[djtiesto]

Surprised there hasn't been any topics on the 2016 primaries... anyways, I'm shocked this guy actually did it... he's going to be the Republican nominee. Him vs. Clinton... though I'm not much of a Clinton fan (I voted Bernie in the primaries, naturally) I'm still very curious how this match will play out. One of the first times I really have to just suck it up and vote "lesser of 2 evils". While Hillary is in the pocket of the big banks, she supported the IRAQ war, she supported trade deals that devastated the rust belt, and still doesn't want to move away from identity politics, she actually has some semblance of an idea what to do beyond "blah blah build a wall blah blah make 'murka great again".

But regardless of who wins between Hillary and Trump, at least it'll be better than Cruz... *shudder* And at least the debates and political commentary will be grade-A entertainment.

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 05 May 2016 - 04:02 AM

[Lachesis]

donald dump

[Dr Lancer-X]

While it's a shame about Bernie, I admit I'm kind of excited to see how the Trump vs Hillary contest will play out. Everyone's been saying Hillary's been pretty much guaranteed since the start and that Trump had virtually no chance of winning the nomination-- even the normally fantastic FiveThirtyEight was waay off the mark. Now things don't look quite as certain.

[CJA]

i hope in the future that we can feed a candidate's genetic fingerprint into a neural network to determine how good they will be as president

political science

[Dr Lancer-X]

CJA, on 06 May 2016 - 06:48 AM, said:

i hope in the future that we can feed a candidate's genetic fingerprint into a neural network to determine how good they will be as president

political science

dismissing the effects of environment/upbringing and swinging for eugenics might carry some problems

Now, if we could take a full scan of the candidate's brain and run them through a Presidential Simulator, seeing what they would do, how they would react to crises etc... that could be nice. Although by then we could probably just create a perfect AI to be president instead

[CJA]

Dr Lancer-X, on 05 May 2016 - 05:07 PM, said:

dismissing the effects of environment/upbringing and swinging for eugenics might carry some problems

Now, if we could take a full scan of the candidate's brain and run them through a Presidential Simulator, seeing what they would do, how they would react to crises etc... that could be nice. Although by then we could probably just create a perfect AI to be president instead

the political halting problem

all hail our robocracy

[djtiesto]

Dr Lancer-X, on 05 May 2016 - 05:40 AM, said:

While it's a shame about Bernie, I admit I'm kind of excited to see how the Trump vs Hillary contest will play out. Everyone's been saying Hillary's been pretty much guaranteed since the start and that Trump had virtually no chance of winning the nomination-- even the normally fantastic FiveThirtyEight was waay off the mark. Now things don't look quite as certain.

Nate Silver was the biggest loser of this election by far. And he just kept on taking those Ls. For someone whose analysis is so built off polls, he was very tone deaf to what they actually said. (I do think the 'elite' such as Silver tend to live in a bubble and aren't very aware of what's going on outside the ivory tower) Not to mention, after every "unexpected" Trump win, he countered with a post saying how "this means nothing", "things can still change", "what this actually shows is <reason why Trump won't be nominated>". It wasn't until the day he won Indiana and Cruz conceded, that 538 finally admitted what actually happened.

I'll admit, I did think it was gonna be Jeb until Iowa/NH, then Marco... once Marco lost Florida, then I knew Trump had it in the bag, even if it would take him a while to get there...

The Hillary vs Trump race, I'm not so sure. At first I'd think Hillary has it in the bag, but:
-Trump's got heavy appeal in rust-belt swing states, where lots of factory jobs went away due to trade deals supported by Hillary, such as NAFTA.
-Trump's got the south covered.
-New York may go either way. Do we go for the carpetbagger or the NYer born and bred? Long Island, Staten Island, and the rust-belt upstate cities LOVE Trump. While urban minorities obviously don't...
-The midwest usually goes Republican, but they weren't so hot on Trump during the primary.
-Hillary and the DNC aren't doing a good job of welcoming those first-time voters and independents who supported Bernie into the fold. Questionable behavior during the primaries by the DNC such as disenfranchisement have left a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of these people. These people may either vote Trump (notice Trump in his tweets talking about how Bernie got screwed by the Democratic party?) or stay home.
-Hillary has minorities down pat, but minorities don't vote much. She also has older women, who definitely do. But Trump may be able to win over minorities, women, and independents with a strategic VP pick.

