Thursday, March 10, 2016

Live by the Polls....

How badly do you want a Republican to win the presidential election? If you want it, really, really badly, you ought to pay attention to this poll. It shows that one current presidential candidate is clearly a loser while the others are either running equal or ahead of the Democrats:

Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would handily defeat Donald Trump in a general election match-up, while a clash between Clinton and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would be a toss-up, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The poll shows that Trump, who frequently boasts in interviews and campaign appearances that he would beat Clinton in November, would lose a one-on-one contest against her by double digits. In a head-to-head fight, Clinton gets the support of 51 percent of registered voters compared to 38 percent for the real estate mogul.

Generally speaking, John Kasich beats both Democrats handily.

The moral of the story: if you want to see Hillary Clinton inaugurated in 2017, the chances of seeing your unconscious wish come true are greatly enhanced by your support for Donald Trump.

Have a nice day!

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two words for this poll.
B & S

Kentucky Packrat said...

And Hillary Clinton won Michigan by almost 20 points.

I would not pretend to know who wins if Clinton and Trump are the two candidates. I do know that polling has pretty much gone into the guessing game this year.

Marsh said...

When a poll hides its raw data and its methodology, it's a BS poll.

Also, if Kay Suck can't even win one state, how exactly is he going to beat Hillary?

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

This is a time for choosing. If the nation chooses Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders for the big prize, we're done. I'd prefer to know on November 8, 2016 where our country stands.

If we're going to be a lawless nation full of takers, led by a cognitive aristocracy out to enrich itself through corporatism and "public service," then I'd like to know that once and for all.

The energy behind Trump really isn't much about Trump at all anymore, so far as I can tell. I was on vacation with a number of thoughtful, intelligent, successful entrepreneurs this past week on vacation. They don't necessarily like Trump, his ego, or anything like that. But they do feel the nation is on the wrong track, and our Establishment "leaders" are leading us into oblivion. They view the Romney speech last week as a desperate attempt by those who think the Republican base are a bunch of kooks who need to be stopped. They think Romney is a loser. Romney lost in 2012 because he is weak, and he did not press the advantage. He wanted to be respectable. Well, "respectability" has given us 7 years of no/lukewarm opposition to Obama. We spent our Republican response to the State of the Union not attacking Mr. Obama's giveaway spree, but attacking the GOP frontrunner. This has to change.

If our nation has given up on the American ideal, the American Founding, American Exceptionalism and American character, I'd like to know. Election Day cannot come soon enough. The people have spoken thus, and Karl Rove and Bill Kristol don't like it, so now they're conspiring with Tim Cook and Larry Page to stop Trump. That's not "strange bedfellows," that's the Ruling Class at work. They're terrified their gravy train is coming to an end.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Camille Paglia captures the energy perfectly, as always:
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/10/i_was_wrong_about_donald_trump_camille_paglia_on_the_gop_front_runners_refreshing_candor_and_his_impetuousness_too/

By the way, Paglia is feeling the Bern.

And this letter captures the energy quite well, too... with a lovely analogy:
http://100percentfedup.com/dear-rnc-an-everyday-american-writes-a-letter-to-explain-the-trump-phenomenon-to-the-washington-elite/

Enjoy.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Marsh @March 10, 2016 @6:08 AM:

"Also, if Kay Suck can't even win one state, how exactly is he going to beat Hillary?"

Because Kasich is a moderate. Republicans have done really, really well with moderates the last two presidential elections. McCain now says we're kooks, and Romney says we fall for phonies. Wow... do you you feel respected?We nominated these guys because they were so "electable." Then McCain wouldn't press on Jeremiah Wright, and Romney showed up for the last two debates and did nothing. Who's the kook? Who's the phony?

And he's so well-known an electable that my spell-checker just changed "Kasich" to "Katich." That's powerful name recognition!

Anonymous said...

Angry white men don't poll well. They're working.

Anonymous said...

Trump is the only one that could beat Clinton.

You have been fooled.

Bizzy Brain said...

Yeah, and the polls said Hillary was going to win Michigan by 23%.

Anonymous said...

Understanding Trump


http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2015/November/39/11/magazine/article/10829676/


https://ricochet.com/an-open-letter-to-the-conservative-media-explaining-why-i-have-left-the-movement/

Ares Olympus said...

Similar polls have existed for the last 6 months, but Trump has now won the majority of primaries, even if each one by a plurality of republicans.

