Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
Another boring post. from Q99.
I love Q99's informative posts. Better and more accurate news than most places, really. Q99 does a good job of distilling the bulslhit out there into one succinct post. F***, if I'm being honest, I get my updates on the primary from Q99 and others on KMC: no where else. haha
I have no idea where I was going with this.
Oh, I remember: I know you're just busting balls but I love the boring updates! cry
Originally posted by Q99
An article on Jeb Bush's problem with speeches, and how he keeps saying stuff and taking it back. Comparing it to his brother, who made speech flubs that were funny but didn't involve him having to do the backpeddle chorus of Jeb- and often Jeb's don't really seem to be speech flubs so much as saying things then retracting them because he realizes they're tactical errors.Also, a poll of Iowa caucus goers and how much they are or aren't satisfied with various things, broken down by party:
Interesting how while the dems are ok with the dems in congress, the Republicans are highly unsatisfied with their own congressional people.
And unsurprisingly, the Dems like Hillary more than the Republicans like Trump, though the Republicans are still fairly strongly in favor of Trump.
Jeb is an idiot, we all know this, report on something new their you.
Well hey we do have some good news from the White House. Obama changed the name of a mountain in Alaska back to its original name.
I know back during the last election I would toss and turn at night trying to decide which candidate would be best suited for returning our mountains to their native names.
FiveThirtyEight Keep Calm and Ignore the "Game Changers"
"If you were to rank the most exciting presidential nomination contests, the 1996 Republican race would be near the bottom. Bob Dole, the “next-in-line” GOP candidate and the Senate majority leader, built up a huge lead in polls and endorsements early in the race and was never seriously challenged for the nomination.
And yet, contemporaneous accounts of the sleepy-seeming 1996 campaign portrayed it as incredibly dramatic, full of “unexpected” twists and “unpredictable” turns. Take this March 7, 1996, article from The New York Times, for example — it was written after Dole had won 12 consecutive primaries and caucuses in the previous week. There are four expressions of surprise in a single paragraph: It’s taken as shocking that the early primaries were as competitive as they were, but equally “striking” that Dole rebounded so quickly from them."
" In this case, because the initial threat to Dole was overstated by the press — Buchanan, a factional candidate, had little chance to see his support grow beyond the 27 percent of the vote he won in New Hampshire2 — Dole’s “comeback” was incorrectly portrayed as unexpected and dramatic.
These biases hold in coverage of the general election too, of course: There were 68 purported “game changers” in the 2012 general election, most of which turned out to be irrelevant."
"or any of these metrics, you can report on the level of support (“Hillary Clinton is polling at 48 percent”), the trend (“she’s lost 4 percentage points since last month”), or even the second derivative (“she’s losing ground, but not as quickly as before”). Multiply 23 candidates by 10 metrics by three ways of reporting on those metrics, and you have 690 opportunities to be “surprised” at any given time."
Or in other words, don't get caught up in the hype of individual moves and shifts in the polls 🙂 Minute-by-minute changes don't win elections, and stuff this early can often be a fair bit off from the final results anyway.
Originally posted by Surtur
Well hey we do have some good news from the White House. Obama changed the name of a mountain in Alaska back to its original name.I know back during the last election I would toss and turn at night trying to decide which candidate would be best suited for returning our mountains to their native names.
Hey, if you can't do the big stuff, might as well do the small. And the state's representatives- including the Republican ones- were for it, so might as well.
It's not like anyone ever does stuff like name changes instead of big stuff. Sometimes it's a small gesture saying, 'hey, we can work together on *something*.' Sometimes it's, "Ok, the other side is entrenched on opposing everything major, so why don't I just do something nice to make a small group happy for no cost?"
Every politician does it, and really, might as well.
Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
Jeb is an idiot, we all know this, report on something new their you.
...
Ok, that's fair 🙂
Originally posted by StyleTime
Interesting that Democrats and Republicans are equally dissatisfied with Politicians in general, the money involved in politics, and Wall Street according to Q99's chart.
The money involved in politics is an interesting one.
The 'Citizens United' decision that allowed the creation of huge SuperPACs and even more money in the race, initially got a good deal more Republican support. "Yea, we have more rich backers*, this means we'll win!" "It's free speech, Democrats! You're just mad because you know you'll lose!" and stuff like that.
Til people realized, it resulted in rich backers trying to push their pet causes and act totally out-of-sync with the actual campaign.
It was a total poisoned chalice, it created a hydra's mess of off topic messages, inefficient targeting where tons of money was dumped into states that weren't in contention, and so on.
Article “Voters despise the non-stop negative ads from billionaire-backed super PACs. Candidates fear them and are forced to depend on deep-pocketed donors to keep up. These are not insignificant impacts.”
Another article about how poor a return on investment some of them turned out to be. "American Crossroads, had a success rate of just 1 percent on $103 million in attack ads -- one of the lowest "returns on investment" (ROIs) of any outside spending group in this year's elections."
