Sunday, July 31, 2016
Trump Could Win Pennsylvania, May Not Debate, Ex-Governor Rendell Says
By Elizabeth Titus
Former Pennsylvania Governor
Ed Rendell said Thursday he’s skeptical that Republican Donald Trump will take
part in the three debates against Democrat Hillary Clinton scheduled for this
fall.
“He not only doesn’t put any
meat on the bones, I think if you asked him for specifics he couldn’t tell you,
and that’s why I think he may duck the debates,” Rendell, a Democrat, said at a
Bloomberg breakfast in Philadelphia during his party’s national convention.
Trump could upend the pattern
of the last six presidential elections and win Pennsylvania thanks to a
“simple” message that appeals to angry and unemployed voters, Rendell said. The
most recent Republican to win in Pennsylvania was George H.W. Bush in 1988;
Barack Obama won the state in 2012 by over 5 percentage points.
Rendell spoke alongside
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who said that he was “very confident”
Clinton will win his politically divided state if current conditions hold,
partly because Trump has alienated Colorado Republicans who vote on “family
values.”
Debate Advice
Rendell said Americans
consider the general-election debates “sacred,” but they thought the same about
presidential candidate releasing their tax returns and Trump hasn’t done that
either, citing Internal Revenue Service audits.
If he were advising Trump,
Rendell said he would tell him to study three hours per day for the debates. If
Trump didn’t want to do that, Rendell would suggest an adviser such as former
UN Ambassador John Bolton travel with Trump for a week.
“Trump is not a dumb man, he’s
a very smart man,” Rendell said in the question-and-answer session with
reporters, calling the billionaire real estate developer “complex” and
“charming.”
“He’s not insane by any
means.”
Inner Circle
Rendell said it’s “absolutely
a problem” that Clinton appears to surround herself with people who won’t
challenge her opinions. There’s “no question” that if she had, it would have
saved her some of the political trouble she ran into for using a private e-mail
server as secretary of state, he said.
“They should occasionally
bounce some stuff off other people,” Rendell said.
Hickenlooper spoke of another,
positive side to the remarkable loyalty he has observed among Clinton’s
longtime aides. It could help Clinton alleviate her problem with the high share
of voters who consider her untrustworthy or dishonest, he said.
“Somehow the Clinton campaign,
somehow they have to figure out how to get this sense of loyalty and devotion
that people have towards her” out into voters’ view, Hickenlooper said. On
trust issues, “she has to live with it” and “she’s also got to work at it.”
Suffolk Poll
Clinton led Trump 50 percent
to 41 percent among likely voters in a Suffolk University poll of Pennsylvania
released Thursday. Trump had a 3-point lead among male voters while Clinton had
a 19-point lead with women. The poll was conducted July 25-27.
Still, Rendell said Trump has
“already made inroads” with traditionally Democratic voters, based on
registration figures. That’s despite Rendell’s view that advancing technology,
not the international trade agreements that Trump regularly trashes, is the
more likely culprit for many of the job losses in Pennsylvania’s manufacturing
sector.
Trump’s likely gains among
Democrats will probably be offset by Clinton’s pick-ups in the Pennsylvania
suburbs and among independents, he said.
Clinton can’t recreate
President Barack Obama’s turnout in key areas of the state, but “this president
is on fire” to help her, Rendell said a day after Obama spoke on
Clinton’s behalf at the convention.
“He may work harder to
generate turnout than he did for himself,” Rendell said.
Pennsylvania is “right up
there among the primary targets” for the fall contest, Rendell said. Trump is
an “X factor” for the state who is also polling strongly in the battleground
state of Florida right now, he said.
“The Russia thing should hurt
him but nothing has,” Rendell said. Trump said
Wednesday that he hoped Russian hackers could find thousands of e-mails
from her time as secretary of state that Clinton deleted from her private
server because she said they were personal.
Effective Surrogates
Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont, Clinton’s primary-election opponent, could be Clinton’s best surrogate
in Colorado, Rendell said. Hickenlooper added that Obama and his wife, first
lady Michelle Obama, could also be very effective for Clinton.
On Clinton’s struggle to
appeal to white male voters, Rendell said Representative Joe Crowley of New
York should have been tapped to help put Clinton’s name into nomination at the
convention -- beyond just having a pre-primetime speaking slot -- because he
“looks like the white man we’re trying to get” and was impacted by 9/11, a key
issue for Clinton when she served in the U.S. Senate.
Reflecting on a sense that
voters are hungry for change after eight years of a Democrat in the White
House, Rendell said, “if you’re hurting, it’s hard to convince you that you
should vote to keep the people” who are already in office.
He said he suggested to
Clinton aide Huma Abedin that when Clinton talks about the Black Lives Matter
movement, she also say that the majority of police officers are good. Rendell
said he was pleased to see that message incorporated into the convention, along
with support for the U.S. military -- a traditionally Republican theme.
My model shows Donald Trump has an 87 percent chance of beating Hillary Clinton
Updated July 28, 2016 9:08 AM
By Helmut Norpoth
THE BOTTOM LINE
Donald Trump may be lucky to
have picked an election in which change trumps experience.
When voters demand change,
they are willing to overlook many foibles of the change candidate.
To be sure, Donald Trump, is a
long shot in betting markets to win in November. PredictIt, a popular legal
wagering website, gives Hillary Clinton a 66 percent chance to win the
presidency. She has consistently led Trump in that market for three months, as
well as in the Iowa Electronic Markets. And Trump has trailed Clinton — with
rare exceptions — in the poll averages by RealClearPolitics and The Huffington
Post.
