Trump campaign spins out of control as GOP leaders seek to distance themselves

http://time.com/4523942/donald-trump-women-video-gop-rejection/

In the aftermath of the revelation of Trump's disgusting comments (talking about how he sexually molests women, that he "grabs them by the pussy" and that it's okay because he's rich and famous) his campaign is spinning out of control. Trump doesn't even seem to realise how serious this is, and the statement he released referred to it as "locker room banter". With only 24 hours before the next debate, GOP leaders are withdrawing their endorsements.

Senators, congressmen, former governors are saying that they can no longer in good conscience support him and will be abstaining in the election (an absolutely astounding and unprecedented position to take for someone who is an elected representative of that party in congress). At this point it is an exercise in damage control to see whether "down-ballet races" (races for senators and congressmen, and other state offices, that happen on the same day) will be dragged down with Trump and whether the Republicans can retain control of congress.

Trump has been pretty consistently behind in this campaign; he has a lock on around 37% of voters who will support him no matter what. This is the point at which undecided voters are taking a final look at he candidates and making up their minds, and any presidential candidate who has a decent shot at winning should, at this point, be broadening their support to include independents. Instead, Trump can't even hold on to moderate Republicans and is losing some of the evangelicals. The only group in which he is ahead, white male voters without a college degree, is one which has been an ever shrinking demographic and tends to have poor rates of turnout in elections. I just don't see how Trump can win, the real question now is probably about whether Clinton can win the senate (which is looking more likely than not) the House of Representatives (probably a long-shot), which would put her in a position to enact a progressive agenda.

Fivethirtyeight has two interesting articles talking about how "The bottom is falling out of the Trump campaign" and "GOP officials stampeding away from Trump".

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-bottom-could-fall-out-for-trump/
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/republican-officials-are-fleeing-trump-in-droves/

Before this latest scandal, Fivethirtyeight's electoral model (a complex algorithm taking into account all the published polls, polls from previous elections, economic data from this election and previous elections, approval rating of the incumbent) was already predicting that Hillary Clinton had an 81.8% chance of winning the election; I wonder what it will look like after the latest polls come in? I'd say that probability sounds about right; common-sense and patriotism will win out and the American people will decline to elect a man who is bigoted, rapey, eratic, angry and in all practical senses a tool of the Russian government

Couple things

1. A 1 in 5 chance is pretty high. Disturbingly so, in my opinion.

2. The 81.5% number is from Polls Only, you are describing Polls Plus which is only 77.5% for Hillary.

Lol why do you waste your time writing all these threads

Don't you have anything better to do?

Why do you waste all this time submitting posts that have no value at all and contribute nothing to the conversation, simply to whine about a thread you claim to have no interest in?

You are not obligated to click a thread in which you have no interest. You're like whingers who complain to Ofcom about TV programmes they don't like, as if they don't have a remote control and are forced to watch the programme (or maybe they thrive on self-pity so they force themselves to watch it so they can feel like a victim).

In short, stop being such a ****ing baby

Hillary Clinton is one of the most corrupt, dishonest politicians there is in American politics. Her appeasement to special interest groups and inconsistency throughout her politic career has made it clear that she wants to become president for all the wrong reasons.

Honestly, I was just wondering how you have all the time to write threads on this

I certainly tip my hat to your assessment of Trump being absolutely awful. But I am interested in your comment about Clinton.

It seems to be the received wisdom among left progressives and right-wingers that somehow Clinton is this uniquely awful, uniquely ambitious and calculating woman the likes of which we have never seen. Anyone who has an interest in American politics that stretches back before around January 2015 (and indeed can stretch that interest back to the 1970s to take a fair look at her career) can see that she has in fact pursued many good causes over the years and that her political career is far from a model of scandal and corruption.

If you look back to her activities in the 1970s and 1980s as the First Lady of Arkansas (and indeed her legal career before that), and her activities in the first couple of years as First Lady of the United States, she had a very strong interest in healthcare issues, in education and in children's rights and protection. In 1993 she was appointed by Bill to be in charge of a National Task Force on Healthcare Reform. She developed a proposal for a universal healthcare system, which pretty much all conservatives in the developed world outside the United States realise is a basic necessity for any kind of fairness in an advanced society.

