Debate Analysis & Election Predictions

These are tweets from last night’s debate—which I’m putting up the night of the debate. The timing’s important because here is my prediction, the last tweet of the night.

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788933539664232448

We’ll see how accurate this is in the morning.

Meanwhile, here are the top tweets, where I use ‘top’ advisedly. It was not a stunner of an event.

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788911860279947264

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788912032045076480

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788915008327458816

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788918480196079617

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788925704398176257

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788931471453020160

https://twitter.com/mattstat/status/788932172488937472

Predictions

On 1 January 2016, I predicted Trump would win the nomination and the presidency. I stick by the second guess, acknowledging that there is at least a dose of wishcasting in my bet. Note that his is a bet and not a probability. The two are not equivalent (see this book for why!).

My probability is Trump is more probable than Hillary—which is not quantifiable (see this book to discover why most probabilities are not quantifiable!). The only numerical insight you can glean from this is that Trump’s probability, conditional on my evidence, is greater than 50%. Which isn’t an especially confident prediction.

Today, right now. That will ebb and flow as the days march on. (To learn why all probabilities are conditional on stated evidence (buy this book!)

The system is going to attempt to gin up “outrage” over Trump’s not swearing to accede to the election regardless of what happens. My guess is the best term for what we’ll see is “spittle-flecked frenzy.” The cathedral complex which is the establishment politicians (D and R), legacy media, the universities, and the “entertainment” world, and the bureaucracy will assume Trump’s non-pledge will work against him, and will push the point far past the breaking point. They’ll convince some “undecided” voters to fret, it’s true, which is a sad comment on the state of knowledge of these voters.

Will all these folks really think that Donald Trump and his minions will rise up and overthrow the newly created Government of Hillary were she to win and if Trump cries foul? Or will they merely say that Trump and his followers pointing out election fraud will “divide” the nation? But, my dears, the nation is already divided; the chasm is growing. The dominate side wants the deplorables to shut up and take it, to do whatever they’re told if Hillary wins. But who thinks those folks will march peaceably under Trump’s banner were he to win?

The frenzy will also work in Trump’s favor, to give impetus to those who might have stayed home. We’ve all seen the Wikileaks collusion emails, the Project Veritas paid-thuggery videos, the FBI “investigation”, the dead and non-citizens on the voter rolls, and on and on. It’s clear the system exists to perpetuate itself and that the corruption is far, wide, and deep and that it will only extend farther, expand wider, and descend deeper. This why every time some network’s expensive haircut fixes his beady eye at the camera and sheds a cold tear for Democracy—O! Democracy!—another Trump voter will be born.

Side note: interestingly, there are rumors among the desperate that the Project Veritas videos were faked or manipulated. Probably by Vladimir Putin and Bigfoot on a UFO fueled by the blood of innocent Syrian refugees.

Special note to those worried Trump might not win.

Suppose that Trump never joined the race. The elites would have—is there any doubt?—nominated Jeb. The campaign now would be between Clinton II and Bush III. And it wouldn’t have made a tinker’s dam worth of difference who won.

Can you imagine the queasy stomachs and the somnolence we would have developed stretching our minds to find anything—anything—to like about Bush III? “Well, Jeb will at least require undocumented immigrants fill out three more forms than Hillary would. Vote for Jeb.” Or “Jeb never raped or groped anybody and he loves his mother. Vote for Jeb.”

Yes, sure, Jeb would have still been better than Hillary, but he would have been so little better that the difference could only be measured by NIST’s top scientists.

With Trump, there is at least a chance of a not apocalyptically awful presidency. He might lose, and maybe those of us who were optimistic had it all wrong. But think of your support like that of buying a lottery ticket for a billion dollars, where you at least have a few weeks of imagining what it would be like to win big.

Enjoy that feeling! Because thoughtcrimes are on their way.

Now’s your last chance: say who will win in the Comments section.

65 Comments

  1. Winner:

    The American people.

    For the first time since Normal-America’s destruction, the remaining Normals have a voice. The neocon fake “conservatives” are exposed as covert PC-Progressives and banished from presidential discussions. An American candidate is calling out the corrupt legacy media, the PC-Prog criminal enterprises masquerading as the Democrat party, and the criminal PC-Prog candidate. He is telling the truth out loud, in public.

    The truth will set us free. This may be just the first step in a long process. but it is a first step.

    It’s a win!

  2. John B()

    Three possible outcomes (order of expectation)

    Trump …acknowledging that there is at least a dose of wishcasting …
    (I’m sure Mr. Spock could give precise odds)

    Hillary … (Uncontested)

    Hillary … and a summer not unlike ’74’s summer of Watergate

  3. Yawrate

    I like that Trump stood his ground…we expected no less. As flawed a persona as he is he will protect the border and nominate conservatives for the supreme court.

