The first statewide poll in and from 2016 is about New Hampshire. I see Trump doing badly and Carson fading. Sanders is doing better than Clinton.



vs Clinton

Clinton 45
Rubio 42

Clinton 46
Bush 40

Clinton 48
Cruz 40

Clinton 50
Carson 39

Clinton 50
Trump 36

vs Sanders

Sanders 50
Bush 38

Sanders 51
Rubio 37

Sanders 53
Carson 34

Sanders 54
Cruz 34

Sanders 54
Cruz 34

3 WAY!

Clinton 43
Rubio 29
Trump 20

Clinton 47
Cruz 28
Trump 18

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/p...e_NH_10816.pdf

The Democratic nominees for President have won New Hampshire all but one of the last six Presidential elections. As in 2004, Republicans can lose New Hampshire and still win. New Hampshire has a Cook PVI rating of D+1, which indicates that unless something unlikely has happened, Democrats can expect to win the state 51-49 in a 50-50 Presidential race.

With such as a guide, I could project the national split in the vote with Hillary Clinton against:

Rubio 52-48
Bush 52-47
Cruz 60-40
Trump 63-37

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

As I see it: if she wins, she will start her Presidency with a lot more confidence in her ability than BHO had, but her tactics will be triangulate, find leverage, make a deal, rinse and repeat. Nothing big comes out of that.

No. She is not stupid. Obama did that, and where did it get him? The fact is triangulation won't work. The Republican base hates her and all Democrats. It has nothing to do with policy, they think she is a bad person, perhaps even evil. She has no choice but to welcome their hatred; they are gonna hate her no matter what she does.

Given that she will do what is necessary to get re-elected. She does not care what people who will never vote for her think. She is 68. She will not be able to run again. It is now or never. She wants to be a two-term president. There will be a recession in her first term. Unless she acts to ameliorate this recession she will lose re-election. To do this she must employ means that do not require Congress, or use and approach that forces a Congress dead-set against her to do her bidding.

Triangulation was a tool for the 3T. This is a 4T. The opposition by their own rhetoric understand only one thing, raw (political) force. This is what Sanders is about.

This is the reason I decided to support Obama (I had been an Edwards man before). It turns out that Obama's theory of change was not truly valid, the Republicans are actually a monolithic enemy. Hillary was in this administration and she saw it go down. Now this wasn't her approach. She wanted to destroy her enemies by being better prepared than them. But in this age of fact-free policy, intellectual power is also ineffective,. However preparation can still work. If she can construct, in advance, an array of elephant traps that can be deployed under various situations she may have a chance to force her will in the teeth of Republican opposition. There are two ways to do this. I know that her husband knows one of them.

The easy solution, the one Bill knows is to wage full-scale "war of the civilizations" on ISIS and all other radical jihadists. This will require a draft, and a huge expenditure. This expenditure will be very stimulatory. If Congress is willing to jack taxes to 90% to pay for it, fine. If they do not, we will put it on the charge card. This enormous increase in borrowing will cause interest rates to rise dangerously, so they will of course act to stop this. The Fed will create money, just like they did under Obama, except this money really will cause inflation. Markets will crash and Congress will be receptive to the Clinton plan to stop inflation. If they sign it there are fucked. Clinton can now go full FDR on their ass. I think she would enjoy it. If they don't go for it, they will see their doors broken down my business lobbyists who DEMAND they play ball. They will face pledges of unlimited corporate dollars to unseat Republicans who do not act to stop the inflation.

The only way out is for the Republicans to argue that a full court press in not warranted in acting against jihadists. That these guys are really not threats. Can you see today's Republicans making this argument?

Hillary was the first person who said there was a "right-wing cabal." Methinks she has a very good idea of what/who she is dealing with.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

With such as a guide, I could project the national split in the vote with Hillary Clinton against:

Rubio 52-48
Bush 52-47
Cruz 60-40
Trump 63-37

You might want to check the RealClearPolitics averages, which are slightly more reliable:

Clinton vs. Trump: 44.6-42.6 (Clinton +2)

Clinton vs. Cruz: 44.5-46.3 (Cruz +1.8)

Clinton vs. Rubio: 43.5-46.5 (Rubio +3)

Hillary is at 43-45% against each, which is right in line with Obama's job approval rating (44.5%). That seems to be about the floor of Democrat support these days. But for Hillary, it could also be the ceiling. She's so well known, and people's opinions of her are so set, that she does not have much room for gains. The Republicans, on the other hand, have a lot of room to grow their support. In any case, all of the national polls show them polling within the margin of error, essentially tied, with no Republican nominee yet.

