The Big Thread For the USA 2016 Presidential Candidates [Poll updated!]

Started by Blythe, July 31, 2015, 04:50:07 PM

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Tamhansen

You forgot Kinder eggs.... Oh no wait, those are banned in the US for being dangerous. :P

As for guns not being vehicles. I feel that if a car is working as designed and you kill someone with it, the manufacturer shouldn't be liable either.

As for Claymores, they're a standard package for every highlander. You get one along with your residential Visa, Kilt bagpipes and haggis when you move here.
ons and offs

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

consortium11

#926
A Trump rally in Chicago was just cancelled due to protests and violence.

To give some examples of what happened there:

A female organizer in the "Women for Bernie" group, went "undercover" as a Trump supporter and started doing heil Hitler arm salutes (I'm not directly linking to the source as it contains her real name and I wouldn't suggest she counts as a public figure). Edit: it appears this was a lookalike.

Jedidiah Brown, an anti-violence activist and political candidate, started punching people.

Apologies for Daily Mail link: Sources suggest there was a credible plan for protesters to charge the stage when Trump appeared.

Protesters blocked ambulances trying to get injured people out.

A Bernie Sanders supporters group have taken credit and responsibility.

There's a lot more stuff out there as well, although as much of it is eye witness accounts I'm not going to link to or attest to the authenticity of.

It's interesting; we've been told for months that it's Trump supporters who are violent and want to shut down the opposition and yet I'm unaware of them infiltrating Sanders or Clinton's campaign events and instigating what came pretty close to the riot, let alone having credible plans to storm the stage when the candidate appeared. What happened was pretty close to the heckler's veto in action and I'd hope everyone would condemn it.

Cycle

Quote from: consortium11 on March 12, 2016, 07:17:14 AM
A Bernie Sanders supporters group have taken credit and responsibility.

Wrong.

Quote from: consortium11 on March 12, 2016, 07:17:14 AM
It's interesting; we've been told for months that it's Trump supporters who are violent and want to shut down the opposition

Because it is trueElbowing someone in the jaw and then saying you want to kill them the next time you see them is violence and an attempt to shut down the opposition.

Quote from: consortium11 on March 12, 2016, 07:17:14 AM
What happened was pretty close to the heckler's veto in action and I'd hope everyone would condemn it.

I won't. 

The Chicago protester has as much right to speak as Trump.  Trump has been encouraging violence.  The Chicago protesters did not.  I will not condemn their actions.  I will condemn Trump's.

Mithlomwen

Baby, it's all I know,
that your half of the flesh and blood that makes me whole...

consortium11

Having successfully managed to shut down Trump's rally in Chicago by threatening to storm the stage, protesters tried to repeat the tactic in Dayton, Ohio today. This time Trump didn't give in to their heckler's veto and the rally went ahead, resulting in a protester trying to storm the stage and seemingly attack Trump.

The first thing to note is that it gives more weight to the comments Trump made about the Chicago rally and why he cancelled it; it appears storming the stage is now a tactic to be used against him at events. The second is the concern that it was coordinated; looked at in the context of the whole event this came shortly after a number of other protesters had been escorted out which obviously divides the attention and resources that the secret service have to protect Trump; it's worth noting that immediately before leaping the barrier the protester appears to be scanning the audience, possibly looking for some form of cue.

It's worth remembering that Trump was one of the first two candidates to get discretionary secret service protection during this campaign (Hillary already received it due to her status as a former first lady) which at least partially shows how seriously the threats to him are considered. Even with that in mind it's somewhat scary to think how close this protester got the Trump before being taken down; he very nearly got on the stage before being intercepted.

Merah

Yes, Trump riles people up to be violent, whether it be his own people or protesters, though it seems we've seen a lot more of the former.

TheGlyphstone

Though let's not forget that nutjobs and crackpots are independent of political parties. If someone tries to go Sirhan Sirhan on Trump, blaming the victim won't be remotely fair.

Oniya

I thought I saw something about the protestors' target being the microphone, not Trump himself.  Similar things have happened to both Hilary and Bernie, much earlier in the campaign.

Although I am tempted to start circulating 'rules for civil disobedience'.  Yes, you are likely to get arrested.  No, it is not likely to be pleasant.  The more dignified you look, the worse your opponent looks.  Etc. 
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Cycle

Break out your aluminum foil hats.  That Ohio protester was apparently an ISIS agent!  So thinks Trump, because, you know, it's on the internet.

Quote from: Oniya on March 12, 2016, 06:47:27 PM
I thought I saw something about the protestors' target being the microphone, not Trump himself. 

"I was thinking that I could get up on stage and take his podium away from him and take his mic away from him and send a message to all people out in the country who wouldn't consider themselves racist, who wouldn't consider themselves approving of what type of violence Donald Trump is allowing in his rallies, and send them a message that we can be strong, that we can find our strength and we can stand up against Donald Trump and against this new wave he's ushering in of truly just violent white supremacist ideas," DiMassimo told CNN.

