Comments

Polls: I just don’t see Trump winning — 71 Comments

1. There is some evidence of overweighting polling samples with Democrats:

   http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/evidence_for_massive_liberal_bias_in_ipsos_polling_of_the_trump_vs_clinton_matchup.html

2. Trump could lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College. He has to win key swing states with blue collar Dems. The polls will tighten but Trump has to get disciplined and smart. That stupid attack on US soldiers for allegedly stealing cash in Iraq is Exhibit A.

   I’m still hoping Israel releases Hillary’s deleted emails.

3. Chad:

   You know what? Polls are flawed, but I am tired of this always questioning them because of skewed samples. In 2012, this was why Romney was going to win, remember?

   My observation is that generally polls are pretty good, less so in primaries state by state, much better nationally. They’re especially good in the aggregate to spot trends, and over time. The polls about Trump have been consistent, and I believe them—not that each one is exactly correct, but that they are correctly describing a very real phenomenon.

4. so far, if polls were right, we would not be discussing trump. Once the left realized that people vote to be with winners they been playing games with polls. its straight out of havlocks change agent guide and dialoguing to consensus.

   the press is fading for lying
   when it says what you like, you forget that
   the press has always lied and hated trump
   what would be news is if they reported the truth

   First link goes to an article about a CBS poll

   CBS news reports: Hillary Clinton: “I’ve always tried” to tell the truth http://www.cbsnews.com/news/campaign-2016-hillary-clinton-ive-always-tried-to-tell-the-truth/

   CORRECTION: CBS News was WRONG, Trump did NOT lie about Hawaii hotel http://therightscoop.com/cbs-news-just-caught-donald-trump-in-a-bold-faced-lie/

   of course we forget dan rather lied when working for CBS too…

   so lets ignore that and go to scribd and the actual poll results
   https://www.scribd.com/doc/315785475/CBS-News-poll-Gauging-Americans-views-on-Orlando-mass-shooting

   1) This poll was conducted by telephone June 13-14, 2016 among a random sample of 1,001 adults nationwide. Data collection was conducted on behalf of CBS News by SSRS of Media, PA. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones

   Did they call 1001, or did 1001 answer questions?
   what area codes did they use?

   the odd thing is that their presentation of the results plays games with the actual results… but why bother looking… presentation has no bearing on anything, just the facts do, right?

   you look at whats reported, and then what was asked, and then try to figure out how they reported what was asked

   Presidential Candidates’ Responses to Orlando pg2
   Approve Clinton 36% Trump 25%

   then you go to page 7
   and you cant figure out how they derived their numbers and that they are two questions put into one point
   Q11, do you approve of risapprove of the way hillary clinton is resonding….
   approve total 36%, rep 17%, dem 52%, ind 27%

   Q12. Do you pprove of the way donald trump is responding…
   approve total 25%, rep 50%, dem 11%, ind 20%

   how many answered the question?
   in no way does any of the combinations add up to 100%
   how did they get total? no combination adds to total…
   is it 36% of the 1001, or 36% of those that answered the question?
   how many didnt answer?
   what was the rate of answering for hllary and rate for trump?

   IF you go to last page you find this
   total respondents 1,001 (out of how many attempts? unknown)

   total republicans 255 weighted 249
   total democrats 320 weighted 324
   total independents 426 weighted 428

   there were 25% more democrats in the poll than republicans

   out of the 1001 25% more democrats are responding than republicans…

   even more interesting.. if they use weighted numbers
   they ADDED 4 to the dems
   and they SUBTRACTED 6 from the republicans

   this is ridiculous…
   [i work in research computing for a medical school]

5. Trump and the Alt-right grift that gave the White House to the Democrats.

6. Maybe my Israel to the rescue fantasy is not too far fetched.

   1. Israel has ALL of her emails.

   2. There is LOTS of bad stuff in the deleted ones.

   3. Media would go wild about them.

   4. Hillary is no friend to Israel. She’s taken millions from Muslims. She worked on the Iran deal. She is, frankly, a foreign policy incompetent. Bibi knows this.

   5. Israel can work with Trump.

   Aside. Top hedge fund manager Jeff Gundlach says polls will turn and Trump will win. Claims he’s neutral.

