David Bahnsen speaks for a lot of Establishment Republicans. Today, he’s linked at the National Review. At this point, Bahnsen is so exasperated with the persistent popularity of Donald Trump that he’s calling on us all to beseech God to intervene.
I’m not sold on his political analysis here, but I do want to note his conclusion.
Trump will not be the President of the United States. His support level is maxed at 35-40% (generously) of the Republican primary voters. In a general election contest, he will lose the nine figure free publicity of the national media, who will turn on him in a New York minute. The blue collar white males who resent the economic changes of the last 25 years will be more than offset by his depleted support from Hispanics, females, and other grown-ups. His skyrocketing unfavorables will matter, and he will lose. And if I am wrong, that is even worse. The United States will be the laughingstock of the world if this man were to become our commander-in-chief.
You will not hear me talk about Trump’s ceiling. I won’t say he’s maxed out at any level. I am not about to say that he will lose the general election. I’m somewhere between skeptical, agnostic and terrified about these questions.
But, if Trump is going to lose as big as people like Bahnsen think he’s going to lose, it’s because a lot of moderate/soft Republicans conclude that it will be better if Trump loses to (presumably) Hillary Clinton than if he wins.
This is the time in the four-year election cycle when people love to promise that they’ll never support the nominee they don’t prefer. Sanders’ voters will never vote for Clinton. Erick Erickson will never vote for Donald Trump. If Ted Cruz is the president, we’re all moving to Costa Rica.
It’s mostly bullshit. The vast majority of people will hold their nose and vote for one of the two major party nominees. Very few committed Democrats or Republicans will cross over to vote for the other side. And no one is moving to Costa Rica.
But this cycle is a little different than most. I can see a lot of New Jersey Democrats who work in the financial sector deciding that they’d rather deal with Trump or Rubio or Cruz than with Bernie Sanders. And I can see a lot of Wall Street Republicans not going for the religious anti-choice extremism of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, and who know Trump well enough to be embarrassed by him and his desperate efforts to show he has class. They don’t like his act and they’re not haters on immigrants, Muslims, or anyone else.
This year, there’s potential for some real shifting in the shape of the electorate. And there really are some voters in both parties who might leave their party for good if they don’t get the nominee that they want.
There are also a lot of young voters who will be making up their minds about whether they’re aligned with the left, the right, or reality television.
About that “reality TV” crack, Booman:
Don’t discount the reality show vote. Trump’s certainly not. It will make up for his losses from habitual RatPub voters, most of whom will just sit this one out instead of voting for a Clinton, an Obama apparatchik or a godless Jewish socialist. More than make up, probably. Along with the many disgruntled traditional Dem voters who will most certainly move to Trump? I personally am nowhere between “skeptical, agnostic and terrified,” myself.
I’m just plain terrified.
AG
I am totally out of touch with broadcast TV, I think you might be cherry-picking a bit. In the summer TV viewship is down in general so reality shows dominate because they are inexpensive – no point in wasting an expensive drama or comedy debut on a low audience night. Here’s the top 10 from last week per Nielsen (just Googled it now):
1 NCIS CBS 10.4 16,941
2 THE BIG BANG THEORY CBS 9.8 16,250
3 CAMPAIGN ’16 REP DEBATE CBS 8.1 13,443
4 NCIS: NEW ORLEANS CBS 7.7 12,587
5 SCORPION CBS 7.0 11,364
6 BLUE BLOODS CBS 6.9 10,924
7 60 MINUTES CBS 6.5 10,417
8 MADAM SECRETARY CBS 6.2 10,061
9 NCIS: LOS ANGELES CBS 6.2 9,755
10 LIFE IN PIECES CBS 5.7 9,348
That’s broadcast. Cable would have had one in the top 10 at #6, Walking Dead on AMC. I’ve never watched any of these (except 60 minutes back when it was staffed by real journalists with New Deal/WW2 core values) but am aware none is a reality show because they are all advertised during football games.
BTW, I wasn’t aware of it but man CBS is cleaning up.
Yup. Could be…
I never watch much TV these days. Dunno what’s hot and what’s not.
AG
I am someone who likes to keep up with ratings, not so much shows. Interestingly older voters are the most valuable because of their turnout but are the least valuable to most advertisers and so count less in ratings.
Also note that the Walking Dead is actually the most popular show on TV. It can get 20 million (live+3 day was 19.1 for the last episode) and is equivalent to live NFL games.
The question then becomes which candidate will win The Walking Dead viewers? I know I’m being a bit flippant, but yeah, that series is huge with the young folks I know.
People who are motivated by elections will vote. And yes, this is the time when everyone promises not to vote if their candidate doesn’t win the nomination.
