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stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Aug 26, 2016 2:17 pm wrote:Nordic » Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:44 pm wrote:seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 26, 2016 6:38 am wrote:blatant in your face racism does bring out the worst in people
and btw he is just not a racist he incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, misogynist and birther
I'm not disagreeing that he's all of these things.
He is.
My point is that Hillary is actually WORSE.
Any chance we could acknowledge that, or is being a racist the absolute worst thing a person could be?
Serious question. I believe being a murdering war criminal neocon hell bent on starting WW3 is actually worse. And what is slaughtering men and women and children around the globe if not racist?
I'm going to have to disagree most vociferously, Trump is FAR FUCKING WORSE than Hillary.
First, any chance we could acknowledge that when it comes to foreign policy and geopolitics, the President always follows an agenda of Elite origin not of their own making? That Bill Hicks may have couched it in humorous terms, but he was actually spelling out the way things really work?
Because once you acknowledge that, it's quite clear the only difference between Trump and Clinton is what they'll accomplish domestically. And that's where Trump is FAR FUCKING WORSE for all the reasons seemslikeadream has mentioned plus a whole lot more.
You really think if the Elite are "hell bent on starting WW3" Trump would stand in their way?
stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Aug 26, 2016 2:38 pm wrote:8bitagent » Fri Aug 26, 2016 1:16 am wrote:Part of me still thinks that if there was no Bernie Sanders, and research showed a far angry populist left turn would win him the White House, Trump would have come out in June 2016 as Bernie Sanders on steroids.
There's a part of me that agrees with you. Trump will literally say and do anything to attract attention in the hopes of garnering enough votes to prop up his phony reality TV image of being the ultimate in winning. But with or without Bernie, I don't think Trump took that turn because:
1. I don't think that the US has a large enough angry populist left contingency to win the White House and Trump knows that.
2. He's a fucking racist. A pro-choice, pro-gay rights racist, but still, once he threw his lot in with the birthers six years ago, it's pretty fucking hard to run as a lefty.
Josh Jordan @NumbersMuncher
All politicians are shameless opportunists, but it's stories like Dwyane Wade's cousin being shot that gets Trump out of bed with a smile.
Stories about the ramshackle nature of the Trump campaign are abundant. A recent article called Donald Trump’s organization “more concert tour than presidential campaign.” A 12-year-old appears to be running Trump’s field office in a populous Colorado county. Sixty percent of registered voters — and even 40 percent of Republicans — believe that Trump’s campaign is “poorly run.”
This is obviously unprecedented in modern presidential elections. Typically, the candidates have similar resources and campaign organizations. Typically, it is difficult for one candidate to have a large advantage in televised advertising or fieldwork. In 2012, for example, my research with Lynn Vavreck showed that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney could sustain a durable advantage in advertising. Obama’s edge in fieldwork did appear to net him votes, although not enough to be decisive in the electoral college.
By comparison, Trump is being vastly outspent in advertising and is limited essentially to whatever field organization the Republican National Committee can provide — which will be exceeded by Hillary Clinton’s, much as Romney’s was exceeded by Obama’s. How much will this cost him on Election Day?
Probably the best estimate comes from a recently published piece by political scientists Ryan Enos and Anthony Fowler. They show that the effect of the 2012 presidential campaign on voter turnout was quite large, about 7-8 points overall.
They arrive at this estimate by analyzing a sort of experiment: media markets that span state boundaries, such that part of the market falls in a battleground state and part doesn’t. Voters in one of those markets would be potentially exposed to the same amount of televised political advertising but different amounts of other campaign activity. In particular, you would expect that the battleground state voters would be far more likely to be contacted by campaign fieldworkers, who generally aren’t going to contact voters outside of battleground states.
