2016 POTUS Election Thread

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townsend

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Those graphs are pretty hard to read.
https://m.imgur.com/nVAaCRQ
Here's the source image. It's still not super intuitive. It's pretty clear that both candidates are less popular than their 2012 counterparts, but the divide between Romney and Obama was pretty slight where as the difference between Clinton and Trump is pretty much a chasm at this point.
 

Jiggyfly

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Jiggyfly

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ANOTHER National Poll Shows Trump Is Doomed; Gary Johnson Getting Massive Support
Posted at 11:00 am on June 16, 2016 by Leon H. Wolf

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http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/06/16/another-national-poll-shows-trump-doomed-gary-johnson-getting-massive-support/


Hard to know what to think of this new CBS News National Poll. The top line result shows that in a two way race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Hillary leads 43-37%. That's when things get interesting. In the first set of poll questions asked, a total of 5% of respondents answered "other" and 6% said "won't vote." A total of 9% said "not sure."

However, when Libertarian Gary Johnson was added to the mix, Hillary's lead remained essentially unchanged, but Johnson showed massive levels of support - levels that would be wholly unprecedented for a Libertarian Party candidate. When Johnson is thrown into the mix, the top line result becomes Clinton 39, Trump 32, Johnson 11. What this shows is that Johnson at least right now is benefitting from equal disgust with both Clinton and Trump.

Will Johnson actually get 10 or 11% in November? Seems doubtful. My best guess is that right now, people are eager to tell pollsters how unhappy they are with the two main choices. My suspicion is that they will come home as the election gets closer. But in this crazy election year, who knows? They might not. And if Johnson really does get even close to 10%, and the LP starts getting matching funds and looking a little less crazy, that might well be a game-changing development in the American political scene.

By the way, buried in this poll is a bunch of horrible news for Trump. For one thing, Hillary leads Trump on terrorism and national security - 50-43%. She also leads him on gun policy - 46-45%. Nearly as many people think Trump did something "illegal or improper" with Trump University (45%) as think Clinton did something "illegal or improper" with her email servers (65%). By a 30-67% margin, voters do not feel that Trump is "prepared for the job of President."

And then here are the numbers that are the death knell for the Trump campaign - on every issue that should be a weakness for Clinton, she is actually leading Trump:





Yikes. I guess that "Make America Great Again" branding program isn't sticking so well as Trump might have hoped
 

Cowboysrock55

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KING: Hacked DNC docs may show ugly connections to Clinton
Shaun King
SHAUN KING
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, June 16, 2016, 5:05 PM
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Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton participates in a round table conversation on national security at the Virginia Air and Space Center June 15, 2016 in Hampton, Virginia.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton participates in a round table conversation on national security at the Virginia Air and Space Center June 15, 2016 in Hampton, Virginia.
(CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)
Earlier this week it was announced that a hacker breached the servers of the Democratic Party and obtained the DNC's opposition research on Donald Trump. The DNC confirmed as much.

Now, a single person claiming to be the hacker has released the supposed Donald Trump information alongside some other very revealing internal documents. When pressed by reporters to confirm or deny the authenticity of the new documents, the DNC only issued this vague statement doing neither. If the documents were fake, it would seem that the DNC would openly deny as much.

The hacker claims to have given over thousands of additional pages to WikiLeaks.


President Obama endorses Hillary Clinton for President and meets with her rival Bernie Sanders. The three seem to agree on one objective: defeating Donald Trump.
53 PHOTOS
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New York Daily News front pages on the presidential election
Three particular documents are disturbing.

Hacker claiming he breached DNC systems releases Trump report
First, the hacker released financial records from donors to the DNC. Earlier this week the DNC vehemently denied that any such information was accessed or stolen.

Alleged DNC Opposition Report on Donald Trump that hacker Guccifer 2.0 claims to have gotten from DNC servers.
Alleged DNC Opposition Report on Donald Trump that hacker Guccifer 2.0 claims to have gotten from DNC servers.
Two other documents that are very concerning were internal memos. One, claiming to be written on May 26, 2015, a full year before Hillary was declared the winner of the party’s presidential nomination and months before the first primary was held, speaks of her as if she is already the nominee and how they aim to spend the following year preparing her for such a moment.

