US Presidential Race

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article93763582.html

Clinton now has a 15% lead over Trump

Clinton doesn't just need to win, she needs to win so bad that Trump's hateful ideas become buried forever



"More encouraging for Clinton, 57 percent of her backers say their vote is for her, while 40 percent say it’s largely an anti-Trump vote."

"Most of Trump’s backers – 57 percent – say their vote is against Clinton, while only 36 percent called it a pro-Trump decision."

The American 2 party system is so ****ed that most people end up voting against someone instead of for someone smh

BarrileteCosmico wrote:
Clinton doesn't just need to win, she needs to win so bad that Trump's hateful ideas become buried forever

I don't think this is the right sort of thinking. If you're pro-democracy, anyway. In fact, I think America needs and hopefully will have more politicians in the future who share some of Trump's policy ideas and values. I mean, hopefully they won't be quite as nuts as he is - for he really does not seem like a responsible person or like he's capable of empathy - but whatever happens, tens of millions of Americans are going to vote for Trump. There is a huge disparity between the demand for Trump's policies and politicians who actually offer those values. And that is simply undemocratic. The people need to be represented. In the end it doesn't really matter what is the most popular public opinion; in a good and functioning democracy the people must be represented as well as possible. It's not only about the most popular and widely accepted opinion, they all should get a representation among politicians, equal to their support among the people. Therefore, for America's democracy's sake, I hope Trump's presidential campaign will spawn more politicians who support some of Trump's ideas, to answer the demand that is there.

The same goes for Bernie Sanders, really. He drew a big demand with his policies and values yet it came across to me like it's rare to have politicians like him in the States. Hopefully his campaign, too, will bring forward like-minded politicians for people to vote for.

How much would Trump win by if women were disenfranchised? Serious question.

Hillary Clinton - 79%
Gary Johnson - 76%
Jill Stein - 75%
Darrell Castle - 36%
Donald Trump - 16%

Art Morte wrote:
I don't think this is the right sort of thinking. If you're pro-democracy, anyway. In fact, I think America needs and hopefully will have more politicians in the future who share some of Trump's policy ideas and values. I mean, hopefully they won't be quite as nuts as he is - for he really does not seem like a responsible person or like he's capable of empathy - but whatever happens, tens of millions of Americans are going to vote for Trump. There is a huge disparity between the demand for Trump's policies and politicians who actually offer those values. And that is simply undemocratic. The people need to be represented. In the end it doesn't really matter what is the most popular public opinion; in a good and functioning democracy the people must be represented as well as possible. It's not only about the most popular and widely accepted opinion, they all should get a representation among politicians, equal to their support among the people. Therefore, for America's democracy's sake, I hope Trump's presidential campaign will spawn more politicians who support some of Trump's ideas, to answer the demand that is there.

The same goes for Bernie Sanders, really. He drew a big demand with his policies and values yet it came across to me like it's rare to have politicians like him in the States. Hopefully his campaign, too, will bring forward like-minded politicians for people to vote for.

Well, yes, what I mean by buried is that Trump's ideas should become their own party (as most european countries have a right win populist party) rather than take-over the party of Lincoln, and maybe without them the party can finally move on to an inclusive model that is actually capable of winning elections.

Another interesting take-away from that poll was that the winner is likely to receive less than 50% of the popular vote for only the 4th time in American history.

There's this notion, which is often proven to be true, that you have to hit rock bottom before you can truly change.

It might be Trump will come to represent the rock bottom for the Republicans.

It's possible - they talked about having to appeal to Latinos and women for a while now, but the way they framed it ("make our message more appealing" - instead of refelcting on the message ) you could feel they hadn't grasped it.

So it's kind of interesting they'd double down on the racism, misogyny, and the defiant, almost imploring, anti-intellectualism with Trump.
Maybe that's what it will have taken so that some kind of coin will have dropped, and the ultra-right-wing, dumbing down tendency that has clearly been at display is stopped or reversed


Then again I'm afraid he might just be a start in some regard.
A trailblazer for a politics where reality and coherent thought have stopped to matter completely (they barely matter still anyway).
And in this vein, since reality has stopped having an impact on their world-view, it might not even mean anything if they lose in a landslide, which they will.

Trump 93%
Castle 86%
Johnson 75%
Stein 9%
Clinton 1%

Main areas of agreement with trump: I believe in sovereign nations and borders, I don't feel sorry for criminals, don't support subsidising squalid behaviour, don't think government should dictate education, agree PPACA is awful, admire the second amendment and dislike racist affirmative action. Shit I must be a raging anti-intellectual genocidal neo nazi

Whoopee, apart from police body cameras and NASA I didn't agree with the hubby-rape enabling ravenous sociopathic liar on anything, not one single issue

Obviously its just GL but its interesting that Gary Johnson is relatively appealing to both Left and right wingers.

