Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

Bush followed the same basic policies as Clinton and Bush 1. I knew Iraq would be a disaster the moment bush announced that Paul Bremer would established to organize elections for a democratic government. Here Bush thought that Islamic barbarians were fundamentally just like us, and like freedom and democracy. We would have been better off had we organized Iraq around simple exploitation and then moving on with our forces into Iran and Syria.

There is a ratio of boots on the ground to population of the territory being occupied that is required for a clean occupation. The US did not put enough troops in initially, and could only sustain the inadequate level by over using the reserve forces. As soon as a unit left the war zone, it would be refit and retrained for the next tour. We pushed our existing forces to the limit just occupying Iraq.

In short, without greatly expanding the Army and/or Marines, we couldn't successfully 'exploit' Iran, let alone Iran and Syria as well. (Did you forget Afghanistan?)

I thought Bush 43 was going to fail in the Middle East on September 12, 2001. He proclaimed an intent to respond militarily without addressing fundamental causes of the conflict. I didn't know what the nature of the failure would be, but I predicted that one way or the other he was going to blow it.

"On to Richmond!"

Originally Posted by B Butler

There is a ratio of boots on the ground to population of the territory being occupied that is required for a clean occupation. The US did not put enough troops in initially, and could only sustain the inadequate level by over using the reserve forces. As soon as a unit left the war zone, it would be refit and retrained for the next tour. We pushed our existing forces to the limit just occupying Iraq.

In short, without greatly expanding the Army and/or Marines, we couldn't successfully 'exploit' Iran, let alone Iran and Syria as well. (Did you forget Afghanistan?)

I thought Bush 43 was going to fail in the Middle East on September 12, 2001. He proclaimed an intent to respond militarily without addressing fundamental causes of the conflict. I didn't know what the nature of the failure would be, but I predicted that one way or the other he was going to blow it.

"On to Richmond!"

Another set of facts that Cynic Nero has conveniently ignored:

1. Iran has 78 million people. That's almost as many people as Germany, the most populous country lying entirely in Europe. 18th most populous state in the world.

2. The country is armed to the teeth.

3. It has very difficult terrain for military operations -- the Zagros and Elburz Mountains in the north and west, and some very nasty desert.

4. It has about one fifth the territorial size of the USA (17th largest sovereign state in the world).

5. If invaded, Iranian nationalism will overpower whatever dissent there is with the regime.

6. It has the 18th-largest GDP in the world.

7. America will have no allies.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Another set of facts that Cynic Nero has conveniently ignored:

1. Iran has 78 million people. That's almost as many people as Germany, the most populous country lying entirely in Europe. 18th most populous state in the world.

2. The country is armed to the teeth.

3. It has very difficult terrain for military operations -- the Zagros and Elburz Mountains in the north and west, and some very nasty desert.

4. It has about one fifth the territorial size of the USA (17th largest sovereign state in the world).

5. If invaded, Iranian nationalism will overpower whatever dissent there is with the regime.

6. It has the 18th-largest GDP in the world.

7. America will have no allies.

We should have stayed with the policies of Bush I. No occupation.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

Bush followed the same basic policies as Clinton and Bush 1. I knew Iraq would be a disaster the moment bush announced that Paul Bremer would established to organize elections for a democratic government. Here Bush thought that Islamic barbarians were fundamentally just like us, and like freedom and democracy. We would have been better off had we organized Iraq around simple exploitation and then moving on with our forces into Iran and Syria.

But since Iraqis don't like freedom and democracy, aren't they a lot like you?

"Cynic Nero," very good brower lol
Throwback to the agricultural age; and to what I call the Mars age.
http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

Originally Posted by radind

We should have stayed with the policies of Bush I. No occupation.

On foreign policy:

Which of the following does not belong in this group:

George H W Bush
William Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama

A hint: when things go bad one tends to go back to when things were last reasonably good if one has any sense at all.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

On foreign policy:

Which of the following does not belong in this group:

George H W Bush
William Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama

A hint: when things go bad one tends to go back to when things were last reasonably good if one has any sense at all.

One of these things is not like the others: Dubya.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

One of these things is not like the others: Dubya.

I view them as shades of gray although the true transitional figure among them was Bush 41.

Originally Posted by Teacher in Exile

Krugman, whose NYT column I have long read, has proved a bit of a disappointment lately: his critique of Bernie's economic plan was way too slanted, and too much in league with other liberal establishment economists. I would hope that Hillary--if elected--would appoint a much more progressive economist, like Joseph Stiglitz--also a Nobel Laureate.

Bill Clinton--if not Hillary, too--is on record as having said that the repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause the Crash of '08. I will provide the link.

The one legitimate point PK has made in all this is the issue of what is a bank? The worst offenders in the last crisis were insurance companies like AIG and specialty finance like Countrywide. No banking regulations will touch them, not that the bank regulations aren't still a good idea. For the shadow banks, we need to take away their toys -- especially the huge asset basket we call derivatives. Derivatives are bets, not investments. There are two options here. Simply making them illegal will push them offshore, but then they're someone else's problem. The second alternative falls under the rubric of caveat emptor. If you make bets and lose, you pay or you lose everything. There will be no hiding behind a limited liability shield. If you make bets and win, but the counter party can't pay, that's tough. No backing ... period.

Gambling serves no socially beneficial end, so why should 'we the people' cover bets?