    Hillary and the Democrat machine are corrupt as they come. I don’t see how it can be ignored.

    I think Trump wins.

  4. Gary

    I tend toward pessimism so I say The Criminal beats The Clown be a few points in critical states and takes the Electoral College easily.

    Trump wanted Hillary to take a drug test. I want him to take an IQ test. He has the self-absorbed attention span of a gerbil. Any of the other Republican candidates could have won this thing in his/her sleep (even Ben Carson, heh) by hammering on her corruption. Trump can’t even mention or remember what she’s guilty of.

  5. Possum-on-the-half-shell

    “Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me”. Sorry, guys. Two pus two is, in fact, indeterminate. Clearly, you all require reeducation.

    Hildebeast wins in an historic landslide, those few pockets of resistance that went for Trump will become ground zero for refugee placement.

  6. Ken

    RE: “Now’s your last chance: say who will win…”

    The candidate who gets the most cast votes counted and recorded. With such dismal support even from their supporters, both candidates can probably count on tepid turnout…which favors Trump, maybe enough to offset the gap. Judging by the tone & expression of Trump’s son in post-debate interviews (he looked like he was about to cry), it sure appears that key members of the Trump team have privately written him off.

    Aside – I’m still a bit flabergasted about how willing Clinton supporters — those supporting the public Clinton (not the very different private Clinton) — are willing to dismiss the Wikileaks emails ‘because they’re from Russia’!

    Here’s the illogic everybody in her team are applying:

    – The Russians hacked their accounts
    – And then provided the private content
    – (Which is a concession that those emails & other documents are genuine)
    – So the “source” IS the Clinton team.

    But they’re arguing the “source” is Russia trying to influence the election.
    And people are accepting that in droves as an excuse to disregard that factual information…so they can pretend the false perspective they have of candidate-Clinton is real by willfully choosing to ignore additional highly relevant facts.

    That makes absolutely no sense, logically; but is entirely consistent with self-delusion.

  7. JH

    The probability of Hillary’s winning is 50%. My subjective quantification.

    I’m still a bit flabergasted about how willing Clinton supporters — … — are willing to dismiss the Wikileaks emails…!

    It’s no different from the reasons that some people are willing to ignore Trump’s obvious flaws, I think.

    BTW, I delete between 20 to 30 emails daily.

  8. Jean

    I predict Trump will win in total votes but HRC’s thugs will prevail in rigging the electoral college, as described today by Christopher Manion. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/10/christopher-manion/hillary-will-steal-election/

    To those who doubt Trump’s intelligence, I would ask that you compare the Trump presented by the media today with the real Trump shown in the following video links. The first is his articulate testimony before a congressional committee in 1991, regarding the ramifications of the 1986 tax laws. In his appearance on Oprah, he talks about foreign policy and trade. He’s not a rocket scientist or a policy wonk, but he’s certainly no dummy. Like so much of what passes for reality today, the public personae of both Trump and Hillary are media creations.

    Trigger warning: Some viewers, especially those over age 55, may experience a sense of mourning and deep sadness by this reminder of how degraded our politics, media and culture have become through the decades of globalist uniparty rule.

    Trump: Congressional Testimony on Economic Recovery (1991):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_mfbjbAtYo

    Donald Trump Teases a President Bid – The Oprah Show (1988):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI

  9. DAV

    Just watched the Trump OH rally speech. Actually said what he would do as President. Too bad he didn’t do this earlier. OTOH maybe the Orange Scary Clown act was necessary to get to this point. He’s finally looking like someone to vote for.

    I’m a natural born pessimist. I think there are too many who use Sylly logic and Ms Bobblehead will win.

    One of the advantages of being a pessimist is being often pleasantly surprised.

  10. DAV

    On last nights debate:
    Trump was mostly on message but still kept falling into Hillary’s deflection traps. He’s learning but too little and I think too late.

  11. Mohammed Amin

    It will be close, but Hillary Clinton will win. In my view, Donald Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton. And there will be flood of Muslims coming to America. Yep, your worst nightmare!

  12. Joseph

    Slightly off-topic question:

    Is the book Uncertainty a good place to start with statistics? I’m always interested in the statistics that appear on this blog, but don’t always understand the concepts/formulae that I come across. Therefore, I’m looking for a good place to start. Would Uncertainty be a good starting place? Or is there a better book for a beginner?

  13. Sylvain

    ”Should we, in our Glorious Democracy, accept the rigging of parts of the election proved by Project Veritas, & the dead on voter rolls, etc?”

