USA Politics

As scary as it is, I'd take Trump over Cruz. Although I'd personally like to see the complete eradication of the Republican party in America in general.
 
I'd take any of the other 3 over Trump .. easily. But, I would take Trump (bleh) over Hillary or certainly Bernie
 
I don't like how Ted Cruz thinks that he, as president, will control holy purifying fire with which to cleanse the Middle East. He scares the living shit out of me. For me, it goes like this:

Kasich
Rubio
Trump
Cruz

When it comes to Republicans. I think Hillary will get more stuff done as a president; Bernie would be embroiled in a huge fight, though he might end up with some amazing successes.
 
bearfan said:
That is the thing, most of what Hillary wants to do is crap.
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I couldn't tell you anyone's policy proposals other than Bernie's and Trump's (and Cruz's, if purifying the Middle East in holy fire counts as a policy proposal). The substance isn't there.

Imma educate myself more and see.
 
This is what I hate about American politics: finding wonky campaign promises is hard. It's all "give middle class families a raise" and "close corporate tax loopholes".
 
One thing to consider is that we have some closed primaries coming up .. Cruz has done better in those, while Trump has done better in the open primaries. California and Florida are both closed
 
Hawaii might tell us some more about that. It is a closed caucus, but with a very pro-Trump style demographic. If he does well there, it might be indicative of Trump's strength in Florida and California.
 
It is hard to extrapolate anything from Hawaii .. it might as well be its own planet .. a very nice planet ... but very different from the mainland US.
 
bearfan said:
It is hard to extrapolate anything from Hawaii .. it might as well be its own planet .. a very nice planet ... but very different from the mainland US.
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Yes, and no. Hawaii is different from the mainland in that it has a lot of Asian-origin people there, but electorally it behaves as a mini-Massachusetts. There's a sizable amount of Mormons and evangelicals, and most of those are white, and well-off - and they vote it.
 
LooseCannon said:
Yes, and no. Hawaii is different from the mainland in that it has a lot of Asian-origin people there, but electorally it behaves as a mini-Massachusetts. There's a sizable amount of Mormons and evangelicals, and most of those are white, and well-off - and they vote it.
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Yes and no, the demographics can be misleading there as they have an entirely different set of issues there and no one campaigns there. I lived there for a bit (some time ago admittedly), but to a degree, many locals (and transplants) see themselves rather differently than the US .. except when it comes to feelings and reliance on the US military (economically more at this point than actual defense). Trump may well do there for sure, but it is hard to transpose that to the mainland.
 
Fair enough.

Michigan and Mississippi have open primaries, and Trump seems to be favoured to do well there, though Kasich's numbers are well up in Michigan.
 
LooseCannon said:
I don't like how Ted Cruz thinks that he, as president, will control holy purifying fire with which to cleanse the Middle East. He scares the living shit out of me. For me, it goes like this:

Kasich
Rubio
Trump
Cruz

When it comes to Republicans. I think Hillary will get more stuff done as a president; Bernie would be embroiled in a huge fight, though he might end up with some amazing successes.
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Kasich is, indeed, the most prepared candidate that i saw, together with Paul. That's another thing that i don't understand about the GOP, why is the party radicalizing with Trump and Cruz? Romney defeat were that bad?

And, since you spoke about congress, wouldn't it block the majority of Bernie/Trump/even Cruz actions?
 
StormTheTrooper said:
That's another thing that i don't understand about the GOP, why is the party radicalizing with Trump and Cruz?
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Well, the conservatives might disagree with me, but I tend to believe that the GOP courted radical elements over the last 8 years to counter Obama. There's been a lot of tapping into anger, and stoking fires, and ridiculous claims coming from GOP politicians like "Obama is the most divisive president ever" or "Obama is the worst president ever". The nonsense over Obamacare was very similar - and even if you dislike the program, it is obvious that it was misrepresented by the GOP. The most egregious and horrible lie, of course, was Sarah Palin's "death panels" nonsense, but there's lots more like it.

Once this anger was accessed, it seems to be unable to be stopped. We called it the Tea Party, because they misunderstood US history and what the Boston Tea Party actually was. It's a smallish bloc, but it shows up reliably for things like primaries, which means it controls the nominees. Small blocs that vote reliably in low-turnout elections have a disproportionate amount of power.

The Tea Party started tossing out GOP moderates, replacing them with Tea Party extremists. Sometimes, in places like Texas and Utah, this didn't make a difference. In Senate races in Nevada, Delaware, Missouri, and Indiana, it was a huge loss of moderates, where Democrats won with their own moderates. There are very few GOP moderates left in the US Congress. This slow shift in power has led to the ouster of John Boehner as the Speaker of the House, because he wasn't pure enough, and he was moved against by more radical members of his party.

This slow shift in power is matched by the degradation of the rhetoric, and the belief that Obama/the Democrats are the worst by those people. Doesn't hurt that a huge segment of these people are ensconced in the right-wing echo chamber of Fox News + Breitbart + talk radio. I still remember people in 2012 talking about "unskewed polls" that showed that Mitt Romney was going to win the election, and the huge amount of people who believed it, because it was what they wanted to believe. Of course, Romney lost, and while it wasn't a runaway by Obama, it wasn't close, either.

Now, that anger has hit the presidential scene. These people are afraid, they are angry, and they are not smart. They seek simple, furious solutions to complex, logical problems. And that is why you have Trump and Cruz. The GOP courted anger and fury, and now it controls them, as the mob controls a man who once sought a favour. Simply put: they are reaping what they have sowed. Reasonable conservative voices, like Mitt Romney and George HW Bush and Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower are either long gone or they are ignored, drowned out by the screams of build a wall! Ban the Muslims! Fire the IRS! and those people who scream don't want to consider what is reasonable, what will be helpful - and what can actually be done.
 
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You can say pretty much the same about Bernie just replace the targets .. and there are not a ton of Dem moderates either. Both parties are moving away from the center.
 
There are far more Democrat moderates now than GOP moderates - though not as many as there used to be, even in the 1990s - and I agree that there is a certain anger in the Democrat side of things as well.

The difference is that the angry vote is not going to win the nomination on the Democrat side, whereas it almost certainly will (be it Cruz or Trump) on the GOP side. Trump as a post-Tea Party reactionary, and Cruz as a Tea Party reactionary.

For reference, here's what happened last time that a hardcore conservative reactionary was nominated against a centre-left (mostly centre) fairly corrupt old school charismatic politician:
349px-ElectoralCollege1964.svg.png
 
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