Parallels for Republican wins of the Presidency. As entrenched as Democrats in some states with large numbers of electoral votes (especially California and New York), anything resembling the scale of electoral blowouts of 1972, 1984 (one state +DC) or even the Eisenhower wins of the 1950s are out of the question. Look at the Obama-Eisenhower overlay that I have shown several times, and if anyone has an Eisenhower-scale win it will be Hillary Clinton. Obama got the style by acting like a 60-ish Reactive which we are unlikely to see in the Presidency for another eight years from now.

Mostly posted at Leip's Electoral Atlas:




This looks like the bare minimum for a Democratic nominee for President - 122 electoral votes -- unless the Presidential nominee is caught doing something unthinkable or unprintable. It is safe to say that in view of the strength of the Democrats in these states that the only way for a Republican to win these states is if the Parties flip in ideology. Such flips have happened -- just think of an overlay between the elections of Obama and Eisenhower. Even at a 58-41 split of the popular vote (which is how Reagan did in 1984) this is the result with states aligned as they are. Even at that I am stretching.

Republican 416 - Democrat 122.




Republican 375 - Democrat 183 (IL, MN, NM go R)
Republican 365 - Democrat 173 (MN goes D, IL, NM go R)
Republican 338 - Democrat 200 (IL, MN, NM go D)

These are the inverses of the Clinton (at 375) and Obama elections. One of these might be accomplished with an electorate like those of 2010 or 2014, and more likely the 365-390 EV scenario because the loser behind 338-200 in September is going to either put the election in reach or collapse trying to do so.




30 electoral votes (CT, ME-02, MI, NV) cuts the Republican total of electoral votes down to 308, which is roughly an inverse of the Kennedy election of 1960. At this point the election is generally perceived as close. This is roughly Kerry 2004 losing Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but winning Nevada and New Mexico. This is what one can reasonably expect as voters want to replace a 'tired' President with someone new, different, and dynamic... and get someone who reaches for the best in American life and gets it. To paraphrase the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Dan Quayle to either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump: "....you are no Jack Kennedy".



This is as close to a near 50-50 split of the electoral vote with the Republican winning. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Iowa go D before the current tipping-point state goes D... and that now looks like Virginia.

Originally Posted by radind

We should have stayed with the policies of Bush I. No occupation.

GWB had a real shot, before the PNAC phalange pushed him to add Iraq to the list. When extradition was denied, we very properly went to Afghanistan to get Al Qaeda. Our forces had them bottled-up in Tora-Bora ... but Bush heard the Siren's song of the greater victory in Iraq, and it was all over.

We hadn't even fought the Taliban at that point. If we had just completed the mission, the likelihood that we would have gotten involved further was exceedingly small.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The one legitimate point PK has made in all this is the issue of what is a bank? The worst offenders in the last crisis were insurance companies like AIG and specialty finance like Countrywide. No banking regulations will touch them, not that the bank regulations aren't still a good idea. For the shadow banks, we need to take away their toys -- especially the huge asset basket we call derivatives. Derivatives are bets, not investments. There are two options here. Simply making them illegal will push them offshore, but then they're someone else's problem. The second alternative falls under the rubric of caveat emptor. If you make bets and lose, you pay or you lose everything. There will be no hiding behind a limited liability shield. If you make bets and win, but the counter party can't pay, that's tough. No backing ... period.

Gambling serves no socially beneficial end, so why should 'we the people' cover bets?

Elizabeth Warren recently took Paul Krugman to task (though she did not mention him by name) for his "revisionist history" on the root cause of the Crash of '08.

On her Facebook page, she recently wrote:

"Eight years ago, Too Big to Fail banks sparked a financial meltdown, then sucked up hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. Today, after an extensive, multi-year review process, federal regulators concluded that five of the country's biggest banks are still – literally – Too Big to Fail. They officially determined that five US banks are large enough that any one of them could crash the economy again if they started to fail and were not bailed out..."

This announcement is a very big deal. It’s scary. And it means that, unless these banks promptly address the concerns identified by the regulators, the government must push these banks to get smaller and less complex.

The announcement also dramatically demonstrates the danger of taking our focus off the big banks as we think about how to prevent the next major crisis.

There’s been a lot of revisionist history floating around lately that the Too Big to Fail banks weren't really responsible for the financial crisis. That talk isn't new. Wall Street lobbyists have tried to deflect blame for years. But the claim is absolutely untrue.

There would have been no crisis without these giant banks. They encouraged reckless mortgage lending both by gobbling up an endless stream of mortgages to securitize and by funding the slimy subprime lenders who peddled their miserable products to millions of American families. The giant banks spread that risk throughout the financial system by misleading investors about the quality of the mortgages in the securities they were offering...

Revisionist history is dangerous because it can blind us in the present – and bind us in the future. As the FCIC wrote, "If we do not learn from history, we are unlikely to fully recover from it.” Today’s announcement should remind us of the central role that the big banks played in the last crisis – and it is a giant, flashing sign warning us about the central role they will play in the next crisis unless both Congress and our regulators show some backbone, stand up to the revolving door culture that is pervasive in Washington, resist the millions spent on Wall Street lobbying and campaign contributions, and demand real changes at these banks. Today, our top regulators warned us about the danger of the biggest banks – and we would be foolish to ignore their warnings."