Simply put, it does not look good for the Democrats, and anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

You might want to check the RealClearPolitics averages, which are slightly more reliable:

Clinton vs. Trump: 44.6-42.6 (Clinton +2)

Clinton vs. Cruz: 44.5-46.3 (Cruz +1.8)

Clinton vs. Rubio: 43.5-46.5 (Rubio +3)

Hillary is at 43-45% against each, which is right in line with Obama's job approval rating (44.5%). That seems to be about the floor of Democrat support these days. But for Hillary, it could also be the ceiling. She's so well known, and people's opinions of her are so set, that she does not have much room for gains. The Republicans, on the other hand, have a lot of room to grow their support. In any case, all of the national polls show them polling within the margin of error, essentially tied, with no Republican nominee yet.

Simply put, it does not look good for the Democrats, and anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

Says the person who was for sure that Obama was going to lose in 2012.

You are the one out of touch with reality.

Originally Posted by Odin

Says the person who was for sure that Obama was going to lose in 2012.

I don't remember ever saying that, or thinking it. There were a lot of questions about the polls that year. Different pollsters were using different assumptions, and getting very different results. So it was confusing, and all I probably posted here was that Romney stood a chance. It ended up being closer than 2008, with Obama being the first president in history re-elected with a smaller share of the popular vote than he got the first time around. It was a very unusual election in many ways. What it comes down to is that loyalty to Obama based on race made patterns from past elections irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

No. She is not stupid. Obama did that, and where did it get him? The fact is triangulation won't work. The Republican base hates her and all Democrats. It has nothing to do with policy, they think she is a bad person, perhaps even evil. She has no choice but to welcome their hatred; they are gonna hate her no matter what she does.

Given that she will do what is necessary to get re-elected. She does not care what people who will never vote for her think. She is 68. She will not be able to run again. It is now or never. She wants to be a two-term president. There will be a recession in her first term. Unless she acts to ameliorate this recession she will lose re-election. To do this she must employ means that do not require Congress, or use and approach that forces a Congress dead-set against her to do her bidding.

Triangulation was a tool for the 3T. This is a 4T. The opposition by their own rhetoric understand only one thing, raw (political) force. This is what Sanders is about.

This is the reason I decided to support Obama (I had been an Edwards man before). It turns out that Obama's theory of change was not truly valid, the Republicans are actually a monolithic enemy. Hillary was in this administration and she saw it go down. Now this wasn't her approach. She wanted to destroy her enemies by being better prepared than them. But in this age of fact-free policy, intellectual power is also ineffective,. However preparation can still work. If she can construct, in advance, an array of elephant traps that can be deployed under various situations she may have a chance to force her will in the teeth of Republican opposition. There are two ways to do this. I know that her husband knows one of them.

The easy solution, the one Bill knows is to wage full-scale "war of the civilizations" on ISIS and all other radical jihadists. This will require a draft, and a huge expenditure. This expenditure will be very stimulatory. If Congress is willing to jack taxes to 90% to pay for it, fine. If they do not, we will put it on the charge card. This enormous increase in borrowing will cause interest rates to rise dangerously, so they will of course act to stop this. The Fed will create money, just like they did under Obama, except this money really will cause inflation. Markets will crash and Congress will be receptive to the Clinton plan to stop inflation. If they sign it there are fucked. Clinton can now go full FDR on their ass. I think she would enjoy it. If they don't go for it, they will see their doors broken down my business lobbyists who DEMAND they play ball. They will face pledges of unlimited corporate dollars to unseat Republicans who do not act to stop the inflation.

The only way out is for the Republicans to argue that a full court press in not warranted in acting against jihadists. That these guys are really not threats. Can you see today's Republicans making this argument?