The DNC is supposed to be an unbiased arbiter of the campaign and this memo suggests anything but that. Furthermore, the memo gives strategies for they can best position her for general election. One of those strategies says they aim to, "Use specific hits to muddy the water around ethics, transparency, and campaign finance attacks on HRC."

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a news conference outside his campaign headquarters in Washington, Tuesday, June 14, 2016.
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a news conference outside his campaign headquarters in Washington, Tuesday, June 14, 2016.
(ALEX BRANDON/AP)
How ugly is that? Muddying the water? What a mess.

Russia hackers steal DNC's Donald Trump opposition research
Another memo claims that they "will utilize reporters to drive a message" but do so "with no fingerprints" on the process so that the public believes the messages are coming from the reporters and not the campaign.

This is exactly what many of us have suspected was going on for the past year. It was, in part, why I chose to wear my support of Bernie Sanders on my sleeve. Even with that, at no time did the Sanders campaign ever even hint at their desire for me to cover a certain topic or angle. Every single story I wrote, I wrote on my own without any such input from the campaign.

---------------

This could get real ugly.
 

townsend

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Campaign Finance Documents Show Donald Trump's Campaign Is in Disarray

Jae C. Hong/AP
Maybe Corey Lewandowski got out at the right time. While reporters scrambled on Monday to figure out why Trump let his campaign manager go, the campaign was preparing to release it's latest campaign finance filing that looks, at least at first glance, to be devastating. It doesn't look much better on second glance.

The first glance: Hillary Clinton's campaign has more than 35 times the cash Trump's does.

Here's the second glance: Ted Cruz dropped out of the GOP primary on May 3, meaning that for the month of May, Trump was all but assured the nomination and the campaign should have been in prime fundraising mode. But it wasn't. Even taking into account Trump's long-stated claims that he had no interest in raising money from others (something he has reversed himself on)—filings the campaign made with the Federal Election Commission late Monday evening show that Trump simply couldn't get any fundraising momentum going. He raised a grand total of $5.6 million from May 1 to May 31, $2.2 million of which was in the form of loans from Trump personally.


That's very bad. It means Trump raised just $3.4 million from people other than himself. His vanquished opponent Cruz, whose campaign had melted away, raised $2.6 million over the same time period.

Trump's fundraising has always been anemic and the campaign has always relied heavily on loans from the real estate magnate, but barely beating his defeated opponents isn't a good look. Hillary Clinton's campaign raised $26.3 million in May. It was only her third best fundraising month. But unlike the other top months, which came at the height of the primary against Bernie Sanders, Clinton wasn't spending money as fast (or faster) than she could raise it. Clinton managed to bank the bulk of her May fundraising, which is how she has $42.4 million on hand.

Trump, who spent more than he raised, has $1.2 million in cash on hand. True, Trump has always had very little cash on hand at the end of a reporting period. But this was because he was writing the checks and didn't need to keep cash on hand. But now that Trump insists he won't be self-financing, those low numbers are a problem. Even if Trump significantly increased his fundraising since May 31, he would have to be raising money at an almost unprecedented rate to catch up to where Clinton is now.

It's not just the low numbers that portend potential disaster for the GOP's man. It's the way he arrives at the low numbers that looks scary. There's no real significant support from top donors—the bedrock of a strong monthly fundraising report. But the Trump campaign picked up just 133 donations that hit the maximum allowed amount of $2,700. Clinton had more donations of $2,700 on May 17 (140) than Trump had all month and almost 15 times as many for the entire month (1,981).

Elsewhere in Trump World things are looking just as bleak. While some of the super-PACs that have sprung up to back Trump have yet to file (and at least one major one won't be filing any information at all until next month), the Great America PAC, which fashions itself as the only "real" Trump super-PAC, has just $501,000 in cash on hand. Compare that to the main pro-Clinton super-PAC, Priorities USA, which has nearly $52 million in cash on hand.
_____________________________

LOL at all the people who thought this guy was some kind of a financial guru. This guy has bankrupted his campaign a month into the general election, but I'm sure he's qualified to lead a country.
 

townsend

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Things are not going well for Donald Trump.

On Monday, he fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Lewandowski ran the campaign on a shoestring budget and a strategy that was largely built off and fueled by the candidate's say-whatever personality and brand.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, in Iowa last year.
POLITICS
Meet Donald Trump's Alter Ego
That worked great in a primary — not so much in a general election. But Trump's problems are far deeper than an embattled campaign manager, who just four months ago was described as Trump's "alter ego."

