected working class has only expanded during the election, I would expect the rust belt to go his way as well (now at 255/270). At that point all he needs to do is pick up 15 more votes from any of the swing states and he's the next president. North Carolina alone (which leans Republican anyway) would do it.

[FYI for positioning purposes, if you haven't guessed already, I'm in the hold your nose and vote for him because he is better than Clinton camp]