But this is also the time that a lot of feelings get hurt, a lot of belief systems are insulted. I find it particularly troubling that Clinton’s success depends on depressed turnouts in the primaries and so far it appears to be what’s happening. It’s not like progressives will go to Cruz or Rubio or Trump in the general. Or Stein, for that matter. No, the younger voters, who see US electoral politics as pretty much a fixed game. They’ll stay home.
So it’s possible that Clinton will win, but all those DINOs that Wasserman Schultz has recruited will be left behind.
In other words, four more years of gridlock, unless the permanent government decides to start a war against Russia. Then Congress will unite and vote for WWIII.
I thought Sanders was supposed to great this great wave of supporters for his revolution?
Primary turnout is about average, it’s down from a huge year in 2008 for sure but still about average. The problem Sanders has is he needed to surpass the 2008 number and so far he hasn’t been able to do it.
Just to be clear, there are a lot of progressives voting for Clinton. I know plenty of solid progressives doing so, not every progressive is on the Sanders train.
It is impossible that a person could consider himself/herself a progressive and still vote for Hillary Clinton. Impossible by definition.
And we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Haha you would certainly think so if you read some progressive blogs
You’re wrong. And rude. Neither of which helps Bernie in any way.
I believe it was snark
What is this “snark” you speak of?
It doesn’t help that there were some 20 debates by this time in 2008 and almost none of them were in stupid time slots. That doesn’t help the turnout not one bit and that is 100% DWS cheating for HRC. That doesn’t mean Sanders doesn’t have to shoulder some of the blame, but the establishment is reaping what it sowed.
In fact, it does that so often I really do wonder how fixed things are.
sounds like excuse making to me, it’s always difficult counting on the youth vote to turnout higher than normal. Just look at the difference in the President’s vote totals from 2008 to 2012
Sanders doesn’t have to count on youth turnout so much as all ages turnout. He beat HRC handily in people under 45 in all 3 contests so far. It’s the boomers that are handing HRC her win. That also makes me smile a bit because the core of the dem voters for the coming generation are quite a bit more liberal.
even with that being true, he still needs exceptional youth turnout to actually win not just come in a close second
counting on voters who don’t usually vote in primaries to put you over the top puts the candidate behind the 8 ball before getting out the gate and that’s for all demographic levels
You can’t have a revolution without the voters and Sanders doesn’t have the voters at least not yet
I think Sanders would definitely agree with the last sentence there, I do. Its why I support continued Sanders efforts to creat and bring out those voters.
Fixed isn’t the right word. It’s not that it’s fixed. It’s that the DNC sought to insulate the presumptive nominee in what was likely to be an unfavorable year. If Bernie could actually deliver on his turnout claims, he could win. But he can’t. Hand-on-the-scale, to be sure, but if this is fixed, then DWS is even more of a buffoon than I thought she was (and I think she’s a complete moron).
Even it’d been completely fair, with boatloads of debates and so on, Sanders was never going to win. Sanders is basically Dean without the crowded field, more favorable demographics after 12 years of Millennials growing up, and no black people.
Primaries are determined by those of us who care and are engaged. The truth is that, contrary to what Bernie’s supporters have claimed, he simply hasn’t ignited anything. The waves of new people, the crossover vote from people who are tired of The EstablishmentTM — it’s just not there.
So who’s doing the suppressing? And isn’t Sanders exactly the candidate required to reverse the trend?
Pardon me, but have you familiarized yourself with the numbers for “great wave maker” of ’08 at this point in the primary cycle? And let’s not omit the fact that Obama began his official campaign four months before Sanders did and unofficially was out there several month earlier.
In point of fact, Sanders has beat Obama in the new voter counts in both Iowa and NH. Sorry if these facts don’t conform to your biases, but please use facts and not your biases to support your snide negative comments.
Newbies in NV were Sanders voters, not Hillary’s. She is not recruiting very many so far.
Doesn’t need to — outsource the GOTV to those that can deliver the regular “base” vote is a more straightforward approach. Bypasses the need to hire and pay workers.
“Suppress” is a transitive verb. It has an agent, as well as a patient.
If, as BoP maintains, the primary vote is being suppressed, someone, or something, is doing it.
I’m curious as to who that might be.
For ‘suppress’ read ‘depress’. Predictive text, doesn’t.
If “suppress” is too strong a term, try “discourage” or any number of words.
I’ll give an example, two actually. When John Lewis endorsed Clinton on behalf of the CBCPAC it was his second endorsement of her this election cycle. He’d personally endorsed her last fall. But when he added the line about not seeing Sanders at any demonstrations was mean-spirited and dishonest.
