[billw55]

 wanoff, on 2015-April-13, 02:51, said:

No he didn't. Not if you believe the exit polls for Florida.

Why should I put more faith in exit polls than vote counts?

[kenberg]

 billw55, on 2015-April-13, 07:25, said:

I think the Rs have a good chance of winning if they nominate someone reasonable. Recent history shows a trend toward alternating parties in the white house. I think that voters (at least, the small percentage who are swinging the elections) just get tired of the incumbent party and want to try something new. Consider GW Bush. He was not a particularly compelling candidate, and the country was coming off a Clinton presidency that was successful in some ways, particularly economically. And yet, there was still a very close election that Bush probably won.

Comparing now, has the Obama presidency been as successful as Clinton's? Can the Rs produce a better candidate than GWB? I think the answers are no and probably. So it would seem that the Rs have a very good chance.

Against this is the tea party and religious fringes of the R party, that are becoming quite scary. A candidate with much association to these fringes will just collect their 40-45% lock votes, and lose routinely.

So really much is in the hands of the R primary voters. Do they have enough sense to understand the situation and act on it? We'll see.

I think the Gore-GWB race is instructive. There was an appearance, wiht I think some reality to it, that Gore's biggest accomplishment was becoming Bill Clinton's Veep. It was not enough,

[y66]

What's up with the logo?



Nate Cohn figured it out.

[Winstonm]

How can the country possibly vote in an all-Republican government considering the state of the current Republican party? Unless we are doomed to die of terminal stupidity, the Democratic nominee will win regardless of who it is or against whom he/she runs.

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2015-April-13, 08:36, said:

How can the country possibly vote in an all-Republican government considering the state of the current Republican party? Unless we are doomed to die of terminal stupidity, the Democratic nominee will win regardless of who it is or against whom he/she runs.

I don't know if it's terminal, but I'd certainly rate it at least life-threatening.

[barmar]

 mike777, on 2015-April-12, 17:55, said:

the remaining 20% are often low information voters, they don't read the forums.

I suspect the portion that are "low information voters" is comparable in all 3 categories. But the 80% that are committed to a particular party just don't matter for this discussion.

[cherdano]

 barmar, on 2015-April-13, 09:04, said:

I suspect the portion that are "low information voters" is comparable in all 3 categories. But the 80% that are committed to a particular party just don't matter for this discussion.

Why make "suspicions" when there has been a lot of effort put into studying this question systematically? Truly uncommitted voters are low information voters, on average.

[cherdano]

Btw, I also want to reply to something else in Timo's post:

 MrAce, on 2015-April-13, 01:52, said:

(...) the people who has not committed their life time votes to a specific party and not be one of their blind followers or soldiers, (...)

Ironically you also said that those 40+40 % will vote with loyalty, regardless of what one of the candidate has to say or do. I guess this must be due to their "highly informed" mindsets.

(...) it saddens me if what you say is true and %80 of voters have created such a wall between themselves and reality in a fanatic team supporter fashion and won't change their mind regardless of what others have to say, what people need, what country needs in a very fast changing environment, relations and necessities.

I just don't understand these kind of statements. I don't know who the two presidential candidates are going to be. But I already with which of the two I will agree on abortion, on economic redistribution, on health care, and on global warming! If someone has a fairly clear opinion on all these things, then it's perfectly rational to vote for the party rather than the candidate.

Would I prefer that there was a consensus in the US about such issues, so that voters could vote for whoever is going to send less troops into war, or whoever is going to legalise weed? Sure. But things as they are, I think the mind of a well-informed partisan voter is much easier to understand as the one of a well-informed uncommitted voter.

[hrothgar]

 cherdano, on 2015-April-13, 09:39, said:

I don't know who the two presidential candidates are going to be.

On the Democratic side, I think its fairly well understood that the Democratic ticket is going to be Hillary Clinto + Julian Castro.

The Republicans almost always chose the establishment candidate. This time around, its Jeb Bush.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the nut cases last longer than usual during the parade of clowns that is the republican primary process, however, I'd be surprised if Cruz or some other were able to win the nomination. I could well be wrong (the fundraising process is very different than past cycles). Even so, I think it will be Hillary v Jeb.

[awm]

 hrothgar, on 2015-April-13, 10:21, said:

On the Democratic side, I think its fairly well understood that the Democratic ticket is going to be Hillary Clinton + Julian Castro.

The Republicans almost always chose the establishment candidate. This time around, its Jeb Bush.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the nut cases last longer than usual during the parade of clowns that is the republican primary process, however, I'd be surprised if Cruz or some other were able to win the nomination. I could well be wrong (the fundraising process is very different than past cycles). Even so, I think it will be Hillary v Jeb.

Not sure the VP spot is so clear on the Dem side although I agree Hillary is a lock.