7. neo says: You know what? Polls are flawed, but I am tired of this always questioning them because of skewed samples.

   from the redstate text block

   [removed the bombast] 51 percent said they did not like the way Trump has been handling the situation, compared with 25 percent who said they approve and 24 percent who said they do not know or did not give an answer.

   the 51% came from a total that is made up of 25% more dems than republicans (according to their paper on scribd)

   should i give a math lesson here?

   since independents are cancelling each other out as they are within the 4 point error margin…

   you would have to ask 65 more republicans to get even numbers… or 65 fewer dems…

   would you want to take medicine if the study on cancer causes were that far off? this is not a small amount and we also dont know a lot of other things

   im sorry your tired of hearing that they do this in favor of the dems, but why not show me them doing this to the republicans?

   i am tired of people believing crappy numbers then using that to influence the life of others cause they are too freaking lazy to check dishonest people.

8. “Trump could lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College.” – Cornhead

   Very true. This is only a snapshot.

   Trump had a “honeymoon” of sorts after securing the nomination to “pivot” to the wider electorate. Doesn’t seem to be happening for him, as he yet to breach his top-end…
   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

   And there are plenty of toss up states…
   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_elections_electoral_college_map.html

   @Chad – In 2012 there was incredible amount of discussion in conservative media about how the polls were biased in one form or another, and that “the people” really were in majority for the GOP (some even predicted a “landslide” for Romney).

   That cured me of second guessing polls, and of taking conservative media at it’s word, as arbiters of what is “real”.

   Best to take the aggregate of polls than one specific poll, as RCP does.

   Another good indicator are the betting sites.
   http://www.sportsbookreview.com/politics-betting-markets/

   In 2012, there were very much in Obama’s favor.

9. Artfldgr:

   See Big Maq’s comment above this.

10. Cornhead:

    Working against your “Israel to the rescue” surmise is Trump’s “America First” shtick. Don’t think that sits well with American Jews or with Israelis. They have a memory of its use in the past.

11. I still remember talking with a NYC Boilermaker about Trump. He carefully said Trump was willing to talk about some things that were important but that Donald should learn to watch his mouth!

    That guy was about as classic a Trump voter as you could imagine but he was hedging his bets. Thats who Trump could lose if he doesn’t control himself. Now Trump has to show that there is more to him than a big mouth and he is failing.

12. ok… i did…
    now i am going back to do the stat work on the programs i am doing for medical research, and for us on Minerva the super computer – my department is research computing… we are the brains behind the researchers, who often dont have the skills to develop the studies, make the surveys or assays, and integrate the results.

    i guess pol survays for leftist papers are much better than what i do for a living…

    you know what… your right…
    base your life on propagandic skewed crap that ALWAYS favors the left and you dont get it.

    i really dont care, i dont want to live long enough for it to matter anyway… go ahead, be upset, believe what they want to believe, cause in dispair your going to do the right thing… right?

    [why dont you study the opposition and their games so you can stop pretending your living in any semblence of honesty any more… its really bad now… ]

    im tired of trying to bring things to an honest point and correct the skews they inject… you never notice its one way, do you?

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Weeks before the election, Reagan trailed Carter in most polls. In the Gallup poll on October 26, Jimmy Carter was at 47 percent and Ronald Reagan at 39 percent

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    by the way, google is helping so much its getting impossible to find what you want… their program doesnt understand the difference between survey of abuse, and abuse of survey..

    what do you key in to get the papers on survey abuse?

    you cant… they have gone the way now of alta vista, yahoo, and others who after they did the same thing, fell apart and then switched to google cause you could find what you want

    now google is doing it so you find what THEY think you want, not what you actually want.

    this makes them useless for a lot of things now.

    its a lot like my phone which has a smaller vocabulary than i do, and if you type foe, you get for… and other wacky responses… worse, it will not let you type foe without changing it many tmes… then after it stops, it will sneak a change in as your typing a paragraph later.

    i hate marketers… they are the ones that force us programmers to do this under the idea that this is better, and no matter how much you explain tothem, they dont get it… then again, if they were smart, would they be in marketing?

13. Afrtfldgr:

    The poll averages have for the most part been correct in the past.

    That’s the point. Not that there aren’t flaws or problems, but that they have mostly been correct, as averages.

14. Ann

    Only history majors and well-read people know the antecedents of the “America First” slogan. Ancient history.

15. Cornhead:

    I don’t think that’s true with regard to the Jewish community.