    Do you guys have notice that at every election there are a lot more people register to vote than the actual vote count.

    http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/

    Voting Turnout Statistics
    Share This Data
    FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditPinterestGoogle GmailShare
    Voter Registration Statistics Data
    Total number of Americans eligible to vote 218,959,000
    Total number of Americans registered to vote 146,311,000
    Total number of Americans who voted in the 2012 Presidential election 126,144,000
    Percent of Americans who voted in the 2012 Presidential election 57.5 %
    State with the highest voter turnout rate (Minnesota) 75 %
    State with the lowest voter turnout rate (Utah) 53.1 %

    20 millions less people voted than people who were registered and much less than the number of people eligible to vote.

    Lower on the same page: White turnouts higher than any other minority turnout by at least 4%.

    Also concerning the dead:

    For example, in 2012 South Carolina’s attorney general notified the U.S. Department of Justice of potential voter fraud after finding 953 ballots cast in the 2010 election by voters listed as deceased, in some cases as long as six years. The finding ran in the Augusta Chronicle at the time in an Associated Press story under a headline, “South Carolina attorney general informs Justice Department of voter fraud.”
    But a subsequent review by the State Election Commission found no evidence of fraud and that mostly the cases were clerical errors.
    In a letter to the attorney general, the executive director of the State Election Commission wrote that it only had the resources to investigate 207 cases from the most recent 2010 election. Of those cases, it found 106 cases were the result of clerical errors by poll managers; 56 cases were the result of bad data matching, meaning that the person in question was not actually dead; 32 cases were “voter participation errors,” including stray marks on lists erroneously indicting they had voted; three cases were absentee ballots issued to registered voters who cast ballots and later died before Election Day; and 10 cases contained “insufficient information in the record to make a determination.”

    http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/trumps-bogus-voter-fraud-claims/

    Porject Veritas = Project Lies.

    As in the claim that democrat are inciting violence. This is actually a good one and it is akin to a man blaming if wife for beating claiming she made him do it.

  14. Uncle Mike

    Has this post been “fact checked” by Martha Raddatz’s million fact checkers yet? Or was that just another of her “disinformation tactics”? Martha was as horrifying and hideous as Hillary. Made my skin crawl.

  15. Ray

    “As in the claim that democrat are inciting violence. ”
    That wasn’t a claim, it was a boast. Scott Foval and Robert Creamer, the Democratic political operatives in the video, stated they hired people to start fights at Trump events.

  16. DAV

    A good example of Nonseqitur Sylly logic.

    Cite irrelavant voter turnout stats at length and a 2012 report of an investgation into NC voter fraud. All to apparently deflect a clearly spoken and recorded ways of implmenting election fraud offered as a service by a Democratic consultant who also claims this is his function.

    Then jump to “Porject Veritas = Project Lies.”

  17. Sylvain

    Ray,

    ”That wasn’t a claim, it was a boast. Scott Foval and Robert Creamer, the Democratic political operatives in the video, stated they hired people to start fights at Trump events.”

    They organize opposition demonstration and that is enough to get a violent reaction from Trump supporter.

    Democratic event also face opposition demonstration and hecklers from Republican but it doesn’t end up in violence against the demonstrator.

    Of course, having Trump on stage saying that he would like to punch people and that he offered to pay legal fee to those who get violent is not an incitation to violence.

  18. Sylvain

    Dav,

    It seems that you already have the data for the 2016 election, maybe you could share them.

  19. DAV

    It seems that you already have …

    You’ve already demonstrated the inadequacy of your logic. Providing further example is unnecessary. But then there’s no telling where your strange logic will lead you.

  20. You are an educated man, but when it comes to politics, you sound like drunk high school drop-out.

    JMJ

  21. SStuart

    @JH

    How many emails did you delete after you were subpoenaed by the FBI to turn those emails over to them?

  22. MattS

    My prediction:

    Both Hillary and Trump have such high negatives, that both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein will capture a few electors denying both major party candidates a majority in the electoral college and throwing the election to Congress*.

    *In the absence of an outright majority in the EC, the House of Representatives selects the next President and the Senate selects the VP.

  23. I wonder if, instead of stating that the right of citizens to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” the 19th amendment instead provided that the the right to vote “shall be denied to everyone unable to show he is a) a high school dropout and b) drunk at the time of voting,” how much better off the country would be today.

  24. Nate

    I don’t think Trump has the states. He may win a plurality of votes, but I’m guessing that there’s enough vans in Michigian, Pennsylvania, and Florida to keep some folks voting all day long. As goes the states, so goes the country. This may be the last competitive election we have for some time.

  25. BrianH

    Sadly, Clinton will win.

    “Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”

    Alexis de Tocqueville

  26. Steve E

    Nate, perhaps it’s time to implement the use of “election ink” to thwart the multiple vote and bussing fraud discussed in the second video.

