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Muh soggy knees.

I don't like the idea of a President Trump but you have to hand it to the man: he can bring the bantz like no other. Lena Dunham, Whoopie Goldberg and friends btfo.

Any predictions for tonight's results?

I think the front-runners sweep. Trump wins them all and so does Clinton.

Sanders is over after tonight. Trump stays barely on track for 1237.

Thoughts?

Clinton and Trump sweep, rest of the pack weep.

Sanders has effectively been over for a while; the question is when he starts consolidation. Interestingly, it looks like Trump is making jabs about Bernie being mistreated, no doubt hoping to prolong that fight.

Kasich is not playing a very effective spoiler, and I think this team up think is going to backfire and cut him out of PA. Cruz doesn't play well in any of the upcoming states and seems increasingly desperate. With Trump now hitting 50% Repub support, it looks like he may finally be gaining some success in a majority coalition. Given that a lot of Republicans seem to want this circus show over one way or another and tend to favor whoever gets the most votes over any other factor, that could be a strong push for uncommitted delegates to vote Trump. Or they might still be angry about Trump not caring enough about bathrooms. Who knows?

To be fair, Trump has more than the most votes, he also has the most committed delegates. Not a majority, but a very clear plurality.

Indiana seems to be the big test. If he can grab the majority there he'll still be on track to hit the magic number if everything goes well for him. If Cruz can stop him there it will probably go to a contested/open/whatever the right term is convention.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What a nasty petty-minded gak he is.

Not a trump fan, however, giving what you get is appropriate.
He's also right in this circumstance. Canada better start building a wall. Make California pay for it.

Idiots threatening to leave the country if someone they don't like wins an election? Why this is unheard of and the Trumpster is right, and Presidential, in responding to it.

I just wish some of the people threatening it would carry through already.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What a nasty petty-minded gak he is.

Not a trump fan, however, giving what you get is appropriate.
He's also right in this circumstance. Canada better start building a wall. Make California pay for it.

Make Texas pay for it, they dont want to be a part of the US anyways with all the secessionist grumblings again.

California actually makes this country money and hasnt shown up in the news with embarrassing policies lately.

 Ahtman wrote:
Idiots threatening to leave the country if someone they don't like wins an election? Why this is unheard of and the Trumpster is right, and Presidential, in responding to it.

Not unheard of at all. It happened when Bush ran for his second term and I'm sure you can find examples of folks saying they would leave if Obama won a second term.

 CptJake wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
Idiots threatening to leave the country if someone they don't like wins an election? Why this is unheard of and the Trumpster is right, and Presidential, in responding to it.

Not unheard of at all. It happened when Bush ran for his second term and I'm sure you can find examples of folks saying they would leave if Obama won a second term.

I suspect Ahtman was being sarcastic. I definitely remember people threatening to leave if Bush Jr got a second term, but not Obama. Threatening to leave may be a leftist tactic.

What's different this time around is only Drumpf has been thin-skinned enough to respond to the empty threats of political nobodies.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What a nasty petty-minded gak he is.

Not a trump fan, however, giving what you get is appropriate.
He's also right in this circumstance. Canada better start building a wall. Make California pay for it.

Make Texas pay for it, they dont want to be a part of the US anyways with all the secessionist grumblings again.

California actually makes this country money and hasnt shown up in the news with embarrassing policies lately.

Make Texas pay for it and we'll just make Canada part of Texas.

Maple flavored TexMex, its the Eighth Sign of the Wienergeddon!

 Frazzled wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What a nasty petty-minded gak he is.

Not a trump fan, however, giving what you get is appropriate.
He's also right in this circumstance. Canada better start building a wall. Make California pay for it.

Make Texas pay for it, they dont want to be a part of the US anyways with all the secessionist grumblings again.

California actually makes this country money and hasnt shown up in the news with embarrassing policies lately.

Make Texas pay for it and we'll just make Canada part of Texas.

Maple flavored TexMex, its the Eighth Sign of the Wienergeddon!

Sure, you've got six shooters but can you fight on skates?

Thats what the Ford 350 diesel double dooleys are for.
Once we have Canada, the Rhode Island won't stand a chance!

*We really should bill NY for Trump actually.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You're right. Much simpler to complain about it than do anything meaningful.

What? You expect D-USA to drop everything and run for office? I can't point out that running for office is really time consuming, and expensive, and it's not like just anyone can do it unless I drop everything else in life and go get out the vote? It's a strange line of reasoning you're operating on. Maybe instead of complaining about complainers you should go do something about all the complaints.

You could try reading what was said first, otherwise...

 Breotan wrote:
So, here is a little tit for tat in the world of stupid celebrities.

Hollywood Reporter wrote:However, if Donald Trump wins the election, she plans to move to Canada. "I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will," Dunham told Cohen. "I know a lovely place in Vancouver and I can get my work done from there."

So, I guess this goes into the "pro Trump" column then?

Maybe her sister will be safe from her there allegedly of course

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You could try reading what was said first, otherwise...

I did. If you meant something other than what was implied, feel free to elaborate.