16. well there are so many details left out

    http://redalertpolitics.com/2016/06/17/trump-outperforming-romney-2012-swing-states-despite-bad-national-polls/#dTPHVZK45OHslDqG.02

17. Here’s a theory that GOOGLE is fixing the polls for Hillary. Google Caught Fixing Polls for Hillary

    Believe what you want, but doubting poll aggregates didn’t work out well for president Romney.

18. Ann:

    You may well be right but that objection is not substantive. I have always been mystified why Americans Jews are solid Dems. Dem party is no friend of Israel. Or America. Dems just play identity politics and somehow Muslims fit that model.

19. What is true in Nov. will hinge upon how much ‘assistance’ Islam provides Trump. If he wins, it will be because the threat has become… personal.

20. In July 1988, Dukakis was ahead of Bush in the polls by a huge margin of 55 to 38 percent.

    Boy, them Dukakis years were fun, weren’t they? 🙂

21. Meanwhile, there’s this: Paul Ryan, who has now descended to full Quisling status, has threatened to “sue” Donald Trump if he lawfully uses presidential plenary power to bar the entry of immigrants from majority-Muslim states.

    So….. he is going to sue Trump. But he didnt do s*** about:

    * GM bondholders getting illegally shafted in favor of Unions
    * Obamacare passed without any reconcilation between the houses. “Deemed” to have passed.
    * Obama illegally sending assault rifles to Mexico, resulting in the death of a border agent and at least 500 Mexicans, in an effort to tar the Second Amendment.
    * Obama illegally ordering federal agencies to NOT enforce federal law at the border.
    * The DOJ dropping the voter-intimidation case agaianst the New Black Panthers Party.
    * Obama illegally wiretapping journalists.
    * Illegally sending the armed forces to Syria without Congressional approval.
    * Illegally sic’ing the IRS and using the arm of the govt to stifle conservative political opponents.
    * Negotiating a treaty with Iran without Congressional ratification, that facilitated their getting nuclear weapons.

    — feel free to add to the list

22. eric12:

    That’s a pretty poor analogy.

    Bush had been VP and there was some dissatisfaction with him, but at the time that poll was taken, Dukakis was getting a bump from the recently-held Democratic nominating convention. Plus, Dukakis was relatively unknown. His unfavorables didn’t begin to compare with the sky-high unfavorables of the extremely well-known and widely-detested Trump.

23. Beverly,

    Blame rightfully lies where it is due. Ryan was not majority leader for nearly all the items you list. But his threat to sue Trump, stupidly exposes his real motivations.

24. Ann – One state where the “America First” issue might matter is Florida, since it has more elderly Jews than most states.

    Can’t think of any other states offhand, but Florida is a pretty big prize.

25. neo-neocon, it’s not an “analogy”, it’s just a historical observation that there’s no point in going nuts over a thin slice of early polling.

    Trump’s got high negatives, but so does Hillary. Back in the day, Dukakis came off as kind of a liberal wimp, but, well… so did Bush. Explaining why this stuff happened in hindsight is super-easy in hindsight, because, you know, hindsight.

    When Reagan ran the conventional wisdom was not that his high profile as an actor would aid him, because frankly his career had not actually been that stellar, but rather that because he was an actor, the public at large would recognize how unserious he was a candidate. The Democrats took played games and demanded (and got) a promise from TV networks across the board that they wouldn’t show any of his old movies because (their argument) that would constitute an unfair advantage for him. Yet every TV network mysteriously violated this rule in order to offer repeated airings of Reagan’s embarrassing *Bedtime For Bonzo*.

    It’s super super easy to say after the fact that his actor’s charisma won the day, but that’s not what the experts were saying before hand.

    I’m not defending Trump. I hate that he’s the GOP candidate. However, I don’t buy this argument that it’s all over because of how he polls against the super slime the Democrats are running this time around. Hillary is likely enjoying a very short-lived bump thanks to securing the nom from that crazed Socialist muppet who was running against her. That won’t last. When the polls show her badly trailing at some point, will we hear people say the reverse, that we better get behind Trump because Hillary’s toast? No, this commentary on Trump is largely opportunistic. People want Trump to be unmasked as a big loser because they want somebody else. Unfortunately, that’s what we were hoping *all the way through the primaries*. It never happened. So it’s too late to start running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Unless William Kristol has up his sleeve some other fantastic, impressive magazine editor he thinks can rout the entire field, might as well just hold on and see if the polls adjust in a while.

26. eric12:

    I’m neither “going nuts” nor running around “like a chicken with its head cut off.”