As a former commercial banker, I can assure you that Elizabeth Warren--and Bernie Sanders--has a firmer grasp on the issue than does Krugman who, quite frankly, ought to know better. Hillary parroted Krugman's false meme during her last debate with Bernie Sanders for obvious reasons. Her shifting the blame to "shadow banking" let's Bill Clinton off the hook for repealing Glass-Steagall. And don't forget that Hillary--as a member of Bill's inner circle at the time--was in on virtually every policy discussion, including the deregulation of banks. Guilt by association.

Originally Posted by Teacher in Exile

Elizabeth Warren recently took Paul Krugman to task (though she did not mention him by name) for his "revisionist history" on the root cause of the Crash of '08.

On her Facebook page, she recently wrote:

"Eight years ago, Too Big to Fail banks sparked a financial meltdown, then sucked up hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. Today, after an extensive, multi-year review process, federal regulators concluded that five of the country's biggest banks are still – literally – Too Big to Fail. They officially determined that five US banks are large enough that any one of them could crash the economy again if they started to fail and were not bailed out..."

Bankers at their best serve as a bar to reckless abuse of credit. They are the only ones who can do so in an economy not centrally-planned, not that central planning is a good idea. In an entrepreneurial society in which millions want to get rich quick, bankers are the ones who must shatter illusions of how easy it is to get rich on other people's money. In the old days bankers were as a rule the laziest, least-learned, and least imaginative people to graduate from college. They could, as one writer put it, go in at 9, borrow at 3, lend at 6, and be on the golf course at 5. One lent based upon what used to be called the three C's -- character, collateral, and conditions. Want an auto loan? The banker would contact your employer. Collateral? The bank didn't want to be caught with a big loan outstanding with someone who defaulted on a business deal that went bad. Banks were in the business of recycling money from one borrower to the next while taking some profit and expenses from interest. The bank wanted to be certain that if the situation went bad for the borrower it would go really bad for the borrower. Conditions? Obviously, make sure that tne money was going as intended, and that the person and property were properly ensured.

By the 1980s, bankers started going entrepreneurial. They wanted to make profits as well as interest. But as a rule, bankers are not good business people. They too can be snookered. By the Double-Zero decade they were arranging loans so that if the borrower defaulted, the bank could repossess and resell for a profit, something possible when banks are lending to people not creditworthy for property that they can't really afford. So lend a $500K mortgage to someone making $30K a year; the low-income borrower would of course default, but by that time the property could be resold for $700K. What could be more profitable than that? The bank keeps the down payment and all interest, and then swings a profitable deal for $200K.

Except that that can't go on forever. Eventually people run out of down payments. Student loans, especially for suspect vocational schools that take money like Harvard to prepare people for nothing... Uncle Sucker got to guarantee the loans out of the borrower's hide.

Such was the "Opportunity Society" of President George W. Bush, the promotion of an economic bubble. Bubbles devour capital, drawing it away from more appropriate lending. But for the time things can look good. The more cautious bankers found themselves having to join the destructive bubble.

This announcement is a very big deal. It’s scary. And it means that, unless these banks promptly address the concerns identified by the regulators, the government must push these banks to get smaller and less complex.

The solution under Dubya was to become simpler -- but do things on a bigger scale. That is a catastrophic model of business. Business entities that grow too big too fast grow their problems, too.

The announcement also dramatically demonstrates the danger of taking our focus off the big banks as we think about how to prevent the next major crisis.

There’s been a lot of revisionist history floating around lately that the Too Big to Fail banks weren't really responsible for the financial crisis. That talk isn't new. Wall Street lobbyists have tried to deflect blame for years. But the claim is absolutely untrue.

Banking needs to go back to what it was in the past -- deciding who is a good risk with other people's money and who isn't.

There would have been no crisis without these giant banks. They encouraged reckless mortgage lending both by gobbling up an endless stream of mortgages to securitize and by funding the slimy subprime lenders who peddled their miserable products to millions of American families. The giant banks spread that risk throughout the financial system by misleading investors about the quality of the mortgages in the securities they were offering...

Now there is the problem. The bankers were lending to big actors of questionable character -- subprime lenders. Although this rule cannot prevent a business failure, the unwillingness to heed this principle practically ensures failure:

Never act in a way that can only hurt your customer or client.

Bankers ignored that principle and they took the economy down with them.

Revisionist history is dangerous because it can blind us in the present – and bind us in the future. As the FCIC wrote, "If we do not learn from history, we are unlikely to fully recover from it.” Today’s announcement should remind us of the central role that the big banks played in the last crisis – and it is a giant, flashing sign warning us about the central role they will play in the next crisis unless both Congress and our regulators show some backbone, stand up to the revolving door culture that is pervasive in Washington, resist the millions spent on Wall Street lobbying and campaign contributions, and demand real changes at these banks. Today, our top regulators warned us about the danger of the biggest banks – and we would be foolish to ignore their warnings."

Not so long ago, most banking was practically a cottage industry. Banks accepted money from depositors and lent it out to people taking prudent risks -- people who stood to get hurt even more than the banker in the event of failure. If commercial banking was inadequate for the borrower, then there were finance companies who charged high interest rates for asking fewer questions. The people who most readily got loans were those in manufacturing because they could show tangible output and some potential for a steady income.

But manufacturing faded as a way of churning income, so we Americans became hustlers and speculators. That is part of the problem, and for that banks do not have the full culpability.

