EJ Dionne puts it well

[callmeslick]

....I've been saying something similar for years. It's fun watching the GOP slide into the toilet, but one-party rule leads to problems that can be far greater.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

[sigma]

Slick, could you tell us today, fairly definitely, who will be the next President of the United States on the basis of your analysis?

[woodchip]

sigma, it will be Trump. Slick will try and give you reasons why it will be Crazy Bernie but in the end the majority of voters will go with the guy who is a success in real life and not another mouth breathing politician.

[callmeslick]

Slick, could you tell us today, fairly definitely, who will be the next President of the United States on the basis of your analysis?

no, but it will be whoever the Dems nominate, unless the GOP wises up. They have two guys who'd have a shot(Kasich and Bush), the rest are just angry(most of them) and off in his own world, politically(Rand Paul).

On a national level, we are now seeing what has happened in a few states(mine, Delaware being one). An insulting level of incompetence in chosen candidates is turning the Republican party into a public joke. Mind you, they still have some support, but what I've seen in Delaware is essentially one party rule, with the Republicans almost incapable of winning 40% of a statewide vote.

[callmeslick]

sigma, it will be Trump. Slick will try and give you reasons why it will be Crazy Bernie but in the end the majority of voters will go with the guy who is a success in real life and not another mouth breathing politician.

this is the sort of delusion that got the GOP to the current state in Delaware. Trump, as the world can see, and most independants and half of all Republicans can see, is a blowhard putting forth exactly ZERO policy positions. His public demeanor is unfit for the office, and we have, of late, even seen Holocaust survivors pointing out eerie similarities to Hitler's public behavior. He will not win. In fact, all polling shows a majority view him not only as not desirable, but DANGEROUS. Oh, and if being a success consists of getting 200 million dollars given to you and screwing up to the point of essentially losing 60% of potential easy profit, sure, he's a rip-roaring success.

[Spidey]

So why does the media keep calling Trump a billionaire.

[sigma]

I will also make my assumption. History teaches us that we need to be prepared for the fact that the new representative of the USA may well be someone no one expects.

[callmeslick]

So why does the media keep calling Trump a billionaire.

because he is. But him starting with over $200 million and turning it into 3 Billion over the time since he got the inheritance, when he could have put the money into a stock index fund and been worth $8 billion(a REAL 8 billion, not counting one's 'brand' value), isn't exactly a show of financial acumen. You confuse the word 'billionaire' with success. I am well off, but was born well off. Hardly makes me an outrageous success. Probably akin to the Donald, I could have just sat on what I've been given and done as well as I have.

[callmeslick]

sigma, we have a college political science department, in the state of Illinois, which models US Presidential elections. They make their predictions every 4 years, in the January before the November general election. They've never been wrong,and have been picking since 1976. They said, last week, out next President will be Bernie Sanders. I'm not quite that bold, yet.

[Ferno]

Sanders as president. That could be interesting.

[sigma]

Well, I have my own opinion. I think, if any of candidates will not convince the political elite that he is a follower of the thinking of Ronald Reagan, he has little chance of getting the presidency. Although in my opinion the thinking of Richard Nixon at the present stage would be more progressive and useful and for the U.S. and for the whole world.

[callmeslick]

Well, I have my own opinion. I think, if any of candidates will not convince the political elite that he is a follower of the thinking of Ronald Reagan, he has little chance of getting the presidency.

here you display how truly little you understand of the American political reality. Reagan HIMSELF couldn't get nominated in the current Republican party(which was his party). Further, there was no 'thinking of Ronald Reagan' of any real consistency. His first 5 years approach to world affairs, which actually pretty much failed, was entirely different than the approach he adopted, which worked fairly darn well. There are some who speculate that his wife had far more influence due to his declining health in those last 3 years or so.

