2016 Presidential Horse Race

[wizards8507]

I think the wild card in a Trump/HRC general are the establishment-Republicans. Do they vote pro-establishment with HRC? Or do they stick with their party and vote for the anti-establishment Republican in Trump?

I think a bigger wildcard will be blue collar white Democrats. They hate "the machine" as much as the rural white Republicans do.

 

[GoIrish41]

Four years ago, Republicans concluded that they would need to attract latinos and other minorities to become competitive in presidential elections. I think its safe to say that those things will not be happening with Trump as the candidate. I agree with Lax -- the anti-Trump vote will be strong with Democrats. I hope Hillary puts Bernie on the ticket, because the enthusiasm of the young voters is going to be pretty important. ... and I don't see them showing up to vote for Hillary if Bernie is not part of the deal.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I think the wild card in a Trump/HRC general are the establishment-Republicans. Do they vote pro-establishment with HRC? Or do they stick with their party and vote for the anti-establishment Republican in Trump?

Several prominent neo-cons, who represent a significant chunk of the GOP Establishment, have already pledged to support Hillary if Trump wins the nomination.

 

[ND NYC]

55, 49, 50, 56, 57, 55 since 1992.

so...a little less than half of people registered to vote don't even do it. incredible.

keep this in mind on here and on your facebooks with friends....basically they'll all have opinions but a little less than half will actually vote. again, incredible.

we get what we deserve.

 

[IrishLax]

I think the wild card in a Trump/HRC general are the establishment-Republicans. Do they vote pro-establishment with HRC? Or do they stick with their party and vote for the anti-establishment Republican in Trump?

Yeah, I personally think a lot of those establishment Republicans will flip to Hillary or stay home. It'll certainly be a wild one... and possibly even wilder if a 3rd party candidate throws their hat in the ring ESPECIALLY if they're anti-establishment or a moderate.

 

[wizards8507]

Four years ago, Republicans concluded that they would need to attract latinos and other minorities to become competitive in presidential elections.

That's a myth that the Republican establishment and donor class have pushed against the conservative wing and base of the party. Think the Fox News crowd and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They push that myth because they support amnesty for illegal immigration against the will of the base of the party. The donors like the cheap labor.

I think its safe to say that those things will not be happening with Trump as the candidate. I agree with Lax -- the anti-Trump vote will be strong with Democrats.

There are blue collar Democrats who aren't particularly liberal just like there are rural Republicans who aren't particularly conservative. Trump has and will do well among those groups, and those groups are bigger than whatever number of minorities even the most popular Republican would win.

I hope Hillary puts Bernie on the ticket, because the enthusiasm of the young voters is going to be pretty important. ... and I don't see them showing up to vote for Hillary if Bernie is not part of the deal.

Strange state of politics where the Democrats' hope for youth turnout is a ticket with the average age of 72. You don't usually see a VP nominee who would be far too old to even be considered for POTUS eight years down the road.

Pretty funny that the Democrats are the party of old white people and the Republican candidates are 60% minorities with an average age of 57.

 

[wizards8507]

so...a little less than half of people registered to vote don't even do it. incredible.

keep this in mind on here and on your facebooks with friends....basically they'll all have opinions but a little less than half will actually vote. again, incredible.

we get what we deserve.

Those percentages were of voting aged adults. So it's a higher percentage of registered voters. Still not great though.

Several prominent neo-cons, who represent a significant chunk of the GOP Establishment, have already pledged to support Hillary if Trump wins the nomination.

Not sure what neo-conservatism has to do with it. Even a full-fledged conservative would be in no-man's land trying to decide between those two candidates, so a vote for Hillary could be viewed strategically, as a way to not pervert the waters of conservatism with Trumpism.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Not sure what neo-conservatism has to do with it. Even a full-fledged conservative would be in no-man's land trying to decide between those two candidates, so a vote for Hillary could be viewed strategically, as a way to not pervert the waters of conservatism with Trumpism.

