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

(And I say this as a black man whose entire extended family is ready to vote for Bernie.)

(Well, one or two are going for Hillary.)

To look at this from a slightly different perspective, consider that even though most people think Trump is a jerk, EVERYONE KNOWS WHO HE IS. Even your grandma.

it's worth remembering that black folks (or latino folks or irish folks or jewish folks or albanian folks or lebanese folks or whoever) are on average no more politically sophisticated than anyone else.

also

like trump is bad and scary sure and definitely legitimizes many people's desires to say racist bullshit but he is really just doing it in a more colorful way that the typical GOP racist bullshit
― marcos, Saturday, February 27, 2016 6:55 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are you kidding? trump bucks current GOP orthodoxy on any number of issues. he’s protectionist, not virulently anti-union, he’s clearly not really committed to the culture-war stuff that cruz and rubio have doubled down on, etc. mcconnell et al are absolutely right that he’s not a "true (ideological) conservative" in the line of goldwater, reagan, et al.

of course there are really three overlapping /themes/ in the current GOP that are always threatening to fracture:

1) classical "conservatism" (laissez faire to corporations, "free trade," anti-union, anti-entitlements, etc.)
2) the religious right (abortion, mostly, but also prayer in schools, war-on-Xmas, etc.)
3) racism and xenophobia (exacerbated by stagnation of middle class; "they're taking our jobs" etc.)

the reason why trump has made some inroads among union members who are not sympathetic to (1) is b/c he emphasizes (3) and has voiced opposition to NAFTA et al. yes, trump's spoken attitudes toward all these things are mostly incoherent but they are latching onto the more sympathetic things he's said.

i think we dismiss trump's appeal as /only/ being about racism at our peril.

I'm sure this has been said a billion times here and elsewhere, but people loooove political brands (OR) people prefer brands because in a way, they simplify life.

In my home state of MD, Paul Sarbanes was one of our US senators for ages. When his son decided to run for a state rep seat, you better believe his last name was huger than any other word on his campaign signs. Guess who won THAT seat?

On a national level it's even more intense. Jeb blew it, but he's a bit of an exception.

Dubya totally spoiled the Bush brand.

http://i.imgur.com/Zm573QI.jpg

lmao

he's got towers everywhere, unfortunately.

also unfortunately, it's hard to deface a "TRUMP" sign a few blocks wide and way up in the sky. we need phillipe petit to get together with some graffiti artists to do it.

The old post office pavilion building in dc that was purchased by trump a few years ago had a giant "COMING IN 2016: TRUMP" sign out front

I didn't know trump bought the old post office pavilion. It used to have a good food court.

Yeah what, that's a travesty, rip old post office.

to keep hillary honest

lol

amateurist otm that what is scary about trump is exactly that he gives you all the joys of racism with none of the buzzkill stuff about how it builds character to have no health insurance.

nro types genuinely thought the latter sort of ideas had been selling for decades on their merits

the nro shock is priceless

This might have been asked and answered already, but it's a big thread so...which states that Obama won in 2012 could Hillary conceivably lose in 2016? Ohio maybe? But that's probably it?

Florida may have buyer's remorse with Rubio, but It's still not an automatic win for Hillary.

If it's Trump, hell, give her Nebraska and the Dakotas while you're at it.

belated, but for that whole 'who would be the left-wing trump' thing the only legit answer is PRINCE

Recent polls in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina have Trump over Clinton, and other swing states don't have recent polls. I suspect Nevada would have Trump up while e.g. Iowa would favor Clinton. This is the kind of stuff that makes me worry--a lot of swing states (like Nevada and Florida) seem like exactly the kinds of places where his persona would have appeal.

wait and see how many opponents she has in November

you really don't think this circus is going to get less absurd?

@ggreenwald
Donald Trump just re-tweeted a parody account depicting him as Mussolini, with one of Il Duce's best-known quotes

http://metro.co.uk/2016/02/28/donald-trump-just-retweeted-a-famous-mussolini-quote-5722266/

NPR's alternate Super Tuesdays:

Scenario 1: Clinton wins big, sweeps the southern states fueled by black voters. She pulls away from Sanders in pledged delegates, especially after a win in delegate-rich Texas, and appears well on her way to the nomination. Sanders will have a big hole to climb out of, especially because all Democratic states award their delegates proportionally. The math will make it increasingly challenging, if not impossible, for Sanders.

Scenario 2: Sanders holds serve in whiter, more liberal states and cuts into Clinton's margins with African Americans and Hispanics, even pulling off a win in a place like Colorado and keeping her delegate advantage to a minimum out of Texas. He mitigates what could have been a disastrous day and lives to fight on. Money continues to roll in, and even though he likely trails in delegates, he's not tremendously far behind. His message resonates in other, more liberal states to come – and a path is still conceivable.