Corey Lewandowski, You're Fired

Trump's family stepped in Monday in a scene that could have been ripped from The Apprentice.

Lewandowski was summoned to a morning meeting, but it was a setup, New York magazine's Gabe Sherman reports:

"Shortly after it began, [Trump's] children peppered Lewandowski with questions, asking him to explain the campaign's lack of infrastructure. Their father grew visibly upset as he heard the list of failures. Finally, he turned to Lewandowski and said, 'What's your plan here?' Lewandowski responded that he wanted to leak Trump's vice-president pick. And with that, Lewandowski was out."
Tension has persisted in the campaign between Lewandowski and a faction led by veteran political operative Paul Manafort, a former Ronald Reagan aide, who was brought on in the spring to manage a potential battle for delegates at the convention. But doubts started to grow about Lewandowski's management. The bottom line is Lewandowski didn't run a campaign that could win a modern-day presidential campaign.

Here were some of the problems:

Money: Trump didn't need much of it in the primary campaign. He was able to get himself on TV without much problem. But Trump, who claims to be worth $10 billion, vowed not to fund his general-election campaign. That, combined with Trump's lackluster fundraising, has made lots of Republicans wring their hands. At the end of May, Trump's campaign had just $1.3 million cash on hand — and owed Trump himself $45.7 million. That figure is so paltry, it's less than every Republican senator up for re-election in competitive races. In something of an exit interview on CNN Monday after his firing, Lewandowski bragged twice that "the money is pouring in." He said the campaign had raised some $6 million to $8 million at recent events.

Trump would have to raise that amount of money every single day for two to three months to total the $500 million he said he would need to fund a general-election campaign. And that's half of what most real campaigns for president would need nowadays. In 2012, Romney and Obama spent roughly $2 billion combined.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a rally at the San Jose Convention Center earlier this month.
POLITICS
How Donald Trump May Have Wasted A Monthlong Advantage Over Hillary Clinton
Travel: Trump wasted a monthlong advantage over Hillary Clinton when he had vanquished his rivals and she was still battling Bernie Sanders. Instead of focusing on traditional swing states, Trump traveled to states where he is likely to win or likely to lose.

Staff: Trump's campaign has fewer than 100 staffers. He boasts how "efficient" his operation is, with 73 employees. Clinton is estimated to already have around 800 paid staffers. Those are people who can be used to register voters and then get them to the polls in key states. You could believe Trump's boast that his campaign is more "efficient" and that his constant presence on TV compensates for a smaller staff. Or you could look to history: By August of 2012, Obama had 901 people on his payroll; Mitt Romney had 403.

And never mind the size of the staff; what is the campaign doing with them? Trump has eschewed data and behavioral analytics so far. That's something the Clinton team not only is all over, but something the Republican Party recognized was a problem after losing twice to Obama. The president broke the mold on this, and Republicans have tried hard to make up ground in the use of data.

Ads: Hillary Clinton and groups supporting her are spending more than $23 million on ads in eight key battleground states, according to NBC/SMG Delta.

Donald Trump? A grand total of zero. Zip. Nada.

For those who think it's still early, it's not really. Consider 2012 — back then, Romney and his allies were on air with almost $40 million in ads, compared with Obama and his supporters with $45 million. And one of the lessons of 2012 was that Romney allowed his opponents to define him with negative advertising early on. Trump's negatives are far worse than Romney's were at this point in the campaign.


The Problem Starts At The Top

But here's the reality: Blame the campaign manager all you want, he's not really the problem. Trump's problems go well beyond a campaign manager and straight to him. Problems in a campaign usually stem from the top, and that's especially true in this one.

Message: Trump has myriad problems, including a lack of policy depth, a dereliction of facts and an overall message — especially when he talks about race and identity — that has offended lots of voters he didn't have to worry about in a nearly all-white Republican primary. But a general election is a whole different ballgame. Some 14 million people voted for Trump in the primaries — a record. But Obama won almost five times as many votes in the 2012 general election (66 million).