Enos and Fowler found that voter turnout within these markets was much higher in the battleground state portion than the non-battleground state portion. About 7-8 points higher, in fact. Most of this, they argue, can be attributed to canvassing by the campaigns via door knocking and phone calls, which other political science research has shown to be particularly effective. The increases in turnout were even larger — closer to 10 points — among the strongest partisans, who should be particularly susceptible to mobilization attempts.
Notably, Enos and Fowler also found that these increases in turnout were similar among Democrats and Republicans. As they noted in a previous Monkey Cage post, this implies that both the Romney and Obama campaigns were able to mobilize voters successfully.
Spending on political advertising during the U.S. presidential election has dropped 60 percent from 2012, a troubling sign for local TV broadcasters that were counting on a windfall.
Since late April, when Donald Trump effectively secured the Republican nomination, $146 million has been spent in the presidential race by all sponsors, compared with $373 million over the same period in 2012, according to an analysis by Ken Goldstein, a Bloomberg Politics polling and advertising analyst. That hurts station owners like Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., Tegna Inc., and Tribune Media Co., Goldstein said.
Spending is down in part because Trump’s campaign has relied instead on getting his message across in a steady stream of media interviews and tweets. There also hasn’t been as much spending by Republican outside groups, such as political action committees, as there was in 2012, Goldstein said. On the Democratic side, the primary season went longer this year than four years ago as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battled into early summer.
“It delayed the start of general election advertising in battleground states where the real money is,” said Goldstein, who is also a politics professor at University of San Francisco.
The Clinton campaign has spent around $50 million on broadcast television advertising since mid-June, almost all of it in 10 battleground states. The largest ad buy last week, $2.2 million, was in Florida, though this ultimately comes out to just $83,000 for each of the state’s all-important Electoral College votes. In comparison, the Democratic nominee spent more than $100,000 per Electoral College vote in Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Steve Lanzano, president of the Television Bureau of Advertising, which represents the local broadcast industry, said he expects more advertising dollars to pour in to Senate races, helping cushion the blow from the lack of presidential ad spending.
“Certainly it’s not what was expected,” he said. “But you’re going to see the money coming in. It’ll just come in later.”
For broadcasters, that won’t make up for four months of lost revenue, Goldstein said. Sinclair shares are down 9.9 percent this year and Tegna has dropped 16 percent. Tribune Media is up 15 percent after announcing in February that it was exploring strategic options for the business.
8bitagent » Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:41 pm wrote:
I dig everyone's take on here and wonder if you or anyone can point to articles or name offhand what elites are behind Trump?
It’s not just that Trump is now courting major donors. (Sheldon Adelson, perhaps the most famous conservative donor not named Koch, has a column in today’s Washington Post explaining why he backs Trump, even though Trump has (1) bashed major donors and (2) been extremely aloof to Israel, Adelson’s major cause.) It’s also that he’s opening up to super PACs. Formally, Trump can do little to stop super PACs—according to the federal rules, it’s illegal for campaigns to coordinate with them. But candidates, including Trump, have found ways to send messages. In October, Trump demanded that super PACs backing him close up shop—though only after the Post spotlighted the close ties between the Trump campaign and one of the super PACs. In April, Trump’s campaign sent a cajoling letter to Great America PAC, a new super PAC backing him, complaining that the group could confuse backers and muddy his message.
More recently, however, after Great America hired former Ronald Reagan operative Ed Rollins, Trump seemed to be more accepting, calling Rollins “tremendous.” Rollins—who to be fair has a reputation for being a loose cannon with little regard for bosses—seemed confident about the PAC’s role, saying, “Usually a super PAC is frosting on a cake. We’re going to be part of the cake.”
Calling this simply a flip-flop lets Trump off the hook, though. Trump has made self-funding a major point of his campaign, proof that unlike his rivals, he’s not beholden to anyone.
...
In reality, self-funding a general-election campaign for president was never plausible. Trump has managed to skate through the primary with less money than his rivals because of his ability to get free media attention. That won’t work as well in a general election, and Trump has estimated he’d need around $1.5 billion for the general. That seems plausible; Obama and Mitt Romney each raised a little more than $1 billion in 2012.