As a former commercial banker, I can assure you that Elizabeth Warren--and Bernie Sanders--has a firmer grasp on the issue than does Krugman who, quite frankly, ought to know better. Hillary parroted Krugman's false meme during her last debate with Bernie Sanders for obvious reasons. Her shifting the blame to "shadow banking" let's Bill Clinton off the hook for repealing Glass-Steagall. And don't forget that Hillary--as a member of Bill's inner circle at the time--was in on virtually every policy discussion, including the deregulation of banks. Guilt by association.

We absolutely must separate retail banking, investment banking, and insurance because even if they have the same common trait of handling large amounts of money their functions are incompatible -- much as the functions of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers are incompatible.

Don't stop with the large commercial banks. Go all the way to the root of the issue which is the "banking system" itself. The globalist banking system that owns the means of printing currency, the people who own that international wire transfer and ledger service, the people who say which billionaire can shift 10 billion across borders and park it elsewhere. The people who own all the books and keep the records that define "banking".

The entire corrupt structure depends on the keystone of printing. Those who control the amount of electronic currency that exists are at the center of all the problems. There would be no disaster for the US if these people were disenfranchised and their printing presses halted. Their system of slavery would simply come to an end, followed by a golden age of freedom.

These electronic dollar flows are used to command resources and direct labor from a central point, to benefit some and enslave others. It is this hidden slavery that everyone rails against, though they don't know it and still believe they need to hate their neighbor and remain divided and conquered. The social conditioning to obedience and hatred is strong, but it is cracking in the Crises. In the future people will no longer be required to waste their lives under threat of starvation and social approbation; the slavemasters will be cast out, never to return.

We are living in the last days of the Iron Age. The final act of the Iron Age will witness the ultimate destruction of slavery.

Originally Posted by Seattleblue

Don't stop with the large commercial banks. Go all the way to the root of the issue which is the "banking system" itself. The globalist banking system that owns the means of printing currency, the people who own that international wire transfer and ledger service, the people who say which billionaire can shift 10 billion across borders and park it elsewhere. The people who own all the books and keep the records that define "banking".

The US government printed money long before the bubble of the Double-Zero decade. Something went very wrong with the banking business -- basically it got too big for its britches. It abrogated its responsibility for controlling who gets to be a large-scale entrepreneur and who has to seek other ways of making a living. It started financing what bankers used to warn us to not get involved in: the infamous get-rich-quick schemes. America went for a swim in the sewer of scams and schemes in the Double-Zero decade -- and the banking industry sold us the rights to swim in the sewer.

I recognize the significance of the reduced role of manufacturing in the American economy. Sure, there is money to be made in some lucrative services from law to entertainment; and not everyone is cut out to work in a factory. But the factory was long the most reliable and readily available means out of poverty. Just think of the promotion of industrial work among smart Negroes (the polite term of the day) by the great Booker T. Washington more than a century ago. Did you think that smart blacks were going to get jobs that white mediocrities thought the preserve of white mediocrities?

Many service activities pay badly -- like retailing (it's really a service), cleaning, and fast food.

The entire corrupt structure depends on the keystone of printing. Those who control the amount of electronic currency that exists are at the center of all the problems. There would be no disaster for the US if these people were disenfranchised and their printing presses halted. Their system of slavery would simply come to an end, followed by a golden age of freedom.

Money is at best a measure of value. So long as the money supply does not grow faster than the productivity of the economic order there will be no significant inflation. Deflation is to be avoided. Even if there is no growth in productivity per capita, increased economic activity that originates in population growth alone needs more money to meet the larger population.

Denial of the printing of money means either a command society (the self-contained plantation except for the profit of the planters), payment in kind (as little and as rough as possible for as much toil as possible from the serfs) or the infamous failure of the gold standard.

These electronic dollar flows are used to command resources and direct labor from a central point, to benefit some and enslave others. It is this hidden slavery that everyone rails against, though they don't know it and still believe they need to hate their neighbor and remain divided and conquered. The social conditioning to obedience and hatred is strong, but it is cracking in the Crises. In the future people will no longer be required to waste their lives under threat of starvation and social approbation; the slavemasters will be cast out, never to return.

Hidden slavery? Practically impossible unless one keeps the slaves out of sight, which the few who get convicted of enslavement in America get away with until the slaves are discovered. The real problem is the rapaciousness and ruthlessness of economic elites devoid of any moral compass or any empathy -- something that hurts people no matter what the formal system of economics.

Hatred is not a growing cancer; it is a wounded, doomed animal. Wounded animals are much more dangerous than healthy ones.

We are living in the last days of the Iron Age. The final act of the Iron Age will witness the ultimate destruction of slavery.

Slavery? Need is not slavery. We are at the end of the era in which economic elites can use shortages to control us. We can easily make all the things that we need, and the sheer collection of things simply makes life more complex than more rich. When status symbols become meaningless, we need to look toward other ways of finding happiness -- experiences instead of baubles. Access, especially to intellectual property, is of greater value than is ownership.

Iron? I call this the Age of Aluminum and Plastic, the commonness of those objects corresponding to revolutionary transformations of technology.

But just think: we could be entering the golden age that Karl Marx first prophesied, that of Communism (no, not the perverse order of the Soviet Union and its imitators) in which scarcity no longer drives people to produce. We may be going to that directly from capitalism.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

GWB had a real shot, before the PNAC phalange pushed him to add Iraq to the list. When extradition was denied, we very properly went to Afghanistan to get Al Qaeda. Our forces had them bottled-up in Tora-Bora ... but Bush heard the Siren's song of the greater victory in Iraq, and it was all over.