  27. Sylvain

    Nate SteveE,

    Considering that to vote in Florida the last election people had to wait in line for several (up to 8 in some places) how many more time than once can a person really vote.

    The closest state victory in 2012 was Florida, which was won by 0,6%. How many vote did it represent: 73,189. This means it would have needed thousands of people voting more than once while waiting up to 8 hours to vote. And then be able to pass the bipartisan check at the poll.

    The idea that an election can be stolen is idiotic at best, not considering how to keep the lid on a conspiracy implicating thousands of people.

    Why would they be busing the same people when the risk to get caught is very high and the price of getting caught is prison. Not considering that in every election about 20% of registered voter don’t vote and that almost half of eligible voters don’t vote. Then why would someone use dead people to vote when so many eligible live people could be convince to vote

    This election will be won by Hillary Clinton in a landslide for several reason: 1) the majority of white people reject the white supremacist agenda represented by this blog.
    2) The Trump campaign invested very little and way too late in the ground and get out the vote effort.

    Because of a badly run campaign which never tried to expand the level of interest of of undecided voters, a campaign that invested to little to late on the ground game and get out the vote effort. The republican will undoubtedly lose the Senate and a high possibility to lose the House.

    The good thing is that Washington will able to get out of the quagmire impose by the tea-party type republican.

  28. John

    Sylvain,
    If the Democrats are not engaging in voter fraud, then why do they fight tooth and nail to stop every possible reasonable precautions? Their reason is always “Because: racism.” Which is not a reason, but a dog whistle.

    In India, loaded with poor people of multiple ethnicities, everyone requires a voter ID to vote.

    Why cannot we do as well as India.

    Yeah, I know. Because: racism.

  29. John

    @Briggs,
    A bit OT, but you raised it. Bush would have been far, far better than Hillary. His election might not have shaken up the “cathedral” as much as Trump’s would, but Bush would have brought conservatives to the court and conservatives to the bureaucracies.

    As to his globalist ideals, he, unlike Hillary, would have had have a real need to appeal to those who are seeing the negatives.

    Whether he could have gotten elected? This year is too weird to tell. Trump’s success tells us that a lot of people are really fed up with “the establishment.” Many of them and myself are deeply upset that the Republican dominated Congress could not do more to thwart Obama. Trump is not going to change that if he loses.

  30. Sylvain Allard

    John,

    Having photo I.D. Is not a problem when the government does its best to make sure everyone has it.

    In some states they either lowered the number of day to get the voter to 4 days in a year (every 5th Wednesday of a month), or forced people to travel hundreds of miles to reach a location where they could get an id.

    We have photo id in Quebec. Our photo id is our health card which every citizen have. We are also automatically registered to vote when we fill our tax return. The most unlucky people will maybe wait about 30 minutes to vote.

  31. Sylvain Allard

    Steve E,

    What it doesn’t say is that the student fill is income tax as living in Ontario. Is mailing home never was Quebec.

  32. Sylvain Allard

    Also, it was a provincial election not a federal. He was eligible to vote in the Ontario province election which he likely did.

  33. John

    Sylvain,
    The solution to the problem is laws requiring that voter-ID services be readily available. It is not, as the Democrats force, lowering the standard so everyone can vote, whether a citizen or not, whether they have voted before in the same election that day, etc. It is not allowing Democratic operatives to go to care homes and sign up and then cast votes for people with dementia – something my wife observed being set up a month ago.

    The reason the Democrats do these things is to cheat. They benefit from both of these activities, since illegals are more likely to vote for them, and because their operatives have fewer scruples, in most cases, than Republicans.

  34. Mohammed Amin

    @ John

    Adam Ward, Basset County, Virginia – guilty of 36 counts of voter frauds. Over 4000 not verified for Newt Gingrich. Charlie White another Republican went down for similar offences in 2012. 4 members of McCotter staff charged with over 1500 signatures. I am sure I can find more examples…

    It is called Projection. Republican party knows very well how to defraud voters.

  35. John

    Mohammed,
    Did you not see that I wrote “in most cases?”

    I didn’t bother to list Democrat excesses. There are too many of them to keep track of. But, I can list one: Senator Al Franken is only in office due to vote fraud.

  36. DAV

    Republican party knows very well how to defraud voters.

    But then they were never caught on video boasting about it and saying if they were caught it wouldn’t matter. Not to mention the implication of this being SOP.

  37. Sylvain

    John,

    “The solution to the problem is laws requiring that voter-ID services be readily available.”

    Not sure to understand what you mean. Do you actually agree with what I wrote. That would be a new one.

    “It is not, as the Democrats force, lowering the standard so everyone can vote, whether a citizen or not, whether they have voted before in the same election that day, etc.”