Trump claims to be worth $10 billion, a claim which ought to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Even if true, spending 15 percent of one’s fortune on a presidential race seems like a gamble, although Trump has made plenty of bad bets in his career. If he’s worth closer to $4.5 billion, as Forbes guesses, it’s an even more painful choice. The last major (using the term loosely) candidate to self-fund was H. Ross Perot in 1992. Perot was at the time worth $2.4 billion, according to Forbes. But campaigns were much cheaper then: A book by two professors pegged the total cost of Perot’s campaign at just $68.4 million.
Wombaticus Rex » Sat Aug 27, 2016 3:47 pm wrote:8bitagent » Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:41 pm wrote:
I dig everyone's take on here and wonder if you or anyone can point to articles or name offhand what elites are behind Trump?
As ever, start with the money. VP selection Mike Pence was a nod to specific power blocs; he comes with his own sponsorships & obligations.
One major name that's been emerging in the past year is Robert Mercer, which is wild. He's part of the James Harris Simons hedge-fund Renaissance Technologies. Simons is one of the single most impressive & intelligent people on the East Coast, to me.
Mercer, less so. Dude supported Ted Cruz and now he's rallying to Trump's side -- Mercer is also the connection that's linked up walrus-faced John Bolton as a "Foreign Policy Advisor," although I doubt Trump listens to a single word that wonk has to sputter. His other claim to fame is spending over $2m on a fucking model railroad and then suing the guy who actually built it for him -- the rich need hobbies, bruh.
Atlantic did a detailed piece - Trump's Self-Funding Lie - mind you, this coverage is from May:It’s not just that Trump is now courting major donors. (Sheldon Adelson, perhaps the most famous conservative donor not named Koch, has a column in today’s Washington Post explaining why he backs Trump, even though Trump has (1) bashed major donors and (2) been extremely aloof to Israel, Adelson’s major cause.) It’s also that he’s opening up to super PACs. Formally, Trump can do little to stop super PACs—according to the federal rules, it’s illegal for campaigns to coordinate with them. But candidates, including Trump, have found ways to send messages. In October, Trump demanded that super PACs backing him close up shop—though only after the Post spotlighted the close ties between the Trump campaign and one of the super PACs. In April, Trump’s campaign sent a cajoling letter to Great America PAC, a new super PAC backing him, complaining that the group could confuse backers and muddy his message.
More recently, however, after Great America hired former Ronald Reagan operative Ed Rollins, Trump seemed to be more accepting, calling Rollins “tremendous.” Rollins—who to be fair has a reputation for being a loose cannon with little regard for bosses—seemed confident about the PAC’s role, saying, “Usually a super PAC is frosting on a cake. We’re going to be part of the cake.”
Calling this simply a flip-flop lets Trump off the hook, though. Trump has made self-funding a major point of his campaign, proof that unlike his rivals, he’s not beholden to anyone.
...
In reality, self-funding a general-election campaign for president was never plausible. Trump has managed to skate through the primary with less money than his rivals because of his ability to get free media attention. That won’t work as well in a general election, and Trump has estimated he’d need around $1.5 billion for the general. That seems plausible; Obama and Mitt Romney each raised a little more than $1 billion in 2012.
Trump claims to be worth $10 billion, a claim which ought to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Even if true, spending 15 percent of one’s fortune on a presidential race seems like a gamble, although Trump has made plenty of bad bets in his career. If he’s worth closer to $4.5 billion, as Forbes guesses, it’s an even more painful choice. The last major (using the term loosely) candidate to self-fund was H. Ross Perot in 1992. Perot was at the time worth $2.4 billion, according to Forbes. But campaigns were much cheaper then: A book by two professors pegged the total cost of Perot’s campaign at just $68.4 million.
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