Until then I'm going to have to ask you to fill out this form listing all political activities you've participated in for the last five years. Be warned that leaving this form blank will result in me adding nothing to a conversation, but vague whining about how you're the problem. If you're not participated in the electoral process, you aren't allowed to offer an opinion on it, and even if you have I'll probably still just keep going on this triad because I've got nothing constructive to say.

Honestly. We've read what you said. Somehow you've just missed how absurd what you say is.

 feeder wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
Idiots threatening to leave the country if someone they don't like wins an election? Why this is unheard of and the Trumpster is right, and Presidential, in responding to it.

Not unheard of at all. It happened when Bush ran for his second term and I'm sure you can find examples of folks saying they would leave if Obama won a second term.

I suspect Ahtman was being sarcastic. I definitely remember people threatening to leave if Bush Jr got a second term, but not Obama. Threatening to leave may be a leftist tactic.

What's different this time around is only Drumpf has been thin-skinned enough to respond to the empty threats of political nobodies.

There was a minor uptick in immigration to Canada from the States after Bush Jr. got reelected. I don't think "tactic" is the right word. I think some people just really feel their country has gone crazy and want to move. I think there would really be a minor surge of immigration northwards if Trump won.

Should be noted that immigration southwards from Canada to the US is always greater than the opposite even during the Bush years.

People keep looking for the point where Clinton has sealed the Democratic primary, but it hasn’t really worked like that. Because of the way the Democratic process works, with preferential voting in every state, you never really get a clear, decisive winner. It’s more like watching the marathon at the Olympics, the winner becomes increasingly obvious over time, and when they finally cross the line everyone at home has long since lost interest and is now watching Badminton or some other nonsense on the alternate channel.

Probably the most interesting story in the Democratic race has been that most of the stories turned out to be nonsense. Despite the pundit chatter about swings back and forth between Clinton and Sanders, there’s been almost zero momentum change. After each set of results we’ve seen talk of ‘Sanders/Clinton won, now that momentum will carry forward in to the next race’, but that momentum never produced anything in subsequent races.

Instead what we’ve seen is each state decided by the basic characteristics of the state. The following is a fairly simple model, it just tracks the % of black voters, the % of Democrats of independents, and whether it’s in the South. The guys at 538 have a similar model and it’s produced similarly accurate predictions of final results. Sanders string of victories before New York said nothing about gaining momentum, it just happened that there was a string of states that suited him all lined up in a row.


There’s a bit of a feel of 2008 and 2012 to the Democratic results – the boffins built their models based on surveys and demographics and quietly went about getting it right almost everytime, and making the pundits and their anecdotes look quite foolish.

But then over in the Republican race, well I don’t think anyone, anywhere has gotten very much right at any point. Pundits and the stats boffins have been pretty badly wrong, pretty consistently. On 538, for instance, Nate Silver spent the whole build up to the primary saying Trump was unlikely to win because his vote had a strong ceiling, and as soon as voters to coalesced around someone else Trump would be swamped. That didn’t happen, first because a lot of people stayed in the race a long time, and later when people dropped out they didn’t coalesce around an anti-Trump. So 538 changed it’s tune, and said Trump was a strong favourite to win the nomination, except then Trump’s vote did hit a 40% ceiling, and while the remaining vote wasn’t forming behind one person, it looked enough to stop Trump reaching 1,237. But now NY and yesterday’s results have come in, and Trump is well and truly back on track.

Exactly why that race has been so hard to call compared to the Democratic race is a pretty good question. The crowded early field is one explanation – though it’s worth remembering there weren’t that many more candidates in Iowa this election than in the last couple of primaries. I think it’s probably because the more conventional Republican candidates, Rubio and Bush, both fell over pretty badly. The other mainstream candidate, Kasich, is still in the race, not so much because he’s popular but just because he hasn’t quit. In fact, the failure of mainstream Republicans to form around Kasich in any real numbers is probably a hint of what’s really going on.

The Republican party is not a mainstream party anymore. I mean sure, it still commands about half of the total votes in the country, so by the simple definition it’s still mainstream. But it isn’t mainstream in its political beliefs or its behaviour. The Democratic race has seen a ‘good enough’ candidate appeal well enough to the coalition of Democratic voters that she’s been a very strong favourite to win throughout the primary. That’s a pretty ordinary kind of politics. But on the Republican side we’ve seen a guy with wildly fluctuating, utterly ridiculous politics shout down a range of ‘good enough’ candidates, Jindal, Walker, Bush, Rubio, until the only guy left standing is Ted Cruz, who’s from the right wing of the right wing of the right wing of the Republican party. The contest is between people wanting a ‘pure’ conservative, and angry people throwing a protest vote at a ludicrous idiot. That is not ordinary political behaviour. And it’s why the Republican primary has been so hard to predict.

 feeder wrote:
I suspect Ahtman was being sarcastic. I definitely remember people threatening to leave if Bush Jr got a second term, but not Obama. Threatening to leave may be a leftist tactic.

There was a bunch of Republicans who said they were moving to Canada after Obama won in 2008. But it was mostly just idiots on twitter and facebook, I don’t know if there were any celebrities who did.