What I don't understand is how delegates work. If the GOP winner needs a majority of delegates and no candidate gains a majority, then it would seem the delegates themselves must decide at the convention, and so Rubio delegates for instance could decide to support Kasich or whatever.

OTOH, I also heard Ohio and Florida are winner-take-all primaries, so if Trump wins with another 35% in Florida, he gets all 99 delegates. Or Rubio or Kasich could suddenly look more competitive if they win.

I still keep hoping we find Trump as an April Fools joke, but I admit my confidence is broken here. The people will decide, and the people deciding are not the majority.

Myself I'd rather have Hillary or Bernie, but I'm not willing to risk a Trump presidency even if early polls claim he'll lose. You never know.

We also don't know what the economy will be doing by November.

Ares Olympus said...

p.s. I guess the question I'd have of the majority of conservatives, is whether Trump is an acceptable candidate for president, if he can prove he can win.

If the polls reverse and show he beating Hillary and Bernie by 15 points, would that mean his new endorsements would fall (or rise I guess) like dominoes?

Clearly a number of "serious policy"-republicans (wanting smaller government, lower welfare, lower social safety-nets, lower taxes, lower regulations, more privatization) don't trust Trump to follow their agenda. They'd rather stick with a democratic president in a stalemate with a republican congress.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/24/ill-take-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/

And yet perhaps "unserious policy"-republicans are glad Trump is a loose cannon and he can turn on a dime and say the opposite of what he said yesterday and not even know it unless you remind him of what he said yesterday. The 24-hour news business will have their best 4-years in history, and President Trump might continue his 24 hour tweets, every stray 4am waking thought will be on the headlines.

And if it was only domestic policy, I suppose loose cannons are instructive and can force issues into the forefront that people otherwise don't want to talk about.

And it would be interesting to see if in the next economic crisis, Trump decides to punish the banks with their "Free market" bad loans and lets them all fall because that's what a good leader does, even if it takes down the rest of the economy for 2 decades.

Can the president really tell Janet Yellen "You're fired!"?

Trump might yet outburn the bern.

Of course once he's fired everyone, he's going to need some strongman policies to keep law and order. And we might just let him, if he convinces us that China or Russia is at fault for our difficultities, and whe need martial law until we "know what's going on".

Anonymous said...

What if she's indicted? Or do the rules not apply to a Clinton? That sounds like a really great reputation to run on! How do the polls calculate for that outcome?

Ares Olympus said...

p.s. Here's the answer to what happens if no candidate gets a majority of delegates. Then each state party will pick their delegates to go to the July national convention, and collectively these delegates will choose the winner.

And since Trump will likely have less than 50% of the vote, then 2 or 3 candidates who do have a collective majority, like perhaps Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich,, they control the floor of they "agree to agree".

But I don't know in detail is how many states have "winner take all" delegates, and Trump winning states like those could give him the majority of the delegates even with a majority of the votes. Then he seems unstoppable within a "brokered" convention.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-convention-the-gop-doesnt-want/473049/
------
In order for Romney and Kasich’s wish to come true, it would mean that no candidates received the necessary 1,237 delegates. The convention in Cleveland would require several rounds of voting, with a majority of delegates eventually free to vote for any candidate. Then, through wheeling-and-dealing, they would pick the nominee. Someone other than Trump—presumably.
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L. Beau said...

John Kasich is a Republican from Ohio. Why would Democratic Party voters prefer him to Hillary?

Kasich is having difficulty getting fellow Republicans enthusiastic enough about his candidacy to vote for him. Given this, why am I supposed to believe that he'll attract enough "swing voters" and/or lukewarm Democrats to win the general election?

I'm not trying to blaspheme against one of the gods of the American state cult (Poll the All-knowing) - hey, I've read about what happened to a few of those Christian martyrs in the days of the Roman Empire. I just have trouble seeing how Gov. Kasich would pull it off. Is it because Hillary would be such a weak candidate? I'd really like to know what someone who thinks Kasich can beat Clinton has in mind.

sestamibi said...

Yeah, right. Can you really see Hillary getting more than 20% of the white male vote? Not a demographic they can afford to blow off.

Also, if Tavis Smiley, a far left black columnist, is right, Trump is poised to make significant inroads in the black vote as well.

This ain't over by a long shot.

Ares Olympus said...

Hey! A fake psychologist has weighed in, is Trump a psychopath?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vaknin

YES! He's a psychopathic narcissist!