    Most elections, at least at states level, end up being won by over 100k votes. In the US rarely anyone can vote in matters of minutes which means that the same person could hardly vote more than once and if very lucky twice. This means that this conspiracy would require at least 50k peoples within each state and in at least what 10-20 states to be enacted and have any effect on the election result. This is simply impossible to do and not get caught.

    They only way something like this could happen is with the electronic counting machine or voting machine that would be tempered with.

    In 2012, only 66% of eligible voter were register to vote and only 86% of the people registered to vote did vote. If there are so much people that could vote and don’t vote, why would anyone need to use the dead to vote? What is the chance that there would be no mixed up in whom is voted with which names? Imagine the level of organisations required to achieve that and in all secrecy.

    Why do that only to elect the president, when congress is the one who usually passes the laws. It would be much easier to effect the house of representative than to effect the presidential election since it only requires a local organisation. And would also require only about 40 district, which is still a lot.
    But the district are gerrymander to certify that district can hardly change hands. In the 2012 or 2014 election, the house democrat received at least 1 million more vote to elect some 35 members less than republican.

    “It is not allowing Democratic operatives to go to care homes and sign up and then cast votes for people with dementia.”

    As your wife called anyone about this. Surely the local republican lawyer would verify that their were no irregularities, like was the citizen eligible to vote, did he vote freely. If not why don’t the republican up their ground game to go get those vote.

    Trump simply cannot win the election because he pissed of to many group of people. He is doing worst than Romney in all categories of voters. Minority, student, women, and man with college degrees. The number of white with no college degree the only category in which he dominate Clinton by at least a 40 point margin are just not enough to win unless very few people vote.

    Even if their is an enthusiasm gap in the poll the democrat invested in their ground game they go door to door urging people to vote and making it easier for the people to go vote. They don’t need people to vote more than once. They only need more people to go vote.

    Finally, if they are doing something illegal than why would a guy boast of breaking the law to someone he just met. The penalty for voter is jail, is it worth it to try something when the price is that high.

  38. Mohammed Amin

    @ John

    ” Did you not see that I wrote “in most cases?””

    Yeah, just bias. Else, prove or evidence that in most cases democrats are worse.

    – –

    “But then they were never caught on video boasting about it”

    And that makes all the difference!

  39. DAV

    And that makes all the difference!

    Indeed it does. Who needs criminals boasting about their exploits and the lack of penalty when caught? It’s worse considering that the Democrats have a large illegal immigrant base to draw upon. So you are suggesting that Hillary is somehow a better choice or is this one of those “You Too!” arguments.

  40. Sylvain

    Dav,

    Why wouldn’t the democrat draw upon the large legal immigrant base that have not voted in previous election.

    Of course, anyone who doesn’t think should have the right to vote.

  41. DAV

    Why wouldn’t the democrat draw upon the large legal immigrant base that have not voted in previous election.

    I said illegal. Take a reading course. Maybe you can find one on the web. Noncitizens do not have voting rights or privileges. Abetting them in doing so is criminal.

  42. Sylvain

    Dav,

    Nitwit, there are more LEGAL immigrant in the USA that haven’t voted in previous election than their are ILLEGAL immigrant in the USA.

    Why would democrat use people that can’t instead of reaching to the people who can LEGALLY vote.

  43. DAV

    Nitwit

    Nitwit, eh? Hello!? Kettle to pot!

    there are more LEGAL immigrant in the USA that haven’t voted in previous election than their are ILLEGAL immigrant in the USA.

    No kidding. Nearly every family in the USA are were once immigrants. My family, for instance. Being a legal immigrant , though, does not necessarily mean you are a citizen. Getting non-citizen vote is voter fraud. Right, pot?

    Of course the Democrats would welcome immigrant vote regardless of taint. One can easily be led to believe that’s why they want to coddle them: more votes to bus in.

    anyone who doesn’t think should have the right to vote.

    I’m guessing you are under the impression this is one of your best qualifications. You still need to be a US citizen to vote here, though.

  44. John

    Sylvain,
    I did not agree or disagree. I merely stated that *unreasonable* burdens on voting are incorrect.

    Did you not notice all the ways that democrats have changed “unreasonable” to “anything that might prevent fraud?”

    As to the numbers… Senator Al Franken is a Senator due to vote fraud. The Democrats would not be constantly fighting all efforts to prevent illegal voting if they did not think it would benefit them.

    Besides, even one vote cast illegally, if it is abetted by one party, casts a stain on the election, and leads to reasonable suspicions that there may be many, many more votes cast that way. In other words, it undermines the authority of the government, which is *very* dangerous.

  45. Milton Hathaway

    “Now’s your last chance: say who will win in the Comments section.”