When asked whether he'd planned on attacking Trump if he'd been able to reach him, DiMassimo said he had not.

"No, not at all. There would have been no point. Donald Trump is 6 foot 3. I'm 5 foot 9, maybe. He's a giant man surrounded by thousands of followers, 12 Secret Service and a former Ohio State offensive lineman. That would have accomplished nothing."

consortium11

This is somewhat of an old story, but it's doing the rounds again.

Back in November last year Cruz (along with then presidential candidates Huckabee and Jindal) showed up to the National Religious Liberties Conference, which as a fairly fundamentalist evangelical conference tends to be less about religious liberty and more about finding parts of the bible which suggest homosexuals deserve to be killed.

Which is pretty much exactly what the guy who introduced Cruz did...

As I say, this is a fairly old story and caused a bit of a fuss at the time but as well as having gained some public traction recently I think it's worth noting for a couple of other reasons:

1) Starkly, a reminder that these people are out there. They may be a fringe group... but it's not a tiny fringe and it's a pretty influential one, as being able to get three pretty well known Presidential candidates to speak at a conference they organized showed. Now, Republican Presidential candidates have almost made an art out of offering the world to the evangelical base and then if they do get into power giving them little but platitudes (Bush Jr was more than happy to talk about the culture wars but did relatively little once in office to actually roll back progress that had been made) but that shouldn't mean it isn't a concern, especially when a candidate heavily links themselves (as Cruz has done) with such groups.

2) The focus on Trump and his media role as the evil overlord means that the other Republican candidates haven't received the scrutiny they probably should. That's not to say you should like Trump, that he's the lesser of two(+) evils or that he hasn't done and suggested things that should be criticized (while I've objected to the media removing context to create stories that doesn't mean there aren't troublesome things Trump has suggested even with context) but it does mean that while Trump has been hogging the media headlines the acts of other candidates don't get much attention; the HuffPo piece linked too above about how no-one is mentioning Cruz at this conference was pretty prophetic. Kaisch is arguably the biggest beneficiary of this, his role as the "moderate" Republican largely coming about because he speaks in a measured tone. But when you look at his policies and record he's hardly what one would consider moderate and despite some nice soundbites about looking after the poor and a path for legalization for illegal/undocumented immigrants on most issues he's pretty far to the right of Trump or Rubio, with Planned Parenthood being a particular victim of his. It's an interesting dichotomy in some ways; Trump presents himself as the radical but outside of immigration most of his policies are relatively moderate (at least by Republican standards) while Kaisch presents himself as the moderate but most of his policies are pretty radical (even by Republican standards).

Cycle

Rubio lost Florida.  And just suspended his campaign.

Blythe

Quote from: Cycle on March 15, 2016, 07:24:22 PM
Rubio lost Florida.  And just suspended his campaign.

Ouch. Florida had a lot of delegates. :/

OP updated, though, thanks Cycle.

I'm thinking of re-doing the poll wholesale soon since so many people dropped out, since right now the poll looks like a graveyard of candidates. >_>;

Cycle

Quote from: Blythe on March 15, 2016, 07:47:02 PM
I'm thinking of re-doing the poll wholesale soon since so many people dropped out, since right now the poll looks like a graveyard of candidates. >_>;

Yeah.  It may be worth doing a screen grab of the poll as-is, for historical trivia reasons, but pruning it seems to make sense now we're down to five...

Edit:  Kasich just grabbed Ohio from The Donald!!!

gaggedLouise

Trump has the nomination almost in his pocket by now, unless they decide to put the boot down in his face at the RNC this summer and say "No, we won't let the guy run, we'll send somebody else". ^_^

In terms of momentum there's just about nobody who can stop him in the long run.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Blythe

Poll updated!

Old Poll with results, for reference


Cycle

Sweet!  Love the new poll and thanks for keeping the old results, Blythe!

Aislinn

I usually avoid talking politics in public....or really at all because it's such a hot-button topic. I have my opinions and I leave it at that.

However, I'm pretty comfortable here so I really have no problem saying that I'm very much in Hillary Clinton's corner. I like her....and have always liked her.

But....

At this point, I would be happy with ANYONE but Trump. The guy scares the crap out of me. I honestly feel that if he got elected president, we would end up getting bombed or in a global war of some sort.
"I am the one thing in life I can control
I am inimitable I am an original
I'm not falling behind or running late
I'm not standing still,
I am lying in wait.”


Mithlomwen

Quote from: gaggedLouise on March 15, 2016, 07:53:44 PM
In terms of momentum there's just about nobody who can stop him in the long run.

Which is frightening. 