Neo-cons were originally Democrats who flipped parties due to disillusionment with the DNC's foreign policy. They are, above all else, militaristic hawks; so Hillary is a very attractive candidate to them.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I'll spare you all the massive wall of text, but here are some links for those interested in light election reading today:

The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty describes how all of Romney's liabilities are suddenly strengths for Trump, which indicates the weakness of Conservatism, Inc. within the GOP right now.

The Week's James Poulos argues that rallying around Cruz is the GOP's last shot at stopping Trump.

The NYT's Ross Douthat describes how lucky Trump is that so many GOP also-rans have improbably stayed in the race this long.

And here's an article from Tyler Cowen regarding the core differences between Republicans and Democrats:

Paul Krugman has a long post on this question, here is part of his bottom line:

…the Democratic Party…[is] a coalition of teachers’ unions, trial lawyers, birth control advocates, wonkish (not, not “monkish” — down, spell check, down!) economists, etc., often finding common ground but by no means guaranteed to fall in line. The Republican Party, on the other hand, has generally been monolithic, with an orthodoxy nobody dares question. Or at least nobody until you-know-who…

My view is not so far from that, but I would put it a little differently and then push harder on some other dimensions of the distinction (btw Brad DeLong comments). The Republican Party is held together by the core premise that the status of some traditionally important groups be supported and indeed extended. That would include “white male producers,” but not only. You could add soldiers, Christians (many but not all kinds), married mothers, gun owners, and other groups to that list.

(The success of Trump by the way is that he appeals to that revaluation of values directly, and bypasses or revises or ignores a lot of the associated policy positions. That is why the Republican Party finds it so hard to counter him and also fears it will lose its privileged position, were Trump to win. The older Republican policy positions haven’t delivered much to people for quite some time.)

Democrats are a looser coalition of interest groups. They agree less on exactly which groups should rise in status, or why, but they share a skepticism about the Republican program for status allocation, leading many Democrats to dislike the Republicans themselves and to feel superior to them. In any case, that underlying diversity does mean fewer litmus tests and potentially a much broader political base, as we observe in higher turnout Presidential elections, which Democrats are more likely to win these days. That also means more room for intellectual flexibility, although in some historical eras this operates as a negative.

Right off the bat, this distinction between the two parties puts most blacks, single women, and most but not all Hispanics in the Democratic camp. Not-yet-assimilated immigrants have a hard time going Republican, even though a lot of high-achieving Asians might seem like natural conservatives. No matter how much Republicans talk about broadening their message, the core point is still “we want to raise the status of groups which you don’t belong to!” That’s a tough sell, and furthermore the Republicans can fall all too readily into the roles of being oppressors, or at least talking like oppressors.

Republicans, who are focused on the status of some core groups at the exclusion of others, are more likely to lack empathy. Democrats, who oppose some of the previously existing status relations, and who deeply oppose the Republican ideology, are more likely to exhibit neuroticism.

It is easy for Republicans to see the higher neuroticism of Democrats, and easier for Democrats to see the lesser empathy of Republicans. It is harder for each side to see its own flaws, or to see how the other side recognizes its flaws so accurately.

Academics are one of the interest groups courted by Democrats. Academics want to appear high status and reasonable, and Democrats offer academics some of those features in the affiliation, including the option to feel they are better than Republicans. So on issues such as evolution vs. creationism (but not only), Democrats truly are more reasonable and more scientific. Academics consume those status goods, plus the academics already had some natural tendencies toward neuroticism.

Academics shouldn’t feel too good about this bargain. They are being “used” as all party interest groups are, and how much reasonableness they can consume in the Democratic coalition will ebb and flow with objective conditions. In the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, it was common for Democrats to be more delusional than Republicans, and those days may someday return, though not this year.

Next, we must move beyond the federal level to understand the two parties, and that is also a good litmus test for whether a discussion of the two parties is probing as opposed to self-comforting.

At the state and local level, the governments controlled by Republicans tend to be better run, sometimes much better run, than those controlled by the Democrats (oops). And a big piece of how American people actually experience government comes at the state and local level.