RealGunner wrote:Obviously its just GL but its interesting that Gary Johnson is relatively appealing to both Left and right wingers.

I sympathize with libertarian principles in quite some regard, and I guess others are the same.
That's because they are nice principles, who sadly tend to get in conflict with history quite a lot.

I will say one thing though, the way these percentages are calculated seem a bit strange to me.
For exampe, I got something like 96% congruency with Hillary Clinton when I know for sure I did vote a number of topics in a way completely diametrally to what Hillary supports.
Pretty sure Hillary does NOT campaign for ending the drone war immediately, for example

RealGunner wrote:Obviously its just GL but its interesting that Gary Johnson is relatively appealing to both Left and right wingers.

Well the whole argument from the Libertarian Party is that as social liberals and fiscal conservatives they have some appeal to both the left and the right. The problem is are there enough people who see themselves as exclusively under those 2 definitions that they would vote libertarian?

You can see how each candidate would have answered, I think. But I agree there is some vaguness. For instance Clinton called TPP the 'gold standard' and now she's for not signing it... well what does she really think? What does the test thinks she thinks? No one really knows what she will do once she is in the oval.

Clinton 84%
Stein 81%
Johnson 62%
Trump 59%
Castle 36%

Expected to side with Clinton a lot more than I did....she always moves though. Its hard to truly pinpoint her.

When you realize #I'mWithHer more than Betty

https://i.imgur.com/JLnqwY7.gif

BarrileteCosmico wrote:For instance Clinton called TPP the 'gold standard' and now she's for not signing it... well what does she really think? What does the test thinks she thinks? No one really knows what she will do once she is in the oval.

This is not a mystery.
She'll not upset big business interests and sign the treaty.

Just like she'll not upset the status quo in any other way.
She had to pretend to have some left-wing positions due to the primary challenge.

CBarca wrote:When you realize #I'mWithHer more than Betty

https://i.imgur.com/JLnqwY7.gif

She's your gal now haha

Hillary's political maneuvering is awful and it's largely why despite lining up with her ideologically, I am very reluctant to support her. I didn't like this with Obama either, but voted for him both times as the lesser of 2 evils. There will not be a 3rd time making that mistake.

Now I outright won't support Trump, but he's not a politician nor is he prone to doing what politicians like Hillary usually do so from that sole perspective, it makes more sense why he has the support he has right now. He's simply different and I won't lie, that's pretty refreshing. I think he knows absolutely nothing about running this country and is quite incapable of it should it come to that, but at this point people are tired of politicians that are all talk and no walk. Hillary flip flopping back and forth on TPP is a keen reason why Trump has gotten this far.

DuringTheWar wrote:Trump 93%
Castle 86%
Johnson 75%
Stein 9%
Clinton 1%

Main areas of agreement with trump: I believe in sovereign nations and borders, I don't feel sorry for criminals, don't support subsidising squalid behaviour, don't think government should dictate education, agree PPACA is awful, admire the second amendment and dislike racist affirmative action. Shit I must be a raging anti-intellectual genocidal neo nazi

Whoopee, apart from police body cameras and NASA I didn't agree with the hubby-rape enabling ravenous sociopathic liar on anything, not one single issue

It's funny how you can be incredibly self critical this whole time about yourself in a sarcastic fashion. If you have to try to say you're aren't an asshole, you probably are.

I mean, you must be the best in the world at playing the victim mentality carry on son

Agreed McLewis, I mean, if I could find a candidate who doesn't play politics like Trump who I even mildly agree with, I would be all for them. That's what Bernie was, anyway. Authentic, he's always been very consistent. He's a politician, yes, but not the same as Hillary and 98% of politicians.

That being said I also agreed ideologically with Bernie on most things.

If I agree on so many topics with Jill Stein (who is far left of Hillary), that essentially aligns me with Bernie as well. Although I think many of his ideals are simply too fantastical in this current climate. I didn't recognize early enough that he was not in this race to win it, but to start a movement. He's indeed not a typical politician in that he's not as rich as many of them, but as we've seen with Obama bringing him to heel, the choice he made to support Clinton was purely political. The optics I see are that he's abandoned his movement to toe the party line. That's something a politician would absolutely do. To go from destroying Hillary at rallies to outright supporting her at them is simply distasteful to me.