    I’m still going with Trump in a landslide. Liberal Demoncrats still don’t seem to grasp the seething anger in the country over illegal immigration, even from working-class Democrats. (Heck, I don’t really understand it either; I agree it needs to stop, but the intensity when the topic comes up continues to catch me off guard.)

    I’m only giving Trump a 50-50 chance of breaking 50% of the popular vote. I will be disappointed if he doesn’t, because then the Demoncrats will holler “NO MANDATE!”. I’m giving Hillary a 50-50 chance of breaking 40% of the popular vote. I know people who despise Trump but still won’t vote for Hillary. Evil, nasty, slimy, two-faced, lying, corrupt, corrupt, corrupt woman.

    I have wondered for a few months now if Trump has been sent by God, to redeem himself as much as the country. Seems like God’s MO, basically a good man in an all-to-human package.

  46. Sylvain Allard

    Milton you will be very disappointed on November 9.

    I guess this is tre price to pay to live in an imaginary world, reality comes crashing hard.

  47. Sylvain Allard

    John,

    I’ve looked into your Al Franken election fraud claims.

    How can you claim that there was fraud when the election result was recounted multiple time. That the lawyers from each party contested every possible case they could find. An not considering that it was under a Republican governor, and that the election officer were named by him, and were in large majority pro-republican.

    It seems that for you everyone is guilty until proven innocent.

    http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/10/18/reality-check-is-the-election-rigged/

    The only thing that seems fraudulent in this case are the two studies mentioning the felon registration.

    The claim of dead voters in North Carolina has also been debunk. The only dead who voted were those who died in between the moment they voted by anticipation and Election Day.

    Meanwhile this is why democrats contest republican id laws :

    https://youtu.be/EuOT1bRYdK8

    https://youtu.be/eXF9euvxreE

    All the laws that republican passed in the last few years were designed to make it harder for minority to vote, not to make them safer.

  48. Culture War?

    It’s collectivist vs. collectivist.

    It’s people who disregard the rights of Potential Americans vs. people who disregard the rights of Potential Americans.

    It’s a platform based on providing prosperity by making things more expensive vs. a platform based on providing prosperity by making things more expensive.

    It’s personal incredulity that non-college-educated whites can be important to the American economy vs. personal incredulity that immigrants can be important to the American economy.

    It’s someone likely to appoint judges like Earl Warren vs. an Earl Warren Republican.

    Jeb, at least, would try defending the rights of both types of Potential American.

  49. Milton Hathaway

    “How can you claim that there was fraud when the election result was recounted multiple times.”

    Sylvain – you gave me a chuckle with this one. We have a saying in this state, “The Democrats always win the close ones”. They recount and recount and recount, picking up a few hundred votes with each recount, which encourages them to do another recount. When the initial results are within a certain percentage, the first recount is free. After that, the Democrats have to pay for each recount. This happens county-by-county. The Democrats only pay for recounts in a very few urban counties which are overwhelmingly rich and liberal. Do you see the flaw in the system yet?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_gubernatorial_election,_2004

  50. Sylvain

    Milton,

    You realize that the Canvassing board that recounted the election were mostly republican.

    ” we find no evidence of any partisan tilt in the Canvassing Board’s makeup or rulings. For one thing, the five-member board is bipartisan. It includes two men who were appointed to the state supreme court by Minnesota’s Republican governor, TimState Canvassing Board Pawlenty. They are Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson. A third member, Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin, was elected to that post in a nonpartisan election in 1986, and hasn’t publicly discussed what her party leanings, if any, might be. A fourth member is Ramsey County Assistant Chief Judge Edward Cleary, who was appointed in 2002 by then-Gov. Jesse Ventura, an Independence Party member. The only clearly identified Democrat on the board is Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. And although Ritchie helped choose the panel’s members, Coleman’s lead lawyer, Fritz Knaak, said at the time: “The people of this state should feel good about who’s on the panel.””

  51. Double Click

    I lean towards Trump pulling it off. This is the first campaign, of what I’m sure are many to come, to bypass the legacy media completely and attempt to use the internet to spread the message. That legacy media has really fallen on its sword this election. I do not know how this change will play out in the future- the internet giants who control streams of information may be even less accommodating than the legacy media has been for a variety of reasons. We already see this with Trump being described as “hate speech” on Facebook, shadowbanning & other shennigans on Twitter, and of course Google’s close ties with the Clinton campaign and its opening of its own “fact checker” which they have been working on for a while. It was lucky that it took them so long to put it up as we now know from the e-mails the Clinton campaign wanted it up sooner. Overall, Trump lucked out because the internet giants were not yet prepared for a fight in their spaces. But they certainly will be four years from now.