This superior performance stems from at least two factors. First, Republican delusions often matter less at the state and local level, and furthermore what the core Republican status groups want from state and local government is actually pretty conducive to decent outcomes. The Democrats in contrast keep on doling out favors and goodies to their multitude of interest groups, and that often harms outcomes. The Democrats find it harder to “get tough,” even when that is what is called for, and they have less of a values program to cohere around, for better or worse.

Second, the states with a lot of Democrats are probably on average harder to govern well (with some notable Southern exceptions). That may excuse the quality of Democratic leadership to some degree, but it is not an entirely favorable truth for the broader Democratic ethos. Republicans, of course, recognize this reality. Even a lot of independent voters realize they might prefer local Republican governance, and so in the current equilibrium a strong majority of governors, state legislatures, and the like are Republican.

Think on those facts — or on the state of Illinois — the next time you hear the Democrats described as the reality-oriented community. That self-description is “the opium of the Democrats.”

If you wish to try to understand Republicans, think of them as seeing a bunch of states, full of Republicans, and ruled by Republicans, and functioning pretty well. (Go visit Utah!) They think the rest of America should be much more like those places. They also find that core intuition stronger than the potential list of views where Democrats are more reasonable or more correct, and that is why they are not much budged by the intellectual Democratic commentary. Too often the Democrats cannot readily fathom this.

At some level the Republicans might know the Democrats have valid substantive points, but they sooner think “Let’s first put status relations in line, then our debates might get somewhere. In the meantime, I’m not going to cotton well to a debate designed to lower the status of the really important groups and their values.” And so the dialogue doesn’t get very far.

Again, both the Democrats and the Republicans have their ready made, mostly true, and repeatedly self-confirming stories about the defects of the other. They need only read the news to feel better about themselves, and the academic contingent of the Democrats is better at this than are most ordinary citizens. There is thus a rather large cottage industry of intellectuals interpreting and channeling these stories to Democratic voters and sympathizers. On the right, you will find an equally large cottage industry, sometimes reeking of intolerance or at least imperfect tolerance, peddling mostly true stories about the failures of Democratic governance, absurd political correctness, tribal loyalties, and so on. That industry has a smaller role for the intellectuals and a larger role for preachers and talk radio.

It is easier for intelligent foreigners to buy more heavily into the Democratic stories. They feel more comfortable with the associated status relations, and furthermore foreigners are less likely to be connected to American state and local government, so they don’t have much sense of how the Republicans actually are more sensible in many circumstances.

It would be wrong to conclude that the two parties both ought to be despised. This is human life, and it is also politics, and politics cannot be avoided. These are what motivations look like. Overall these motivations have helped create and support a lot of wonderful lives and a lot of what is noble in the human spirit. We should honor that side of American life, while being truly and yet critically patriotic.

That said, I see no reason to fall for any of these narratives. The goal is to stand above these biases as much as possible, and communicate some kind of higher synthesis, in the hope of making it all a bit better.

This year, I’m just hoping it doesn’t get too much worse. In the last few years I have seen some nascent signs that Democrats are becoming less reasonable at the national level, for instance their embrace of the $15 national minimum wage. I also am seeing signs that the Republicans are becoming less fit to govern at the local level, probably because national-level ideology is shaping too many smaller scale, ostensibly pragmatic decisions. The Trump fixation also could end up hurting the quality of Republican state and local government. So this portrait could end up changing fairly rapidly and maybe not for the better.

 

[connor_in]

Neo-cons were originally Democrats who flipped parties due to disillusionment with the DNC's foreign policy. They are, above all else, militaristic hawks; so Hillary is a very attractive candidate to them.

The definition you give is exactly historically correct. However, over time, it appears anymore that the connotation of the word is a pejorative for any R who is not an establishment moderate. At least that is how I tend to see it used and not fitting with the original definition.

 

[connor_in]

That'll change real fast in the general. GOP enthusiasm is being driven by pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions. Once we go to the general, the Democrats are going to benefit from the anti-Trump enthusiasm.