Clinton 97%
Stein 96%
Johnson 65%
Trump 21%
Castle 8%

Interesting that having that Trump and I agree on marijuana, medicaid, planned parenthood(even though he's against abortion), minimum wage, offshore drilling, common core and juvenile solitary confinement.

And who the f*** is Darrel Castle? The only other third party candidate apart from Johnson and Stein I know is the new guy Evan McMullin. Never heard of this Castle.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

CBarca wrote:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:http://www.isidewith.com/

Stein 92%
Clinton 92%
Johnson 82%
Trump 27%
Castle 27%

Clinton 98%
Stein 94%
Johnson 54%
Trump 24%
Castle 11%

I was surprised by how high I scored on Stein, maybe I should do some actual research on the Green Party? My pre-conceived notion is that she is a female version of Bernie without any actual experience in public service. Doesn't seem too appealing.

She's a little farther left of Bernie and some of her views are a bit unrealistic/too out there. She also ran for president in 2012 and her campaign was a pathetic failure. In the years since then, she and the Green Party went into hiding. Nowhere to be found until the next(current) election cycle. When this election is over, you won't hear a thing about the Green Party again until 2020. It just strikes me as unseriousness at best.

If you want to be taken seriously, you can't only try to talk to people/run for office during the presidential elections. That's just stupid. You owe it to your party to have other people running for various offices, developing a good ground game, gaining momentum, convincing young people and others about your values and goals. Actually have people in different public offices that are of the Green Party. It's hard to do but if you don't do it, your presidential bid is nonsense.

That's the main reason I couldn't care less about the Green Party even though most of my views are in line with theirs. They're very unserious, only to be seen during presidential elections type people. Not my cup of tea.

Now they're trying to say they should be allowed in the presidential debates even if they don't reach 15%. Give me a break. You don't get to be lazy for 3 years in building awareness and then try to waltz in and enjoy yourself in the 4th year. Right now, the only reason she even have the publicity she has is because of the work that Bernie did, not even her.

Also, she strikes me as a "my way or the high way" type person, like many of the Bernie Or Bust folks. That's not how politics work, especially not in a country as large as this. You have to be prepared to compromise on certain issues. This is one of a reason the far right irritates me. I'll pass.

Also, third party voting is one of the reasons Al Gore lost in 2000. If a lot of Dems hadn't been diverting their votes to Nader, I'm pretty sure Gore would have won that election and we wouldn't have had to go into Iraq in the first place. I would expect people to have learnt that lesson by now. It sucks, but that's the way politics is in this country. If there's a very solid third party candidate, then yes, it makes sense. But like I said above, too many of these guys don't care what happens in the years between presidential elections and because of that, this country will continue to be a two party system.

So your assertion is that voting 3rd party ensures the continuation of a 2-party system? That's depressing honestly.

How exactly is voting 2-party going to get us to a place with more parties that truly represent our interests when the Dems and GOP don't?

McLewis wrote:So your assertion is that voting 3rd party ensures the continuation of a 2-party system? That's depressing honestly.

How exactly is voting 2-party going to get us to a place with more parties that truly represent our interests when the Dems and GOP don't?

My assertion is that if we want to break the 2 party system, voting 3rd party only during presidential elections will NEVER solve the problem. The same way 3rd party candidates only taking presidential elections seriously will NEVER solve it. You have to build it from the bottom up. Not magically try to change things from the very top. It just won't happen.

What happened to Jill Stein after the 2012 elections? Why didn't she try to start a movement a build a solid party? Now she's back to reap the fruits of Bernie's labor. Give me a break.

Gotcha. That makes more sense. I agree then, specifically with Stein's opportunism. Had she been out there with Bernie early on when he started his campaign, she would've positioned herself much earlier to capture his supporters and launch a more staunch campaign of her own, but the optics suggest she's merely a vulture picking after the leftovers. Too political for someone positioning themselves as a populist.

And it's not just 3rd party voting outside of presidential elections, it's voting outside of presidential elections in general. Congressional elections and local elections have historically very low voter turnout and this is often how those who really shouldn't have power, hold on to it. They want low voter turnout which is why I don't get these ridiculous Rock the Vote e-mails spamming my e-mail box during mid-terms. Because the RocktheVote overlords don't care if I don't vote during the midterms as that serves the interest of their Democrat owners.

Not only do we need more 3rd party voting at more regional levels, there needs to simply be more 3rd party activity at the grassroots level. I honestly don't understand how people in my country cannot understand that real political change starts from the ground up, not the top down.