    I think Trump’s biggest concern right now is that the GOP apparat sat on their hands this election; or at the very least, those on top encouraged those below them to do whatever but help Trump. How many votes is Trump going to lose come election day because they didn’t give full effort and do all the little things parties typically do to make sure people are aware of their candidate, registered to vote and able to get to the polls on the right date? You know the Democrats are prepared 110% in that regard (maybe literally and figuratively.) So Trump has to do so much better than normally expected because he did not have the political version of an offensive line this campaign. He also lacked a defensive line [see all the professional Republican hacks in the writing business who have folded their arms or spent the whole year talking down the party candidate].

    Even if he falls short, his effort will have been impressive. He has ushered in changes regardless of his finish.

  52. John

    The Internet is indeed growing in importance. But it is a mistake to deprecate the power of the mainstream media. A whole lot of people still turn on the TV, watch the evening “news,” and are affected by it. The consistent left wing bias of that media is, sadly, still worth quite a few percentage in the actual vote.

    Trump’s biggest problem is not the Republican Party, although too many of the party elite are certainly adding to the trouble. Trump’s biggest problem is his thin hide and his narcissism. This has caused him to miss one opportunity after another, and to add fuel to his critics by making inappropriate attacks on his critics – such as savaging the Muslim guy whose son died in Iraq. That was politically stupid even if he really did have a valid point. Sure, his base forgave him, but no election is won just by the base.

    The odds are that he will lose. It is harder to predict this year than in the past, because the electorate is restive, and polling has been getting less accurate.

    But, the chances are that we will be facing the coronation of the most crooked and incompetent President since Lyndon Johnson, and she will be infesting our news cycle for another four years at least.

  53. Sylvain

    “Trump’s biggest problem is not the Republican Party, although too many of the party elite are certainly adding to the trouble.”

    Trump biggest problem is that he is unable to hide that he is a white supremacist and a misogynist.

    Is only dominant electorate are male white with no college degree. Although the most numerous, it is not enough to win the election.

    In all other category he is doing worst than Romney did.

  54. John

    So, Sylvain, you too have fallen for the propaganda. No, Trump is not a white supremacist and he doesn’t hate women. There is ample evidence of this.

    And, your elitism shows again, as is typical of those against Trump. He has support from plenty of well educated people, including a whole lot of senior military officials.

    He will probably lose, but your characterization of him and his supporters is uninformed.

  55. Sylvain

    John,

    ”So, Sylvain, you too have fallen for the propaganda.”

    I think you mistake the meaning of the words ‘propaganda’ and ‘fact’

    ”No, Trump is not a white supremacist”

    While Trump father was sued over discrimination practices. Donald Jr had a bad comment about ‘gas chambers’ and appeared on a white supremacist radio show. The apple doesn’t fall far of the tree.

    Trump keep re-tweeting tweets made by white supremacist. He keeps making racist comment. Never condemn action done by white supremacist group. Somehow he didn’t know who David Duke was???

    He keeps floating the idea that only certain city which have a large number of blacks would somehow be stealing the election. Black illegal immigrants are not that common in the USA.

    http://mashable.com/2016/09/15/donald-trump-jr-white-supremacism-holocaust-joke-animal-killer/#HYeNTBJqGsqL

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-extremists-idUSMTZSAPEC33G5QT8C

    Now Steve Bannon is a white supremacist anti-semite and avowed leninist and he is running Trump campaign.

    Trump lead the birther movement that tried to remove any legitimacy to Obama’s election.

    This is only a few thing that support my claim that he is a white supremacist.

    Now about women:

    The fact that he admits that his status makes it okay for him to grab women by the p###y, invites himself in girls changing room without any warning or decency to let the girl getting dress before he gets in. That he calls them miss piggy, etc.

    Other than Bannon violence toward his ex-wife. Roger Ailes was fired of Foxnews after the women complained of sexual harassment.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/21/roger-ailes-sexual-harassment-accusations-fox-news

    And now how many women did come out of having been assaulted by Trump.

    Guess what most women that complain against Clinton were telling the truth, and most women who accused Trump are telling the truth. Just like the women who accused Crosby were telling the truth.

    I would not be surprised that you, Briggs, and most of the man on this blog have actually sexually assaulted women.

  56. John

    Sorry, but your “facts” don’t fit the definition of Trump being a white supremacist. Such a person believes strongly that white people are better than all others, and acts or speaks to that effect. There is no evidence that Trump is one.

    As to birtherism, are you aware that Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign started that? Does that make her a white supremacist? You are confusing opposition to Obama with racism, and a specific form of it called white supremacy. That is, simply, nonsense.

    But, it is in fact the propaganda put out by the Democratic Party.

    As to Trump’s behavior towards women, again you are misusing a term. A misogynist is someone who dislikes women and/or considers them inferior. There is no evidence of that in Trump’s behavior.