    And I’m not reacting to a “thin slice of early polling.”

    I’m pointing out the situation as it stands. I also have said it could change. But it hasn’t so far, and the polls have been quite consistently bad for Trump. His unfavorables are historically high, higher than hers (which is quite a feat, since hers are high, too), and haven’t budged except to rise slightly. What’s more, both candidates are very well known, as opposed to someone like Dukakis who was not, and I feel it is very very appropriate to point out those differences.

    If things improve for Trump, I certainly plan to note them. Until then, I’ll write about what’s happening.

    One more thing—this campaign season has broken all the rules. You seem to have a crystal ball that says Trump is the inevitable nominee at this point. I say he’s not, although I agree it is most likely he is the nominee. But until that happens, I will retain a small hope for some better alternative.

27. “Dukakis Lead Widens, According to New Poll”

    New York Times, July 26, 1988

    http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/us/dukakis-lead-widens-according-to-new-poll.html

28. Geoffrey Britain:

    What if Ryan’s “real motivations” are to protect the separation of powers as stated in the Constitution?

29. Back in Iowa after 10 days in the north woods, far from wifi or even cell coverage….

    Sheesh, djt will achieve a flaming merde storm of victory if he tops 100 in the electoral college. Unless he is overthrown at the convention, the shrew queen wins. Congratulations to all trumpians, enthusiastic or temped because fill in the blank.

30. “Jefferson has beliefs and Burr has none.”

    From the musical “Hamilton.”

    “Trump has beliefs and Clinton has none.”

31. hey parker, hope you had a good vacation.

32. Hey guys!

    Trump is our only chance. Negativity breeds defeat. He’s our guy. Let’s be positive. The country will be completely ruined if Hillary wins.

33. Cornhead:

    Some have not and continue not to buy into that line of “logic.”

34. Cornhead:

    “Much of what Trump has said after Orlando–doubling down on the Muslim travel ban and insinuating that President Obama was not interested in fighting terror–has been unhelpful. But he was right to assert that Democrats were wrong to try and change the subject from the threat from Islamist terror to their favorite gun control hobby horse. Yet by flipping on this issue without knowing enough about it to acknowledge the concerns that conservatives have raised, he undermined Senate Republicans.”

    https://www.commentarymagazine.com/american-society/the-gun-control-shadow-game-trump/

    This is what passes for “Trump-leadership” on the Second Amendment. Everything is negotiable or a suggestion with DJT. No thank you.

35. “Dukakis Lead Widens, According to New Poll”

    New York Times, July 26, 1988

    http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/us/dukakis-lead-widens-according-to-new-poll.html

    Last time I come here to darken your world. Promise.

36. neo-neocon: sorry about the “nuts” and “chicken” stuff, but doom and gloom over a poll this early doesn’t make any sense.

    There’s an obvious diff in Trump and Hillary’s negatives. The conventional wisdom (which is the nice phrase we have for “the latest rampant idiocy among the elite class”) is that Hillary has yet to begin to fight Trump because she’s been distracted by the Socialist muppet. This view has it that Hillary has nowhere to go but up, Trump nowhere to go but down. However, because she’s been involved in the inter-party struggle, the fight between her and Trump really hasn’t begun. Just a few loose salvos, at most.

    The fight between her and softball Sanders has actually protected her from any major scrape so far. Trump may be vulnerable, but Hillary is a freaking mess. No matter how much I dislike Trump, I can tell he’s ready to go for the jugular in a way that few Republicans can do. The only way Hillary gets let off the hook and wins decisively is if the bozos who run the GOP find a way to successfully stab Trump in the back and replace him with a proven loser like Romney. Romney does Hillary the same service he did for Obama, politely allows his opponent to run rings around him with slime and lies. Trump will hammer Hillary over her sleazy foundation, and that will take a toll, even if his ultimate success is in quesiton. But Romney or anyone else the GOP likes will be too polite to mention any of the horrible things she’s up to, and try to win by bragging that they’ve got binders full of women.

37. Roy Lofquist:

    Perhaps you didn’t see it but I already responded to that poll and the whole Dukakis discussion, here.

38. Oh, and I don’t have a crystal ball, but the only way it’s anybody but Trump at this point would be a suicide move by the GOP. I might like somebody better than Trump, but, you know, he ran and lost. Shove aside the nominee the larger number of voters clearly prefer — no matter how much we dislike him — and you’re just going to create a huge split in the party that *guarantees* Hillary takes the WH, not just for one term, but probably a full eight years, because it will take that long to sweep up the pieces and try to glue the Republican party back together again.