I think that if the GOP candidates had reduced their numbers earlier on there might have been more if a chance to stop Trump.  But having so many candidates to choose from this late in the game has hurt any chance anyone might have had to beat him. 
Baby, it's all I know,
that your half of the flesh and blood that makes me whole...


Cycle

Quote from: gaggedLouise on March 15, 2016, 07:53:44 PM
In terms of momentum there's just about nobody who can stop him in the long run.

No one person, no.

But 160 million, yes.

Trump won't make it through November if we don't allow him.

Oniya

Quote from: gaggedLouise on March 15, 2016, 07:53:44 PM
Trump has the nomination almost in his pocket by now, unless they decide to put the boot down in his face at the RNC this summer and say "No, we won't let the guy run, we'll send somebody else". ^_^

In terms of momentum there's just about nobody who can stop him in the long run.

There is - just not on the Republican side.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

Quote from: Oniya on March 15, 2016, 08:34:42 PM
There is - just not on the Republican side.

I know - I was only referring to the race to become the nominee this summer.  ;)

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Oniya

Sadly, you may be right there.  Not to be melodramatic, but I think this year's election is going to be a battle for the soul of the US.  Last night, I sent up a shout-out to my friends back in Ohio to get out there and vote today.  Fairly sure none of them were going to be voting for Trump.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Cycle

Looks like Sanders is feeling the Bern. 

He lost Florida, lost North Carolina, and lost Ohio.  He's leading in Missouri and losing in Illinois, though neither has been called yet.

Likely he's going to end up in the hole by another 150 pledged delegates at the end of the night.

consortium11

Quote from: Mithlomwen on March 15, 2016, 08:18:00 PM
Which is frightening. 

I think that if the GOP candidates had reduced their numbers earlier on there might have been more if a chance to stop Trump.  But having so many candidates to choose from this late in the game has hurt any chance anyone might have had to beat him.

I'd argue it's the other way around.

Most of the early states decide their delegates proportionately which means if you're in the "anyone but Trump" camp (and while Cruz is hardly popular with the establishment it does appear they're more favorable to him then Trump at this point) then if Trump is to win the state it's better that he wins it at 40% of the vote (with the other 60% split multiple ways) and thus gets 40% of the delegates then it is for him to win at 55% in a one-on-one race. Having lots of candidates in a state which has proportional delegates tends to hurt the front runner, as while they may win they don't pick up an overwhelming number of delegates.

But now we're coming into states where it's winner takes all and there are a lot of delegates on the line. In such cases a split vote tends to help Trump as if he can pull 40% while the other 60% is split he'd take all the delegates home. So what those who are against Trump want is at least one candidate who can beat Trump in each state. Take the two big ones today, Florida and Ohio... both winner take all. In the perfect "anyone but Trump" world Rubio would have been able to do what Kasich did and win his home state and thus Trump, despite being a clear second in both and not that far behind the winner, would have no delegates to show for it. The way the campaign is structured if you want to hurt a front runner it's best to have lots of candidates early and then hope you can coalesce them behind one opposing candidate later on.

The issue with that tactic going forward seems to be that Cruz and Kasich are doing well enough that they can justify not dropping out but while they're both still arguing that they should be the one to take on Trump one-on-one any anti-Trump coalition that may form is still split between them... and with Trump tending to get around 40% of the vote it's very hard to see a split opposition beating him.

But if the establishment really are thinking anyone but Trump then they don't really need to beat him in delegate numbers to beat him.




The number 1,237 is a vitally important one for the Republican candidates because it's the number of pledged delegates they need to claim an overall majority and thus the candidacy; unlike the Democrats they don't have super-delegates to get anyone over the final hurdle. And the Ohio loss hurts Trump because now he likely needs to win all of the remaining states by at least 55% (although as above that only really matters in proportional delegate states) to get to that number and, especially if both Cruz and Kasich remain, that will be a real challenge.

And if Trump gets to the Republican convention with less than 1,237... even if he has a commanding lead in both delegates and the popular vote, even if he's won every state in the buildup, even if he has all the momentum... then he can still lose.

The key thing to remember is that pledged delegates only stay pledged (i.e. they have to vote in line with the public they represent) in the first round of voting. If there's not a winner in the first round? It's a free-for-all and delegates are free to change who they vote for. And just because a delegate is pledged for Trump doesn't mean they have to be a Trump supporter. They can be the opposite in fact... here's a Cruz supporter rather crowing about the process. It's one of the issues anti-establishment candidates like Trump face; the very fact that they are outside the establishment means that they're also on the outside of the party machinery and processes. If you're in charge of picking who the delegates will be and you don't want Trump to be the candidate then it's not surprising that you'd pick delegates who when given a choice would vote for someone other than Trump. And if Trump doesn't get to 1,237 then they may get that choice in the second round of voting.