Dolores Huerta’s confused allegations were also dishonest.
Neither one of these incidents is a major point, but it is the kind of underhanded, half truthful power politics that the Clintons play. Many people find the tenor of Clinton’s campaign to be, well, Republican-lite. There is a sense that when she tries landing a zinger in a debate she is somehow lying.
For example, her line about Sanders voting for an omnibus bill in which her husband slipped in a banking deregulation bill at the last minute. That is dishonest. Her defense of her vote for the war in Iraq is dishonest. Her call for a no-fly zone is dishonest, considering the circumstances in Syria.
The outrage from Sanders’ supporters only strengthens their belief that Clinton is a crooked, bought politician. And then she suddenly gets those extra delegates that the Party created for the status quo. It is a fixed game and her endorsements seem to flow from the trough where corporate neoliberals feed. Jeez, even the supposedly “gay” endorsement from the Human Rights Coalition (or whatever it’s name is) is just another corporate shill job (take a look at the people on their board of governors).
Not good. I suspect that Sanders will do better out of the South. But if Clinton shows up at the convention with a majority of delegates from states where Democrats don’t win (South Carolina, for ex) and party insider delegates and Sanders’ has won a string of primaries I see a further crushing of this year’s progressive hopes, and perhaps the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party.
Thanks, but was actually thinking of the staffing of the caucuses by the IA and NV DEM parties. Chaotic and understaffed at precincts that would have been expected to have high turnouts and a high percentage of Sanders supporters. How many gave up or left because they couldn’t afford more than two hours to participate?
Long lines due to under-resourced and under-staffed polls in minority communities in FL 2000 and OH 2004 were considered voter suppression efforts. But for some Democrats it’s only not acceptable when done by Republicans. “Third Way” Democrats can do no wrong in their eyes.
Yes, we have the diary from fladem re Iowa and on SirisXM Mark Thompson;s show (Make it plain with Mark Thompson), I heard a young black voter in Nevada complaining about the same deliberate misdirection.
This extremely offensive horseshit is counterproductive. THE DNC DOES NOT EXECUTE THE STATE CAUCUSES AND PRIMARIES. So even if your highly factually deficient claims were true about the national Party, it’s the State Parties which run the caucuses and primaries.
Not one Hillary voter is turned into a Bernie supporter with this stuff. Think about what you’re doing.
Or this from 2008. Heard similar things happened this year:
Widespread Cheating & Vote Suppression by Clinton Campaign in Clark County, NV
Posting from phone. Link that works:
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/19/439573/-
Gosh, it would have been nice if you had noted that these claims relate to the 2008 campaign.
Pretty clear I did. You’d know that if you even read my block quoted portion. And the fact that I said that the same shit happened this time again, reported on ground from same poster, David Atkins, blogger at Washington Monthly.
OK, you did, sorry. As for 2016…why is this relevant?
A cheater doesn’t change her spots.
For partisans, one of their own can only be clever and impressively cunning in their wins and only an opponent cheats.
Alright, let’s be clear:
David Atkins is an active member of the California Democratic Party. To the point of actually “going to the meetings” and all the usual criticisms you hear from neoliberals about socialists/leftists wanting to change the party. He’s open about this. He (and I) want to change the party from within, and view 3rd party politics as mostly useless (although I’d support Sawant in Seattle, so there are exceptions).
He drove to Nevada in 2008 to GOTV. He documented Clinton cheating in that diary. David Plouffe complained about the cheating occurred:
We know this isn’t just a campaign manager being a campaign manager because it’s documented in the link.
Now, in 2016, David Atkins drove to NV to GOTV again, and once again, stated that the same things which happened in 2008, happened again in 2016. Would they have changed the results? In 2008 he doesn’t seem to think so, and says so in the quoted portion I posted. In 2016? Idk. Sanders was definitely closer in vote count than Obama was in 2008 (even if Obama left with the most delegates to the convention). Could it have made a difference? Depends how widespread it was. I doubt it…but we’ll never know.
Really now.
John Lewis’ endorsement of Clinton and crack about Sanders’ alleged absence from civil-rights activism is not exactly a big deal. Lewis wanted to support one candidate and dismiss the other. Sure, he could have been more gracious, but taking umbrage at Lewis’ remark strikes me as a being a bit too sensitive. Moreover, at this point in time, anyone who cares about “was Sanders really a civil rights activist?” knows that Sanders was one indeed: there’s that video of him being arrested at a civil rights protest, right?
