The rumor that Robert Reich floated a while back was that the establishment was just waiting 'til it was too late for Trump to file as independent and then, regardless of whether he has a majority of the delegates, they are going to kick him to the curb as unfit for office. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that and it would be suicide in the current election but it might still be the right move to try and salvage the party long term. They’d be wounded but would have four years to recover. I don’t know if they have the stones to do it though. They might still rally around him out of party loyalty.
Going back to the Vox article on authoritarianism, the only way they can reverse it at this point would be to de-escalate the constant drumbeat of fear from both Fox news and every Republican politician running for office but I don’t think they’ll ever see that. I don’t think they can change their MO so if they strike down Trump, another will rise in his place. And aren’t many of them Trump-lite anyway? The nationalism, the scapegoating of racial and religious minorities, the misogyny, the pandering to evangelicals while espousing values that are antithetical to Christian values, the running of our country by government enabled corporations… The party left principled conservatism behind in the 20th century. Certainly they are not the party of fiscal conservatism. That’s just something they spout to justify cutting taxes and cutting non-military spending.
To make my position clear to the conservatives here so you don’t think I’m dog-piling on you, while I am personally a progressive, I recognize the importance of a wide range of political views. My grandfather was deeply conservative and Eisenhower is one of my personal heroes. I have many good friends who are conservative and I have deep respect for principled conservatism even if my own beliefs run the either direction. I’d like to see us return to a nation where two valid but differing philosophies engage in the art of compromise in the name of actually governing our country.
I’ll predict if that situation arises they rally rather than kick. Feel free to kick me if I turn out to be wrong.
Trump has by far the highest negative among Republican of any candidate. If we had a preferential ballot system at the start of the season with all 17 candidates, I would have given him 16th or 17 place pretty early on. I think Rubio, Cruz, and probably Kasich would beat Trump with a preferential ballot.
How delegates are actually selected is very complicated and it varies by state. At best a slim majority are actually hard core supporter of a candidate picked by the candidate’s staff. The rest are folks are current and former elected officials and party volunteers. They are pledged to support the candidate on the first ballot and sometimes the 2nd ballot, but not pledged to support him on any procedural rules. I’ve been to a couple state conventions and there are ton of rule fights even when when people are unified behind the top candidates (Governor, Senators)
For the non-US folks, the best way to think about it the Parlimentary system. In a parlimentary system, it is fairly common for one party to have a plurarity but not an outright majority. The party with most number of seat is asked to form a government and they combine with 3rd and/or 4th place party to form a coaltion government. But sometimes no other political party will work with the majority party, so the 2nd and 3rd parties come together and form a government. You argue all day about if it is fair or not, but it is the way the system works.
The solution in this case is much simpler. Ban cigarettes. Of course sometimes you need to take steps like these slowly (ban them in public places, then ban them.indoors…) but this is a measure that has been proven to work. And one that has helped reduce costs in health care (and will reduce them further down the line).
The problem with health care is that it can’t be isolated, but it’s affected and code pendent with many other policies. Effective public health care needs either really good coordination or a strong central government (at least in several areas).
Again, post hoc punitive measures have been proven not to work and have been abandoned as policy in single-payer systems a while ago. Human psychology does kot work that way and telling somebody that unless they stop they will have to pay will mean nothing to them (after all, they su possibly already know that unless they stop they might get sick and people still continue their -our- unhealthy habits). And while it’s all good to say “at least let them pay” the reality is that after they become unable to pay, the system then has to pay an even bigger cost (because there’s data that when people have to pay, they take longer to seek help).
Banning drugs never stopped law abiding tax payers from footing the bills of treating drug blinging overdosers.
Yeah. Soft banning works better. Keep the drug legal but limit the public use and tax it to hell. That way you reduce consumption without hiding it (and thus losing control).
But, one of the only decent arguments against blanket drug legalization is indeed the public health costs of such measures (even when it carries other benefits, including better treatment for addicts). Some countries with legalized consumption of mostly illegal elsewhere substances have tight rules on public use and sales.
Strollen’s summary is pretty good, but the thing to remember here is that at the end of the day, the two parties are (mostly) not enshrined in hard-core law. Republicans and Democrats are pretty much just social clubs who put forth presidential candidates. You could make your own political party out of your old D&D gaming group and it would have just as much legal standing as the Elephants or Donkeys. [Of course, getting the required # of signatures in each of the 50 states in order to get on the ballot might pose a challenge for your little party]
And since they are pretty much just clubs, the primary and convention rules are decided by the party leaders before the season starts, and they can (and do!) change from election to election. In this cycle, the GOP rules state that the candidate must have a majority (meaning >50%) of the delegates to be the nominee when the convention starts. If no one has that, then they go to the floor and start rounds of voting with the delegates acting as proxies for the people that sent them.
If that happens, it won’t be the GOP pulling a fast one on Trump. It’ll just be them following the rules that they set down previously and that he (Trump) agreed to play by. You could say that the GOP Establishment is trying hard to engineer that situation, but that would be “gaming the system”, not “rigging the game.”