You never know until you get there. Current events and October surprises along with the general day by day of 9 months before the election can skew things either way.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

Too much Trump vs HRC talk on this thread. What happens if Bernie wins the nomination? Everyone seems to be ignoring the possibility that Bernie steam rolls HRC the next two weeks and catches up/passes her in delegates (excluding Supers).

It wasn't long ago that HRC had a margin over Obama. Didn't that race go well into May or June? (I forget when he actually took the lead and she conceded.)

 

[IrishLax]

Too much Trump vs HRC talk on this thread. What happens if Bernie wins the nomination? Everyone seems to be ignoring the possibility that Bernie steam rolls HRC the next two weeks and catches up/passes her in delegates (excluding Supers).

It wasn't long ago that HRC had a margin over Obama. Didn't that race go well into May or June? (I forget when he actually took the lead and she conceded.)

That's exactly the problem. Bernie could beat her 60/40 across the board and he still wouldn't have the majority of delegates because of the supers.

The crux of Bernie's issue is that he's never been part of the party, whereas Hillary is the polar opposite. She embodies the institution. It's really not fair to Bernie, but it is what it is with the supers. If the Republicans had supers, then Trump would have 0% chance of getting the nomination.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The definition you give is exactly historically correct. However, over time, it appears anymore that the connotation of the word is a pejorative for any R who is not an establishment moderate. At least that is how I tend to see it used and not fitting with the original definition.

That hasn't been my experience. "Neocon" is only a term of abuse among those few voices on the right who think endless war is bad for our country.

 

[connor_in]

Marvel Comics Wants You to Vote Loki for President

Having Loki run for president is a prime opportunity for Marvel to offer some sly political satire under the guise of a superhero comic. Whether or not they live up to the task remains to be seen. No doubt readers will be drawing their own comparisons between the prankster god and various other candidates, past and present, but the real question is whether he would be any better or worse than the real-world candidates who are still in the race.

Now I am torn between Loki 2016 and SMOD 2016

 

[BleedBlueGold]

That's exactly the problem. Bernie could beat her 60/40 across the board and he still wouldn't have the majority of delegates because of the supers.

The crux of Bernie's issue is that he's never been part of the party, whereas Hillary is the polar opposite. She embodies the institution. It's really not fair to Bernie, but it is what it is with the supers. If the Republicans had supers, then Trump would have 0% chance of getting the nomination.

Supers aren't set in stone though. So that brings up the question: If Bernie wins the popular vote, would the elite Dems cut off their nose to spite their face? Or would they all switch allegiance from HRC to Bernie in order to support what the voters want? I can't imagine them doing the former. It'd be political suicide, would it not? To piss off your voters by going against the candidate they voted in?

 

[Rack Em]

Neo-cons were originally Democrats who flipped parties due to disillusionment with the DNC's foreign policy. They are, above all else, militaristic hawks; so Hillary is a very attractive candidate to them.

It feels weird thinking of Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, and Fred Barnes as part of a sect that originally identified as Dems. The media seems to hold them out as the beacon of conservatism. It's somewhat liberating to understand how they're the outliers and not me.

 

[IrishLax]

Supers aren't set in stone though. So that brings up the question: If Bernie wins the popular vote, would the elite Dems cut off their nose to spite their face? Or would they all switch allegiance from HRC to Bernie in order to support what the voters want? I can't imagine them doing the former. It'd be political suicide, would it not? To piss off your voters by going against the candidate they voted in?

This is a good question.

 

[kmoose]

the Democratic Party…[is] a coalition of teachers’ unions, trial lawyers, birth control advocates, wonkish (not, not “monkish” — down, spell check, down!) economists, etc., often finding common ground but by no means guaranteed to fall in line.

Not anymore. The top 5 Clinton campaign contributors are all high dollar finance people:

Soros Fund Management: $7M
Euclidean Capital: $3.5M
Pritzker Group: $2.8M
Saban(no relation) Capital Group: $2.5M
Paloma Partners: $2.5M

That's almost $20M from a bunch of rich old white guys. Isn't that what the Democratic Party is railing against; rich old white men?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

It feels weird thinking of Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, and Fred Barnes as part of a sect that originally identified as Dems. The media seems to hold them out as the beacon of conservatism. It's somewhat liberating to understand how they're the outliers and not me.