You may be underestimating Scott Walker on the Republican side. Unlike the other crazies he has been elected (three times counting a recall attempt) as governor in a blue state. His appeal to the far right is stronger than Jeb Bush, but he is probably "mainstream" enough for the establishment to accept. He also has some "not elitist" credit as a guy who never finished college (and who doesn't have a brother/father who was president). Jeb has been out of politics for a long time, the Bush brand is still fairly toxic, and his positions on immigration and education are not acceptable to the crazy wing.

I wouldn't count Walker out until/unless his scandals catch up to him.

[gordontd]

 wanoff, on 2015-April-13, 02:51, said:

Still it wasn't all bad - the 'special relationship' strengthened under Bush/Blair.

Did you miss out an emoticon?

[wanoff]

 gordontd, on 2015-April-15, 05:26, said:

Did you miss out an emoticon?

Correct but having just alluded to electoral fraud I thought that enough of a clue.

[y66]

 wanoff, on 2015-April-15, 09:52, said:

Correct but having just alluded to electoral fraud I thought that enough of a clue.

That and putting 'special relationship' in quotes. I see that gordontd's reply didn't have an emoticon either. Perhaps we've reached a new level of ironic appreciation in the water cooler and emoticons are no longer needed.

[mycroft]

Yes, well, the special relationship (and the one that MulroHarper has with the US, and...) is working really well these days.

It just seems that it's *primarily* used to pass information about our country's citizens that by law we can't get ourselves - and to be able to very carefully say "We follow all our laws, and they explicitly stop us from spying on our own citizens."

ISTR in the "bad old days", we used to spy on our enemies and pass the information on to our friends. Now it seems it's the same, but government's definitions of friends and enemies are ... more insular.

[cherdano]

So this is a NY times article about Hillary's order at Chipotle. Except they didn't know what she ordered.

Ladies and gentleman, I hereby present the US presidential campaign. It'll be a long 19 months.

[kenberg]

 cherdano, on 2015-April-16, 03:00, said:

Ladies and gentleman, I hereby present the US presidential campaign. It'll be a long 19 months.

You got that right.

A semi-serious question: Has anyone attempted to classify the personality trait (personality disorder imo) that would lead to someone putting himself/herself through the idiocies of a campaign? Me, I would look at it and think "I have to do what? I have to say what? No thank you". Not that anyone would vote for me anyway. The way I see it, anyone willing to engage in such activity should automatically be judged as too loony to be trusted with serious responsibility.

[helene_t]

 kenberg, on 2015-April-16, 05:59, said:

Has anyone attempted to classify the personality trait (personality disorder imo) that would lead to someone putting himself/herself through the idiocies of a campaign?

Psychology today said:

In terms of the four subscales, politicians scored the highest on the Leadership/Authority subscale, and clergy scored the lowest on the Exploitativeness/Entitlement subscale. In other words, politicians did score higher than the other three groups in total narcissism, but the differences seemed mainly due to their high scores on the Leadership/Authority scores. Interestingly, although the differences did not reach statistical significance, politicians also had the highest scores on Superiority/Arrogance and Exploitativeness/Entitlement subscales and professors had the highest scores on Self-Absorption/Self-Admiration. Without statistical significance, however, these last differences could be due to chance.

https://www.psycholo...hology-politics

[NickRW]

 helene_t, on 2015-April-16, 06:15, said:

https://www.psycholo...hology-politics

So if I got that right if in my estimation I have good leadership and don't think I exploit people I can become a leading politiciancult leader.

[y66]

David Foster Wallace made this semi-serious attempt to describe the personality traits of presidential candidates in 2000:

Quote

Think back to the sort of kids in high school who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way. Eager to play the Game. The kind of kids other kids would want to beat up if it didn’t seem so pointless and dull. And now consider some of 2000’s adult versions of these very same kids: Al Gore, best described by CNN sound tech Mark A. as “amazingly lifelike”; Steve Forbes, with his wet forehead and loony giggle; G. W. Bush’s patrician smirk and mangled cant; even Clinton himself, with his big red fake-friendly face and “I feel your pain.” Men who aren’t enough like human beings even to hate—what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is often a defense against pain. Against sadness. In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about. It’s way easier to roll your eyes and not give a *****. You probably don’t want to hear about all this, even.

[kenberg]

Random thoughts

Yesterday I played bridge at the local club and when I got back Becky asked what I had for lunch. I first replied that I didn't think I had anything, but upon reflection I mentioned that I had stopped at Starbucks for coffee and a cheese danish. I never wish to have a job where what I eat or where I eat it is of interest to anyone other than myself and perhaps Becky. And she was just making conversation, not evaluating my lifestyle.


George Bush the elder was our most recent one-term president. It seemed to me that his heart was not really in the 1992 re-election campaign and I imagined him saying to himself something like "Folks, I have been president for three and a half years now, if some of you have not yet decided whether or not you like me, I really can't imagine what I could now say or do to help you decide".

It might be fun to take the Narcissism exam mentioned in the article Helene posted. I can see how profs might score high on self-absorption. Not me, of course.

Al Gore as "amazingly lifelike" Yes, I like that.