Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
A few people have pointed out that, while pundits didn't believe he would make it,
the polls showed Trump winning from the start and never wavered, People just didn't want to believe that the polls were accurate or always assumed that there'd be some major correction or realignment down the line.
Polling with a small plurality in a field of 17 candidates last summer isn't the same thing though. His polling numbers didn't exceed 50% until very recently.
So what? As has been repeatedly said (and now proven),
you don't need majority voter support to win the GOP nomination. The fact that Trump has been leading the field since he declared tells you all you need to know. Funny enough, where you DO need a majority (well, close to it) is in a two person general election race. So your argument is that the primary polling doesn't count because Trump didn't break 50% when all he needed was a mild plurality -- and he always had at least that -- but now that Trump does need to be close to 50%, it's all good that he's polling around 40%.
My point is that you're assuming that he wont get that number. Which is the same thing we said. I wasn't talking 50% even back then. I was certain he could not get over 35% support among GOP voters at any point in the primary. I was wrong.
You are certain he can't get over 50% support among general election voters. Consider that you may just be wrong. We did the same freaking thing that pundits are doing today. Dividing people up into traditional voting blocks, and then assessing how Trump will do with those blocks based on traditional assumed reactions to various positions, statements, etc. Heck. That's *exactly* what the guy who generated the election map you linked earlier did. Um... But what if he is wrong? What if Latino voters in this election care more about Trump fixing the economy, getting jobs back from China, stopping handouts to slackers, putting terrorists in the ME on notice, etc, etc, than they are about voting in lockstep with their illegal immigrant bothers? Maybe women voters will care more about those things than whether they think Trump supports or opposes Planned Parenthood?
You're assessing his electability based on assumptions about what each of these voting blocks care about most and what motivates them to support or oppose a given candidate. But those assumptions themselves are based on a standard view of the Dem candidate versus the GOP candidate. And that's just not the case with Trump. He's not running like a standard GOP candidate. The same rules and measuring stick doesn't work.
That's the lesson we conservatives just learned the hard way. We also kept assuming that he could not possibly have enough voter support based on the same kind of math folks are doing now. We made assumptions about how each region would break based on the traditional demographics of those regions, and the traditional voting patterns of those demographic. And we were wrong.
Do you get that the current GE math is based on many of the exact same assumptions?
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No, there is no actual evidence yet that Trump will win in the general election. You are doing literally what I described: ignoring the existing data and just going with what you bet is true. Saying "Yeah, but I bet he'll run this populist campaign and that'll change everything" while Clinton is +13 is no different than "Yeah, but he'll say something dumb and flame out" when Trump was +20.
Oh. No evidence. i guess we're all saved then!
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I don't know about that. I listened to some remarks she made this week, and she was doing the same thing the GOP candidates did. Just dismissing him out of hand.
Eh, no. The Clinton campaign has been planning for this since June 2015. In fact, they were planning for it back when the GOP candidates completely ignored Trump as someone they didn't have to worry about.
Ok. You keep telling yourself that. Let's see what happens over the next few months. Cause I'm pretty sure the GOP candidates were just as confident that Trump would fail at some point, and they'd just move on past him. They also didn't take his chances seriously. I get that Clinton may have "planned" for Trump to win, but if all the talk of how easy she'll have it against Trump is any indication, she hasn't planned very well. She's been planning on him winning so she'll have an easy time of it. I think that's a terrible mistake.
I also think that by the time her campaign realizes this mistake, it'll be too late. I get that folks on the left have viewed the whole GOP primary thing more as spectators laughing at the GOP candidates fumbling around, and presumably just assume that "their candidate" wont have the same problems. I think that's incredibly foolish. Trump has an amazing ability to put other candidates on the defensive and make them look weak and foolish. And he does so in a way that doesn't allow for much recovery once it happens. He is completely unlike any candidate the Democrats have run against. He doesn't talk policy, or agenda, or platform. He just makes fun of your candidate, making them look stupid.
Expect him to make fun of Clinton's pantsuits, and her hairstyle, and being a female cuckold to her husband, and how she's bought and paid for (because he bought her!), etc, etc, etc. I honestly don't think she's prepared for this at all. She'll likely make the exact same mistake the GOP candidates did. She'll first take the high road and dismiss his statements as ugly personal stuff that has no room on the public stage. But he'll keep saying it, and the public instead of being outraged, will join him in laughing at her. And she'll complain about that and be called a whiner. And then she'll finally start attacking back, but it'll then be seen as weak and desperate. This is the pattern he used to win Joph. He's simply willing to get uglier than anyone else in the race. And right now, with the Washington establishment politicians (or anyone perceived as such) polling lower than herpes, it works. And Clinton is particularly vulnerable to this. Moreso than most of the GOP candidates were. And he hasn't even started on her yet.
I would love if the general voting public stops reacting to that populist rhetoric and votes based on substance, experience, and policy. But that's not what I'm seeing right now. I'm just not sure that the Dem well of fear mongering among various minority groups will be deep enough to counter it. We'll see though. Again, it wont be about policy positions, it'll be about the people. And that's a battle Trump thinks he can win. Because how the voters feel about immigration policy, or foreign policy, or economic policy, may just not matter next to how they feel about Clinton as a person versus Trump as a person. She's got the charisma of a chunk of charcoal. That's a problem. I've been watching Trump beat the stuffing out of politicians who were much much better politicians than he, and the whole time pundits would be shocked at how Trump won with this group or that group, and shouldn't have, etc.
He's not following the normal rules. Again, I'd love for that to mean he has no chance, but I have a feeling that's a bad assumption to make.