You repeatedly call Hillary Clinton dishonest. How do you characterize Sanders’ silly claims about economic growth under his program? Booman wrote about this at length recently, with links to economists who have picked apart Sanders’ numbers and described his projections as nonsensical. Gosh–for all I know, there’s someone who has characterized Sanders’ numbers as “dishonest”. Well! We can’t admit that possibility, can we? Anyone who uses the “d” word to describe Bernie Sanders must be an amoral, devious Hillary Clinton operative! No other explanation is admissible.
I’ve been warned by someone who knows me in the flesh that I ought to be careful about playing the devil’s advocate, so I’ll be tiresomely explicit here: I’m not a Hillary Clinton admirer. I was once; no longer. I intend to vote for Sanders in the unlikely event that the Oregon primary actually matters. (It isn’t until May.) I’m just tired of the accusatory tone that characterizes so much commentary here.
Yes, this. All of the “Hillary is bad” commentary by the Sanders supporters is doing nothing to help their cause or persuade the undecided.
In fact, it is doing the opposite. The moralizing tone is pretty much unbearable.
Ah, you might find this instructive after the dust has settled.
Most of the disbelief was connected to the Fed’s expected interference with allowing employment to rise, given their historical behavior in slapping it down with interest rate increases.
This by Dean Baker, with the inflammatory header, discusses how that might be changed…http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/president-obama-s-council-of-economic-advisers-confirms-sanders
-growth-projections
Maybe not a big deal to you. I’ve worked for social justice since I turned 18 back in the sixties. Lewis, and Huerta, are forever tarnished for me. I don’t need perfection in my heroes, just don’t lie to me.
Saw this on a blog comment today. Someone else is noticing that down ticket Dems are being hung out.
In 2008, Clinton dominated the Democratic National Committee using the same machine politics she is using today. So to win, Obama built a new, separate organization, and didn’t allocate much of those funds to congressional races. Because of this, the DNC did not have money to pour into critical races nor get out the vote and Republicans won 69 seats. Today, the DNC has 63% of the permanent staff it had in 2007. (115/183)
The Clinton vs. Sanders race is doing the same thing. Clinton is again using machine politics to control the DNC, and Sanders supporters have run campaigns to kill donations to the DNC to force changes and make the system fair.
(http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/krugman-gang-4-need-apologize-smearing-gerald-friedman.ht
ml)
Send this man money. I have. https:/timcanova.com
God, that would be rich. To primary DWS.
They don’t go down easy or often, but when they do it’s always a shock and sometimes a shock to the system. Seems to me that the House has become even crazier and more conservative (something that wasn’t easy to imagine) after Cantor went down.
Yes, if Cantor went down, DWS can go down too. Don’t know if Carnova is the guy, but I felt it was worth throwing a few bucks his way. If every one of Bernie’s donors sent Carnova $3, the guy would have a $12 million dollar warchest.
Maybe ten dollars. Sanders doesn’t have anywhere near four million donors, but it should be above a million by now.
OK, the e-mails are deceptive. “4 million donations” not donors. Donors appear to be 1.3 million. So Carnova would have $4 million.
If we have to fight, China’s more of a threat. Rather not do either though. We might win against Russia, I don’t think we’d win against China.
So, what’s the deal with Costa Rica? Is it nice there?
I hear it’s getting more expensive, and that the roads are still bad. Some friends of mine bought real estate there quite some time ago, but then, for reasons I don’t remember, regretted it. I think they had hassles of some sort but I don’t really know.
Anyway, they claim to be very grateful to have sold their RE at some level of profit for them and glad to be done with CR as a place to settle.
That’s just one story, so… pallet of salt. Friends are pretty low-key, frugal types, fwiw.
I’m now also hearing that Ecuador is getting quite expensive and has poor health care, even if you have some money to pay for it.
Not sure how many easy fixes there are out there.
Spent 3 weeks in Chile and have that on my “if it all goes to hell” list.
Sadly, if America does go all to hell, it’ll probably take Chile down with it, as we did a number of years ago.
Lots of US expatriates, can get around speaking English without Spanish, never gets cold, universal health care, extremely cheap to live, and no military.
It’s been on my “fuckit” list for years.
oh my, don’t get me started! what’s not to like!
I just hope that Sanders keeps running for as long as possible and keeps getting his message out there. I’ve donated to him, even though I have always had some reservations about Sanders. Well, he’s not perfect, but who is? In this election, imo, Sanders is clearly the pick of the litter. And frankly, imo, he stands a chance of winning the General, should he get the nomination.
As far as having the passion to win, Sanders has made it clear that he’s ready to go the distance.
Anecdata: A friend of mine hates Obama and has stated she’d like to punch Clinton in the face. She hasn’t expressed any opinion I’ve encountered about Sanders but from what I know of her, it’d be oh, hell, no for him too. A sure vote for the GOP, right?