We hadn't even fought the Taliban at that point. If we had just completed the mission, the likelihood that we would have gotten involved further was exceedingly small.

And, we are still paying for the disaster in Iraq.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

But just think: we could be entering the golden age that Karl Marx first prophesied, that of Communism (no, not the perverse order of the Soviet Union and its imitators) in which scarcity no longer drives people to produce. We may be going to that directly from capitalism.

Long, long ago one of my teachers made the comment that the problem with Communism was that no one had actually put Communism into practice. Of course , at that time I had no clue what the teacher was trying to convey.
So far the leaders of revolution under the banner of Communism rather quickly just set up another dictatorship.

Originally Posted by radind

Long, long ago one of my teachers made the comment that the problem with Communism was that no one had actually put Communism into practice. Of course , at that time I had no clue what the teacher was trying to convey.
So far the leaders of revolution under the banner of Communism rather quickly just set up another dictatorship.

It's the same with any Utopian Vision. It's the same with Libertarianism. It's the same with Cynic Nero's Utopian Vision.

None of these fantasies can come to pass. Once enough force has been applied to the subject population to install the Utopia, whoever is applying the force realizes that they don't have to give up control, and a new kind of autocracy is born.

Originally Posted by radind

Long, long ago one of my teachers made the comment that the problem with Communism was that no one had actually put Communism into practice. Of course , at that time I had no clue what the teacher was trying to convey.
So far the leaders of revolution under the banner of Communism rather quickly just set up another dictatorship.

Communist Parties have typically sought to facilitate Communism by rushing into Socialism as Marx wanted it -- government ownership and operation of productive enterprise so that Humanity can get through the age of scarcity. Communists cut out the profit of capitalists and can dedicate profit to investment in plant and equipment instead of into luxurious indulgence by a few. The problem is that the Communist parties invariably get complete power and elites within them become just as exploitative as aristocrats and plutocrats. Marx also got wrong that ownership of the assets was the real power. Command is -- which explains the power of executive elites in business bureaucracies and of political hacks. People who get well rewarded for treating others badly usually treat others badly and reap the rewards.

Communists typically went quickly for maximal production without judging the appropriateness of what they produced. So was there anything that the Soviet Union and its satellites made that you cared to buy? As Robert Heinlein put it, the luxuries from the Soviet Union were caviar and furs -- basically the sort of output that one would expect from a hunter-gatherer society. There was the AK-47, probably the best rifle in its time... but military procurement is always exempt the rules of the marketplace. The ballet? The symphony? Chamber music? As we all should know by now, success in cultural creativity is craftsmanship that defies the calculation of profit and loss. (I did enjoy some records from Czech and Hungarian labels). Or it's leftovers from a capitalist or even aristocratic heritage -- like those fine recordings of classical music on Suprophon, Hungaroton, and Melodiya.

Consumer choice is a good control of underproduction of basic desires and the production of schlock. But what happens when manufacturing of stuff becomes the manufacture of excess? We are there now, and that is much of our political and economic mess. Our educational system and our mass culture have ill prepared us for a time in which overproduction is a certainty.

In this thread I rarely show state polls. But the state is Pennsylvania, one that Republicans usually think that they have a chance of winning in a close Presidential race that they win. This poll suggests that with Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz such is a delusion. Four years ago Pennsylvania was very close to being a Mitt Romney pickup. This time it would be for John Kasich if he could keep the campaign dynamics as they are except for now having practically no chance of winning the nomination. But I have some discussion of that for another post.

I have some other states filled in (among them Indiana, which rarely gets polled).



http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-t...ows-1461502801


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




Hillary Clinton vs. John Kasich





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%.

Binary matches involving Bernie Sanders:

Bernie Sanders vs. Ted Cruz




Bernie Sanders vs. John Kasich




Bernie Sanders 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%.

Something is even more important than winning the election -- not failing afterward.

Polls involving Sanders (who needs to win about 70% of all remaining delegates to win the Democratic Party's nomination for President, which is the only way that one wins in a binary race) and Kasich (at best a compromise choice between Cruz or Trump supporters after several balloting failures by both, which will probably not look as good in November 2016 as it does now) may be losing current relevance. But note that I say "current". The likelihood of Sanders vs. Kasich is slight, and I have cause that will become evident in this post why I choose to avoid discussing a Sanders-Kasich matchup.


Bernie Sanders vs. Ted Cruz





Bernie Sanders 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%.

Sometimes we get stuck with polling maps that show an election that can never happen. In 1968 we might have had Robert F. Kennedy vs. Richard M. Nixon vs. George Wallace. I doubt that anyone could have predicted how that would have gone had all three been the electoral choices of 1968. God help us if something like the assassination of RFK happens in a Crisis Era when people are not yet at their best behavior. More frequently we see campaigns that fizzle out early because someone proves not up to the challenge due to a flaw that the candidate is slow to discover (think of Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama; I'd love to show one of her polling maps from from 2012). I figured that unlike others similarly reactionary (like Mike Huckabee) she so bungled the English language that she became a joke. She did especially badly, I figured -- worse than other Republicans -- among people whose first language was not English. Such would take a long explanation of something no longer relevant to any discussion of this or subsequent elections. Sarah Palin will never run for President again, and she will never be nominated for the Vice-Presidency.