The map will certainly look different from the "United States of Canada vs. Jesusland" split popular in the last few election cycles.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Quote

Nate Silver was the biggest loser of this election by far. And he just kept on taking those Ls. For someone whose analysis is so built off polls, he was very tone deaf to what they actually said. (I do think the 'elite' such as Silver tend to live in a bubble and aren't very aware of what's going on outside the ivory tower) Not to mention, after every "unexpected" Trump win, he countered with a post saying how "this means nothing", "things can still change", "what this actually shows is <reason why Trump won't be nominated>". It wasn't until the day he won Indiana and Cruz conceded, that 538 finally admitted what actually happened.

Quote

The map will certainly look different from the "United States of Canada vs. Jesusland" split popular in the last few election cycles.

I don't think these two things are unrelated. Hell, I still have respect for Nate's methods, they just didn't work this time. That tells me that US elections have gotten so stale over the years that US politics has come down to an incredibly predictable exact science. However, this year it hasn't. Nate Silver's only crime was the biggest sin a data scientist can make - overfitting.

People have been saying the 2-party system the US needs a shakeup. Well, this year is probably the closest you're going to get to see that, with Republicans incredibly dubious about their own nominee and even looking at spending $200 million to promote a third-party candidate in five states to deny Hillary and Trump the electoral college votes (so that the vote comes down to the House). I don't think this will be successful and it will destroy the Republican party, but I'm fascinated to watch!

[Bramble]

Dr Lancer-X, on 08 May 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

I'm fascinated to watch!

Yeah, at this point, I'm just hoping for some good entertainment. I'm so disillusioned with the running, I care less about who wins and more about how they win.

[[[ Commence jumbled thoughts ]]]

Actually, no. I want Clinton to win. She may be a shitty individual, but she has experience, while Trump is playing a sport he doesn't know. We're more likely to experience less extreme nationwide trauma with her in office than if Trump won the race.

Trump is just so damn stupid (albeit messily strategic and 100% resilient), which seems like a recipe for a kind of series of presidential failures we haven't seen in a long time. Clinton, on the other hand, would at least be able to run things in an orderly fashion.

The reason I think Trump has gained so much voter support is everyone in the U.S. is tired of being lied to (nominees make promises, become president, and can't fulfill them.) Which seems like a necessary evil to winning a race. Then Trump comes in and just speaks his stupid mind, and it's something new. I think people are gravitating towards something new, and they want to see what happens without a "politician" in office.

This post has been edited by Bramble: 09 May 2016 - 10:05 PM

[Dr Lancer-X]

I admit I'm mostly looking forward to Trump winning just so I can point to Sanders Crushing Trump in Polls 53 Percent to 38 Percent, Seen as Strongest General Election Candidate* and laugh my head off. Remember how there were pro-Cruz neocons saying that Trump's presidential run was just a ploy to secure Clinton the presidency? What if it turns out to be the other way round?

I don't think Clinton would be that bad of a president. Hell, on the right wing side of things one of the more common criticisms I've seen is that her presidency would be like another 4 years of Obama. I thought Obama was pretty decent on the whole, so.. whatever. (I'm going to need a whole lot of convincing that the whole intelligence gathering overreach, war on whistleblowers, TPP etc. are his fault since things were already going in that direction and probably would have happened no matter who was president. The president isn't as important as the house and senate are anyway, especially when it comes to things like the economy...)