A draft requires an Act of Congress. Which is unlikely to happen, especially if such a draft would be by lottery and include the children of the wealthy. Americans have a much better idea these days of the real cost of war in terms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury that is a lot higher than if casualties simply die as in previous conflicts. And the idea of allowing undocumented immigrants to earn their citizenship through military service was a non-starter even in the midst of the Iraq War, when National Guardsmen were being deployed for more than 1 tour of duty in many cases.
The US may be supportive of sending in "the troops" (as long as they are all volunteer and therefore expendable) but we have inequality at the same levels as 1929 AFTER 8 years of Obama. Had Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 been successful and Hitler come to power ten years earlier the US would not have been psychologically prepared for a War of Civilisations in 1931. It took a lot of preparation under the New Deal to create a sense of common purpose instead of class warfare and pave the way for entry into war. And then there's the fact that the shock troops will be Homeland Generation Adaptive, not Civic--the configuration that fought in Korea. Perhaps we are at the right time in the Generational Cycle for Millenial Civics but that dosen't change the fact that these "helicopter parented" cohorts have been raised Adaptive. And Hillary is too much of an Unravelling figure to unify the nation for a 4T struggle. And she isn't inclined to seriously change the inequality that we have in this country.
In terms of regeneracy, the Obama years have been largely wasted. Both Obama and Hillary are more Alfred E. Smith figures than FDRs. Bernie Sanders might be able to START the regeneracy in terms of a real New New Deal but only after 4 years of butting heads with a Republican Congress and making the case in 2018 and 2020 for Congressional wave elections--which are unlikely this year whether Trump or Sanders are elected because there is so much focus on the White House in people's minds. Even FDR mostly spun his wheels until 1935.
Unlike Hillary (or as it turned out, Obama) , Trump and Sanders are both agents of real change. See http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...america-213503. Both are, as this article points up, "enabling dissenters", bringing whole sets of ideas "out of the closet" that large segments of the American people have been afraid to express for fear of being labelled bigots (Trump) or socialists (Sanders). This may be the first election since 1860 that we are seeing "enabling dissenters" coming out of BOTH sides of the political spectrum at once. And the ideas that both sets of "enabling dissenters" are voicing will not easily be repressed.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It's not going to be Trump, it will be Cruz or an establishment guy, and so you can count on voter suppression being fully engaged.

Voter suppression is geared toward African Americans and young people who vote Democratic. It cannot easily be adapted to suppress Trump's demographic, at least not this election cycle.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

I don't remember ever saying that, or thinking it. There were a lot of questions about the polls that year. Different pollsters were using different assumptions, and getting very different results. So it was confusing, and all I probably posted here was that Romney stood a chance. It ended up being closer than 2008, with Obama being the first president in history re-elected with a smaller share of the popular vote than he got the first time around. It was a very unusual election in many ways. What it comes down to is that loyalty to Obama based on race made patterns from past elections irrelevant.

No it wasn't confusing. That was the whole point. The best way to see this is by going to the election projection site. It's one of the first of the 538-like election prediction sites. It is run by a conservative republican. He compiles results every week and in 2012 he showed Romney losing on every single assessment. His clientele had a lot of fans of skewed polls and he maintained a second page where he put results after adjustment for the presumed skew effect. This analysis did show Romney ahead. But his official result and the one he stuck by showed Obama ahead all along and predicted a comfortable victory. He was right.

There is a backstory to this. He used to call himself "the blogging Caesar" and in the early days he used to issue predictions in the form of edicts. In 2006 his model predicted that the Democrats would take both Houses of Congress. He could not believe this would happen and so he wrote that he was going to overrule his model and issue an edict that the Republicans would hold the Congress.

Next morning he wrote a post called egg on my face. Here he resolved that in the future he would always believe the model. And so he has and has been right since. This is why the skewed analysis was on a back page. Up front he presented the results of the model, not what he wanted to believe and in 2012 he did not have egg on his face.

There is another guy, this one on the left, who did something similar in 2004. He had his main model and then a modified one he introduced during the campaign. The first predicted a Bush victory and the second a Kerry. He favored the second because it was designed to capture future trends and he felt it would be more accurate. After the election, he dropped the modified model and only the standard model results have been presented since. He's also been right since.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

Voter suppression is geared toward African Americans and young people who vote Democratic. It cannot easily be adapted to suppress Trump's demographic, at least not this election cycle.