Well, not necessarily. She’s also posted recently that the Republican field is a collection of awful lightweights — Trump’s a blowhard clown, Cruz makes her skin crawl, etc. Maybe Rubio or Kasich could win her over, but I’m not even sure of that. If Trump is the nominee, I can see her saying the hell with it and just not voting.
I don’t know, someone who wants to punch Hillary in the face sounds like exactly Trump’s demographic.
And yet, she’s cool with gays, she’s a fan of Jim Wright/Stonekettle Station, and she has a pretty good bullshit detector. I’d say she’s a New England/small businessperson type of Republican, not a demographic the current version of national GOP is designed to appeal to.
Nice to know that Cruz induces that skin crawl response in other than lefties. (Actually, on basic visceral and first impression type stuff, I’m well within that of the solid majority. One reason why I trust certain of my impressions enough to extrapolate from them to a group.)
Cruz induces that in 99% of people based on all anecdata.
“And I can see a lot of Wall Street Republicans not going for the religious anti-choice extremism of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio”
Wall street republicans make up an infinitesimally small percentage of the electorate, though perhaps you’re thinking of their outsized donation/lobbying influence. In any case, I don’t see that bunch spending more than five minutes thinking about women’s reproductive rights.
Likely as not they’ll have conversations with trump and his proxies that will make them feel just fine.
Hillary – and it will have to be Hillary, as Bernie just burned his last bridge with African American voters last week, for those who were paying attention – is on solid footing to take advantage of a Trump nomination, but she’ll have to fight the urge of the media to pretend Trump isn’t a fascist.
Have women really come out and punished Republicans at the state level where all the damage is being done?
No — because it’s seen as a battle between old white liberal women and old white, religious conservative men and women. Younger people don’t believe the status quo will change enough for it to impact their own personal lives. And let’s be fair, poor women, unless they could scrape together the money or had access to a free clinic, have been excluded from safe abortions since 1976 and all the good Democratic pols then and since have been just fine with that.
At least Clinton has called for ending the Hyde Amendment — and Sanders followed. Although one would think under single payer abortions would be funded anyway…but it’s definitely something I’m glad he clarified.
Indeed, that is a no brainer.
Bernie voted against the renewal of the Hyde Amendment in 1993. Exactly how many times did he have to vote against it before it’s accepted that he opposes it?
OTOH:
So, there it is not only in traditional Medicaid, but also expanded Medicaid and ACA subsidized insurance policies.
Considering they cast the majority of votes in just about every election, at every level, I’d say ‘no’.
“There are also a lot of young voters who will be making up their minds about whether they’re aligned with the left, the right, or reality television.”
I think your options may be a bit limited. I don’t know any young people who watch reality television or for that matter, any television, so that’s out.
Now we’re down to choosing between the left or the right. If it turns out the left is Hillary and the right is Trump, they will see little difference between crazy right and moderate right. The lesser of two evils has left the building. So what will they do? The answer is simple; forgetaboutit. They go back to what they were doing in 2010 and 2014, nothing. With nothing to vote for, they will just move on with their lives the best they can.
Don’t worry, the DNC will save us. Debbie really, really wants to become Speaker.
On the brighter side, Bernie and Hillary are tied with 51 elected delegates each.
I have a couple of twenty-somethings in my household and I tell them at every opportunity that although all three of us favor Sanders, I will vote Democratic in November regardless of which candidate prevails for the nomination. You see, I don’t buy into the pernicious nonsense that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Hillary Clinton and the prospective Republican candidates.
You may never know for sure if they do what you want just because you want it, you know, private voting booth and all.
I think the wild card here is how they will react if Hillary does steal the nomination using the DNC poison pill.
The biggest thorn for me is how she got the various groups to endorse her even when majorities of their members wanted Sanders. It’s not like politics isn’t a rough sport but that is too close to subverting democracy to me.
It’s not exactly a subversion of democracy, only an institution of democracy. Union leadership began selling out when unions began losing political clout. Generally in favor of the most viable and conservative DEM candidate. Oh, sure they make noise in between presidential elections, but that’s mostly to keep the membership at bay. (Remember Obama’s claim that if elected he’d put on his walking shoes and join union strikes? Maybe he’ll find those walking shoes sometime after he leaves the WH.)
Marie3, as a Union political organizer I can assure you that your opinions are not facts, and the Labor movement has nowhere near unanimity in its endorsement decisions, the endorsement processes of the various Unions, and how heavily or lightly the thousands of Unions in the United States involve their memberships in endorsement decisions. And how you, at your distance, would claim to know these things as broadly as you claim here, is a curious thing.