But I also had matchup maps this year involving Hillary Clinton against others who dropped out of the Presidential race of 2016 -- Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio. I figure that they all recognized that they had no chance to win. Some find that their support is in only one region. Some figure that if nominated they will lose so badly that they will be butts of political jokes for the rest of their lives. For some this is the wrong election year for their appeals.

Hillary Clinton will almost certainly win the Democratic nomination for President. Will she fare as well in the general election as maps suggest for Bernie Sanders? Almost certainly not. She does not have as extensive an appeal as Sanders does. She is no populist. So are these maps relevant in the event that Hillary Clinton should lose to Cruz or Trump, even if Bernie Sanders should not be up to running for President in 2020?

Yes. The Cruz-Sanders and Sanders-Trump matchups suggest what is possible in the event of a failure of a Cruz or Trump administration. Nobody can predict success of a Presidency. Few Presidents ever got elected with more going right for them than did Herbert Hoover. Aside from his bungling of the economic meltdown that began in September 1929 he was not a bad President. On the other hand that bungling is what he is now best known for. (He presided over another calamity related to his failure at economic stewardship -- the rising polarization of German political life).

Such polls as I show of Sanders against Cruz and Trump suggest what a 2020 election would look like with a failed Republican President. Now what about a failed Democratic President in 2020?

Hillary Clinton vs. John Kasich



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%.

Don't get me wrong. I do not think that John Kasich, if nominated for President will defeat Hillary Clinton in November. He has run a campaign based largely on avoiding saying the offensive things that other Republicans say. To get the nomination in a third or later ballot he will have to cut deals with Cruz and/or Trump -- compromises that will soil him in the minds of people who wanted a quiet, bland, unobjectionable Republican to be President.

Should Hillary Clinton be a failure as President, then this polling map of Clinton vs. Kasich will apply to an electorate not so fussy about alternatives. To be sure, Democrats are entrenched enough in California, Maryland, and New York that a Republican nominee will still lose those three states. There will thus be no trouncing of the Democratic incumbent as severe in the electoral college as happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980. California has six more electoral votes (55) than Carter got (49) in 1980 and nearly what Hoover got in total in 1932. But if you see a loss analogous to Carter in 1980 as six states and the District of Columbia, then one probably has the following states and DC going to Hillary Clinton:

California (55)
New York (29)
Maryland (10)
Massachusetts (12)
Rhode Island (4)
Vermont (3)
District of Columbia (3)

That's 116. That's a little better than Dukakis did in 1988.

Add some more that are not in some shade of blue

Delaware (3)
Maine (4)
New Mexico (5)
Hawaii (4)
Illinois (20)
New Jersey (15)
Minnesota (5 -- the state does not swing much)
Washington (12)
Oregon (7)

...and she is up to 190... 22 more than the elder Bush in 1992.

So much for number-crunching to meet a coincidence.



So if the economy goes in the tank, maybe cutting wages, outlawing trade unions, and mandating unpaid overtime while shifting from a federal income tax to a federal sales tax might sound like a cure. Should the People's Republic of China make satellites out of the Philippines and Indonesia, then maybe we will need a rhetorically-tough President (or so it might seem).

On the other hand if the Republican President causes NATO to splinter or brings about another economic meltdown like that beginning in September 1929...

Elections have consequences. We can vote for utter failures and have no clue.

Mr. Trump,

Since you announced your candidacy for president, teaching high school social studies has become more interesting. Other than comedians, students have gained more from your White House run than anyone.

As a high school American government teacher, I recognize that you are in a great position to win the nomination. The U.S. Constitution and the values it embodies serve as the foundation of our curriculum, so when my students ask questions about the election, the role of the president and you, their interest brings more meaning to our discourse.

Mr. Trump, taking questions about you has been a challenge. The cornerstone of your immigration policy includes building a “great wall” and having Mexico pay for it, so naturally students have questions. When you said, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” about opponent Carly Fiorina, students wondered about your character. As you talked about “bombing the (expletive)” out of enemies and killing their families or banning all Muslims from entering the country, we took notice in class.

Mr. Trump, you have put me in a precarious position as a professional educator. My ability to remain neutral, as you brazenly assault the American values I have spent my career promoting, became more difficult every time you found a microphone. Referring to African Americans as, “the blacks” and bragging publicly about having a young “beautiful piece of (expletive)” are just a couple of the red flags my students have raised in class.

Mr. Trump, behavior like yours in a classroom would stifle learning and make parents cringe.

You actually referenced your penis size in a national debate and publicly denigrated the appearance of a political rival’s wife. Your preposterous comments and arrogance justify students’ concerns about your temperament. For many of my students, who study history and defend the Bill of Rights, it is inconceivable for them to support you.

At one time, we laughed at your antics. We had never heard a political figure say the things you were saying and in a manner that defied even modest political calculations. As you sunk to new lows, students became victims of the circus atmosphere you were creating.

Mr. Trump, not taking you seriously was a mistake I deeply regret — as a teacher and as a citizen.

Your candidacy has ushered in a sobering realization that more Americans are impaired by prejudice and anger than my students thought was possible. Mr. Trump, you have reached millions of people with a disturbing political message and nasty tactics. Your behavior is repulsive, but professional integrity requires that I attempt to understand your appeal.