Yeah, I was referring to that. I was saying that Trump isn't going to be the nominee and the GOP establishment will be rulling engaged in voter suppression for the benefit of their candidate, no matter who he is.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

A draft requires an Act of Congress. Which is unlikely to happen, especially if such a draft would be by lottery and include the children of the wealthy. Americans have a much better idea these days of the real cost of war in terms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury that is a lot higher than if casualties simply die as in previous conflicts. And the idea of allowing undocumented immigrants to earn their citizenship through military service was a non-starter even in the midst of the Iraq War, when National Guardsmen were being deployed for more than 1 tour of duty in many cases.

The US may be supportive of sending in "the troops" (as long as they are all volunteer and therefore expendable) but we have inequality at the same levels as 1929 AFTER 8 years of Obama.

What you describe here is war, Republican style. If Clinton pursues this as a corrective to depression, she will lose big and her party destroyed for a generation. She will go down as the worst president ever, even worse than Hoover, because nothing like the Depression had happened before when it happened to him. The assumption that I was working on is she actually WANTS to win a second term.

Had Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 been successful and Hitler come to power ten years earlier the US would not have been psychologically prepared for a War of Civilisations in 1941. It took a lot of preparation under the New Deal to create a sense of common purpose instead of class warfare and pave the way for entry into war.

The New DEAL absolutely did NOT create a sense of common purpose, it was extremely polarizing and divided the country. It was the WAR that unified the country.

And then there's the fact that the shock troops will be Homeland Generation Adaptive, not Civic--the configuration that fought in Korea.

In 1941 the GIs had been born 17-40 years-earlier. The corresponding dates for a 2018 war would be 1978-2007. The Millies fit in the middle of this span.

And Hillary is too much of an Unravelling figure to unify the nation for a 4T struggle.

And FDR wasn't?

Franklin Roosevelt was affable and gregarious, "the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with." He had never distinguished himself as a particularly deep or innovative thinker, and it was often difficult to discern whether any bedrock principles underlay his evident political ambition. So, pretty much exactly like a modern president.

In the campaign of 1932, FDR was a giant flip-flopper. One day, candidate Roosevelt proudly defended Wilsonian internationalism; another day, he demonized the League of Nations to win the support of isolationist kingpin William Randolph Hearst. One day, he criticized Herbert Hoover for centralizing power in Washington; another day, he demanded bold new "social planning" by government. One day, he called for increased federal spending to kick-start the stalled economy; another day, he blasted Hoover's deficit spending and promised retrenchments to balance the budget. Roosevelt's frequent attacks on Hoover for excessive government spending are bizarre in retrospect; indeed, one of FDR's advisers later wrote that "given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines."⁷ Roosevelt was basically running under the premise, "I'm rich, you know my name, vote for me." This might seem a bit familiar even now. Even FDR's famous New Deal began not as a detailed policy platform but merely as a throwaway applause line in a speech.

And she isn't inclined to seriously change the inequality that we have in this country.

If doing so will benefit her then I think she will. And there is also the issue of payback. Do you think she enjoys all the shit that has been flung at her? If she manages to actually become president after eight years of Obama, she will prove that the Republicans simply cannot win the presidency during normal times. Therefore if she loses in 2020 it will be because it will not be normal times.

The cause of not-normal times is economic inequality. Once we fall into recession, if she doesn't deal with inequality, normal times will not return and she and her party will be driven from power for a generation (they are almost there now). People turn to the right during hard times. Republicans will thrive in such an environment.

In terms of regeneracy, the Obama years have been largely wasted. Both Obama and Hillary are more Alfred E. Smith figures than FDRs. Bernie Sanders might be able to START the regeneracy in terms of a real New New Deal but only after 4 years of butting heads with a Republican Congress and making the case in 2018 and 2020 for Congressional wave elections.

A 2018 wave election for Democrats under Democratic president is a fantasy. So is believing that if Republicans are elected and really screw up they will be discredited. A president Clinton faces an existential threat, like the threat Southern democrats faced in 1860. If the Republicans will not compromise (they didn't in 1860) then to save herself she has to go full-FDR on whatever war is being offered.

Alternately (hopefully) if she is prepared and adroit, she can exploit the fear that a spectacular decline in financial markets can generate to ram a 100-days agenda through a panicking Congress. If she can do this she doesn't have to go to war right away, and maybe not at all.

But if she plays it 3T-style (as you fear) then she will fiddle her party's way right into oblivion like Hoover did.