It's one of the few consolations for me in this whole debacle. Those who are voicing the loudest complaints about Trump's hostile takeover of the GOP are the neocons, who executed their own hostile takeover of the party 30+ years ago.

 

[Emcee77]

I mean we are basically seeing Barry Goldwater all over again, but in ideological reverse. Or it least that's what everyone keeps saying.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

This is a good question.

That's what makes this election cycle so fascinating. The masses are supporting the anti-establishment candidates, putting hyuge amounts of pressure on the establishment, itself, to make a decision whether or not to support the voters or give them the middle finger. This country is at a crossroads because of it and you couldn't script a reality TV show any better.

 

[calvegas04]

I would like to see Bernie run as a 3rd party

 

[wizards8507]

From Kishore Jayabalan at the Acton Institute, Pope Francis, Donald Trump and the Problem of Populism:

After first broaching the subject of the populism of Pope Francis and Donald Trump last September, I admit to being provocative, perhaps excessively so. Then the pope and Trump engaged in a controversy over building walls, with Trump initially taking exception to having his religious faith questioned. “Who is the pope to judge?” he may have asked. Well… the Christian humility of the one and the (especially Protestant) American bravado of the other were quite evident.

Both sides eventually backed down, but neither seems to have lost much public support or suffered any significant diminishment of his ability to inspire supporters as a result of this brief skirmish. Does this not prove Trump and Francis are populists, each with a reputation of defending the “common man” against entrenched special interests? What would happen when these populisms collide at the first Francis-Trump summit? We may shudder at the thought, but if Catholicism and strident nationalism are indeed so opposed, we may be left waiting for another St. Augustine to resolve the tensions between the City of God and the City of Man.

Augustine wrestled with the question of whether Christians can be good citizens and turned his attention to the vices of pagan Rome rather than trying to detail how Christians ought to practice politics. The example of the recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would seem to follow suit. A traditionalist in belief and practice, he rejected any sort of “Catholic” interpretation of the law and went so far as to deny the importance of natural law for judges. For Scalia, there was no contradiction between the US Constitution and Catholic morality, even in cases such as the death penalty, which he addressed in a First Things essay, “God’s Justice and Ours”. If he thought the Catholic Church demanded the abolition of capital punishment, he would have to recuse himself from such cases or resign in protest, but he would not pervert the law to fit his moral preferences.

Justice Scalia often deferred to the will of the American people as expressed by their representatives, but he was no populist. He was a Constitutionalist and a proponent of the rule of law who defended what Harvey Mansfield called “the forms and formalities of liberty”, i.e. the institutions and practices that, in Tocqueville’s words, democratic peoples are most in need of but have the least respect for. We are today even more impatient with the democratic process of deliberation and compromise, a.k.a. “gridlock,” that our system was specifically designed to encourage.

Forms and formalities are opposed by those who want to achieve popular ends without the trouble of having to convince others of the rightness of their views; populism is therefore a form of tyranny, as the history of failed republics proves. The framers of the Constitution warn us, in Federalist Paper n. 1 that “the greatest number of [despots] have begun their career by paying obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants”; the Constitution is the political form meant to “refine and enlarge” public opinion through an system of checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government.

Such refinement is, of course, elitist, but so are elections. It requires patience, a virtue that we often lack due to the progress that liberal societies have already achieved in a relatively short amount of time. (I use the world “liberal” in the European sense, not the American which is closer to progressivism than liberalism as it was originally understood.) Progressives especially have become increasingly impatient to achieve “proportional” results in all areas of society and seek to impose their preferences regardless of differences in sex, race, ability or other evident obstacles. Such is the “inevitable” nature of progress.

But if society is already progressing towards even greater equality, why does it need to be imposed? Populists say the “system” is controlled by lobbyists or others who wish to deny privilege to outsiders. What is therefore needed is a strong, charismatic leader, himself a member of the elite, to overcome such resistance. He becomes a traitor to his fellow elitists in the process.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. It is the common core of socialism, communism, fascism and Nazism, all of which stood opposed to the forms and formalities of “bourgeois” liberal democracy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even with the Allied victory in World War II and the end of the Cold War, liberalism remains a fragile thing in the face of populism at home and abroad. So the question is: Who now will speak on behalf of a decent liberal regime?