This is true, but nobody seriously believes that Trump supporters will accept that, right?
In other news, thank god this thread is here to remind me that I deserve to live in debt slavery if at all, because Americans don’t fucking understand how medicine works.
Oh sure. If it goes to a floor-vote the Trumpites will lose their shit because they appear to be incapable of comprehending any nuance at all.
I can’t educate Trump supporters, but I hope I might have cleared things up for a couple Qt3’ers.
Oghier
6354
True, but do you think that any other candidates’ voters would react differently? The primary system looks and feels like a democratic process, even if it’s not based in the constitution. If the candidate with a plurality of voter support were to be passed over, those voters would feel deeply betrayed. I think that the result would be similar if the same thing happened to Cruz or Sanders.
With Trump, it would be worse because the candidate himself would lose his marbles, and that implosion would receive 24-7 coverage by every network. He would not eventually embrace the nominee and instruct his voters to get in line. He would threaten to litigate. Hell, he might whip it out onstage.
I think people are quite right that trying to get a brokered convention will harden, even energize, Trump’s supporters. The thing to remember, though, is that those hard-core Trump supporters appear to be about 25% of the GOP primary electorate, with another 5% to 20% who are currently thinking about voting for Trump “because he’s a winner.”
The point of the Stop Trump movement appears to be stop the growth of the leaners - create the perception that Trump is a bomb, not a shoo-in - to prevent a takeover of the party by Trump. In that analysis, the Establishment GOP doesn’t care whether their campaign makes the 25% hard-core as mad as hell. They care about keeping Trump’s overall support within the party below 50%.
(Considerations about winning the general seem to have gone out the window. This party squabbling really takes me back to the days of my youth when it was common - among the Democrats.)
Timex
6356
So be it.
Dealing with Trump is like dealing with a terrorist at this point. You can’t bend to his will out of fear that he’s going to be an ass. Screw it, just do the right thing and deal with his assinine bullshit afterwards.
I think people are quite right that trying to get a brokered convention will harden, even energize, Trump’s supporters. The thing to remember, though, is that those hard-core Trump supporters appear to be about 25% of the GOP primary electorate, with another 5% to 20% who are currently thinking about voting for Trump “because he’s a winner.”
The point of the Stop Trump movement appears to be stop the growth of the leaners - create the perception that Trump is a bomb, not a shoo-in - to prevent a takeover of the party by Trump. In that analysis, the Establishment GOP doesn’t care whether their campaign makes the 25% hard-core as mad as hell. They care about keeping Trump’s overall support within the party below 50%.
(Considerations about winning the general seem to have gone out the window. This party squabbling really takes me back to the days of my youth when it was common - among the Democrats.)
And as I pointed out, the Trump fools are like 20% of those voting in the primaries… but the overall number of primary voters for the GOP currently is WAY HIGHER than normal. You can pull the trump supporters out and throw them away, and you still have a large GOP base. They aren’t required. They’re a bunch of racists who don’t normally vote anyway.
Timex
6357
More data continues to trickle out highlighting how Trump is pretty shitty at business.
Last year, Wonkblog examined Trump’s performance as an investor based on public estimates of his wealth, including his own claims. His numbers were not only worse than those posted by skilled investors such as Warren Buffett, but Trump has made even less than a Main Street investor would by buying decent run-of-the-mill mutual funds to save money, if that investor had started with as much money as Trump did.
In response, several readers wrote in to defend Trump, complaining that comparing the real-estate business to the stock market is comparing apples to oranges.
That’s true, but it turns out that making money in real estate has been even easier than making money in stocks during the past several decades. Compared to other investors in his business, Trump’s performance looks much worse than when compared to ordinary people who save money in the stock market.
In 1976, Trump told the New York Times that he was worth $200 million. Had he put that money in an ordinary fund based on the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, the kind that many people use to save money for retirement, he’d have $12 billion today. That is more than the $10 billion he has claimed he is worth. Bloomberg estimates his wealth at $2.9 billion.
Jim Webb effectively said Trump is better than Hillary today. Wow. There are going to be some Trump Democratsm and not just in a burn all the houses style.
Let’s hope they all live in Red States where it won’t matter.
Timex
6360
Webb also bragged about killing some dude with a grenade during a debate. So there’s that.
Related to that previous thing about Trump’s failure as a business man, some interesting thing I was unaware of is that Romney didn’t actually get money from his father. I had kind of assumed he did, but apparently the only money his father gave him (beyond the benefits of growing up wealthy) was a small loan for $42k to buy a house.
That actually makes me much more impressed in Romney’s subsequent success.
Oghier
6361
Literally none of Trump’s supporters will believe this. The dude makes speeches standing in front of a 757 with his name painted on it, next to his supermodel wife. And he has his own TV show.
If you want to change people’s minds with a personal attack, it must go to an attribute that those people already suspect or fear may be true. You either use confirmation bias as a lever, or you run into it as a wall. That’s why the email story bothers even Hillary supporters – “trust” is her vulnerability. Themes like “Trump’s a bad businessman,” though, will be instantly rejected by anybody who doesn’t already hate him.