Originally Posted by playwrite

What does the Castro twins' astro charts look like for 2020. One of those two are going to make TX, FL, NM, AZ, CO, and possible GA solidly Blue states - even JPT will then grasp its over for what passes as the Right these days. A 2-term HC will hold that off until 2024, but I'd be okay with it happening in 2020.

Your next VP and 2020s Prez will be on Steve Colbert tomorrow night.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

A nearly perfect summary of why I don't support Hillary. You seem neutral on how much impact Bernie Sanders campaign will have, and I can see that. I'm just not that neutral. She may be a strong person in her own right, but she's been through the Clinton Wars since the beginning in 1976 -- 40 years of fighting a rear guard action. It seems unlikely this won't weigh on her. It did on Bill.

As I see it: if she wins, she will start her Presidency with a lot more confidence in her ability than BHO had, but her tactics will be triangulate, find leverage, make a deal, rinse and repeat. Nothing big comes out of that.

And you seriously think a Pres. Sanders would change that???

Gad, another reason I want HC to win - otherwise, just like with the '08 Obamatrons, we'll get all that whining frustrations from millions of 'Bern Victims.' Maybe Deb C will even return to the forums to express her outrage of Bernie's betrayal of not providing the magic ponies!

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The horoscope scores are what make the Castros non-viable. By nature they just won't appeal to Americans. Sorry, but that outlook is permanent; it doesn't change from year to year. Remember they have the worst score among the many dozens of recent or current possible and actual candidates I've looked at.

So how did they both get elected if they don't appeal?

If you say it was the demographics, you'd be right. And now you just need to expand that thought to TX and half a dozen other states where the eligible but typically non-voting Hispanic populations reside - can you say "sleeping giant?"

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

You might want to check the RealClearPolitics averages, which are slightly more reliable:

Clinton vs. Trump: 44.6-42.6 (Clinton +2)

Clinton vs. Cruz: 44.5-46.3 (Cruz +1.8)

Clinton vs. Rubio: 43.5-46.5 (Rubio +3)

Hillary is at 43-45% against each, which is right in line with Obama's job approval rating (44.5%). That seems to be about the floor of Democrat support these days. But for Hillary, it could also be the ceiling. She's so well known, and people's opinions of her are so set, that she does not have much room for gains. The Republicans, on the other hand, have a lot of room to grow their support. In any case, all of the national polls show them polling within the margin of error, essentially tied, with no Republican nominee yet.

Simply put, it does not look good for the Democrats, and anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

Real Clear Politics has a moving average that fits reality well when nothing is changing. That is one potentially-valid model. But only one possible model, and one that can be very wrong when something very basic changes. That model fails when one of the candidates collapses. Averages for Carson and Fiorina still look almost good... but both have become irrelevant.

The average is based upon the latest polls. The PPP poll of New Hampshire is the first statewide poll that I have seen in about three weeks, and it shows a clear movement toward both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I contrast one poll by the same pollster to another in a state that gets polled often, and when major change appears, the new poll shows the change.

Polling is much like mapping. Every poll, like every map, becomes increasingly obsolete with time. A 1966 Rand McNally Road Atlas might have been very accurate in its day, but it is now at most a historical document.

Here is my most current set of maps of binary match-ups between Hillary Clinton and possible Republican opponents in 2016. Know well that changes in political climate happen far faster than does the completion of road-building projects.

Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush




Hillary Clinton(D) vs. Ted Cruz (R)



Hillary Clinton vs. Marco Rubio



Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump



30% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 3% or less
40% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 4% or more
60% -- lead with 50-54%
70% -- lead with 55-59%
90% -- lead with 60% or more

White -- tie or someone leading with less than 40%.

So why do I base so much upon one poll in one state (New Hampshire)? First, even though New Hampshire is a small state and not particularly representative of America as a whole, it is reasonably predictable. New Hampshire is slightly (1%) more Democratic than the US as a whole in an average Presidential election.

I also use nationwide polling as a control.

