Bernie Sanders Question

[_Gunnar]

Tulsi Gabbard would be an interesting candidate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard

Yes indeed! If she runs and wins in 2020, she will not only be the first female President in history, but the youngest.

[_EAllusion]

Here's a question.

How would Hillary do?

she wouldn't do well at all....at all....her party has drastically changed since 2016 (a.k.a. she is a relic of a political style that is dead):

Nearly half of millennial Democrats say they identify as a socialist or democratic socialist, according to a new poll from BuzzFeed News and Maru/Blue. Almost half, 48 percent, said they would call themselves a democratic socialist or socialist, compared to 39 percent who said they identified as neither.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... ar-BBNVnse

Young Democrats - well, not old Democrats - tend to use the word "socialism" to refer to fairly standard Democrat politics from the New Deal to the Great Society. To them, it means something like "support of social programs." This is thanks to yahoos like you continually red-baiting ordinary center-left politics as Marxism and Bernie Bros calling themselves socialist.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling ... today.aspx

[_EAllusion]

Tulsi Gabbard would be an interesting candidate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard

Yes indeed! If she runs and wins in 2020, she will not only be the first female President in history, but the youngest.

I'd think her hardcore support of Bashar al-Assad would make her about as bad of a Democratic candidate as you're likely to find.

[_Gunnar]

I'd think her hardcore support of Bashar al-Assad would make her about as bad of a Democratic candidate as you're likely to find.

Probably true.

[_Maksutov]

I don't see any Democrats that I could support for the White House.

[_subgenius]

Bernie Sanders has a pulse.

Bill de Blasio has a pulse.

Tom Perez has a pulse.

There you go. Field one of those three if you want to win the nomination because in EA's world a Democrat having a pulse wins him the Presidency.

Hillary Clinton also had a pulse.

inconclusive, and most people lean towards the fact that she never exhibited signs of having a pulse....but she 100% had her finger nowhere near the pulse.

[_cinepro]

In the Abramowitz prediction model, Barack Obama did slightly worse than fundamentals. Hillary Clinton did slightly better. If Obama was a great candidate and Clinton was a terrible one, then what gives? I think Cinepro significantly overestimates the need for individual candidates to be good in order to win because a lot of voter behavior isn't dependent on that. I think Cinepro is completely off the ranch to think of Trump a juggernaut of a candidate. The fact that he cites beating a ton of Republicans in the 2016 primary is a tell there. He seems to take that as a sign of strength - look at how many people he vanquished - rather than a weakness - look at how divided the field had to be for him to sneak through.

That's fine. I hope you're right and that even if the Democrats put up a weak (or even just a normal) candidate, Trump loses. I hope they find a rockstar and it isn't even close.

I guess the only way to test my theory is if the Democrats run a weak or normal candidate. If they do, I would predict that Trump gets more than 304 EC votes. And I'll specify whether the candidate is weak or not before election day.

[_EAllusion]

To be clear, my position is that the odds of Trump winning or losing isn't all that dependent on who he is running against. His opponent might as well be named "Not Trump." I think he's got a coin-flipish chance of winning. This isn't because he's a good candidate. He is about as bad as they come. It's because being a presidential incumbent when there isn't an unpopular war or recession is normally a massive advantage and that probably couterweights him being so terrible. I don't think it is meaningless who he runs against. Differences among candidates can matter at the margins and it is quite possible the election will be close enough for marginal difference to be decisive. It's just that we don't know how close things will be to know if a second tier Democrat would lose where a top tier one wouldn't. How good the economy is doing is much more important than if Democrats run Warren or Beto O'Rourke.

His odds are also probably somewhat dependent on whether Democrats take the House as Republican interference on his behalf is holding back a tidal wave of serious investigations into his endless corruption that *might* be substantial enough to affect voter behavior.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

To be clear, my position is that the odds of Trump winning or losing isn't all that dependent on who he is running against. His opponent might as well be named "Not Trump." I think he's got a coin-flipish chance of winning. This isn't because he's a good candidate. He is about as bad as they come. It's because being a presidential incumbent when there isn't an unpopular war or recession is normally a massive advantage and that probably couterweights him being so terrible. I don't think it is meaningless who he runs against. Differences among candidates can matter at the margins and it is quite possible the election will be close enough for marginal difference to be decisive. It's just that we don't know how close things will be to know if a second tier Democrat would lose where a top tier one wouldn't. How good the economy is doing is much more important than if Democrats run Warren or Beto O'Rourke.

His odds are also probably somewhat dependent on whether Democrats take the House as Republican interference on his behalf is holding back a tidal wave of serious investigations into his endless corruption that *might* be substantial enough to affect voter behavior.

What year is this? 2016?

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

What year is this? 2016?

- Doc

It's sort of fascinating that people watched Trump stumble through 2016 as a wounded duck candidate who could barely, just barely eek out a victory against someone being covered like she was in the middle of Watergate and think, "This man is unstoppable!"

If you think that the worst performing candidate to win a presidential election in over a century is a virtual lock to win reelection unless the Democrats manage to nominate Jesus Christ, then you probably should think that about every presidential incumbent. A simple look at history proves that wrong, but at least it would be more consistent.

If Trump is so strong, I don't know how you can get your head around George H.W. Bush or Carter losing. They both actually won elections with more voters and stuff and were popular at one point. I guess the internal logic must be to assume that means their opponents were incredible even though their opponents both were very unpopular when there was a recession during their presidency and saw major midterm defeats.