39. The Republican party allowed this to happen by setting up the rules to allow someone with 44% of the votes to win 67% of the delegates. They wanted Trump, not Cruz because they are indeed the stupid party. And now I find this strongly resonating with me : “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

40. Neo,

    You’re getting awfully damned defensive. You “responded” to that poll by dismissing it in one sentence.

    Now, I don’t know Eric or what his experience is but this is My 17th Presidential election. Every election since WWII. And everyone of them has been the most important election in our lifetimes. And every time headless chickens were stampeding in the streets, and the highways, and the byways.

    Eric and I are attempting to throw oil on troubled waters, to bring a measure of peace and comfort to troubled minds.

    The words of the prophet are apropos:

    Come writers and critics
    Who prophesize with your pen
    And keep your eyes wide
    The chance won’t come again
    And don’t speak too soon
    For the wheel’s still in spin
    And there’s no tellin’ who
    That it’s namin’
    For the loser now
    Will be later to win
    For the times they are a-changin’.

41. Roy Lofquist:

    I gave you the incorrect link.

    The correct link to my response is this.

42. @neo Much as I detest Trump, I have been edging closer to the incredibly distasteful act of voting for him, for the obvious reason that on the whole I think Hillary Clinton could be worse (believe me, it’s a close call)

    Yippie.

    Time to cool down everyone.

    The main thing I got out of this whole discussion was …neo has pretty much decided she’ll vote for Trump.

    Unhappily, unwillingly, reluctantly, guardedly, forebodingly, all the while grinding her teeth while in the booth, and spitting twice when she enters and leaves the polls.

    Yaay.

    Reluctant sister-in-arms. Non-Jacksonian. Under duress. Whatever.

    I’ll take what I can get lol.

    Bienvenida a bordo de mi amiga. Y gracias.

    …the elites despise us all.

    They think they need a new electorate.

    What we need is a new elite.

    Trump as mere change agent? I’m good with that.

43. “Trump as mere change agent? I’m good with that.”

    We don’t need this kind of change.

    One of the continuing – I believe – fallacies of this election season is the apocalyptic talk about how “bad” things are currently. That we need revolutionary, burn it all down change.

    Where does this come from? I know things aren’t great (unless you compare our situation in the US to almost EVERY OTHER TIME IN HISTORY ANYPLACE ELSE IN THE WORLD.

    But we’re going to burn it all down. As you would say brdavis9, “Yaay”

    The most likely outcome is just the end of the Stupid Party. I say good riddance. And I’ve voted loyally for them since 1984. The second most likely outcome is Trump actually wins, which brings it’s own set of flaming horribles into reality. I figure we’ll survive, but any hope of ever getting limited, sane government, at least for a good long while, will be shaky hope indeed.

44. You miss the point, the dems are burning every institution down to the foundation, the gope is providing the torches.

45. You all disgust me. Liberals in denial, all of you.

46. neo,

    Trump imposing a temporary ban on Muslim migration, until we can establish a reliable means of vetting applicants is not a clear intrusion upon Congress’ Constitutional powers. So, the argument that Ryan might sue to maintain the separation of powers is invalidated.

47. Neo:
    “Those on the right who say they cannot support Trump are accused by many of his supporters of betrayal and of wanting Hillary to win, or at least not caring whether she wins.”

    For the activist creative engineers of the Trump phenomenon, it’s just a stratagem. They’ve already achieved their near-term objectives establishing their social activist movement by displacing conservatives and encroaching the GOP for their Gramscian long march. They’re playing the activist game for paradigm shift, which is bigger than electoral politics, and in the activist game, they’re playing with house money already. They’re strategically appealing now to principal Republican concerns, but those are not their principal concerns.

    The Trump phenomenon winning the general election would be productive, of course, but it’s not necessary for them, especially given the apparent lack of competitive activism by conservatives – even now – that might threaten to seize an opening to rebel with a Trump struggle.

    Neo:
    “who had become extremely angry at the GOP”

    Conservative candidates needed that same anger to fuel their creative engine for the 2016 general election versus the Democrat-front Left, and they had 1st dibs on it. But they were unable to harvest it due to the critical dearth of the necessary activist social political engineers among conservatives, which effectively invited the active usurpers responsible for the Trump phenomenon to commandeer the essential social resource and manufacture it to serve their mission.

