Delaware Dem

Friday Open Thread [3.18.16]

Hans Noel on why some conservatives want to stop Donald Trump at all costs:

Some conservative Republicans are meeting this week to talk about the possibility of fielding a conservative third-party candidate in the increasingly likely event that Donald Trump hijacks their party’s nomination. Trump is not only not a conservative; he also embraces the most distasteful elements of right-wing populism. An independent candidate would give voters a “real” Republican to vote for.

Such a move has an obvious downside: It likely leads to President Hillary Clinton. Trump and the “real” Republican will split the Republican vote, just as William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the GOP vote in 1912, giving us President Woodrow Wilson. Is blocking Trump worth the risk of electing Clinton?

If you are a conservative, I think it is.

Presidential elections are unpredictable, but there is one pretty common pattern. The longer the party has been in office, the less likely it is to win. One-term incumbents are reelected at a high rate, but after two terms the office often goes to the other party. After three terms, it’s very hard to hold on to the White House.

Assuming this pattern holds, if Trump wins the 2016 presidential election, he’s likely to win reelection. But the Democrats would likely win in 2024 and again in 2028. You wouldn’t see a “real” Republican in the White House until 2032, after a 24-year drought.

The obvious flaw in this logic is that Democrats, liberals and non-Trumpian conservatives will have been “final solution”-ed by 2019, and Dear Leader Trump will be running unopposed for his fifth term in 2032.

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Thursday Open Thread [3.17.16]

A Washington Post editorial calls on the Republican party to aim for a contested convention in order to stop Donald Trump.

“We do not take this position because we believe Mr. Trump is perilously wrong on the issues, although he is… No, Mr. Trump must be stopped because he presents a threat to American democracy. Mr. Trump resembles other strongmen throughout history who have achieved power by manipulating democratic processes.”

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President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to be Associate Justice

This is something of an upset, since Sri Srinivasan was the heavy favorite. There is a theory why….

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Wednesday Open Thread [3.16.16]

The Democratic Primary for President is over. The winner is Hillary Clinton. She will be the nominee.

Remember what I said on Sunday: “[B]est case scenario for Sanders on Tuesday: He wins Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. Those three wins, and the margins he wins them by, would give Sanders the first real momentum of this campaign, and first real panic in the Clinton camp. Worst case scenario: five losses to Clinton, which would end his campaign for the nomination. One win would keep him alive, on life support. Two wins would keep him alive as a competitive challenger, though with Clinton still in control of the race.”

So we have the worst case scenario for Sanders. I’m not going to pile on here, because I know the stages of grief a passionate supporter of a candidate goes through on days like this. I have been one, I am one, and I have been there. So take your time, BernieBros and BernieGals. There will be no demands of loyalty from me today.

And you should be proud of Bernie. You and he confounded expectations, and you took a 73 year old cranky socialist from Vermont and made him lovable, endearing, and most importantly, a credible competitor for the Democratic nomination for President. And you and he did a valuable service: you mainstreamed the left again. You made the Democratic Party proud to be liberal, by showing that’s where the votes are. So this is all great work by you.

What you, and Bernie, should do know is, yes, continue the campaign. BUT! Not for President. Sure, sure, he will still be running for President, his name will still be on the ballot, but the efforts and fundraising should be aimed towards identifying and electing and contributing to Revolution Bringers down the ballot. Bernie should travel the country in the months ahead and campaign with liberal and progressive candidates for the House, Senate and State House and Senate. He needs to take his army of passionate supporters and focus on building up the Democratic Party from the bottom up, rather than the top down. You want to make a President Hillary Clinton do what you want? Force her to by electing Revolution Bringers to Congress.

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Tuesday Open Thread [3.15.16]

Does the GOP Primary end tonight or is it just beginning?

“The Republican presidential campaign will not end next week, or even next month. But voters in the five states casting ballots on Tuesday will go a long way toward determining whether Donald J. Trump can win the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim the party’s nomination,” the New York Times reports.

“If Mr. Trump loses Ohio (possible) or Florida (less likely) and wins less-than-commanding victories in Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, he would face the strong possibility of falling short of a delegate majority and entering a contested Republican convention this summer. But with victories in the home states of two of his rivals, he could end the campaigns of Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Marco Rubio, leaving Sen. Ted Cruz as the only candidate still standing in his way.”

I think Cruz will win Illinois and Missouri, Trump will win Florida and North Carolina, and Kasich will win Ohio. Contested open convention here we come!

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Monday Open Thread [3.14.16]

A week of Trump’s lies: a brutal takedown from Politico.

“With the GOP front-runner scooping up delegates in a march toward the Republican nomination, Politico subjected a week’s worth of his words to our magazine’s fact-checking process… The result: more than five dozen statements deemed mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or simply false – the kind of stuff that would have been stripped from one of our stories, or made the whole thing worthy of the spike. It equates to roughly one misstatement every five minutes on average.”

“From warning of the death of Christianity in America to claiming that he is taking no money from donors, the Manhattan billionaire and reality-show celebrity said something far from truthful many times over to the thousands of people packed into his raucous rallies. His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources.”

When Trump follows up a statement with “It’s true,” and he does that often, it is guaranteed he just lied to you.

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