Did you hear Donald Trump is going to be the Republican presidential nominee? You probably did. I won’t say I was on the Trump-will-win bandwagon from the beginning, but I jumped on pretty early. I remember having a (good-natured) argument with a coworker who is a lifelong (Trump-hating) Republican about this; he was saying Trump would absolutely not win, and I was saying he was the most likely candidate to win (although at that point I still would have taken the field). I think I’m a pretty decent political prognosticator (sports too). Here are five rules of thumb I follow to get it right: (1) Don’t confuse what you want to happen with what you think will happen; (2) Don’t be so cynical that you only foresee the worst case scenario (this is the opposite of (1)); (3) Know that you don’t actually know what will happen (which actually makes you wiser than those who think they know -- Socrates, see), and so you should always frame things in terms of probabilities -- a “likely to happen,” “very unlikely happen”, “50-50 to happen,” etc.; (4) Listen to smart people and copy what they say; (5) Know who the smart people are. Item (5) is perhaps the most important. Although, ironically, one of the smart people I usually listen to is Nate Silver, and he really got the Donald Trump thing wrong. Nobody’s perfect.
I’m fine with Trump being the nominee. I mean, if I could pick anybody I wanted then I certainly would not pick him, but if I’m limited to only the field of Republican candidates, then he is just as good (or just as bad, rather) as anybody else. And if the choice is between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, as it was at the end, then I actually prefer Trump. That’s how loathsome I find Cruz; I would rather have a xenophobic, bigoted ignoramus then Ted Cruz. In fact, on balance, Trump’s win makes me happy, because it means Ted Cruz is out. And then we get to watch videos like this:
I love this video. It's not just that Cruz makes a gaffe and uses the wrong terminology -- although that is pretty funny in and of itself -- it's that Cruz is in the middle of his "real America" shtick (one he blatantly ripped off from the movie Hoosiers, by the way) and he completely exposes himself as the phony that he is. (Don't forget, he's a lawyer from an effete Ivy League school, just like every other politician in our country.) This is the greatest thing since that school in New York denied him the opportunity to come and speak. The whole "New York values" thing is a very strange angle to play, in general. I mean, isn't Ted Cruz supposed to be really smart? Because categorically insulting the people in the largest and most iconic city of a country, when you are trying to garner votes to become president of that country, doesn't seem very smart to me. It actually seems pretty stupid.
Also, Cruz was supposedly outmaneuvering Trump with respect to the delegates -- going behind the scenes to curry favor with uncommitted delegates, whereas Trump was largely ignoring them. My coworker (a different one than above) was saying that he didn't understand this strategy by Trump, and that Cruz might win the nomination because of it. But my response is that Trump would turn this to his advantage by railing that the system is against him and that they are stealing the election from him... lo and behold.
Plus the thing about Cruz is that he is just as xenophobic and bigoted as Trump (even worse in some cases!), but he just has a different way of conveying it. He shrouds everything in Christian moralism, so people find him more palpable for some reason. He speaks like a preacher and Trump speaks like a carnival barker, but they are basically saying the same thing.
Anyway, here’s a political prediction for you: Hillary wins the White House in November handily. I don’t think it is going to be a Reagan-Mondale-esque rout, but I do think she takes it comfortably -- maybe like Obama in 2008. Or 2012 for that matter -- Romney would have had to have flipped four states to win the presidency. That's not easy. I can't imagine Trump does better this year. The Republicans are at an electoral disadvantage in the presidential race, and that's when they are not running a candidate three-fourths of their party detests. Right now the odds makers are setting it around 70-30 in favor of Hillary. The positive for non-insane people is that this means Clinton is the overwhelming favorite; the negative is that it means Trump is currently hitting .300.
It certainly doesn't help the odds that many Bernie Sanders supporters seem to think Hillary is just as bad as Donald. They aren't even in the same universe -- the Supreme Court vacancy alone should be enough to persuade liberals to hold their collective nose and chose the least worst option, but, judging from my FaceBook feed, not everybody agrees with me. I mean, I don't love Hillary either, but as Dan Savage is fond of saying, "the lesser of two evils is less evil." Exactly, Dan, exactly. Now let's please all vote that way... unless you think Trump is the lesser evil. If that's the case, then you need to stick to your principles and write in Paul Ryan or something.
Until next time…
I’m fine with Trump being the nominee. I mean, if I could pick anybody I wanted then I certainly would not pick him, but if I’m limited to only the field of Republican candidates, then he is just as good (or just as bad, rather) as anybody else. And if the choice is between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, as it was at the end, then I actually prefer Trump. That’s how loathsome I find Cruz; I would rather have a xenophobic, bigoted ignoramus then Ted Cruz. In fact, on balance, Trump’s win makes me happy, because it means Ted Cruz is out. And then we get to watch videos like this:
I love this video. It's not just that Cruz makes a gaffe and uses the wrong terminology -- although that is pretty funny in and of itself -- it's that Cruz is in the middle of his "real America" shtick (one he blatantly ripped off from the movie Hoosiers, by the way) and he completely exposes himself as the phony that he is. (Don't forget, he's a lawyer from an effete Ivy League school, just like every other politician in our country.) This is the greatest thing since that school in New York denied him the opportunity to come and speak. The whole "New York values" thing is a very strange angle to play, in general. I mean, isn't Ted Cruz supposed to be really smart? Because categorically insulting the people in the largest and most iconic city of a country, when you are trying to garner votes to become president of that country, doesn't seem very smart to me. It actually seems pretty stupid.
Also, Cruz was supposedly outmaneuvering Trump with respect to the delegates -- going behind the scenes to curry favor with uncommitted delegates, whereas Trump was largely ignoring them. My coworker (a different one than above) was saying that he didn't understand this strategy by Trump, and that Cruz might win the nomination because of it. But my response is that Trump would turn this to his advantage by railing that the system is against him and that they are stealing the election from him... lo and behold.
Plus the thing about Cruz is that he is just as xenophobic and bigoted as Trump (even worse in some cases!), but he just has a different way of conveying it. He shrouds everything in Christian moralism, so people find him more palpable for some reason. He speaks like a preacher and Trump speaks like a carnival barker, but they are basically saying the same thing.
Anyway, here’s a political prediction for you: Hillary wins the White House in November handily. I don’t think it is going to be a Reagan-Mondale-esque rout, but I do think she takes it comfortably -- maybe like Obama in 2008. Or 2012 for that matter -- Romney would have had to have flipped four states to win the presidency. That's not easy. I can't imagine Trump does better this year. The Republicans are at an electoral disadvantage in the presidential race, and that's when they are not running a candidate three-fourths of their party detests. Right now the odds makers are setting it around 70-30 in favor of Hillary. The positive for non-insane people is that this means Clinton is the overwhelming favorite; the negative is that it means Trump is currently hitting .300.
It certainly doesn't help the odds that many Bernie Sanders supporters seem to think Hillary is just as bad as Donald. They aren't even in the same universe -- the Supreme Court vacancy alone should be enough to persuade liberals to hold their collective nose and chose the least worst option, but, judging from my FaceBook feed, not everybody agrees with me. I mean, I don't love Hillary either, but as Dan Savage is fond of saying, "the lesser of two evils is less evil." Exactly, Dan, exactly. Now let's please all vote that way... unless you think Trump is the lesser evil. If that's the case, then you need to stick to your principles and write in Paul Ryan or something.
Until next time…
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