The reason you don’t see Republican celebrities say it is probably because;
1) There are hardly any Republican celebrities.
2) If you’re bothered about a left winger winning the presidency, moving to Canada isn’t much of a solution. It’d be a bit like getting annoyed that the zoo is putting in a penguin exhibit, so you move to Antarctica.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What a nasty petty-minded gak he is.

Not a trump fan, however, giving what you get is appropriate.
He's also right in this circumstance. Canada better start building a wall. Make California pay for it.

It's not statesmanlike.

Some actress says she will go and live in Canada if Trump get elected. Big deal! Ignore her and deal with something important.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What a nasty petty-minded gak he is.

Not a trump fan, however, giving what you get is appropriate.
He's also right in this circumstance. Canada better start building a wall. Make California pay for it.

It's not statesmanlike.

Some actress says she will go and live in Canada if Trump get elected. Big deal! Ignore her and deal with something important.

Of course its not statesmanslike. Why do you think a good portion of the US is smacking its head against hard surfaces go "why?....why?...why/"

When the two major parties nominate such horrible, utterly horrible candidates, its time to shut out the lights and call in Colonel Coup. We're done.
On the positive now is the time for a Third Party. Vote Wiener Dog in 2016! Join the Pack!

Sebster: 538's Nate Silver seems to have had a personal boas against trump that I think flavored a lot of the early coverage. Trump never really hit a "ceiling" it's just that point of the race included a serious outlier state- Utah. Essentially it was an anomaly in Trump's path and his delegate count has been consistently grinding on a steady path upwards. I agree that the miscalls are largely because this has been an "anti-Establishment" year so the expected frontrunners didn't make it out of the gates. The reporting establishment missed the tone of the race early on and discounted Trump, but were more than happy to play up the horse race later (as in all national elections). But they don't really care about accurate predictions so meh.

One thing that's very interesting about national politics is that it's largely a mix of regional, ethnic/cultural, and economic factions, not the imaginary "liberal/conservative" divide. For example, northeast blue-collar workers tend to pull towards Trump while upper income Southerners do not. The Democrats meanwhile have pretty much locked up the POC blocs, but are struggling to hold a lot of their working class base as they have shifted to more corporatist/business support.

Regardless, the Republican's current anti-immigrant, hostility to POC, pro mega business stance propped up by moralist rhetoric is unsustainable as a winning national platform, though it continues to see strong support in certain regions. I really think a shift back to more worker friendly economic realism would do them wonders. Kicking the moral majority back to the edge would also help and bring them back in line with a minimalist government stance. Strong borders is fine so long as it emphasizes national safety, but too often veers into racist dogma and ignores the huge benefit large companies get from exploiting undocumented workers. The one bright spot the Republicans do have is national defense, but they to get back to emphasizing national defense and away from the neo-conservative interventionism.

For what it's worth, Nate Silver himself has said several times that has poorly predicted Trump's performance. I don't know that I'd call it bias per se, I think he was simply wrong, which isn't unreasonable given how bizarre Trump's success has been.

The Republicans lost national defense as an issue with their epic failure in Iraq.

Not sure that this means Trump loses it as an issue, because Trump has no national defense experience.

 jasper76 wrote:
The Republicans lost national defense as an issue with their epic failure in Iraq.

Yes, but Democrats failed to be able to take that platform with their own missteps and poor communications. How many Americans would you say believe that President Obama pulled troops out of Iraq too early? Or that it was his decision to pull troops out of Iraq at all?

Atop that, you can't denounce the GOP for adventurism with their own antics in Libya and elsewhere.

Any missteps the Democratic administration has made in the pursuit of national defense pale in comparison to the epic failure of Iraq.

Iraq would have worked if Obama wouldn't have made the unilateral decision to pull out the troops as early as he did, and refusing to leave troops stationed there after we left.

IME no matter when we pulled out, Iraq was going to plunge into civil war.

In any case, politically, it's a hot pile of steaming poop. The only candidates who want to talk about Iraq are the ones who were vocally against it, because it makes them look wise. Trump and Sanders have both made cheddar on Iraq opposition, and Iraq will always be an albatross hanging around Clinton's neck.

We had a plan for Iraq, but then Obama decided to screw that plan and decided to pull out all troops without leaving behind a security force totally abandoning Iraq even though they wanted out help. Totally his fault.

I know you are pokung fun, d-usa,but you might want to stick a in there.

 d-usa wrote:
We had a plan for Iraq, but then Obama decided to screw that plan and decided to pull out all troops without leaving behind a security force totally abandoning Iraq even though they wanted out help. Totally his fault.

I suspect if you picked a random sampling of 10 Americans, 6 minimum would agree with this statement. Minimum.

Well, Obama got elected on Iraq withdrawal and got reelected. We shouldn't be too surprised that he did what he said he was going to do.

I've been talking mostly about the decision by the prior administration to go in in the first place, which is the original sin here, as opposed to Obama's fulfillment of his campaign promise to withdraw.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I know you are pokung fun, d-usa,but you might want to stick a in there.

Ugh...my sarcasm detector is busted.