News Donald Trump's Popularity To Date

[EveHarrington]

This makes me feel better. Much, MUCH better.

Dead Link Removed

 

[joeylittle]

Good post @EveHarrington - that electoral map is very hard to stay on top of, and I don't know - maybe it's simpler to think the US is a democracy, instead of this slightly strange thing, where a candidate can win the popular vote but lose the election. I've got no ideas on how that gets solved, but it's nice to see how the map is looking at this point.

 

[Justmehere]

There is some interesting things being pointed out. Regan suspended his campaign just before the California primary. He ended up using the time to win delegates behind the scenes, and he won the primary.

But I want to GOP out. Just out. They need to be dissolved. Pronto.

Current polling shows that 41% of Anericans right now would vote for the guy. That's millions and millions of people who see the racist mysogynist orange menace and future tyrant that is Donald Trump, and say yeah, that guy, I would vote for him.

Trump himself is just one man and there still are some checks and balances in the system that would keep his possible presidency under a little control, maybe... but the real concern for me is the Trump is as popular as he is right now. That 41% is mind boggling and a tremendous threat to living in a free society. That cry out from so many Americans for a strongman is what will destroy our country - not Trump alone.

He's a symptom of a much deeper problem.

 

[Anarchy]

He's a symptom of a much deeper problem.

He is. Start with page 36 of the .PDF.
It's a cartoon abridgement of Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom" that was written during world war 2.
It'll take about 5 minutes to scan through
Link Removed
The full version of Road to Serfdom, takes longer. Hayek has a "formidable prose style", and though his reasoning is good, you can see the poor guy constantly cutting his reasoning short with the statement "but I believe that..."
Hayek was a very mild social democrat, and he could see that if he kept following his logic, it was leading to anarchist conclusions, and Hayek wasn't ready to go there.

Mises' pamphlet, "Interventionism" explains the same principle
That interventions in the market cause un-intended problems, so more interventions are introduced, which in turn produce more problems and more demands for further interventions...

This is an ever escalating "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she'll die" process.

The more areas of life that are regulated, the more that people's choices are thwarted and the more they are hurt - so the more force is needed to keep them from following their own choices.

There are also many short term problems which have been kicked into the long term future; for example borrowing, and inflating the money supply to buy votes and fund populist schemes, and to reward and then to bail out cronies - eventually we reach that long term future, and IMO we're reaching it now.

For example, for decades there has been a ready demand for newly printed us dollars overseas, for reserves and for trade in commodities like oil (the petrodollar). So dollars could be printed and votes bought at home with them, without raising prices too fast at home. At some point, there will be better alternatives overseas to those dollars; Remimbi, Euros, Roubles, Rupees... - and the dollars will flood home to the last place on earth where they can be spent - then money prices for goods will rise fast, very fast!

That is where the "strong man" or "Strong Woman" comes in, People hope that the "dictator" for want of a better name, will fix the problems for them
and America is at that stage now.

Let's hope it doesn't get to the
"I know an old lady who swallowed a horse. She's dead; of course."

unfortnately the ground preparation, of a dumbed down education system and a tame lamestream media that are described in the cartoons, are already in place

Most people - including most economists do not understand economics, what generally passes for economics is mathematical play in which all of the interesting bits are assumed away and abstracted from. Logic is either not taught, or when it is, it is taught in symbolic or mathematical form that is difficult to apply to verbal reasoning.

We are not in a good position for people to begin to understand the problems

- oh, look, there's Kim Kharwottshername's arse;)
[later adition: - the Kim K's arse reference is an allusion to all of the distractions that are out there for us to spend our entire lifetimes with - and never once doing any hard reading or even moderately deep thinking
It's said that Bertrand Russell, once he became something of a celebrity philosopher used to say

Most people would die sooner than think,
and most do

Back later
:hug:@

 

[The Albatross]

Well, my guy dropped out last night.... so that leaves the presidency to a hot head loose canon populist who has dubious conservative principles, a crony Washington insider who has highly suspicious insider deals for her own enrichment and is under FBI investigation for incompetence at best/crimes at worst, and a socialist. Lord help us all.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/5/4/slickest_con_man_out_of_nyc

"And his ability to slide through this stuff is astonishing. You know, I mean, recently,Politico brought together all the people who had written biographies of Trump, just to sit down at a table and swap stories. And I commend that piece to everybody who wants to read it. My friend Wayne Barrett is one of them, Tim O’Brien is one of them, Gwenda Blair—folks who had written really most in-depth biographies of him. And they tell wonderful stories, I mean, one after another. But my favorite one was about Trump and the draft, which for people of our generation was a very big deal as to what you did during the draft. And Donald Trump has always claimed that his—he got out of the draft simply because of the fact that like they didn’t need him at that point. And he talked about having a high number, which was a lottery at one point. But one of the biographers went back and checked, and he said, "Well, actually, you know, your date was before they were even using the lottery. How did you get out of the draft?" At which point Donald Trump says, "Heel spurs. I got a 4-F because of my heel spurs." And the guy who wrote this book said, "You know, I can’t imagine how many miles on a golf course this fellow has walked, and he had too many heel spurs to walk in Vietnam." I mean, that’s those kind of stories which are out there waiting to be picked."

 

[EveHarrington]

Somebody tag me when there is a legitimate road to presidency for Trump based on actual polling and/or voter history that shows an actual/probable electoral map that will garner him that magic number. Until then, I'm not worrying.