It's a fascinating dynamic, though, because Clinton is very much the archetypal politician with probably more political experience than any presidential candidate ever (and hence represents everything people like and hate in politicians), while Trump isn't a politician at all, and will probably be the presidential candidate with the least political experience ever. He can't be bought, while Clinton already has been, many times over. I think things are looking very much in Trump's favour at the moment and will become even moreso as the campaign plays out.

*I know HuffPo is literal garbage and barely a step above Salon but I think they're mostly right on this one.

[Exophase]

Donald Trump is a bumbling thin skinned egomaniacal fool who makes everything up as he goes along and can't seem to hold a consistent platform for a month. His questionable views on women and minority groups don't really help. Hillary Clinton has much better credentials and platforms and seems like an obviously superior candidate.

Despite that, I won't be voting for her. I voted for Bernie and I'll probably be voting for Dr. Jill Stein in the generals. And honestly, I kind of want Trump to win. Even if I can't bring myself to vote for him. And even if I'm pretty scared he'll do something crazy that'll crash the market or start new wars.

The reason why is that I see more at stake than simply who is president for the next four years. Bernie is the closest I've seen anyone come to shaking up the hegemony of the two dominant political parties. You could say Trump is doing this by effectively running as an independent who took over the Republican party, but he doesn't seem to have any real lasting interest in changing the political system. Bernie is the only major candidate I'm aware of who has pushed for legislating alternative voting methods and he's by far the strongest on campaign reform and regulation. In my opinion, an outsider who can take over the Democratic party like Bernie almost did is this country's best hope for long term reform. So long as we have the first-past-the-post voting systems that ensure the two party system will we continue to see a race to the bottom in candidate favor, ever increasing tribalism and partisan hatred, gridlock between different parts of the government, and erosion of true democratic representation. Elected officials will continue to become less and less autonomous and more and more figureheads for their party's collective. This removes any semblance of true checks and balance, term limits, or significance in elections.

If Hillary wins 2016 then it's not terribly likely she'll win 2020; a party hasn't held four terms since FDR and Truman and she is already nowhere near as liked as they were (at least before Truman was actually elected), and the country is far more politically polarized. But she will definitely be the Democratic nominee. So there's no chance for a Berniecrat to take the election. On the other hand, if Trump wins 2016 Hillary will probably not win the 2020 Democratic primary. If Hillary does manage to win 2020 there's a very small chance of another Democrat winning 2024 for a fifth straight elected term. So 2028 becomes the earliest realistic possibility for a Berniecrat, which will be long after any momentum has faded away. 2020, on the other hand, strikes a good balance between being far enough away to allow for more serious preparation and branching out while not being so far away that the momentum started by the Sanders movement will be completely down.

Hillary as president will also embolden staunchly establishment candidates to better secure Congress.

[asgromo]

i give this thread two tiny wittle thumbs down

[Dr Lancer-X]

i give it two uptrumps

[woofy barkerson]

i giev this thred a big fat this thread sux

[Exophase]

I thought it was going well

[Bramble]

woofy barkerson

Exo, I for one read your entire post and enjoyed it. What's going on here anyway.

[Lachesis]

woofy barkerson for presedent 2016

feel the

[GetDizzy]

I find myself seriously considering voting for Dr. Stein primarily as a "protest vote", for reasons Exophase already eloquently outlined.

[Dr Lancer-X]

I have to wonder about those people burning American flags while protesting Donald Trump. I get that it's a gesture against nationalism, but are most people really going to see it that way?

[GetDizzy]

Dr Lancer-X, on 04 June 2016 - 02:45 AM, said:

I have to wonder about those people burning American flags while protesting Donald Trump. I get that it's a gesture against nationalism, but are most people really going to see it that way?

His supporters certainly won't.

[Old-Sckool]

Exophase, on 18 May 2016 - 09:50 PM, said:

Donald Trump is a ... thin ... man ... who makes everything ... His ... views on women ... really help. Hillary Clinton ... I won't be voting for her. ... I ... want Trump to win. ... vote for him.

[Exophase]

Oh no, what have you done