48. I used to like and respect Paul Ryan, but no more.

    Ryan said he would sue a President Trump if he ordered a temporary ban on Muslims. Reporter asked if the President had legal authority for such a ban. Ryan said he didn’t know.

    What do you mean you don’t know? Ryan suggests he will undertake the extraordinary step of suing the president and he doesn’t know if the president can do it?

    The president has CLEAR statutory authority to ban any class of persons from entering the country. Carter did it.

    Not knowing the law on this for a gratuitous attack on Trump is unforgivable.

49. GB

    There is tons of precedent that the president has wide authority and discretion in enforcing immigration law. Congress has no authority other than writing the law.

    BTW, Texas v US decided this month on this issue.

50. “For the activist creative engineers of the Trump phenomenon, it’s just a stratagem.” Eric

    I assume you’re speaking strictly of “the activist creative engineers of the Trump phenomenon” and not of those who genuinely see Hillary’s election as a probable consequence of a failure to vote for Trump.

    Cornhead,

    Good to know. I suspected so but try not to assert things that I’m uncertain about.

51. If Trumpistas are sure they are right, they can show it by placing bets on his victory. Right now, they can get pretty good odds, about 5-1.

    (Practical matters: They can place bets legally at the Iowa Business School market. Bets overseas might require the help of an overseas friend, or a couple of visits. Consult a lawyer before making any very large bets either way.)

    I’m not sure if there is an agreed upon term yet for Trump supporters. I prefer “Trumpista” because it captures his caudillo style, a style that doesn’t show much respect for our limited government ideal.

    Example:
    Limited government: I will propose to Congress that we extend the walls on the Mexican border.

    Caudillo: “I will build a wall.”

    We have had these types before — Huey Long promised to make every man a king, which is about as good as Trump’s promise to give us “everything” — but not many in recent years, nationally.

52. Cornhead:

    No, Carter did not ban a class of people in terms of religion from coming to this country.

    He did not ban a class of people at all, although that’s an internet meme that went around for a while during the time everyone was taking about Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims. I wrote a post on it back in December: take a look.

    Carter banned people from Iran in 1980:

    “Fourth, the Secretary of Treasury [State] and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly.”

    It is something akin to if the president now (or Trump as president) were to ban people from Syria. Read the post; I discussed it all at the time.

    Banning Muslims (Trump’s suggestion) would be different because it suggests a religious criteria for banning. It’s also a topic I discussed many times in some depth, and of course it was discussed on many websites and news programs as well (for a summary statement of my position, see this). Ryan’s “I don’t know” represents a fact that is true of us all, because the question of whether a president can ban a class of immigrants who subscribe to a certain religion, and whether he can do it without Congress, has never been decided and has never occurred, as far as I know. So Ryan was just stating a fact, but that does not stop him from having the opinion that it would be unconstitutional and needs fighting. In this he would agree with many legal experts. In this, he would also be acting to limit an imperial presidency.

    You obviously don’t agree, but it’s a very valid small-government pro-Constitutional position, and it’s the truth that “we don’t know.”

    In a different thread I have written more about what Ryan said about suing Trump and what he meant. I’m not sure whether you’ve seen it yet, but you can find it here.

53. After some thought, I have decided that the comment calling Paul Ryan a “Quisling”, that is, a traitor and a Nazi ally, was intended as satire.

    By beginning that way, the writer intended, I think, to tip us off that everything which followed was a joke.

    (I assume that most know that Ryan had a serious girlfriend in college, who just happened to be black — which is not something Nazis would approve of.)

54. Goeffrey Britain:

    I assume when you wrote “good to know” to Cornhead, you were referring to his comment on Ryan.

    But I just wrote this comment disagreeing with Cornhead’s assertion. Please take a look, if you haven’t seen it already.

55. brdavis9:

    Yes, funny how so many people seemed to have missed that statement of mine.

    Nor is it the first time I’ve written something of the sort. I have not made up my mind and don’t intend to do so until I’m in the voting booth, but that is my lean at the moment.

    Funny how nearly everyone ignores it, in their rage. A lot of emotion let loose this election cycle.

56. Peoply who claim to know what the results of the elections in November will be are fooling themselves.

    The only honest evaluation of the polls is to state that: if the election were held yesterday (or whatever the polling period was) the results would have been ….