This is the last nationwide poll, and it is about a week newer than the last poll that I got from before Christmas:

Quinnipiac national poll, conducted Dec. 16-20:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-e...ReleaseID=2311


Clinton 47%
Trump 40%

Clinton 44%
Rubio 43%

Clinton 44%
Cruz 44%

Sanders 51%
Trump 38%

Rubio 45%
Sanders 42%

Cruz 44%
Sanders 43%

....and this one is now three weeks old. It is more relevant than my maps (except for New Hampshire)

I am the first to admit that my maps are obsolete. Most polls shown are from when Hillary Clinton was reeling from accusations of bungling in Benghazi and misusing a private server. That situation is now no longer relevant, but that is what we have to go by until we see new polls from some states.

Can my model be wrong basing everything on one poll from one small state? Sure. New Hampshire could be lurching rapidly to the Left while America is staying where it was. Such happens. The same pollster gives an assessment of Iowa based upon polling this weekend (the first non-holiday weekend in January).

We will see a plethora of polls. The latest reliable poll (one not commissioned or performed for or by a blatant special interest group, candidate's campaign, or political party) is the most relevant poll of a state. Nationwide? A composite is best.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

I won't support her either. I present her campaign suits.









I foresee a lot of featherbedding from her friends.

Sorry, Rags, but it is a binary choice. If not her, then you are for Trump/Cruz, either by direct vote or staying home and enabling them.

It's not pretty, but it is reality.

Originally Posted by Odin

Says the person (JPT) who was for sure that Obama was going to lose in 2012.

You are the one out of touch with reality.

...JPT is in the same league of people whose political predictions have a basis in contempt for one side of the political spectrum. I saw much of this in the 1980s with "Reagan is horrible/senile/stupid/reactionary/reckless"... and he still won.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

Trump may want a fortress America as much as Rand Paul does. And Hillary may be crazier than Trump. We are dealing with a shared delusion of American world leadership and invincibility that could back us into a shooting war. I look at Trump's bombast and then I look at Hillary's unguarded moment victory dance "We came. We Saw He died. Which is even more insane given that she was Secretary of State at the time and given not only Benghazi but that we have spec forces in Libya right now trying to keep ISIS from blowing up oil export facilities (and apparently not succeeding). Just because neo-conservatism and liberal interventionism is widely shared dosen't make it any less insane. Germany, France and Russia had a lot of delusions about each other 100 years ago and the result was millions of dead.

A lot of people looking back now not only believe they got it exactly correct but that the answer of non-intervention is always so easy. The reality is proving the negative is fallacy and the hope of spreading the shining light (e.g. Arab Spring) is just as much in our national DNA as isolationism - both have their untold accomplishments and both have their highly visible utter failures.

We learn our lessons and the smart ones don't repeat them. I haven't heard any of her worse detractors claim she isn't very smart.

Originally Posted by playwrite

And you seriously think a Pres. Sanders would change that???

Gad, another reason I want HC to win - otherwise, just like with the '08 Obamatrons, we'll get all that whining frustrations from millions of 'Bern Victims.' Maybe Deb C will even return to the forums to express her outrage of Bernie's betrayal of not providing the magic ponies!

I see more of the half-measures the Clinton-Obama Democratic Party have been known for. I agree with Mike Alexander on this: it's a prescription for a dew decades in the wilderness.

Then again, I doubt Bernie could have won, even with Hillary out of the race. If the GOP hates Trump, the Dems are in the same boat with anyone on the political left. It's sad, but there it is. The worst part is the Congressional wing of the Democrats, who can't seem to find a voice. Steve Israel is the first to say something important: the game is rigged. More needs to be done.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

We have been waiting for Georgia, Texas and Arizona to flip Democratic for the last 12 years. I'll believe it when I see it. A Republican can win in Colorado, based on the results of it's 2012 Senate race--if that Republican is comfortable with not enforcing marijuana prohibition in states that legalise marijuana. Nevada and New Mexico have probably already flipped Democratic based on the last 2 election cycles. Florida and NC are still very tight swing states--which is why Republicans work so hard to suppress the youth and minority vote in those places. And Ohio, if close can win if there is Republican chicanery--unless the Ohio Republican Party is more comfortable with Hillary than with Trump. Which given Governor Kasich's dislike of Trump is a definite possibility.

It's been four years since 2012. This will be the second 2-year election cycle since. On a national basis, that means the 08/12 Dem coalition is 4 percentage points bigger. For states that have rapidly growing populations, becoming more urbanized, more female and particularly more Hispanic that demographic change is even quicker. Where do you think CO TX and the others mentioned fall in that calculation?

