I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

who do these people think they are, trying to tell me what's a classic and what's a dud? Let the American people make up their own minds.

I actually think, I have to make deals with ILX and a lot of these people, they are great people. Terrific people. You know what they say we need to do? You know what they believe in? TAKING SIDES. They take sides. That's what we need to do. That's why we don't win anymore! Everybody says, Donald, you can't say that, you can't take sides, you might offend somebody! Well I'll tell you what, come 2017, that's outta there. We're gonna take the sides, we're gonna take the oil and we're going to win against ISIS, we're gonna win against Radiohead, and we're gonna make America great again.

tick vg!

"Picking only ten! That's for losers."

prescient: https://storify.com/sethnotshep/2016-gop-field

so apparently 75k people voted in the GOP caucus in Nevada compared to only 12k Dem voters. that's a pretty stark disparity for a "blue" state (per the last two elections), no?

Clinton's "wins" are that much less impressive when a few thousand people vote

Where are you seeing 12K? I see 84.

https://m.lvsun.com/news/2016/feb/22/nevada-democratic-caucus-turnout-lower-than-in-200/

oops i guess morbz is very impressed w/ clinton's win now!

http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/nevada

gulp

but then i'm seeing an estimated 80k here so

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-nevada-turnout_us_56c9c86de4b041136f1752d4

i suppose those #s aren't final are they

anyway, look at this weird shit

https://twitter.com/nwarikoo/status/702373024188788737

something fishy going on here

Wonder if the "Trump campaign" part of that is just an assumption or if there's anything to back it up.

Taibbi on the future emperor:

Trump is already positioning himself to take advantage of the political opportunity afforded him by "transactional politics." He regularly hammers the NAFTA deal in his speeches, applying to it his favorite word, "disaster." And he just as regularly drags Hillary Clinton into his hypothetical tales of job-saving, talking about how she could never convince Detroit carmakers out of moving a factory to Mexico.

Unions have been abused so much by both parties in the past decades that even mentioning themes union members care about instantly grabs the attention of workers. That's true even when it comes from Donald Trump, a man who kicked off the fourth GOP debate saying "wages [are] too high" and who had the guts to tell the Detroit News that Michigan autoworkers make too much money.

You will find union members scattered at almost all of Trump's speeches. And there have been rumors of unions nationally considering endorsing Trump. SEIU president Mary Kay Henry even admitted in January that Trump appeals to members because of the "terrible anxiety" they feel about jobs.

"I know guys, union guys, who talk about Trump," says Rand Wilson, an activist from the Labor for Bernie organization. "I try to tell them about Sanders, and they don't know who he is. Or they've just heard he's a socialist. Trump they've heard of."

This is part of a gigantic subplot to the Trump story, which is that many of his critiques of the process are the same ones being made by Bernie Sanders. The two men, of course, are polar opposites in just about every way – Sanders worries about the poor, while Trump would eat a child in a lifeboat – but both are laser-focused on the corrupting role of money in politics.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cb_SVTzW4AAeiJl.png

ban political columnists

is that Cokie Roberts

the only good thing I see about Clinton/Kasich is that it removes Kasich from the governorship of Ohio

pragmatists sure have weird dreams

As I remarked on FB last night, I sense an unholy alliance coming between the Clintons and the remains of the GOP establishment.

If "unholy" is your translation of "Everybody win$!"

also really liked Taibbi's comparison of Rubio to Ian Holm's last moments in Alien

i don't think any GOP remnant is linking up w/ hillary.

back in 08 all the "pumas" and hillary die hards screamed and wept and flirted with palinism and then obama got huge turnout on election day and the phenomenon disappeared.

similarly i think the professional GOP will huff and puff and then happily vote for the man who will keep hillary out. none of these people has a problem with bigots or bullies or liars.

god the election is 6mo away.

actually lots of those establishment types did vote for Obama in 2008.

Depended how much money + influence you had.

god the election is 6mo away.

8+

i recommend baseball.

i grew up in cubs territory, i'll never understand the sport tbh

http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/24/ill-take-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/

lol don't believe a word

should I give them a click

Yeah, I was just coming here to post that for all the _Alien_ refs that would pop up in campaign writing, one doesn't expect them to namecheck Ian Holm.