Trump isn't going to flip ANY of the states to red which voted blue in all of the last 6 elections. That gives 242 electoral votes. Add in Florida where Hillary is ahead in polling and game OVER! Yeah, it really IS that simple. And this doesn't count any of the other states which have been moving in a blue direction and could very well go blue in this election cycle nor does it count in any of the states which have gone blue 1-5 times in the last 6 elections. Whew! On the flip side, there are quite a few less states that have gone red in the last 6 cycles. The road to red------yeah, not going to be easy by a long shot.

A few potentials in the red VP list have come to light. All said not interested. Yeah------not interested in career suicide.

 

[Justmehere]

#NeverTrump, #GoodByeGOP are trending big time on Twitter. So many screenshots of GOPers changing their voter registration. Also, Google reports surge in 'Libertarian' after Cruz left the race.

GOP is fully into its next stage of implosion.

This is a very good sign for defeating Trump. A good chunk of his own party's base is running from him and his party.

Right now, 41% of Americans support Trump. I don't think he can win the White House today... but a lot can happen between now and November.

Check out this article about 12 ways Trump could win the White House: (Hehe)
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-signs-he-will-win-213870

Number 12 made me laugh:
"Sign #12: Someone (Ivanka?) changes Trump’s Twitter account password.

And she doesn’t tell him what the new one is."

This article gives several economic models by which Trumps wins:
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/275084-models-predict-gop-white-house-even-with-trump

And then there is the Bernie Sanders supporters revenge effect - where Sanders voters choose Trump to send a big F U to Clinton. (I have already talked to very active democrats in my state who are considering exactly this.)

This is another article describing another way that Trump could win: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/us/politics/donald-trump-white-voters.html?referer=

Also, third parties are getting a ton of attention, on both sides. The rise of multiple third parties could also be another path to the White House for Trump. The guy THRIVES on chaos.

If there is a large terrorist attack in the US, or the economy suffers another 2008 type of slump, I believe we will see Trump's numbers rise.

Last summer no one really thought he would get the GOP nomination. Sure enough, millions of Americans gave it to him, and much sooner than expected. Even after 9 months of the endless disaster that is Trump and everything he says every time he opens his mouth.

But right now, I think we have a very good shot of keeping him out of the White House if we do not give up or let down our guard.

 

[Anarchy]

or the economy suffers another 2008 type of slump,

That is very, very likely
and when it happens (it will - the only question is when?) it will be far worse than 2008.

________________________________________
here's why it will be worse than 2008

The fe'ral reserve more than trebled the size of its balance sheet after 2008 - so three times more debt
Wordwide, For every $100 that people believe that they have in their checking account, available for instant withdrawal, there is between approximately 4 and 6 cents of actual money*

Institutions that were incredibly irresponsible in the run up to 2008, and which should have been removed from the market by bankruptcy, got bailed out with other people's money, teaching them that they can do it again with impunity (technical term for this is "moral hazard")

And the people who managed and directed those institutions into such shit, and who should have been desperately seeking work serving gas or mopping out toilets in 2008, and hence removed by the market from positions where they had proved that they were dangerously incompetent or reckless - they're still in position.

Neither Bush the dumber, nor O'Bama the Keynesian# "saved the world" with their interventions and bailouts in 2008-2009. They wasted a whole lot of Other people's money, prolonged the pain, and set us up for an even bigger crash (with three or more times bigger debts) sometime in the future

that sometime looks like it is getting very close.

______________________________________________________________
* how could there only be between 4c to 6c per $100 in the banking system?
check out how fractional reserve banking actually works and creates the illusion of many times more money than there really is

#Keynesian - follower of the entirely fallacious economics of John Maynard Keynes

 

[Justmehere]

The economy is headed for a few more bumps, at best, and more will struggle and be fearful... and out of that fear they will want a strongman who promises to fix it all, no matter what. Only Donald Trump promises that. All the other candidates have more measured approaches. Only one will do whatever it takes.

And it will come at great cost. :cry:

But I'm hopeful we can stop Trump now and have a better person in the White House before it gets to be harder.

 

[Whyteferret]

I'm having a really hard time with his popularity. He's not qualified at all.c no experience at all.
And he's openly a sexist pig. And racist. Basically, he hates. He's creepy. He openly discussed women's sexual attractiveness and disrespects them if they're not up to his standards. He's even commented this way about his wife and daughter!

He terrifies me. And it terrifies me what it says about this country.

 

[Anarchy]

I've just seen something both alarming and interesting:

For the first time in the history of the united state - the life expectancy of white people (including females) aged between 45 and 54 years, and with no more than a high school edjumication - has declined.

this occurred over the period of 1999 and 2014

The decline in average life expectancy is by one month - but is notable because it is a decline.

With few exceptions (life expectancies declined throughout the 1917 to 1992 soviet era in Russia) life expectancies have been increasing since the 18th century or before - arguably due more to capital factors like being able to afford clean water, reliable nutritious food, and warmer dryer housing, than to medicine.

actually, since the late 19th century - access to medicine has declined as restrictions on the schools allowed to teach medicine and who is allowed to practice medicine (pushed for by the medical associations in order to restrict entry to their profession and to keep their incomes high due to lack of competition) has restricted access to medically trained people and has increased the prices of seeing them.

What increased causes of death account for this decline in life expectancy?
Suicide, drug related and alcoholism

People who are in the demographic that the Trump (and the Bern) are most likely to appeal to - are increasingly demonstrating that they are desperate and have nothing left to loose.

Desperate people will do desperate things.

some ideas for reasons for desperation in another post