The Politics Thread

[Vee]

It is not going to be that close. I heard this same thing four years ago and Romney was trounced. It is an absolutely hellish year but Trump isn't a fraction as viable as Romney was.

[ReddFoxx]

Trump has polled only 12-15% of Hispanics in the latest poll done by pollsters who poll the Hispanic vote. If he gets only that much Nevada and Colorado are off the table, with Florida probably also being out of contention. He also has issues with college educated white voters, particularly women. I think Clinton wins the same as Obama did, while adding North Carolina.

[Juliajms]

I don't know what to believe. I agree that HRC is more polarizing than some will admit. My husband actually floated the idea of voting for Ben Johnson the other day. I was truly shocked. He's more liberal than I am and he's a feminist. He just thinks she's very dishonest. Hard to argue with that if we are really honest with ourselves. I convinced him that we have to rally behind HRC, but it made me wonder how many liberals out there are looking to a 3rd party candidate.

[JaneAusten]

I might be a bit worried but I also don't think the election will be that close. I remember all the pollsters(barring Nate Silver) claiming the Romney - Obama race was much closer than it turned out to be. Obama won easily as Silver predicted.

And Hillary's handicap is that she's a woman period. For all of the so called "crimes" of the Clintons, name me any other politicians who could have withstood 20 years of attacks and still be viable public servants. Bill Clinton left office more popular after the Ken Starr BS than before he was elected the second time. I doubt the Bush family doesn't have skeletons(where are those 20 million emails deleted from the RNC server that Bush and Cheney used while Bush was president). Nor have they had anyone as venomous as the GOP after them.

And for all those claiming they aren't going to vote for "crooked" Clinton there are as many establishment republicans out there who feel the same way about Trump. Why is no one factoring these people in and are just talking about so called democrats who are voting for Trump but ignore the many party republicans who won't vote for Trump?. A former college classmate who lives in Utah is a neurosurgeon now and has voted republican his entire life and he finally told me he just can't do it this election. He was toying with voting for Gary Johnson, but he's really afraid of a Trump win so his vote is going to Hilary. Same issue with a friend of mine who runs a small business in Indiana who is a lifelong republican who won't vote for Trump and trust me when I say that adding Pence did NOTHING to encourage him any further particularly because Pence has a number of issues that have impacted him and many republicans there feel he's out of touch.

It's no where near a lock for Hilary but I do think she would have had difficulty and challenges no matter what due to her gender anyway.

[ReddFoxx]

There were people on television who said that they actually saw emails of Clinton responding to Nigerian scammers and emails of her asking Putin for shirtless pictures, even though no such emails exist. She actually has the cleanest record when it comes to being fact checked, but she has still received more negative coverage than Trump.

Edited July 22, 2016 by ReddFoxx

[JaneAusten]

It's to the media's advantage to make the race seem closer than it is. Polls can be skewed based on how questions are asked to get the desired response. I think both Obama's elections are a testament to that. Both races ended up being far more lopsided than the media and most pollsters would lead anyone to believe. If Nate Silver comes out and says the race is neck and neck based on his analysis I'd believe it. But he's the only one. Now that doesn't mean that the democrats should take anything for granted and I guess time will tell/.

[ReddFoxx]

Agreed. The media needs a close race in order to keep ratings up, which are already not great to begin with.

Meanwhile, male escorts cleaned up during the convention. Lots of closeted Republicans were patronizing them.

http://nypost.com/2016/07/21/male-escorts-are-making-crazy-money-at-the-rnc/

[Juliajms]

Nate Sliver is one of the people who keeps bringing up HRC's unpopularity.

 

http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/gop-convention-day-one/?#livepress-update-21056741

 

I don't want to be an alarmist. I do think HRC will win, but I'm not feeling complacent by any means.

 

Utah is an interesting state. I would have thought that it'd be any easy win for Trump, but he's scared off the Mormons by targeting Islam. Makes sense.  The more groups he scares/pisses off the happy I am.

 

[JaneAusten]

Yes I know he has but he's also talked about Trump's unpopularity and I just don't think Trump has the ability to shift that because he is who he is and no campaign manager is going to be able to tame his tongue and control his narcissistic tendencies.

It does surprise me that people, even Nate Silver, don't know why Hillary is allegedly unpopular. She's a woman. If her name were Howard Clinton I doubt many people would care about any of this. Bill Clinton himself is proof of that. If anyone was Teflon to all the mudslinging it was him.

A local political analyst in the Chicago area wrote an in depth analysis back in 2008 of why getting elected would be  harder for a woman than for an African American male, even with the population in the US indicating there are more women than men. This was before the primary was pretty much decided. I'm not suggesting Obama had it easy by any means, but the attacks on Hillary during the primaries was overdone IMO by the media. I still believe that is the case and that women are judged, particularly by other women, much more harshly than men are and not forgiven anywhere near as easily. It's why I actually feel a good solid and bold VP pick would help Hilary. And I still don't think the safe white guy is the answer.

[Bright Eyes]

For a little brevity ... The great Laura Benanti as Melania Trump.

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[DRW50]

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[quartermainefan]

This was Trump's worst speech, I am really surprised how stiff he sounded.   In contrast Ivanka is like a perfect human.   Besides being beautiful, she has poise, good taste and able to talk in coherent sentences.   Trump's children are the pieces of the puzzle that just don't fit with the rest of the story:   They're borderline perfect, Ivanka and Don Jr both, so he must be doing something right somewhere. 

[dragonflies]

I think the fact that Trump didn't get Ohio in the primaries but Clinton did is going to be the deciding factor in the end.

[DRW50]

I'm not sure it matters much. Obama lost the Ohio primary in 2008 but won the state in November.

[DramatistDreamer]

The HRC Campaign mentioned some of Ivanka's talking points that were the same ones that the Clinton campaign has been making for months (e.g. the equal pay issue, which Donald Trump has never mentioned himself).  Ivanka's not running for President so her words during her father's campaign matter as much as Sasha and  Malia's words during their father's campaign.