    That said … Team Clinton does seems to be pulling away.

57. neo – So right now, you think you may be aa “clothespin” voter.

    Be fun to show up at the polls with one, which, sadly, we can’t do here in Washington, in this vote-by-mail state.

58. @neo-neocon brdavis9: “…Yes, funny how so many people seemed to have missed that statement of mine.“

    {blush}

    I do claim a slight ability to discern the forest from a tree.

59. Donald Trump, Manchester, NH

    “Thank you. I will use this power to protect the American people. When I’m elected I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there’s a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats.”

    Clearly Constitutional and fully within the powers of the President.

60. Roy Lofquist:

    But as I’m sure you know, that’s not the Trump statement that’s being criticized.

    There’s nothing wrong with banning people from certain countries. That’s not the issue under discussion here. The issue is banning people who are members of a certain religion. I’ve given tons of links to previous discussions of this, and there are plenty more. One link is this, and another good one is this. Also see this.

    The beauty of a Trump candidacy is that he has said so many things, some contradictory, that a person can point to this and that statement and prove he means almost anything. But his Muslim ban statements, repeated quite a few times, are what’s under discussion here.

61. Neo, With your kind leave I would like to clarify where I’m coming from.

    I do not like Donald Trump. I have not liked Donald Trump for more than 30 years. It’s personal. But personal no longer matters. I spend my days pondering what will happen when I meet my maker. My hopes and dreams are now firmly lodged in my grandchildren, and their children to come. And I am afraid. I am afraid that the 21st century will be a repeat of the 20th century. A century where the forces of darkness turned this world into a charnel house. More than two hundred million people were brutally murdered before it ended.

    Donald Trump ran a new kind of campaign for the nomination. New but old as the hills. Guerrilla warfare to confuse and confound his opponents. It worked.

    He is now campaigning for the presidency. He is a different Donald Trump that we have not seen before. Please watch this speech and let me know what you think.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygIDdXEpPnk

62. Roy Lofquist:

    I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I do not care about a prepared speech Trump gives that someone else writes. He has already revealed himself to us.

    Now, I realize that all candidates generally read speeches written by others. But for nearly all of them there is no disconnect between their speeches and what they say extemporaneously. Of course, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy and we don’t know them through and through. But with all candidates I believe we know them by two things most of all: their off-the-cuff, unprepared remarks, and their actions, not their prepared speeches.

    With Trump the disconnect is far more profound between those things and his prepared speeches (which have been few and far between, anyway). It is also true that he’s shown little understanding of quite a few of the policy positions on his own website (that were also written by others).

    If I vote for Trump (and I may, as I’ve said before) it will be with the hope that he will at least choose good people and listen to them as advisors. I’ve seen little evidence of that, either, but it would be a hope to cling to.

    I could not care less about a prepared speech he makes, however.

    I am assuming you have linked to a prepared, written speech—I don’t have time to check it out, but if I’m wrong about that, let me know.

63. And not unexpected at all, reports that Hillary’s already slipping in the polls, after Orlando.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/283961-poll-clintons-lead-over-trump-slipping-since-orlando

    We are hearing from more and more gay voters in particular that they got a wake-up call.

    There may be events that work in Hillary’s favor, but it’s harder to imagine what those might be. Old-style Democratic spin works, but mostly against polite no-argument-from-me Republicans like Romney.

    I mean, I hate to say Scott Adams was right about Trump’s skills at persuasion and linguistic kill-shots and all that, but so far every indication is that Scott Adams was right. Hillary better take a deep breath, she’s just about to go on the ride of her life.

64. eric12:

    From the link you gave:

    Pollsters found 45.5 percent of voters now support Clinton, while 34.8 percent back Trump and 19.7 percent pick neither.

    Clinton last Sunday registered 46.6 percent before the bloodshed at Pulse nightclub, versus Trump’s 32.3 percent.

    That is not a statistically significant change. Nor is it much different from what Trump’s showings in general election polling have been right along. In fact, it’s quite a bit lower than his polling indicated after he seemingly clinched the nomination.

    It is about a third. That’s not going to win elections. If that’s the sign of a “master persuader,” color me surprised.

    I’ll believe some of that “persuader” stuff if and when Trump starts putting up some decent numbers. 34.8 percent doesn’t fit that definition by any stretch of the imagination.

65. Neo,

    Teleprompter? If so then he pulls it off much better than anybody that I have ever seen.