Rubio's face-plant brilliantly reprised Sir Ian Holm's performance in Alien, as a malfunctioning, disembodied robot head stammering, "I admire its purity," while covered in milky android goo. It was everything we hate about scripted mannequin candidates captured in a brief crack in the political façade.

ugh @ Rubio's brief crack

Martin Longman compiled Trump's insults (pollable):

asich: “total dud”
Rubio: “a lightweight choker”
Carson: “Pyramids built for grain storage – don’t people get it?”
Cruz: “the worst liar, crazy or very dishonest”
Fiorina: “if you listen to Carly Fiorina for more than ten minutes straight, you develop a massive headache”
Graham: “dumb mouthpiece”
Walker: “not smart”
Pataki: “terrible governor of NY, one of the worst”
Jindal: “such a waste.”
Paul: “reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain”
Perry: “should be forced to take an IQ test”

FOX News flunkies:

Brit Hume: “know nothing”
Megyn Kelly: “I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct”
Carl Cameron: “consistently fumbles & misrepresents poll results”
Charles Krauthammer: “should be fired”
Bill Kristol: “a sad case”, “always wrong”
Frank Luntz: “a low-class snob”
George Will: “boring and totally biased”, “should be thrown off Fox News”

Remember December?

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2015/12/16/donald-trump-jeb-bush-cnn-gop-debate-sot.cnn

Carson one is an easy winner

Also pleased that Taibbi foregrounded the WWE comparison that others(and me) have been making. Trump has been business associates with WWE and (probably?) buddies with Vince McMahon since the mid-80s. Both dudes are the same age and inherited multi-million dollar empires from their fathers, hitting their stride in 1980s NYC. Art of the Deal got published in November 1987; Wrestlemania III was the biggest thing thing WWE had done to that point and happened 7 months earlier.

Rather than the fact that modern American presidential campaigns(GOP primary ones especially) resembling pro-wrestling so strongly being a horrifyingthing, it's actually reassuring(and/or confirming several biases all at once).

You have so many shared elements:

-storylines, that everybody's got an angle and beef/alliances with everybody else

-character and persona, heel/babyface or not

- communicating all this in a straightforward, direct manner that reaches every audience member even in the cheap seats(Steve Austin chugged those Steveweisers in an exaggerated manner for a reason)

-that despite what everybody on camera is telling you at that moment, all this is a work, and you are watching a constructed theatrical performance

-oh and that only pro-wrestling is real, to borrow a line from standup/podcast host/ex-WWE writer Matt McCarthy.

Trump speeches are so obviously him cutting a promo to the camera, same as Ric Flair or Randy Savage or The Rock, only louder and with less nuance or intelligence. He's getting his character/persona across to the audience in a way that connects on an emotional level, ugly as those emotions are, but that connects deeper than just listing off policy stances. I think that aspect is what's escaping or exasperating to the punditry, who are operating with a far different model of how these things work.

Dude can communicate, like Obama/Reagan/others; it's just that what he does communicate is so horrendously wrong and evil.

I'm just wondering if he'll cause his own downfall before reaching the general. Probably not, at least not in the same way every one else of these joker chucklefucks have so far this time round.

also WWEism makes politics just a little bit gayer

NY Times has one Sanders story on how the old fogey can't stop railing against the "corporate media," WHATEVER THAT IS! (It includes his alleged regular answer to interview-time requests: "If you are a typical media idiot, hmmmm, 12 seconds.")

And another one with the title Sanders Is Jewish, but He Doesn’t Like to Talk About It. (psssst, self-hating...)

the times coverage of the sanders campaign has been ridiculous

omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg

https://twitter.com/ppppolls/status/702541126994153472

http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/24/ill-take-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/

how many of these "sincere conservatives" are left in america? are they an actual, sizable voting bloc that could stop trump if the field narrowed to two?

they seem so retro

alex p. keaton

i know this thread moves fast but come on

hahaha barely an hour before that link was reposted

wtf @ this, from a time.com post:

If Robby Mook manages Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, former journalist David Brock rules the external Clinton machine. ...

All the pushback on misleading news reports that Bernie Sanders won the Latino vote (he didn’t) in Nevada, trackers following Sanders catching his every gaffe like when he yelled “English, only!” into a mic at a Nevada event or pushing polling showing Clinton winning amongst African Americans in South Carolina—those all come from from Brock.

http://time.com/4214020/david-brock-correct-record-media-matters-hillary-clinton/

the author just tweeted they are working on a correction (how long does it take jeez)

never forget that this was a man who wrote a book called Blinded by the Right.

It's good that our media is relying more and more on the "Telephone Game" model of information dissemination.

jesus christ