Although in my opinion the thinking of Richard Nixon at the present stage would be more progressive and useful and for the U.S. and for the whole world.

in terms of global politics, Nixon was nearly a genius. I don't know how he'd have adapted to current reality, but still. The problem there, for us, was that he was a purely deceitful, manipulative person, and America generally isn't friendly to that.

[woodchip]

sigma, it will be Trump. Slick will try and give you reasons why it will be Crazy Bernie but in the end the majority of voters will go with the guy who is a success in real life and not another mouth breathing politician.

this is the sort of delusion that got the GOP to the current state in Delaware. Trump, as the world can see, and most independants and half of all Republicans can see, is a blowhard putting forth exactly ZERO policy positions. His public demeanor is unfit for the office, and we have, of late, even seen Holocaust survivors pointing out eerie similarities to Hitler's public behavior. He will not win. In fact, all polling shows a majority view him not only as not desirable, but DANGEROUS. Oh, and if being a success consists of getting 200 million dollars given to you and screwing up to the point of essentially losing 60% of potential easy profit, sure, he's a rip-roaring success.

You can see the real desperation when the left starts labeling a candidate similar to Hitler. And how many billions do you have slick? You at all successful at any business. Able to come back after going bankrupt are you? The real blowhards are the ones always telling you how bad someone is and how easy it is to do X. And criticism by 90 year old liberal democrat jews should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Lothar]

he could have put the money into a stock index fund and been worth $8 billion

Politifact calls that claim "false": http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/st ... umps-fath/

To add to what they say: the rules for money with that many zeros are different than the rules for money with the number of zeros most of us manage. Especially since in 1982, there were very few index funds -- Vanguard (John Bogle) had started the mutual-index-fund practice in 1976, and the world's first index fund was managing $110,000,000 by the end of 1982. So the idea that Trump could have just dropped $200,000,000 into a $110,000,000 index fund in 1982 the way an ordinary investor might drop $200,000 or even $2,000,000 into Vanguard's $3,000,000,000,000 of current assets is nonsensical.

It's possible that if Trump had liquidated his company at just the right time, and bought $200m worth of shares in S&P 500 companies, he would be worth maybe twice what he currently is. If you cashed out all of your investments in October of 2007 and rebought in March of 2009, you'd be worth twice as much as well. We call that "hindsight bias", and it's a terrible way to evaluate someone's business acumen. I wouldn't even begin to treat it as credible unless we were looking at a lot more orders of magnitude.

(Disclaimer: Trump is a terrible human being, a flip-flopper, a fake conservative, with worthless political ideas and no concept of how to run a country. But that doesn't mean we should accept lame analysis of how he should have managed his fortune.)

[Top Gun]

And criticism by 90 year old liberal democrat jews should be taken with a grain of salt.

...are you really ★■◆●ing going there?

[callmeslick]

oh, yes, he is.......and moreover, he's going there while blabbering about the 'desperation' on the 'left'.

[Lothar]

of the things that deserve response in this thread, woodchip's blathering is definitely worthy of 2 responses to my post's 0.

[woodchip]

Lothar, to those guys I'm a cult hero that they can feel free to make comments about, knowing I made it simple for them to understand. With your posts they have to think harder to reply and on most days they are not capable of it.

[vision]

of the things that deserve response in this thread, woodchip's blathering is definitely worthy of 2 responses to my post's 0.

woodchip is DescentBB's Trump.

[Spidey]

Yea, it’s a pattern I have seen on this board since I joined, whenever someone makes a salient point…ignore it and continue the personal attacks instead.

[Ferno]

of the things that deserve response in this thread, woodchip's blathering is definitely worthy of 2 responses to my post's 0.

woodchip is DescentBB's Trump.

That's an insult to trump. He's more westboro baptist and a great example of the dunning-kruger effect.

[Lothar]

of the things deserving of response in this thread, my fact-based post is still at zero, while my comment about your relative willingness to respond to stupidity rather than to engage facts is now at four. Nice going!