    Some read what’s put in front of them. “Message, I care”, “corpseman”, “if, if, if, where was I?”.

    Others take the speech from their writers and work assiduously to make it their own. Men like Truman and Eisenhower and Reagan and Bush 43. The proof is found in their Presidential Libraries.

    Some say things that ring loud and clear long after they are gone. Others are on a list in the end notes of a history book.

    You and I may read the transcripts. The voters do not.

    Would you please watch the speech?

66. > That’s not going to win elections. If that’s the sign of a “master persuader,” color me surprised.

    No, the sign is his performance in the primaries. By all rights, the conservative nominee should have been Cruz. He’s the guy who took the risks against the establishment when the conservative base voted for change. He’s the one guy who should have been acknowledged for doing what he was supposed to be doing. If not him, the establishment should have prevailed with their hand-picked Bush.

    Trump applied select targets to them and took them out like they were yesterday’s rubbish.

    And he did so by garnering the one thing that always trumps polls: actual votes. The way he took out Cruz was, I hate to admit, masterful. He knew Cruz would have to work on the delegate system in order to keep up, and that would look sort of slimy, especially if he was called on it. By labelling him “Lyin’ Ted”, he planted the seed of Cruz’s destruction, because Cruz wound up in the unfortunate position of having no choice but to prove Trump right or give up.

    McCain and Romney are incapable of this sort of strategem. They were both like Bob Dole, they acted like it was simply “their turn” at the wheel. It’s as if they were politicians who didn’t understand that politics involves politics.

    This is what’s going to be the key to this election. When both candidates are intensely disliked, the dislikability factor is essentiall null. What matters is if Trump succeeds in disqualifying Hillary, just as he has managed to disqualify every single other one of his opponents so far.

67. In fact, for all of the GOP handwringing about replacing Trump, it’s far more likely that the Democrats will have to pull another Toricelli before the election. McCain or Romney guarantee President Hillary; Trump has the potential to drive her out of the election altogether. I seriously can envision a situation where her position becomes so untenable that they really do have to do an eleventh-hour switch, probably replacing her with Biden.

68. eric12:

    You can “envision” it. Many things can be “envisioned.” The question is whether they will happen.

    People have been predicting that Hillary will drop out for many many months. I said then, and I say now, it won’t happen. The only way it might happen is if she sinks like a stone in the polls, which Trump doesn’t appear to be effecting.

    And a replacement by Biden would be to replace a weaker candidate (Hillary) with a much stronger one (Biden).

69. eric12:

    I’ve said it so many times I’m sick of saying it, but I’ll say it again: that reasoning is faulty.

    What appeals in the primary to a largely GOP electorate is very very different from what works in the general.

    I predicted back in August of 2015 that Trump had a very good chance of being nominated, even though I deplored that outcome. But I have always predicted he has little chance of winning the general, although it’s slightly possible that he could.

    The primaries and the general are very very different.

    Hillary is already “disqualified.” Trump has to increase his favorables to gain voters if he wants to win. That isn’t happening so far, and I don’t see it happening. Most Democrats and Independents cannot stand him and would vote for a cobra rather than him.

70. Neo, you’ve often said things like this about trump-supporters:
    “who for months and months during the primaries declared that their goal was to destroy the GOP and then to rebuild it in their own image.”

    But I’m not sure you had links. You’re right when talking about Ryan to not trust third party interpretations. I think it would be a stronger argument for you to quote & link some Trump suipporters who want to destroy the GOP. I’m sure many want the leadership replaced with those who are more willing to fight for Rep values and interests.

    The Dem media attacking Trump and defending Clinton should be a reason for more folk to support Trump.

71. Tom G:

    I have no idea whether I had links. If I didn’t, though, I am certain it was because I assumed no one who reads this blog (or other blogs on the right) would need them.

    For months and months—for pretty much the entire primaries—Trump supporters (many) would go from blog to blog saying it over and over. Anyone who read blogs should have seen it many many times. Certainly anyone who read comments at Breitbart and Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse would have seen it over and over, but it was not limited to Trump-supporting blogs by any means, and commenters saying that sort of thing appeared rather often on this blog for a while.

    To go back and find these things now would take an enormous amount of time and effort. But if I didn’t link to them back then (and I have no idea whether I did or didn’t) it’s because I assumed most people on the right side of the blogosphere were very familiar with the phenomenon.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>