Democrat Hillary Clinton has been dealing with her ongoing email saga. It has gone on for months and has stuck. Compare that with Republican Donald Trump. All of his controversies have seemed to roll off him.
IT'S ALL POLITICS
The 'Teflon Don' And The Haunted Hill: A Contrast Of Media Narratives
Image: Trump may have been the Teflon Don with GOP voters, but he was Velcro with the rest of the country. Coming out of the primary, Trump's negative rating is higher than any other presidential candidate in history. And it has gotten worse in the past month following (1) his inflammatory comments that the presiding judge in the Trump University fraud case was biased because of his Mexican heritage and (2) the veterans fundraiser imbroglio. Trump donated $1 million only after the Washington Post reported there was no evidence he had done so as promised. That led to a press conference at which Trump called reporters names like "sleaze" and, derisively, "a real beauty." (Both reporters are children of Cuban immigrants.)

Disunity: All of that has led to a split with Republican Party leaders. Never before has the sitting speaker of the House called his party's presumptive nominee's comments "racist" (as Paul Ryan did with Trump's comments on the Trump U judge). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell chided Trump to get on message and stick to the script. One Republican senator said he would not entertain any more Trump questions and others are refusing to defend him and even threatening not to support him.

Inconsistency And A Lack Of Discipline: Trump himself months ago had promised to be "more presidential than anybody other than the great Abe Lincoln." Back in March, on the night of the Michigan primary and five days after he became the first presidential candidate in history to defend the size of his genitalia during a live national presidential debate, Trump vowed, "I could be more presidential than anybody. I can be more presidential, if I want to be, I can be more presidential than anybody."

Marco Rubio and Donald Trump participate in the Republican presidential debate in Detroit.
Marco Rubio Defends His 'Small Hands' Criticism Of Donald Trump
He called it "easy." It's proved to be not so easy. Instead, Trump seems to have an internal conflict choosing which self he wants to be. He delivered two wooden speeches, reading from a teleprompter twice in a week after GOP disunity came to a head. And then he was back to his free-wheeling self at a rally in Atlanta on Wednesday. His rambling speech went on for more than an hour, with Trump sometimes ducking out of incomplete thoughts midway through a sentence, sometimes coming back to them much later.

You just never know which Trump you're going to get — and both have their flaws.

Polls: Trump is now facing a minor collapse of his poll numbers against Hillary Clinton. After Trump wrapped up the nomination, he pulled even with Clinton, according to the Real Clear Politics average of the polls. (That was when the Democratic race was not yet settled.) Over the past month, Trump has dipped below 40 percent. Clinton holds, on average, a 6-point lead. Polls this far out are hardly predictive of what will happen in the fall, but the trend is unmistakable and worrying many in the GOP.

Besides the horse-race numbers are other worrisome figures for the GOP:

— An ABC/Washington Post poll found 70 percent of Americans dislike Trump, including 56 percent who have a "strongly unfavorable" view. That's unheard of. What's more, 9 in 10 Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Trump, including more than three-quarters who said so "strongly."

— A CBS/New York Times poll found that 41 percent said they thought Clinton had done something illegal with her emails and private server setup in her home. Yet Trump was pulling in only 37 percent against Clinton's 43 percent in a head-to-head matchup. That means Trump isn't even getting all of the people who thought Clinton had done something illegal.

So What Now?

All of this has led to "Free the Delegates," the latest of the Stop Trump/Never Trump/Dump Trump movements.

"It's good news for us, bad news for the Trump supporters," contended Kendal Unruh, a delegate from Colorado, speaking Monday on MSNBC of Lewandowski's ouster. She's one of the leaders of "Free the Delegates," which is encouraging the Republican National Committee to change its rules and allow delegates to vote their conscience at the convention.

Donald Trump walks toward the 11th tee at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
Donald Trump walks toward the 11th tee at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
Gary Friedman/LA Times via Getty Images
"There is not a campaign, there is not an organization," Unruh said of the Trump team, adding, it would be "impossible to win against Hillary Clinton" with Trump on the ticket.

But Free the Delegates, like past Stop Trump efforts, is unlikely to succeed. It, too, has little organization. And, perhaps most importantly, no candidate.

"Zero chance of success, unless Ted Cruz, who controls almost 1,000 delegates, joins in," is how veteran GOP operative Charlie Black described the effort. Black worked for John Kasich's presidential campaign, but also has ties to Manafort, with whom he founded the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly. "This likely will calm down before the convention."