If she was this evil corrupt hag who only cared for power why on earth would she do that? Why would she take on such a powerful vested interest like the HMOs and drug companies given the capability they had to hit her really hard, politically speaking? She really tried to get that plan through and she was absolutely assailed with disgusting attacks by politicians in the pay of the for-profit healthcare industry, by the media who relied heavily on advertising dollars from the for-profit healthcare industry and directly by HMO lobbyists. I think anyone who has read up on her career and can get a sense of her personality and history is that experience really affected her. After that she was never as open as before, she was never as willing to put herself out there and take political risks... it's almost like when you're sunburned, your skin is quite sensitive and even a small touch can hurt. That's what happened to her politically. But even so she continued to champion education and children's rights issues.

And in the senate she championed both progressive issues and general reform issues. As Senator of New York she had very high approval ratings of around 72%, including approval by around half of Republicans. She was considered to be a good, effective senator. When she went for the nomination in 2007/08 against Obama her approval ratings fell because she's an absolutely awful campaigner (she's not very good at politics, she's much more of a policy wonk). But when she become Secretary of State, again she was very effective, highly respected by America's allies and again enjoyed high approval ratings.

As she is campaigning now her approval ratings fall because she's simply not very good at campaigning. But her history tells us that once she actually gets the job and is allowed to get on with the job, she does well in it and I predict she will be a pretty effective president.

As for the claim she is "doing this for the wrong reasons", I think that's facile because pretty much everyone in politics is there out of a mix of personal ambition and a belief that their favoured policies are the best for the country. There's little question for me that one of the most important policies she has championed, guaranteed paid holidays and sick leave (as we have here in the UK and as pretty much all advanced economies have) is something that will have a major, positive impact on the lives of 150 million Americans who work.

Have you ever bothered to read her memoir Hard Choices and the policy book Stronger Together? Most conservatives, in my experience, are vitriolic about Clinton but have never bothered to read any of her writings, never bothered to read up on her history and make comments like calling her "one of the most corrupt politicians in America" which are patently (I'm sorry to say) idiotic. As I said, this view of her really seems to be the received wisdom and those repeating it rarely stop to consider the reasons they are supposed to believe that or what incidents and examples are supposed to evidence these claims re: her being somehow the most malevolent and evil politician. It's taken as a given and it's lazy and boring

Hillary Clinton is one of the most corrupt, dishonest politicians there is in American politics. Her appeasement to special interest groups and inconsistency throughout her politic career has made it clear that she wants to become president for all the wrong reasons.

I'm not a progressive by the left's definition of the word, so I do align myself more with the GOP when it comes to American politics. Generally, I see this new wave against the political norms as a good sign, especially when it comes to topics which are often sidelined as a result of political correctness. However, Donald Trump is not the man to represent this movement. He's a moron. He doesn't know the difference between being politically incorrect and outright rude. Personally, someone like Ben Carson, Ted Cruz or John Kasick would have been so much better for the Republican Party.

As much as I despise Hillary Clinton, I loathe Donald Trump. His bombastic rhetoric has become tiresome, and his brand of politics toxic. Hopefully, the US will elect Hillary Clinton and the GOP can find someone better for 2020.

Great comment, I too think the absurd hatred of Hillary Clinton is actually bizarre and quite worrying.

x

Finally someone with some sense. It's okay to be right wing and dislike Trump, the man is an incompetent idiot. There's too many people who blindly support him just because he annoys the "regressive left"

did you study english at cambridge or something, you have good english writing ability

Lol why do you waste your time writing all these threads

Don't you have anything better to do?

Sorry, you are quite right; the model that takes into account all the historical polling and economic date is Polls-Plus. Interestingly, the Now-Cast model shows the probability for a Clinton win as high as 86.5%.

As for a 1 in 5 chance, I think the model has to spit out a number and they can't assign him a zero chance, even on the current polling numbers it's possible that some strange confluence of events would mean that somehow Clinton supporting voters didn't get to the polls and Trump voters did in exceptionally large numbers. But otherwise I think that overwhelming circa 80% number speaks to just how solid Clinton's lead is at this point.