    But hey, just keep on following the progressive propaganda. The redefinition of terms in a way that always favors their political stance.

  57. Sylvain Allard

    John,

    “As to birtherism, are you aware that Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign started that? ”

    Are you aware that there are what 1 individual that did mentioned it maybe once and realize that it was bogus and did not pursue it. I would hardly call this starting it.

    Where are the investigators that Trump sent to Hawaï and that he claim they could not believe what they found. What did they find? Nothing there were no investigator sent to Hawaii. And this was after he produce his birth certificate..

    And republican don’t have propaganda?

    I’ll give you your point about misogyny. I will replace it by saying that Trump is a women abuser.

  58. Double Click

    John,

    I agree that legacy media (and by that, I mean the large conglomerates in print and television from the post WWII era to present,) is still important. What I meant is that this election has demonstrated that they’ve passed their peak in importance sometime in the last five to ten years and this is a sign of the heralding of a change. The proof will be that a major party candidate can run a competitive race without their system. And it is a system with specific ‘news cycles’, traditions and shaping messages around the sensibilities of those in these industries.

    After all, as Hilaire Belloc wrote, “the power of the press is to suppress;” and increasingly, our elections turn on narratives which interest the media itself. It would be trite to go through all the examples of this but, perhaps nothing else so clearly demonstrates it as our national debates. They are organized to appease the media with a cycle’s worth of soundbites and then we score the candidates along how effective those little bits will play to the media as stand-ins for the voter; in other words, how effectively they can manipulate the media cycle to reproduce those words in copy-by-the-pound. We then score the moderator as a participant and speculate on how much his or her ‘gotcha’ questions were self-aggrandizingly “fair” or “biased.” Which is why I think the ‘Khazir Khan brouhaha’ you brought up is an example of a legacy media-centric story demonstrating the declining effectiveness of the (now) old way of doing things- Trump was already in decline in daily-tracking polls the morning of July 28th before Khazir Khan and his wife took the stage at the Democratic National Convention. He was dropping whether or not that whole thing took place; his convention bump was over after all. But, the media attempted to run with this “Wrath At Khan” because it provided hundreds of man-hours of grist for the media to talk about, write about, discuss amongst themselves. If this were an election from 10 years ago, it would’ve sank the candidate permanently. It should’ve played like Al Gore sighing at his [second?] debate in 2000- something the media could drive home in their analysis. By all the old conventions, he has done everything wrong, and yet he may still pull this off. Which suggests we may be looking at a battle of Jena situation, and the old ways of doing things no longer guarantee victory.

    Now, I could be extremely wrong here; we’ll know in two more weeks. But anything short of a ten-point landslide would suggest that the situation has begun changing, and if it it were my livelihood to run these sort of campaigns, I would be watching very closely and figuring out how to position myself for a race where CNN and the Washington Post isn’t as important as Twitter. If he loses by, say, <4%, I would say the legacy media era is finished and they will need a completely new game plan by the next election cycle.

  59. John

    I believe you misread legacy media’s intent. They are, in this race, indistinguishable from Democratic Party operatives. They seized on a lot of Trump’s pronouncements as a way to discredit him, and it has worked, although not as well as in the past. They did the same thing the last election cycle, except that Romney was so innocuous that they had to take amazingly trivial things and weaponize him – his slip about “folders of women” for example, or having is dog in a crate on top of his car.

    Notice how the media’s creation of these silly narratives has worked: those narratives have become important in new media, but they originated in the ech chambers of the coastal mainstream media.

    I think that Trump’s success is not that much due to the loss of influence of that media – at least in the race itself. It is due to a pent-up demand for change caused by various related factors – unfettered immigration, the poor job prospects of many blue collar people, the insane increase in political correctness, and the fear of an ever more intrusive government.

    Trump in many ways is a result of the power of the MSM. They played his message loud and clear during the primaries. Partly because it really was news, and partly, I think, because they wanted to embarrass Republicans.

    In the case of the media, never ascribe to incompetence or lack of power what can be ascribed to malice.

    None of this is to say that new media isn’t important. It does allow people opposed to the establishment to communicate with each other. If it were up to the MSM, as they have demonstrated so clearly, we would have heard very little about Hillary Clinton’s faults – her constant lying, he disregard for national security, and her health issues. We can thank alternative media for that.

    There is a huge irony in that. Our coast elite foes, those that run the main stream media, were the ones so enamored of the alternative media back when this progressive nonsense really went off the rails – the ’60s through the ’80s. They loved Pacifica radio, The Berkeley Barb, the LA Free Press, and the east coast equivalents (you can tell I’m a westerner).

    Now they control the establishment and it is conservatives who are using alternative media and challenging them.

    The irony is rich.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *