That's because, unless talking about a specific set of people (mainly Democrats and low-information voters), she's not likeable. Older women don't like HRC and neither do young women.

 

 

Hillary? Charisma? Are you sure you aren't talking about Bill C. in a dress?
 

 

I think they do care and will care more. She has honesty problems; the Email bit does actually have serious implications, especially considering David Petreaus' fate. What Clinton did - or allowed to have happen - is worse many times over. Clinton's problem is that she continued to lie about it, try to deflect it and of course - blame the ever present (to her) "vast Right-Wing Conspiracy". Uhuh.  :-/


I'd wager a bet that soon Bernie Sanders does an about-face and begins attacking her, as he needs to do if he really wants to win.
 

She has *some* charisma. Not as much as Bill but she's not totally devoid of it like a lot of recent candidates have been.

And yeah, tonight's debate just finished and Sanders is hitting her harder which is good to see.

Maybe if we are lucky, there will be enough complaints about the primary elections that the "caucus" system states will convert to normal primary elections.  This is a problem, almost regardless of your personal political views.

> Maybe if we are lucky...
> ...
> This is a problem...

:?

Hello Peter,

The US election system has some interesting contortions, both in the main election, and in the primary elections.

There is not any mandate or limitation on the number of political parties submitting a candidate for any elected office, but the two main parties are so dominant, that they do everything possible to drown out the smaller ones in the general (main) elections.

The "Primary Elections", which is what we are in now, are "who will be the candidate from each party.  The political parties are a lot like a corporation, and have successfully argued in court that the National Laws don't apply to them.  They can choose more or less any method they like to select a candidate.

They give voters "an opportunity to express their preference" during the primary elections, but are not legally bound to follow this "preference".

Within the "Primary election system", there are two common methods used to determine if a candidate (within a party) wins a state primary election or not:

- Normal Voting - one person, one vote, typically in a private booth at an official voting location, on an official form, fairly close to your home, in a very structured, organized, legal manner.  Mistakes are made, but it is pretty scrutinized.

- Caucus Voting

- In this case, there can be as many, or as few as (one) location where people have to travel to in order to make their opinion / vote known.  The location can be 2 - 4 hours drive away, and include pre-meetings that can last for hours, before the "vote" is taken. 
- The vote can be taken in any number of ways including a) someone writing down how many people are in a candidates "room" - counting noses at a particular moment in time
- an actual vote count, but not necessarily with any privacy
- voice vote, where the loudest group saying their preference wins
- There may, or may not be any attempt to verify if the people in the room are registered voters or not
- Votes might be collected and counted by a volunteer who happens to be in the room, with no prior experience with how it is organized
- Voting can be done on a legal form, or paper napkins, as needed
- There is only limited scrutiny of the results and procedures, and it is not uncommon for bags of "votes" to be found, in the trash and uncounted.
- Just to add to the fun, it is on a work night, so the people who go, might spend the entire night there, and then be expected at work the next day.
- Sometimes, a town will select "someone of good standing" to go the caucus and represent the opinion of the entire town.

Incredibly, both systems are given equal weight in terms of who becomes the US President, and it is hard even for Americans to grasp just how manipulated this system is.

This is what I mean when I indicated that I hope that the Caucus system of voting is someday eliminated.
 

Trump fails really really bigly That's all we need. a POTUS with the vocabulary of a toddler.

I kind of believe his handlers' recent claim to the RNC that this sub-literate jackass persona is an act.

I suspect that the real reason that the RNC and some big money donors don't want Trump as President, is that he knows which closets contain the skeletons.  I do agree that he mostly likely uses "talk" to move topics in his preferred direction, which is really the primary power of a President.

While I don't necessarily call myself "sold on Trump", it becomes easier to not worry about it when we look at the last 40 years of prior US Presidents, and the leaders of other countries.  There have been some pretty mixed quality and policy politicians in just about every country, and most have survived.

The more people bash Trump, the more I think he might be a decent candidate.  Of course there are some details which are not ideal, but that is always true of any candidate.

The financial institutions and intelligence community pretty much run the country anyway, so the country is more or less immune to the politicians.

It is so interesting to see how passionate people in other countries are about US Politics.  While it is interesting to watch the political process in other countries, I would not imagine actually becoming emotionally involved in foreign elections.

 

"he knows which closets contain the skeletons"

How?

It's kind of important to pay attention to the USA from outside, since much of the world economy runs on US$ and a seemingly increasingly large part of it gets American bombs dropped on it too, with far-reaching consequences. 

Your stated rationale there for increasingly thinking he might be a decent candidate is frankly bizarre, but I'm sure there's more to it.
 

"the real reason that the RNC and some big money donors don't want Trump as President to win the Republican nomination" (FTFY) ...  is because if he does, Hillary wins by a landslide, Republicans will be purged from currently-held Congress and the Senate, and their party all but destroyed by bitter infighting.

Some of the biggest 'traditional' Republican donors (e.g. Koch bros) are already making noises about switching their support to Hillary.

So if you want another 'Republican Lite', elect another Clinton.

If Cruz gets the nomination, Hillary wins by a landslide but the Republican Party will survive in a weakened state to fight another election (maybe), with Tea Party nutters (like Cruz) a discredited, spent force.

I agree with the rest but I don't think Trump necessarily loses to Clinton in a general. And it's far too far out for polling on that to be relevant.

Both candidates have very high unfavourables and both will motivate people to vote against them. I'm not sure whether apathy at two unlikeable candidates or desire to vote against one or the other would win out.

Trump's demonstrated that his support crosses party lines which Hilary's certainly doesn't. And his support has shown no signs of hitting a ceiling. He also can't be smeared - attacks on him simply don't work (and, particularly from Clinton, would only go to make his anti-establishment narrative, bullshit as it may be, all the more compelling for the fuckwits who do/would vote for him).

I think Trump getting the nomination would tear the party apart. But I'm not certain - the GOP is resilient as all fuck.

But from the party's POV I don't think the problem is that he'd lose the general, it's that he might win. In which situation they'd have a republican president who doesn't really represent any of the republican core beliefs.

I agree that they'd rather lose with Cruz than win with Trump (and rightly so).

Still, the dems are also looking more strained than they have for a long time. There's definitely a desire for an actual progressive candidate and, moreover, for the democrats to be an actual progressive party. And, as you say, totem issues aside, Clinton is really a republican. I wouldn't even say 'lite', particularly on economic and foreign issues.

Also worth bearing in mind: As soon as Sanders is out of the race (which probably won't be long now, sadly), Clinton's going to move back the right. Which makes the Republican's job easier come the general (left leaning independents stay at home (except those who can bring themselves to vote Clinton as an anti-Trump measure) and the GOP are far better at wooing even the soft-right independents).

The dems are kinda shooting themselves in the foot. If Sanders were the nominee then he gets Clinton's support by default (because Clinton's support is party-loyal dems). If Clinton wins I suspect a large proportion of Sanders' support will just melt away - either not voting or voting green/similar. Clinton would be only marginally easier for them to vote for than, say, Kasich.

It's a really interesting election though. In terms of just horse-race entertainment value it's fucking awesome.



 

Urgh - so with the latest results that's Sanders out and (pretty much) Trump in, then.

Yup :(

I think Sanders will stay in at least until California, possibly to the convention because unlike normal candidates his funding isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I think he's intending to influence the platform at the convention and also sticking around just in case Clinton gets indicted.

But yeah in terms of winning more delegates before the convention, unless something miraculous happens in California, he's out.

It's been a wild ride and can only get wilder as November approaches.

"Clinton is really a republican. I wouldn't even say 'lite', particularly on economic and foreign issues."

There's never been a lot of daylight between the two establishment parties' respective positions and power bases, especially since Bill Clinton, America's answer to Tony Blair, swept in. I've said it before: the Repugs hate the Clintons for stealing all their 'best' ideas. Dubya was a bit of an outlier and an extremist, but only in the sense that he handed US foreign policy on a silver platter to Dick Cheney, probably because 9-11 scared the hell out of him and he just couldn't face it.

The Sanders campaign has always had a surreal (perhaps even moreso than Trump), rear-view mirror air to it. It never managed to broaden its appeal much beyond a nostalgic-progressive core, and took too much for granted, resulting in serial, egregious blunders that blindly and willfully ceded huge swaths of delegates to Hillary, just so Bernie could continue to be Bernie. I must assume he bears personal responsibility for his campaign's tone-deafness on issues such as gun control and endemic racism. He is truly trapped by a persona well past it's sell-by date, even if college kids just now discovered it, and think it's novel and cute.

Sanders and Trump have both traded on widespread disaffection in the American hinterland first manifested by the tea party, the sense that the 'social contract', such as it was, has been abandoned and the middle class (now have-nots) with it. There's a lot of economic misery and fear afoot. Dangerous times.

And speaking of fear, Clinton has a potent library of Trump's most toxic rants in her back pocket. All Trump has is: she's a woman, and she's a Clinton. I think we'll see how little traction that has outside of rabid conservatives.

 

It is useful to think about how voters feel vs how party insiders and billionaire funders feel about US political positions.

1) Hillary
- No matter if you like or dislike her personally or her political positions, she will be nearly impossible for anyone to beat.
- Personally, I think she will be very effective if elected, because she is so well connected.
- The problem I have, is that I dislike her policies.  That is not a person dislike, really don't like her positions on things.
- The attacks on her pretty much are ignored by her base, and frankly, most women
- No matter how you shape it, she can draw in women votes from both sides of the aisle, just because she is a woman. 
- The are no remaining, nor hardly any even viable men or women in the republican party that can pull in those votes.
- It "might" be possible to swing some women votes toward the republican candidate if the VP choice is a woman
- She will certainly carry left leaning states in the main election, but it will be much harder for her to win key states like OH, MI, FL, and TX.

2) Sanders
- What you perceive as his "weakness positions", are actually the reasons he has support from the "middle of the road voters", from both parties
- His position on gun rights is far closer to mainstream America thinking than Hillary, and he foolishly backed down on this position, as it was actually one of the the keys to his backing.
- Not everything he said was ideal, especially for someone like me who is more libertarian in thinking, but that is normal.
- In some ways, his appeal crossed over party lines better than most any other candidate.
- He has always had a big, uphill battle to cover against the Clinton stranglehold on the DNC, it is actually amazing that he has gotten this far.
- The real question is - will his backers, who fairly strongly don't like Clinton, be willing to actually vote for Clinton ?  I am not so sure.  In some ways, they could be more likely moved to back Trump, or stay home.

 

It's funny that you think things run on American money, we think it runs on London and Chinese money.

Presidents are not picked by "winning" an election, they are picked by "avoiding loosing".

You might be right, but my perception is slightly different. 

If you look at how Reagan changed the party from "Pre - Reagan" to a "Post Reagan" era, it was by uniting three versions of conservatism:
- Fiscal conservatives - These were "original republicans", many are socially fairly liberal.
- Religious conservatives - These were originally the Southern Democrats, and more or less where Cruz pulls support
- Big Government skepticism conservatives. - These were mostly original Republicans, also many are more open minded that you might think.  They are nearly libertarian in thinking  - Rand Paul

These three groups all sort of put up with each other, but it isn't that they fit together perfectly.

Cruz can only pull from the religious conservatives, and a few fiscal conservatives, but he has virtually no backing from the rest of the historical republican voters.  Romney lost for the same reason, the voters stayed hone or voted third party just out of protest.

I am not sure how Hillary fits into your thinking about being even slightly part of one of those 3 historical parts of the Republican party, but maybe I am missing something.

As far as Trump causing local elections to move toward the DNC - I really doubt it.  The DNC lost those elections - when they could have won, because Bloomberg pushed Obama to go after gun ownership.  They won't admit it, but it was really that simple.  The ongoing siege of (many)  personal rights by Clinton and Bloomberg will keep many actually decent dem candidates out of office.

Republicans that loose elections will be looking to blame someone, but it will be because of what they have done, or not done, not because of Trump.

I am not really sure that it will weaken or destroy the RNC party, but it might move it more toward middle of the road politics than it's somewhat over the top religious bent right now.  

 

A really interesting combination would actually be Trump + Sanders as the VP candidate.  They both are really independents, like most American voters actually are.

If Sanders could bring even 50% of his base with him, it could be a really interesting election.