With some Trump: “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”
Thus the Republican numbers dropped because, hey, they wanted more money on their side, not money spent on campaign ads that largely serves some rich person's axe to the grind that was not overly effective (some more than others- a SuperPac did play a big role in knocking Gingrich out of the race) or spending going to fight quixotic races that couldn't be won.
*Both sides have rich backers, but the Republicans do proportionally draw more of their funding from theirs, and much of the campaign finance fight was because those backers wanted to throw in more. The Democrats get much more out of grassroots campaigning.
And another FiveThirtyEight article: The Republic Establishment is waiting in the wings
They note how this time last race, Romney didn't have too many endorsements, but even so, he had 67% of the ones that were given out.
Jeb Bush, the endorsement leader this time around, is moderately behind Romney in absolute terms, but only has 27% of the ones that have been given out.
And, overall, a mere 4% of possible Republican endorsements have been given by representatives, senators, and the like. Which is not a lot, considering the Democrat endorsers have more than half come out.
So in other words, the Republican establishment has neither come out, and those who have aren't particularly united either. Much less so even than last time. This really is a highly unusually up-in-the-air primary.
Jeb Bush has a tax plan, and it's weird
At times, as The Washington Post’s Jim Tankersley observed Wednesday morning, Bush sounds like Mitt Romney 2.0: He wants to cut the income tax rate and eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax — all policies that would benefit mostly the wealthiest Americans. At other times, he sounds like a populist, calling for the closing of loopholes that benefit corporations and hedge fund managers. And at others, he sounds like a policy wonk, arguing to shift tax policy in a way that encourages companies to build rather than borrow.
So, kinda an amalgam plan that's fairly disunified economically in order to try and appeal to a mix.
It'd cut taxes to the rich, businesses (very significantly), and working poor, which leaves one of three possibilities as to how it balances the numbers: One, it'd raise taxes on the middle class, or two, it'd be significantly below the US budget and send the debt soaring, or three, he'd also be cutting a ton of major government services to try and balance it.
On the plus side, there's also some simplifications of things and alterations that, while not game changing, are likely positive, but from the sound of it it reminds me a lot of the Ryan plan from last time.
Here's an article contrasting Trump and Sanders' races
Noting stuff like,
While they're both considered 'outsider' candidates, Sanders is still well liked within the democrats while a lot of Republicans are up in arms about Donald.
How Sander's web page is all about his policy on numerous issue while Trump's really only touches one as befitting his more personality-driven campaign.
More unexpectedly, Bernie Sander's campaign organization is actually larger than Trump's at this point.
Bernie Sanders is much more demographically focused- he has a constituency, while Donald Trump is drawing his support from a variety of sources.
Trump is a much larger threat to his party's establishment, and it notes if Bernie pulled ahead, the Democratic establishment would fall in line.
And of course, just how different their situation is, winning frontrunner in a many way race vs second-place challenger against an overwhelming favorite.
Originally posted by Q99
Here's an article contrasting Trump and Sanders' racesNoting stuff like,
While they're both considered 'outsider' candidates, Sanders is still well liked within the democrats while a lot of Republicans are up in arms about Donald.How Sander's web page is all about his policy on numerous issue while Trump's really only touches one as befitting his more personality-driven campaign.
More unexpectedly, Bernie Sander's campaign organization is actually larger than Trump's at this point.
Bernie Sanders is much more demographically focused- he has a constituency, while Donald Trump is drawing his support from a variety of sources.
Trump is a much larger threat to his party's establishment, and it notes if Bernie pulled ahead, the Democratic establishment would fall in line.
And of course, just how different their situation is, winning frontrunner in a many way race vs second-place challenger against an overwhelming favorite.
Because the democratic party does not break ranks, but lets be real, it will be Biden.
Rick Perry drops out, which is not a shock considering even though he's not the lowest in the rankings (though just third-to-last), he's apparently been out of money for some time, and doesn't really have his own niche. What does he do that someone else doesn't do better?
Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
Because the democratic party does not break ranks,
Except when they do, like last time they had to decide 🙂 Or when Bill did something similar....
Traditionally, ironically, the Democrats have tossed around multiple candidates before deciding while the Republicans have fallen in line, while in the last two it's been the reverse (once because of having a presidential incumbent, but having such a favorite right off the bat is reasonably uncommon, even VPs and the like normally have some major competition, like Edwards was to Kerry).
it will be Biden.
Yea, that wouldn't be shocking, if he ran, though I'd still put odds on Hil. Him and Hillary are definitely the high-odds contenders.
Originally posted by Omega Vision
I wonder which candidate will pick up his supporters.Huckabee? Santorum? Bush?
He has supporters?
Once a lot of candidates start dropping out there'll be an effect, but his polls average at 0.8 points.
Perry's establishment so... I figure they'll mostly go to Bush, but likely spread around some since there's so many other establishment candidates.
Five Thirty Eight has an article about him. In short: He entered this race about where he left the last one, and only lost ground since.