It would be the Republican party pressing the big red button and I'm not sure they'd do it. Right now it looks like even if Trump doesn't win outright over the course of the remaining states he's still going to have a big lead come the convention and if he walks into that convention as the "winner" of this campaign, even without having quite hit 1,237 delegates and the Republican establishment find a way to make someone else the candidate then it would likely be political suicide for them. Trump may or may not run as a third party candidate (if he did he'd likely struggle... or even find it impossible... to get on the ballot of every state considering the deadlines) but even if he doesn't there's going to be a whole load of people who voted for Trump in the primaries who would be absolutely disgusted and not vote for whoever the candidate does end up being. That doesn't just hand the Presidency to the Democrats... it likely hands the House and Senate to them as well. But maybe it's a price they consider worth paying. I think it's one of the reasons Trump keeps emphasizing bringing the Republican party together and how many new voters he's bringing in in his victory speeches; not just as an attempt to convince the powers-that-be to get behind him but also to point out what they'd be losing out on.




I followed the results through The Young Turks (unfortunate choice of name, but an openly pro-Sanders, anti-establishment online political news/discussion "channel") and they mentioned anecdotally that they were hearing of quite a few Democrats taking advantage of the semi-open nature of Ohio's primary (i.e you can change your party affiliation on the day of the vote to take part in the primary you'd prefer) to vote for Kaisch in an attempt to stop Trump. Chances are it makes no difference in Ohio itself... Kaisch and Hillary's wins were too big for some Sanders favouring Democrats switching to Republican to vote against Trump making a difference. But Illinois and Missouri are both also open primaries and the results there are very close; while Trump took Illinois easily Sanders is only a few percentage points behind Clinton and in Missouri Sanders has a very slender lead over Clinton and Trump a tiny one over Cruz. People changing over to stop Trump in either of those two states may have a real impact on both the Democrat and Republican races.




As for Sanders, the suspicion is that this is it and he turns from a legitimate "he can win" type candidate to a message candidate staying in the race to make sure the issues he cares about get a public airing. Even setting aside super-delegates it's no longer enough for him to simply win states... he needs to win them big. Looked at on paper you'd probably see the remaining states as ones he stands a decent chance in but I'm not sure he can win them by enough to make up the gap there currently is. He's clearly staying in the race... his speech tonight was pretty gung-ho and he went after Clinton pretty heavily for her Wall Street speeches and big money donors... but I think he needed to win Ohio tonight to have a real shot at the candidacy. It's an interesting to "what if" to think about how things might have changed if the primaries were in reverse order; as it stands the states you'd expect Hillary to do well in (and she did) came first and it's only now that we start to come to the more favorable states for Sanders. How would things have changed if instead of Hillary running up an early and commanding lead in the south, largely due to the African American vote, it had been Sanders winning state after state and getting momentum?




Talking of Sanders speach and his words on special interests/big money donors, the Young Turks ran it pretty much back to back with Trump's own speech and it is interesting to note how many of their talking points are similar. Now, clearly they're different people with very different ideas on a number of positions and Sanders didn't hesitate from going after Trump over immigration (although as I've mentioned previously Sander's position on immigration a few years back used a similar logic to Trump's, even if they offered wildly different solutions). But both have made their anti-establishment nature and companies outsourcing and moving jobs out of America key parts of their campaign; if you removed the personal idiosyncrasies (Trump going "it's terrible" and "we don't win any more" for example) and just read a transcript then it wouldn't be immediately apparent which guy was talking. They have slight differences of course; Sanders tends to attack big money donors from the moral high ground while Trump runs a poacher-turned-gamekeeper act playing off his own history as one of the those big money donors and on jobs moving out Sanders focuses almost exclusively on China while Trump also mention Mexico but they both rail against the same things, are willing to name names (Sanders mentioned Goldman Sachs specifically tonight, Trump's called out the Club for Growth by name and has made Carrier Air Conditioning and their decision to move a plant to Mexico the launching point for his spiel on bringing jobs back) and talk about the devastating effect it has had on the middle class. Linked to the jobs moving abroad point, they both also have very similar positions on trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP (both Trump and Sanders have called NAFTA a disaster) and both offer essentially the same solution (renegotiation on more US friendly terms).

As mentioned above that's not to say the Sanders and Trump are similar candidates; for all the things they come close to agreeing on they are miles apart on others and that's without touching on their personalities or demeanor. But if bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US and/or opposing special interests in politics are your big issues then it is possible to see why there's a slight undercurrent of both Sanders and Trump supporters who wouldn't be completely against voting for the other one if their preferred option doesn't make it to the ballot. Obviously one shouldn't read too much into internet comments but that sentiment wasn't a particularly unusual one to find in either of the big Trump or Sanders places on Reddit, at least until the events in Chicago where it became more about Trump vs Sanders then both attacking the establishment and special interests.