So what does that make his followers? And what does that make America if we elect him?

And what does that make his public hater? (probably stupid)

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/donald_trump_and_narcissistic_personality_disorder_an_interview_with_sam_vaknin.html
-------
I was the first to introduce pathological narcissism into the terms of the political debate with my July 2008 essay where I suggested that Obama may be a narcissist. Obama is intelligent and prosocial.

Trump clams to be the former, but he is definitely not the latter. I regard him as much more of a menace than Obama ever was to the future of the USA and, by extension, the world.

I am shocked that -- despite an increasing awareness of the dangers of narcissism in the media and in the public -- Trump is still making any headway in this election cycle.
....
Here are my preliminary clinical observations:

Trump confabulates a lot and has grandiose fantasies, which he has come to believe in, thus partially and intermittently losing touch with reality (delusionally "failing the reality test").

Trump is hypervigilant to the point of paranoia, besieged by conjured enemies and imaginary slights to his person, appearance, or accomplishments. He reacts aggressively and vindictively to such perceived narcissistic injuries and humiliations. His is a siege mentality.

Trump is a compulsive attention-seeker and will go to any extreme to obtain it.

Trump is counterdependent: he abhors authority, rules, traditions, and "The Establishment" and rebels against them vociferously and ostentatiously. He is manifestly defiant and abrasive.

Trump talks about himself in the third person ("Trump will do this") and often uses the royal "we" to refer to himself. His first person pronoun density (the number of times he uses "I," "me," and "myself" in a conversation or in interviews) is the highest I have ever heard from any politician, Obama included.

Trump places a premium on appearances rather than on substance.

Trump is highly somatic and hypochondriac as he emphasizes the way he dresses and refrains from damaging his shrine-like body by consuming substances like alcohol or nicotine. He is self-worshiping and painfully self-conscious.

Trump is disproportionately aggressive, hypersensitive, and defensive, faking superiority which, in all probability is compensatory: it masks a deep and unsettling sense of inferiority and extreme awareness of and an agonizing dependence upon what other people think of him ("thin skin").

Trump lacks empathy and clearly enjoys embarrassing and hurting other people gratuitously. Such antisocial misconduct makes him feel (and, in his mind, actually renders him) all-powerful and God-like ("omnipotent").

Trump has an inordinately developed "cold empathy": the kind of an "x-ray vision" that allows him to immediately spot the vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and chinks in the armor of his interlocutors, adversaries, partners, and enemies and to leverage this knowledge to his benefit by penetrating their defenses. He therefore resonates powerfully and intimately with the hidden hopes, dreams, fantasies, delusions, and negative emotions (rage, hatred, fear) of his "constituencies." He is a consummate predator.

To my mind, Trump is the most perfect example I have ever come across of a malignant and, probably, psychopathic narcissist.

Of course, he cannot be fully and assuredly diagnosed this way. Only a qualified mental health diagnostician can determine whether someone suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and this, following lengthy tests and personal interviews. But the overwhelming preponderance of presenting symptoms and visual and textual evidence for tentative profiling is definitely there.
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Dennis said...

The only poll I believe is the one that happens on election night. If polls are so accurate then Michigan would have gone to Hillary instead of Bernie. A quick check demonstrates that the polls have been all over the map. At best most polls have acted as "self fulfilling prophesies" which I believe in today's environment leaves much to be desired because most people do not trust pollsters and will lie to them.
I have come to the conclusion that I want to see Cruz be the nominee just to see him eviscerate Hillary Clinton in the debates and in a manner in which she doesn't really know how much she is being eviscerated. It will take a couple of days before the "media" know it and will recognize what happened right in front of them.
I watched Cruz the other night being interviewed, if one can call it that, by Kelly. Cruz so nicely used her own foibles and strengths agains't her that it was enjoyable. Only twice did she understand that she had been had. Hillary could not carry Kelly's attache case. A tad bit hard to use the "woman card"
Please spare me that Cruz is this or that because there is not a candidate still in the arena that I cannot tear apart. Those who have the guts to step in the arena have all made mistakes and errors in judgment. It is easy for those who have not risked themselves to attack those who take those risks. In fact I have gained respect for all of them for getting into the arena. I may have my qualms and quibbles with most of them, but until I become perfect I can deal with that.
Polls cannot take into consideration that Trump does seem to have the ability to appeal to non republican constituencies.

Sam L. said...

Given the unreliability of polls this year, need I say more?