So how can a reasonable person
predict that Trump will be the next president?
For starters, pre-election
polls have selected the wrong candidate many times. Who can forget Tom Dewey
defeating Harry Truman in 1948 polls — until he didn’t? Or Michael Dukakis
leading George H.W. Bush in 1988 by 17 points this time of year? Or Mitt Romney
edging Barack Obama in the final Gallup poll four years ago?
My advice: Beware of pollsters
bearing forecasts, especially anyone trying to peek into the future, especially
those with money to bet.
Some 20 years ago, I
constructed a formula, The
Primary Model, that has predicted the winner of the popular vote in all
five presidential elections since it was introduced. It is based on elections
dating to 1912. The formula was wrong only once: The 1960 election. That one
hurt because John F. Kennedy was my preferred candidate.
The Primary Model consists of
two ingredients: The swing of the electoral pendulum, and the outcomes of
primaries.
You can see the pendulum work
with the naked eye. After two terms in office, the presidential party in power
loses more often than not. In fact, over the past 65 years, it managed to win a
third term only once. In 1988, President George H.W. Bush extended Ronald
Reagan’s presidency by one more term. Reagan made this possible by winning
re-election by a bigger margin than when he first got elected. That spells
continuity, a desire for more of the same.
President Barack Obama has not
left such a legacy for a Democratic successor. He did worse in his re-election
victory over Mitt Romney in 2012 than when he beat John McCain in 2008. That
spells, “It’s Time for a Change!” The pendulum points to the GOP in 2016, no
matter whether the candidate was named Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John
Kasich or whoever.
Now add the outcomes of
presidential primaries. Although some experts claim primary votes have no
bearing on general elections, the fact is that primaries prove uncanny in
forecasting the winner in November. Take the first election with a significant
number of primaries, in 1912. In November that year, Woodrow Wilson, the winner
in Democratic primaries, defeated William Howard Taft, the loser in Republican
primaries; Taft was renominated since most states then did not use primaries.
In general, the party with the stronger primary candidate wins the general
election.
This year, Trump has wound up
as the stronger of the two presidential nominees. He won many more primaries
than did Clinton. In fact, this was apparent as early as early March. Trump
handily won the first two primaries, New Hampshire and South Carolina, while
Clinton badly lost New Hampshire to Sen. Bernie Sanders before beating him in
South Carolina.
The Primary Model predicts
that Trump will defeat Clinton with 87 percent certainty. He is the candidate
of change. When voters demand change, they are willing to overlook many foibles
of the change candidate. At the same time, the candidate who touts experience
will get more intense scrutiny for any missteps and suspicions of misconduct of
the record of experience.
Trump may be lucky to have
picked an election in which change trumps experience and experience may prove
to be a mixed blessing.
Helmut Norpoth is the director
of undergraduate studies and political science professor at Stony Brook
University.
5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win
By Michael Moore
[…]
Midwest Math, or Welcome to
Our Rust Belt Brexit. I believe Trump is going to focus much of his
attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes –
Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic
states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only
Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in
March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million)
that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest
polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this
close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s
said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the
industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on
this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed
the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor
factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they
did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to
Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to
the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class
of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them
to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well,
hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone
to the governor next-door, John Kasich.
From Green Bay to Pittsburgh,
this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the
smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to
call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who
were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still
try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with
a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving
the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer
Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can
make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of
them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump,
has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even
have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the
center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR
MESSENGER!
And this is where the math
comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral
votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump
needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of
traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for
Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He
doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan,
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is
how it will happen in November.
The Last Stand of the Angry
White Man. Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A
woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were
warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title
IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at
playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it,
Beyoncé stormed on the field at this year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army
of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby
terminated! Oh, the humanity!
That’s a small peek into the
mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped
out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are
done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the thing that as Trump says, “bleeds
through her eyes or wherever she bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after
having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re
supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around?
After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the
transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been
granted human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country.
This has to stop!
The Hillary Problem. Can we
speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I
actually like Hillary – a lot – and I think she has been given a bad rap she
doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would
never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t broken that promise. For the sake
of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m
breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in
some kind of military action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s
psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.
Let’s face it: Our biggest
problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70%
of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old
way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you
elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the
next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest
detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles
that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger
generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that
they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like her,
and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for
her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th
excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became
president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t
there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who
drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right
now is in the catbird seat.
The Depressed Sanders Vote. Stop
fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton – we’re voting for
Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary
this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in ’08 who then voted for
Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that
while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to
somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed
vote” – meaning the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He
doesn’t volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never
talks in an excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed
voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS.
Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for
music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable
phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but
many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to
give them a reason to support her — and picking a moderate, bland-o,
middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy
move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two
women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared
and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing
the youth vote.
The Jesse Ventura Effect.
Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or
underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they
draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few
places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening
devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’
time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you
do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can
write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that,
and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are
going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like
his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the
apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way like when you’re
standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what
would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love
being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see
what that might look like. Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of
Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do
this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of
statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could.
Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with
people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their
version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to
happen again with Trump.
Coming back to the hotel after
appearing on Bill Maher’s Republican Convention special this week on HBO, a man
stopped me. “Mike,” he said, “we have to vote for Trump. We HAVE to shake
things up.” That was it. That was enough for him. To “shake things up.”
President Trump would indeed do just that, and a good chunk of the electorate
would like to sit in the bleachers and watch that reality show.
[…]
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