Mistakenly, I expected that decency would always have a role in any legitimate campaign for president. As a veteran teacher, I failed to recognize the consequences of the depraved manner in which you pedal fear to hungry crowds. We never saw your rise coming. Once the laughter died down you were leading the Republican field by huge margins, and the teacher became the student.

Your lively political rallies with threats of violence and lessons about greatness woke me up. The punchlines became storylines that paint a picture of a hopeless, deeply confused nation. You are enthusiastically leading an insurgency against goodwill that my students will spend a lifetime undoing.

Yet, I remain optimistic about the future of our nation in the face of your existence.

Mr. Trump, I am hopeful because my students are gaining a deeper appreciation of American values like promoting the common good and fighting for equality. Students are embracing diversity and individual rights as those values come to life on the campaign trail. Student attitudes are being shaped, in part, by opposition to your toxic rhetoric. As many students prepare to vote, they recognize the threat your presidency would pose to the world.


Mr. Trump, at worst your popularity is a cruel reminder that many of our neighbors and friends have xenophobic leanings and a worldview skewed by sexism and bigotry. At best, your entertainment value has clouded the judgment of too many voters.

Regardless, for my curious students, you are their first living lesson on the perils of populist racism. Hatred and bigotry, really bad ideas before you came along, are now alive for first-hand analysis in every classroom coast to coast. You are energizing a generation of young people to fight back.

Once you flame out, they won’t let you happen again. This is the source of my optimism.

Instead of teasing modern angles out of the lessons from Jim Crow America, we have you: a national political figure exposing the ugliness that occurs when power and bigotry mix in the absence of humility. In social studies classrooms, divergent points of view and civil dialogue co-exist. Your absence on the national stage will encourage informed conversation that will advance progress. The legacy of your successful run will be overshadowed by the lessons we learned from your disgraceful campaign. Lessons that will live much longer than the harm you inflict today.

Today, you are trending. Tomorrow, your story will be the one about the damage that is unleashed when fear controls the political narrative. The lesson about how slowly the electorate digested your hostile message about American greatness will stay with us a long time, Mr. Trump. Your candidacy will be a lesson about temptation and averting disaster.

Mr. Trump, you are a reminder that progress is not dependent on a specific political party or the ambitions of one man. Advancing American democracy demands a citizenry that is vigilant and informed.

You, Mr. Trump, are the pathetic reminder that we needed a pathetic reminder.

Nick Gregory
High School Social Studies Teacher

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-g...b_9695866.html

Pennsylvania poll % averages, 4/24-25

Clinton 54
Sanders 39.6

Trump 48.25
Cruz 26.5
Kasich 21.75

My advice to a Kasich supporter who thinks that Trump and Cruz would be disasters. Identity disguised, as this is from another site. Obviously most of the analytical writing is mine.

Originally Posted by a Kasich supporter in Indiana

Is strategic voting really a thing? Let's say I'm a moderate Indiana Republican who wants to see Kasich nominated. Do I strategically vote Cruz? Because if I'm a Kasich supporter I probably see Cruz as a lunatic.

More than likely I stay home, or I switch parties and vote Hillary so there's someone who can defeat Trump in the general.

The ultimate strategic voting is as such: if your Party's nominee should prove a disastrous choice, someone who would bring about a depression or a military/diplomatic debacle or offend most of your sensibilities, then vote for the candidate of the other party. Three things can go right:

1. You may have elected a President who solves some problems.

OK, without Watergate and the other dirty-tricks stuff, Nixon was an adequate President. I doubt that a majority of Democrats who voted for Nixon over McGovern long had regrets about voting for Nixon.

Many liberals may despise Ronald Reagan, but for all his offenses to liberal sensibilities, he at least presided over the end of the disconcerting inflation of the 1970s. America started to get some respect in the world that it had lost in recent years. He did right about Grenada... and he did right with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now let's get to Barack Obama. After the abject failure that we had as President before him, 'more of the same' or even 'much of the same' would have been bad for us. He took foreign policy back to the Bush foreign policy -- that of the elder Bush, whose foreign policy has been adequate enough for imitation by Bill Clinton. I didn't expect him to work so well with the military and with intelligence agencies as he did, but Osama bin Laden didn't expect that either. Putting an end to the most dangerous meltdown of the American economy since that of 1929-1932 may not fully be his doing, but he certainly didn't get in the way of anything necessary to stop the collapse.

All the stuff about him not loving America? He knows its faults. He worked with those faults. Dislike his culture? Does that matter?

I see Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan having much the same skill sets; the difference is that about 5% of the American people will not vote for a black man unless he is a stooge for right-wing interests. A white male doing what Barack Obama did as President would have likely won something like a 45-state landslide re-election.

2. We get a mediocre, one-term President, and we get a better choice from your Party the next time.

The election of Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford in 1976 may have been a blessing in disguise for Republicans. I can imagine Ronald Reagan losing to Ted Kennedy in 1980 due to partisan fatigue over the Ford Administration. Dukakis losing to the elder Bush in 1988? Maybe Clinton was better than Dukakis ever would have been. I have never heard anyone criticize the elder Bush for a mistaken approach to the collapse of Communism or to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Panama? Become ferociously anti-American and get involved in the trafficking of drugs as a military strongman, and you might reasonably expect to be overthrown and sent to a federal prison. Those were the three most critical tests of the Presidency of the elder Bush, and he did them so well that all but one subsequent President has followed the playbook. The one who didn't follow that playbook (paradoxically his son) got America into a disaster.

