/LL

Gonna bump this thread the night I win the nomination in August 2048

jerseyhoya wrote:I have a better chance of one day being the Republican nominee for President of the United States than Donald Trump does

jersey is right. The Donald is... well, it's easier to say what he isn't: a serious candidate.

By my count, the Republicans have five, in roughly this order:

Scott Walker
Jeb Bush
Chris Christie
John Kasich
Marco Rubio

I think the odds are top heavy here on 1 & 2. Christie is a long shot but too good a politician to be discounted. Kasich is plausible but uninspiring I would think to the money or to the base. Rubio has electability going for him, but I don't think he is a serious contender otherwise.

The rest are wasting their own and everybody's time I think. The big thing to look at it is who has the real structure in place to run the enormously expensive and time consuming business of a state-by-state primary campaign; you need money and political will in the form of competent (and quite extensive) staff, and plenty of dedicated volunteers. There are really only two who can meet this threshold I believe.

I may be being unfair to Rand Paul, as I examine my list, and too kind to Kasich. I still think the PTB / the traditional base make Paul an unlikely choice, but if Rs are willing to shift to a more libertarian approach to their party it could work (and oddly, I think he would have a much better chance of winning the general than many in my list, because of his more libertarian positioning, which is I think where the majority of Americans really are). Meanwhile, Kasich is sort of a classic guy to run - governor of an absolutely must-win state for Rs to regain control of the WH, who won re-election in a landslide - but I think his national profile is lacking just now (which he can fix), and he is kind of a "dull" choice.

So then he's more serious than 12 other candidates.

pacino wrote:So then he's more serious than 12 other candidates.

Huh? I am not sure Trump is serious about anything, up to and including himself.

He is soundly defeating everyone on a national basis. He has more of a chance of winning than most of the field. You just said there are 5 'serious' candidates...there are I believe 18 candidates now.

What makes him less serious than a lot of these guys? Does he believe things vastly different? If so, maybe the others should go to his way of thinking if they want to lead the clown car. If not, then it's just tone to which you object. He didn't say anything worse about McCain than the W Bush campaign did.

Anyway, my liberal friends, if you believe Trump IS a serious candidate with a significant shot at securing the Republican nomination - a notion I admittedly question - but if you believe this, you should be doing cartwheels. Sure, it will say something really awful about that minority portion of the country that manages to nominate him for the presidency, but it would pave the way for... wait for it... Bernie Fucking Sanders to be President of the United States, a dreams-come-true outcome that I don't think is plausible except in this laughably implausible scenario!

and then we get Puig!

You said he was unserious. You later added the 'with a significant shot'. Not sure why you just changed the question.

Also not sure why you say 'anyway' as though I didn't just follow up on your post and show you where you missed a few things.

Just saying he is unserious doesn't make it so. The voters don't seem to think he's unserious, at least not yet.
Carry on, whatever.

Trump is not a Republican. He's certainly not a conservative. He will not be the Republican nominee for president.

The national polls reported at this point are not only close to useless predicatively (see: four years ago), there's good reason drilling down within the polls to think his numbers aren't real even if the election were today. His support is not coming mainly from the very conservative voters whom you would expect his immigration/Obama's a birther stuff might appeal to - he's doing as well or better with moderates rather than conservative Republicans. These are people who are more likely to be watching Entertainment Tonight than Special Report with Bret Baier, and not particularly likely to participate in party primaries. They're not responding to a specific message, but name recognition/saturation coverage. We're also basing all of this off polls like this WaPo one from yesterday where Trump had a SHOCK LEAD at 24%, where it was a sample of 1000 adults of whom 815 were registered voters of whom 21% were Republicans. So like 40-50 people said Trump, and this was this morning's headline. I don't have any first hand information on this, but I would bet good money that Jeb or Walker doing internal polling off lists in New Hampshire or Iowa among people likely to vote in the primary/caucus are finding much lower levels of Trump support.

pacino wrote:He is soundly defeating everyone on a national basis. He has more of a chance of winning than most of the field. You just said there are 5 'serious' candidates...there are I believe 18 candidates now.

What makes him less serious than a lot of these guys? Does he believe things vastly different? If so, maybe the others should go to his way of thinking if they want to lead the clown car. If not, then it's just tone to which you object. He didn't say anything worse about McCain than the W Bush campaign did.

I'm an organizer. To win a campaign - ANY kind of campaign - you need a tremendous amount of organization. The presidential primary process is probably the most brutally taxing political campaign of any kind in the world. You need billions of dollars to run it over a 10-12 month period; but it isn't just the money. You need great campaign staff - in every state, coordinating more staff, in offices all over each state. You need a network of volunteers. For all of this, you need more than just money - you need political backing, which you get from political relationships.

Donald doesn't have ANY of this. He has a personal fortune - and a famous name. He has NOTHING LIKE what you need to execute a successful, multi-month, 50 state coordinated but essentially one at a time campaign. Among what you need is a great amount of personal perseverance and patience - he doesn't have that either. He'll get bored before he runs out of money.

Really, the 2012 campaign was a clear demonstration of this, on the R side. Why did a candidate who fired no one's imagination among Republicans win the nomination. despite everyone BUT him polling as the "popular choice" during one week or another? If you go back and read articles from the time, it is was because Romney was the only one who had secured big money donors AND THEN marshaled that money into a campaign superstructure capable of going all the way: he started with an advantage because he had much in place from his previous unsuccessful attempt in 2008.

Walker and Bush are the guys drawing the right kind of money, and Bush has the connections to create the structure; Walker has some structure, but can get more because of his national prominence. There is always room for one new face, and his is it.

pacino wrote:He is soundly defeating everyone on a national basis. He has more of a chance of winning than most of the field. You just said there are 5 'serious' candidates...there are I believe 18 candidates now.