As different as they are, Pope Francis and Donald Trump are populists who are thriving on the widespread dissatisfaction with our religious and political institutions. Rather than subvert or further weaken those institutions, they really should be reinforcing them and thereby educating their adoring masses. Perhaps they still can, but they would have to tone down the very rhetoric that has made them so popular, a hard trick to pull off in the age of Twitter and around-the-clock news. I, for one, am hoping and praying that the pope or the president can find the wisdom and courage to do so.

Pope Francis, Donald Trump and the Problem of Populism | Acton Institute

 

[GoIrish41]

I would like to see Bernie run as a 3rd party

I think that might mean a Trump presidency.

 

[wizards8507]

I think that might mean a Trump presidency.

Trump won't be the nominee, so nope.

 

[GoIrish41]

Trump won't be the nominee, so nope.

I looks pretty inevitable at this point, unless there is a contested convention. And that will be the biggest political dumpster fire any of us has ever seen -- making this circus primary seem tame. Curious how you see this playing out in some other way than Trump as the nominee.

 

[wizards8507]

I looks pretty inevitable at this point, unless there is a contested convention. And that will be the biggest political dumpster fire any of us has ever seen -- making this circus primary seem tame. Curious how you see this playing out in some other way than Trump as the nominee.

Either 1) Rubio or Cruz drop out, endorse the other, and Trump starts losing states 55-45, or 2) exactly what you laid out. I think it's unlikely that Trump gets to the convention with over 50% of the delegates and there's no chance the power brokers make him the nominee even if he goes in with a plurality. (Yes, I know this is undemocratic, generally bad, and will spell the end of the Republican party as we know it.)

Besides, if Trump is the nominee then the conservatives run a third party candidate in order to get the vote out so they at least win some down-ballot elections. There's no way Trump is ever POTUS. Between losing the primary, losing at the convention, or losing the general, there's zero chance he jumps all those hurdles.

 

[EddytoNow]

Not anymore. The top 5 Clinton campaign contributors are all high dollar finance people:

Soros Fund Management: $7M
Euclidean Capital: $3.5M
Pritzker Group: $2.8M
Saban(no relation) Capital Group: $2.5M
Paloma Partners: $2.5M

That's almost $20M from a bunch of rich old white guys. Isn't that what the Democratic Party is railing against; rich old white men?

Greedy rich old white men. They exist in both parties, but they have more influence with Republicans, who favor cutting their taxes and, at the same time, cutting back programs that benefit the less fortunate, the poor, the elderly, the sick, etc. The Koch Brothers and others aren't contributing all that money to the Republicans for nothing. Both parties will take whatever money they can get their hands on. Neither has proven to be the party of austerity. So once we get beyond the notion that either party is looking out for our financial well-being, we can look at the political actions they take when in power.

If I'm poor, sick, handicapped, elderly, etc. I would much rather have the Democrats in power. If I'm wealthy and in no need of social supports of any kind, the Republican policies might just look better.

 

[Irish#1]

Disagree. People are just now scratching the surface of the abomination that is Trump, which is why turnout was so high on Super Tuesday. As we get closer to closer to the election people will seriously start freaking the hell out if he's the nominee... and I think the turnout will be massive on election day. People will vote for Clinton out of fear.

Again, I'm interested to see if Bernie or Bloomberg or someone else runs as a 3rd aprty candidate because then stuff will get really wild. In a Sanders vs Clinton vs Trump race who wins? Sanders?

How so? People already have a pretty good idea of who he is and he did okay on super Tuesday. The media is blistering Trump using every opportunity to make him look stupid as are professional politicians and political analyst. No one says or writes anything positive about Trump, yet he keeps getting the votes. If he didn't have the support of the voters, I think it would have shown up right away in Iowa and New Hampshire.