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/28/468261048/6-scenarios-that-could-play-out-on-super-tuesday

are you kidding? trump bucks current GOP orthodoxy on any number of issues. he’s protectionist, not virulently anti-union, he’s clearly not really committed to the culture-war stuff that cruz and rubio have doubled down on, etc. mcconnell et al are absolutely right that he’s not a "true (ideological) conservative" in the line of goldwater, reagan, et al.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Saturday, February 27, 2016 10:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup the gop formula is to use white bigotry to support the oligarchy, you cant actually go around deporting the undocumented immigrants that work in their factories thats counterproductive

admittedly these are extremely difficult decision that im glad i will never have to make but clintons continued bias toward military interventionism is extremely troubling to me http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html

My sense is that most politicians are so used to message discipline and constantly guarding what they say, always confining themselves to a specific carefully honed set of words, that the idea that anyone could get away with all the crazy shit Trump says every day and still be trouncing them was dismissed from their minds as an impossibility because it caused too much cognitive dissonance to be possible. It makes a mockery of their whole worldview.

Dude, wtf? This is the party of Todd Akin!

Pretty interesting look at that very thing from a baseball writer:

http://joeposnanski.com/donald-trump-and-the-fourth-wall/

Lew Turner ‏@LewTurner 15m15 minutes ago Fruit Cove, FL
Trump RTs a Mussolini quote. Chuck Todd asked if he wanted to be associated w/ fascist: "I want to be associated with good quotes"

lol

The key quote probably came next (Trump to Todd): "It caught your attention, didn't it?"

admittedly these are extremely difficult decision that im glad i will never have to make

they're not difficult as all our recent interventions have resulted in a net loss

idk an entire city of ppl is about to be slaughtered you can bomb the army of a ruthless dictator to stop it what do you do

If we had shown any indication that it knew what to do once we stop bombing that would be a tougher choice.

Jeffrey Goldberg ‏@JeffreyGoldberg 17m17 minutes ago
Jake Tapper: Will you renounce David Duke's endorsement?
Donald Trump: Who?
Tapper: From the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump: Never heard of it.

it's hard for dictators to maintain power when their populace is angry and wants change. afaict ppl are either advocating that we should've bombed the rebels in libya to preserve gaddafi's reign, or just kept our fingerprints off it so whatever ultimately happened we weren't to blame. the former is essentially trump's pov and the latter is imho v childish. i'd also pt out that a lack of intervention did not save syria (and that the vast majority of those dead in syria were killed by pro-regime forces, if what motivates you is primarily keeping the death toll down).

Cruz has been on two shows this morning throwing out the possibility that Trump's tax returns will reveal business dealings with the Mafia. (Used the word twice, along with "mob.") Even mentioned a specific name, Fat Tony or something. Trump may be in their pocket, like so many nickels and dimes.

"Fat Tony." Seems like anti-New York, anti-Italian dogwhistling tbh.

ok im on board trump is a hillary sleeper agent there can be no doubt

Talking Points Memo ‏@TPM 36m36 minutes ago
Trump refuses to distance himself from David Duke and white supremacists http://bit.ly/1XSZ3Gu

I think he is just showing his characteristic scrupulousness, refusing to speak on a topic before he knows absolutely all the facts

admittedly these are extremely difficult decision that im glad i will never have to make but clintons continued bias toward military interventionism is extremely troubling to me http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html

― lag∞n, Sunday, February 28, 2016 9:33 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's pretty sad how hillary more or less lost the nomination last time around because of this, hasn't shown she's learned much and dems now i guess just dgaf

xxxxp Il Douché

i think shes seen to be more serious now via her SOS stint but yeah her actions seem to reveal the same tendencies xp

but now she's got a warmaking resume, it's like the end of The Wizard of Oz.

Christie really put the toad back in toady on the morning shows this morning. The contrast between his pro-Trump arguments and the anti-Trump video clips from literally 2 weeks ago were vomit-inducingly hilarious.

Was just about to post the exact same thought...It was painful watching that.

Kasich's bursting out of the gates this morning with some bold new words for Trump on Super Tuesday:

"I think Trump's probably going to win probably all of them. But you keep holding your own, and we have our campaign plan," Kasich said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I mean, everybody has to do it the way they want to do it. Our way of doing it — our campaign plan was ultimately to, you know, hold our own in some of these places, and we will, I expect."

Vote for Kasich! He's gonna hold his own in some of those places, he expects, you know

the plan afaik is keeping DT one delegate short of the nomination

I don't really think "berniesplaining" (an awful coinage) is really an accurate description of Bernie's problem with black voters -- condescension was not the problem, it was the fact that he was an unknown quantity and Clinton was a very well known quantity, and that most voters (including African American voters) don't just read platforms and pick a candidate. In other words, Bernie didn't struggle with the black community because his supporters "splained" too much, he struggled with the black community because people are skeptics.

Condescension was a big massive fucking problem