What makes him less serious than a lot of these guys? Does he believe things vastly different? If so, maybe the others should go to his way of thinking if they want to lead the clown car. If not, then it's just tone to which you object. He didn't say anything worse about McCain than the W Bush campaign did.

He obviously believes things that are vastly different. And he has less of a chance of winning than most of the field.

I'd love having money on Jeb, Walker, Rubio, Christie, Perry, Kasich, Jindal, Paul, Cruz, and Huckabee ahead of Trump. Fiorina, Carson, Santorum, Graham, and Pataki aren't going to win the nomination either, although if I'd probably take any of them ahead of Trump in likelihood as well on the off chance the entire rest of the field died.

You saying he's not a conservative is fairly useless; it depends on your definition. He's portraying himself as a rightwing nativist, and doing a good job of it. Who cares if he thought Democrats were good in 2004? He's been aligning himself with Republicans for years.

Moz- yes, organization wins. He won't win. I never said he would. He is serious enough to sink several candidates and outdo what used to be thought of as party darlings. He's also gearing up for the debates, where he'll take someone down. It's going to be a bloodbath.

He's no less serious than a Graham or Jindal or most of these guys.

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:He is soundly defeating everyone on a national basis. He has more of a chance of winning than most of the field. You just said there are 5 'serious' candidates...there are I believe 18 candidates now.

What makes him less serious than a lot of these guys? Does he believe things vastly different? If so, maybe the others should go to his way of thinking if they want to lead the clown car. If not, then it's just tone to which you object. He didn't say anything worse about McCain than the W Bush campaign did.

He obviously believes things that are vastly different. And he has less of a chance of winning than most of the field.

I'd love having money on Jeb, Walker, Rubio, Christie, Perry, Kasich, Jindal, Paul, Cruz, and Huckabee ahead of Trump. Fiorina, Carson, Santorum, Graham, and Pataki aren't going to win the nomination either, although if I'd probably take any of them ahead of Trump in likelihood as well on the off chance the entire rest of the field died.

You put a lot more stock in these guys than I do. The dog whistles are currently tucked away but they'll be back.

pacino wrote:You said he was unserious. You later added the 'with a significant shot'. Not sure why you just changed the question.

Also not sure why you say 'anyway' as though I didn't just follow up on your post and show you where you missed a few things.

Just saying he is unserious doesn't make it so. The voters don't seem to think he's unserious, at least not yet.
Carry on, whatever.

I don't think unserious / "significant shot" are diametrically opposed. If you don't have a significant - if you prefer, I can say "realistic" - shot to win, you are unserious. Lindsey Graham is unserious too. Not sure what on Earth is going through his mind frankly.

As far as the "anyway" - I think you posted once in there where I was still responding to a previous post, so that I had not read one of your posts yet when I responded to a previous post. I think.

Let me put it this way: if someone will take a bet right now wherein I get to make money by betting money that anyone OTHER than the Donald will win the Republican nomination, I need to find that someone right now and win my free money.

pacino wrote:Moz- yes, organization wins. He won't win. I never said he would. He is serious enough to sink several candidates and outdo what used to be thought of as party darlings. He's also gearing up for the debates, where he'll take someone down. It's going to be a bloodbath.

He's no less serious than a Graham or Jindal or most of these guys.

I see - it looks like we are using the word "serious" differently. You are saying Donald thinks he's serious. And maybe he does - I can't really tell. When I say serious - or unserious - I am talking about his ability to either win or significantly effect the outcome of the R nomination process. And I don't think he is serious in that context, as I don't think most of them are, really.

The primary debates are a sideshow I think, perhaps an entertaining one, or perhaps an embarrassing one, depending on your view (I think Republican debates are embarrassing). All this money, all this talk ahead of Iowa & New Hampshire, and if you finish out of the top 3 in both, you're done. Trump may be amusing in that he may force some of the less intelligent participants to get on to the record about things they ought not to get on to the record about, but time will tell, and anyway it's got to be something that separates the wheat from the chaffe.

jerseyhoya wrote:Pataki

Yes, exactly why did he decide to climb up out of his grave to run now?

pacino wrote:You saying he's not a conservative is fairly useless; it depends on your definition. He's portraying himself as a rightwing nativist, and doing a good job of it. Who cares if he thought Democrats were good in 2004? He's been aligning himself with Republicans for years.

One thing that I think will become apparent especially in debates or if he does any media interviews with neutral/unfriendly journalists is he is so disconnected from the language of conservatism that questions about topics not readily familiar to him are going to get weird answers that actual Republicans won't like, and he's too much of an arrogant ass to do debate prep and too stubborn to apologize.

mozartpc27 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Pataki

Yes, exactly why did he decide to climb up out of his grave to run now?

In his mind he sees Jeb! as a frontrunner and thinks he also was a governor of a big state until 2007, so why can't us?!

The fact that Jeb was a successful conservative governor who entered the race with a built in national fundraising apparatus while Pataki was the pro-choice governor of a kleptocracy who has been irrelevant for about a decade is a small detail.

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:You saying he's not a conservative is fairly useless; it depends on your definition. He's portraying himself as a rightwing nativist, and doing a good job of it. Who cares if he thought Democrats were good in 2004? He's been aligning himself with Republicans for years.

One thing that I think will become apparent especially in debates or if he does any media interviews with neutral/unfriendly journalists is he is so disconnected from the language of conservatism that questions about topics not readily familiar to him are going to get weird answers that actual Republicans won't like, and he's too much of an arrogant ass to do debate prep and too stubborn to apologize.

I see this happening.