[Ferno]

of the things deserving of response in this thread, my fact-based post is still at zero, while my comment about your relative willingness to respond to stupidity rather than to engage facts is now at four. Nice going!

I'm not sure if you're responding to me or not, but it's coming off as a little egotistical.

the only fact I see in your response is this... and only this:

the rules for money with that many zeros are different than the rules for money with the number of zeros most of us manage.

everything else is just speculation.

[Spidey]

Careful what you wish for Lothar...

[Vander]

And on topic posts are still at zero. (unless you count the OP)

I generally agree with Dionne that the lack of a course correction by the GOP is a bad thing, but it will happen. I think pure demographics will force it. The extremist wing is not a large constituency, and continued pandering to it isn't going to grow it.

[Krom]

2012 showed conservatives that you can't win a national election with just older white male voters. So the new conservative strategy for 2016 is to try and win a national election with only the most angry subset of older white male voters.

[callmeslick]

of the things that deserve response in this thread, woodchip's blathering is definitely worthy of 2 responses to my post's 0.

the claim was made by Bloomberg Business, so there may be some personal beef triggering the math on their part. I have heard similar analysis for a long time, here in the east. That is the only response I can make.

[callmeslick]

And on topic posts are still at zero. (unless you count the OP)

I generally agree with Dionne that the lack of a course correction by the GOP is a bad thing, but it will happen. I think pure demographics will force it. The extremist wing is not a large constituency, and continued pandering to it isn't going to grow it.

it can be said, also, that the Dems suffer a similar, but less anger-inducing, set of failures to live up to promises or expectations. That latter word might be better, as I saw a lot of Dems that had expectations from the Obama Presidency that were at complete odds with Obama's campaign promises or rhetoric.

[Vander]

Do you think those failed expectations provide a usable lens through which to view Sanders' support? Did it push people left in search of ideological purity? I personally think it's a contaminated experiment as both support for Obama and support for Sanders can be viewed as support for Not Hillary.

[Lothar]

http://christandpopculture.com/be-caref ... ign=buffer

[Ferno]

And on topic posts are still at zero. (unless you count the OP)

I generally agree with Dionne that the lack of a course correction by the GOP is a bad thing, but it will happen. I think pure demographics will force it. The extremist wing is not a large constituency, and continued pandering to it isn't going to grow it.

I could talk about it but really, it's kind of like agreeing that water is wet.

[callmeslick]

Do you think those failed expectations provide a usable lens through which to view Sanders' support? Did it push people left in search of ideological purity? I personally think it's a contaminated experiment as both support for Obama and support for Sanders can be viewed as support for Not Hillary.

I think you might be close, here.

[callmeslick]

Today, Gallup posted the current negative ratings for all candidates. They've been doing this since the mid-80s. Trump came in at a staggering 60%, which means, essentially, that 60 percent of the overall voting pool can't stand him. This is an all-time record high. The traditional thinking is that 40% is the threshold of electoral death, based on the reasoning that to overcome it, a candidate has to win over 50.1% of the remaining 60% to win, a near-impossible task, even in a sharply divided electorate. No one, to date, has ever prevailed at over 40%, that I'm aware of. 60% moves into the range of electoral debacle, and the GOP is rightly panicking over that fact. What is interesting is that Hillary pulls around 50% and has for some time, and pretty consistently always pulled 40% or more. The Dems, sensing an opportunity(Cruz is plus 45 as I recall as is Rubio) are now starting to look for a Hillary alternative more seriously. And the money flows in:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnb7Kz

I'm proud to be part of this influx, and like most cited by the article, still have about $1500 to give. Bernie becomes a challenge after that, because there is no Super-Pac to just cut a big check to, but that's what makes Bernie who he is. On the other hand, they are up to around 3 MILLION individual donors, which is precisely the way Obama barrelled to victory. When you have literally millions of small stakeholders, they corral friends and relatives, coworkers and others, and they are willing to work insane hours for the campaign, gratis, because they have skin in the game.