Another veteran strategist called it "unlikely" that the RNC rules would be changed to derail Trump and said it is "highly improbable" that most of the delegates would "go against the will of millions of Republican primary voters."

"The ball is the hands of one person, Donald Trump," said Danny Diaz, who managed Jeb Bush's presidential campaign. "If he proves he can campaign without attacking fellow Republicans and employing divisive rhetoric, he will have few issues becoming the nominee, despite getting grudging support on the floor of the convention."

If Trump continues to be critical of fellow Republicans, however, it's possible there could be at least a protest vote on the floor of the convention. Sure, Trump would still be the nominee, but the last thing the party wants is a demonstration of disunity shown live on national television months before voting.

Either way, Trump has a lot of work to do — and it starts with himself.
 
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townsend

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What a mess. Is there still time for Romney to step in?
I genuinely think Romney or some other guy like him might have to. You have to wonder if Trump will even make it to November. I don't know if he has the constitution to endure this much failure. It's not like Mitt would win, but the the Republicans need to give up on the presidency and start worrying about sustaining their down ticket. Trump has poisoned them so badly, I think they've set themselves up for a 2008 level democrat supermajority.

Maybe if they could sub in some bland candidate like Mitt, he'd at least be good enough to keep life long republicans voting straight ticket.
 

BipolarFuk

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Ambassador's sister: I don't blame Clinton for Benghazi

Ambassador's sister: I don't blame Clinton for Benghazi

The sister of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, said she doesn't blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what happened.

"It is clear, in hindsight, that the facility was not sufficiently protected by the State Department and the Defense Department. But what was the underlying cause? Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted. Certainly the State Department is underbudgeted," Anne Stevens told The New Yorker.

"I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta."

Stevens said they were "balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world."

"And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had," she said.

"The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn't a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself."

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was secretary of State during the time of the attacks and has taken "full responsibility" for what happened, Stevens said. But she admitted that the security system will never be perfect.

"We all recognize that there's a risk in serving in a dangerous environment," she said.

"Chris thought that was very important, and he probably would have done it again. I don't see any usefulness in continuing to criticize her. It is very unjust."

On Tuesday, the House Benghazi Committee released its report on the attack, which faults the Obama administration for its actions before, during and after the terrorist assault that killed four Americans.

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump seized on the opportunity to attack Clinton, saying a Clinton presidency would be "catastrophic for the future of our country."

Stevens said she thinks making Benghazi and her brother's death an election issue "is not appropriate." She added that her brother had "a lot of respect" for Clinton.

"He admired her ability to intensely read the issues and understand the whole picture."
 

L.T. Fan

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Well Bernie hanging on to the nomination process and Bill meeting with the AG makes one wonder if Hillary may have a problem.
 

Jiggyfly

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No charges for Hillary on email probe.

She still looks bad but nothing was there that we already did not know.

Sorry L.T.
 

townsend

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No charges for Hillary on email probe.

She still looks bad but nothing was there that we already did not know.

Sorry L.T.
If looking bad stopped Hillary, she wouldn't have even been First Lady of Arkansas. She's the queen of the bounce back, she might also be a queen of the lizard people.
 

Jiggyfly

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If looking bad stopped Hillary, she wouldn't have even been First Lady of Arkansas. She's the queen of the bounce back, she might also be a queen of the lizard people.
She is a politician.

She got the game on lock.
 

L.T. Fan

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It not that Hillary wasn't guilty. The investigation report listed several violations of law with regard to classified documents and in addition other violations were cited. The conclusion was that the FBI opined that a Prosecutor wouldn't process the case. That's not his call. This was a directed report and conclusion and the circumstances surrounding the AG and Bill Clinton is glaring. The AG is after all the prosecutor and the agency Supervisor to the FBI. The whole thing stinks but that's politics.
 

L.T. Fan

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The Head of the FBI was very careful to say that the investigation was all above board and it was. He gave the report of the discrepancies and violations but then he immediately turned to the political side when he said he didn't think a prosecutor would handle it. That is the most absurd contradiction he could have uttered. The agents that did the work are probably really pissed. They dug out the violations and then heard the Director say it all there but it's not good enough. That is blatantly a slap in the face to an Investigative group. It's a travesty.
 
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