3. The President elected at the time gets enmeshed in a disaster of war, foreign policy, or the overall economy that, even if not his fault, was inevitable anyway.

Maybe your Party would be better off if the calamity happens on the watch of the President in the other Party. Think of the 1929 Stock Market Crash and ensuing events. We will never know. Few Americans realized in the early 1960s that the Communist insurgency was certain to win because the government of South Vietnam offended a large part of the populace for reasons other than economics. Nobody had a clue that one of America's biggest allies going into the late 1970s (Iran) would become a political tinderbox.

Would Al Smith been more effective than Herbert Hoover in dealing with the economic meltdown? Maybe not. Would Barry Goldwater have handled the Vietnam buildup any differently? Probably with even more vigor, betting heavier in a bad 'game'. Would you as a partisan Republican prefer that Jimmy Carter got caught in stagflation and the consequences of the collapse of the Pahlavi Dynasty in Iran?

Having the better President now is the best for all of us. Getting a better President four years later might be better than wasting time with one that you think OK this time but that 55% of voters reject the next time.

Kasich 2020 might be possible if Hillary Clinton wins and proves mediocre or simply unlucky. Kasich 2020 will be impossible if President Trump or President Cruz proves a disaster.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

My advice to a Kasich supporter who thinks that Trump and Cruz would be disasters. Identity disguised, as this is from another site. Obviously most of the analytical writing is mine.



The ultimate strategic voting is as such: if your Party's nominee should prove a disastrous choice, someone who would bring about a depression or a military/diplomatic debacle or offend most of your sensibilities, then vote for the candidate of the other party. Three things can go right:

1. You may have elected a President who solves some problems.

OK, without Watergate and the other dirty-tricks stuff, Nixon was an adequate President. I doubt that a majority of Democrats who voted for Nixon over McGovern long had regrets about voting for Nixon.

Many liberals may despise Ronald Reagan, but for all his offenses to liberal sensibilities, he at least presided over the end of the disconcerting inflation of the 1970s. America started to get some respect in the world that it had lost in recent years. He did right about Grenada... and he did right with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now let's get to Barack Obama. After the abject failure that we had as President before him, 'more of the same' or even 'much of the same' would have been bad for us. He took foreign policy back to the Bush foreign policy -- that of the elder Bush, whose foreign policy has been adequate enough for imitation by Bill Clinton. I didn't expect him to work so well with the military and with intelligence agencies as he did, but Osama bin Laden didn't expect that either. Putting an end to the most dangerous meltdown of the American economy since that of 1929-1932 may not fully be his doing, but he certainly didn't get in the way of anything necessary to stop the collapse.

All the stuff about him not loving America? He knows its faults. He worked with those faults. Dislike his culture? Does that matter?

I see Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan having much the same skill sets; the difference is that about 5% of the American people will not vote for a black man unless he is a stooge for right-wing interests. A white male doing what Barack Obama did as President would have likely won something like a 45-state landslide re-election.

2. We get a mediocre, one-term President, and we get a better choice from your Party the next time.

The election of Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford in 1976 may have been a blessing in disguise for Republicans. I can imagine Ronald Reagan losing to Ted Kennedy in 1980 due to partisan fatigue over the Ford Administration. Dukakis losing to the elder Bush in 1988? Maybe Clinton was better than Dukakis ever would have been. I have never heard anyone criticize the elder Bush for a mistaken approach to the collapse of Communism or to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Panama? Become ferociously anti-American and get involved in the trafficking of drugs as a military strongman, and you might reasonably expect to be overthrown and sent to a federal prison. Those were the three most critical tests of the Presidency of the elder Bush, and he did them so well that all but one subsequent President has followed the playbook. The one who didn't follow that playbook (paradoxically his son) got America into a disaster.

3. The President elected at the time gets enmeshed in a disaster of war, foreign policy, or the overall economy that, even if not his fault, was inevitable anyway.

Maybe your Party would be better off if the calamity happens on the watch of the President in the other Party. Think of the 1929 Stock Market Crash and ensuing events. We will never know. Few Americans realized in the early 1960s that the Communist insurgency was certain to win because the government of South Vietnam offended a large part of the populace for reasons other than economics. Nobody had a clue that one of America's biggest allies going into the late 1970s (Iran) would become a political tinderbox.

Would Al Smith been more effective than Herbert Hoover in dealing with the economic meltdown? Maybe not. Would Barry Goldwater have handled the Vietnam buildup any differently? Probably with even more vigor, betting heavier in a bad 'game'. Would you as a partisan Republican prefer that Jimmy Carter got caught in stagflation and the consequences of the collapse of the Pahlavi Dynasty in Iran?

Having the better President now is the best for all of us. Getting a better President four years later might be better than wasting time with one that you think OK this time but that 55% of voters reject the next time.

Kasich 2020 might be possible if Hillary Clinton wins and proves mediocre or simply unlucky. Kasich 2020 will be impossible if President Trump or President Cruz proves a disaster.

Well since none of the likely GOP candidates this year (including Trump) would appeal to the true Centrist swing voter, the most likely outcome is Clinton. That having been written: If Trump is the nominee, the chance of an upset increases, in spite of current polls, simply because Trump is so dirty (he's projecting when he says this of Cruz). If Cruz is the nominee, the weirdo "I'll do anything to vote to upset the apple cart" crowd will sit it out or vote for a 3rd party Trump. Clinton wins in that case.