President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

We need a psychologist here ....

Does Donald Trump know and understand he's a compulsive liar?

 

Why would it have to be boring and fiction?

 

The Best Brain!

 

you rang?

 

I really hate this formulation. America has been ready for a smart woman president for a while. Now we just need one to run and win. Everyone would have said we weren't ready for a black president before Obama. What about a Hispanic president? Are we not ready or has it just not happened yet? It's a job for one person, that opens up once every 4 years. Was America not ready to elect the brother of a former president or a young conservative senator from Florida or a cranky old Jewish socialist?

 

This isn’t true at all.

The purple vote is almost non-existent. Most voters are very partisan. You know how 40% or so of Americans identify as independent? They mostly don’t vote. And the ones who do are by vast majority extremely partisan and don’t identify with a party because they believe no party goes far enough to their side. True centrists rarely vote.

Trying to win the middle hasn’t been the major focus of a presidential campaign since maybe Clinton 96. The model the last two decades has been the same: turnout your base and depress their base.

 

To amplify Rick's point. Here is Massachusetts, slightly over half of all voters are registered as independent (no party affiliation). This has not made us a swing state.

 

Why was there the immediate assumption that a centerist independent would take votes away from a Democrat? Why wouldn't Schultz be appealing to moderate Republicans fed up with Trump? The last time an independent billionaire ran for president, it was H. Ross Perot and he was credited with delivering the 1992 election to Clinton at the expense of HW Bush.

 

The moderate independent voter is about as believable as the undecided voter a week before the election. Which is to say, horse shit.

 

And BTW...does independents having little chance mean they should never run? Or be prevented from running? Did Trump winning not prove that almost anything is possible in American presidential politics?

 

I think if the eventual Democratic nominee is in the center, even the hard leftists will go his or her way. What's their alternative?