Originally Posted by playwrite

Sorry, Rags, but it is a binary choice. If not her, then you are for Trump/Cruz, either by direct vote or staying home and enabling them.

It's not pretty, but it is reality.

Yes, it's a binary choice, but may not be the one you think. There is also a choice between long ball and short ball. If you believe, as I do, that winning now may create desolation for decades, which choice do you make then?

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

No, the Clintons are part of the same universe as the Republicans. They pulled the Democratic Party far to the Right during Bill's Administration. They (and yes, it was a co-presidency as Bill said it was) gave us SNAP in place of AFDC, the an immigration law that closed the door to legalisation to most of the people who came as undocumented workers, NAFTA, which forced 5 million Mexicans to come to the US by dumping subsidised corn on Mexico and finally, to prevent Bill from being convicted after being impeached, repeal of Glass-Steagall. And in foreign policy, interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia which seemed like a good idea at the time but planted the seeds for the poor relationship between the US and Russia today. And created a precedent for the occupation of Iraq and the intervention in Libya.
We would have been a better country, frankly, and the Democrats a more liberal party had we endured a Bush Sr. second term. Or preferably, ANY of the other Democratic candidates in 1992. The country could have done without the Clintons and maybe gotten Al Gore or Jerry Brown or even Ted Kennedy in 1996. A big part of the misery that poor people suffer today comes from policies signed by Bill Clinton. (Although yes, I realise that a lot of the impetus for these policies were generational, the result of Boomer sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy and authoritarianism on BOTH sides of the aisle--a product of the times).
Only Bernie Sanders might take the Democratic Party back to where it should be.

pssss, it's not the 1990s any more and Hillary is not Bill. Just thought you should know.

And if you think HC's policies are any where close to the same universe of the present GOP clown car, you are delusional.

As for your Sanders savior complex, one of my big reasons for supporting HC is to avoid repeating all the handholding and bucking up that I did with the '08 Obamatrons when you don't get your magic ponies once again and feel the inevitable betrayal.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It's not going to be Trump, it will be Cruz or an establishment guy, and so you can count on voter suppression being fully engaged.

I don't understand your certitude on this; particularly we're now just 3 weeks from Iowa.

What's the reasoning or is this the same kind of gut feel that so many in the GOP Establishment and media have been expressing for 6 months.

Cruz is leading in Iowa, but Trump is not that far behind. If Trump wins in Iowa, it is over. If he loses, he still will likely take NH, that leave SC. There, a Trump win makes it over whereas Cruz or anyone else winning still keeps Trump viable in the race at least until Super Tuesday, and he's been in more of those states and getting enormously more coverage by the entertaining news that any of his clown car travelers.

Bottom line: except for NH, at every primary point in the next 2-3 months, a Trump win means he's the nominee.

Originally Posted by playwrite

It's been four years since 2012. This will be the second 2-year election cycle since. On a national basis, that means the 08/12 Dem coalition is 4 percentage points bigger. For states that have rapidly growing populations, becoming more urbanized, more female and particularly more Hispanic that demographic change is even quicker. Where do you think CO TX and the others mentioned fall in that calculation?

This demographic shift isn't doing anything now, so why expect anything prior to 2020? A President is not a dictator, but we hold them responsible as if they are. With a solid GOP Congress for the next two Congressional cycles, no Democrat can pass anything that isn't GOP-Lite at best. Even SCOTUS appointments will be rejected or "centrist" in the current meaning of the term (i.e. conservative).

If you believe the GOP agenda is bad, why let a Democrat get the blame?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

This demographic shift isn't doing anything now, so why expect anything prior to 2020? A President is not a dictator, but we hold them responsible as if they are. With a solid GOP Congress for the next two Congressional cycles, no Democrat can pass anything that isn't GOP-Lite at best. Even SCOTUS appointments will be rejected or "centrist" in the current meaning of the term (i.e. conservative).

If you believe the GOP agenda is bad, why let a Democrat get the blame?

The demographic shift will do the Presidency. And that will provide one of two paths. You may want to say HC's bumpy path is like the GOP's straight-to-hell path, but its not.

For example, a Progressive-enough candidate that the GOP can stall but not turn back is from a different universe than another Scalia or Thomas that Trump/Cruz will nominate. To suggest otherwise is just being silly.