I never won anything in my entire life! I'm so happy! 
I want a tire list as prize!
I want a tire list as prize!
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NobleHelium posts Hearthstone screenshots & lurkers get annoyed. Earlier: sound, fury
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At Ichabod:
On the  tile subject: Plans for East Indiamen loaded with cavalry?
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. (March 29th, 2016, 09:26)Ichabod Wrote: What I'd really like to get as a prize is to know your opinion about the chances of Bernie Sanders winning the US elections. And what about Trump? I'm really interested in hearing what americans have to say, since it's hard to get a feel about what's really happening from the press only. I owe you guys 3 turn reports now, including exciting news of meeting our first neighbor but I figured I'd give this a quick bash since I'm stalling on what I actually need to be doing... Caveat: The rest of this post will be political. If that isn't something you'll enjoy reading, just go ahead and skip this post now. Caveat: I am one of the most liberal Americans you know and my answers will be deeply colored by the perspective. Short answer: Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president of the United States. Long answer: The Democratic side is an easier answer than the Republican so lets hit that first. Bernie Sanders is basically my 2nd choice to be president right now - Elizabeth Warren would be my ideal candidate, though she's not now or probably ever going to run. He's what passes for an American socialist and I mean that in a positive way - one of the few national candidates of the last 35 years in this country who believes things like health care and a living wage are rights and not privileges - y'know, things western Europe has had sorted out for decades. There a few reasons he can't win the Democratic primary however, foremost among them being that with the level of appropriate mistrust that Black and Latino people have for white men it will be very hard for one of them to excite them as a candidate, particularly when someone who has a long history of being beloved by those communities is running. You can no longer win national elections in America simply by carrying white people, particularly a Democratic primary which is overwhelmingly where people of color are registered to vote in 2016, thanks to years of dog-whistle race-baiting by conservatives in order to turn out their base of poor and lower-middle class whites. (More on this in a moment.) So while Sanders has energized young white Democrats in a similar fashion to Obama in 2008, he can't overcome his disadvantages in other demographics to win anything remotely approaching enough delegates to be the nominee of his party. His presence in the race mostly serves to move Clinton to the left, though given her family's history, expect her to pivot directly to the center once the campaign switches from the primaries to the general. For the record, I dislike Mrs. Clinton intensely, but it isn't for any of the nonsense reasons spouted by misogynist ultra-conservatives on Fox News and talk radio - stuff like BENGHAZI!!1one and the email thing are classic non-scandal scandals trumpeted in their obsessive desire to discredit everything about her, mostly because they're threatened by anyone with a vagina who isn't cooking them dinner. I dislike her intensely because she is no Democrat. She is a Corpratist, just like her husband and will sell any political position to the top donor and is only interested in becoming president for becoming president's sake - she has no actual political soul. Her and her husband's poisoning of the party with the DNC may have won two elections but they also created the environment which allowed the Republicans to "win" 2 National elections this century which they had no right even being competitive in. That said, I will happily bound the polls and vote for her in November because... The Republican Party is an absolute shambles and has managed to pledge the majority of the their delegates to the biggest fraud in possibly the entire history of American politics, Donald Trump, and has pledged the second largest share of their delegates to one of the biggest assholes American politics has ever seen in Ted Cruz. Trump's issues are well-known and there's no reason to go over them here but he is ultimate product of the Republican party's decades of using low-to-middle-income white peoples feelings of inadequacy to garner votes so that they can serve the only masters they really care about - the ultra-rich. I would almost feel bad for them, the way they've been frothed to the polls on social issues they have always been on the wrong side of history on - race, gender, sexuality, choice - only to see those candidates bend them over economically by enacting policies which only favor a small percentage of the population. I don't feel bad because there is no actual moral excuse for supporting policies which disenfranchise and take rights away from people simply because they don't look or act like them. What impacts you more - the unemployment rate or whether or not two random people can have the type of sex they want? Its an easy answer but conservative Republicans have answered wrong for decades. I used to think the apex of this stupidity was the second Bush presidency, the most spectacularly failed presidency in the last 80 years where in addition to the bungling of many other issues, we managed to get in a war which created the current greatest world terror threat also completely tanked the American economy on a scale we haven't seen since 1929. But somehow, these people have managed to outdo themselves by giving nomination pole position to a carnival huckster with no qualifications, credentials or even the apparent ability to string 10 words coherently. I could wax on Trump for hours but who cares, he's an idiot and even the people voting for him know it. That said, he's the most likely nominee because he will win the most delegates in the Byzantine primary system and likely the rest of the party will eventually fall in line to nominate him. The other choices are Cruz, a man so unlikable that people like arch--conservative Senator Lindsay Graham come out and admit he's their 15th choice and only the nuclear awfulness of Trump can get them to support them. If he were to get enough media scrutiny he'd be even more wildly unpopular but because our media is more interested in the ratings and page views covering Trump garners, he mostly skates under the radar. The third candidate, Kasich, is irrelevant since he can't win anything but gets mentioned due to the possibility of a contested convention where he could conceivably usurp the other two candidates simply because they are so unbelievably unlikable. That is a very distant possibility, however. The most likely scenario is that Trump wins a plurality of delegates but not enough to actually secure the nomination. Some hand-wringing and back-room shenanigans occur and he eventually gets nominated. Let's say that has a 65% chance of occurring. The second most likely scenario is that Trump wins a plurality of delegates but pisses off enough Republicans that they hold their nose and through a contested convention or shady back-room dealings give the nomination to Cruz. Let's say that has a 30% chance of occurring. I suppose the remaining 5% is the same scenario but everyone hates Cruz so much that they manage to get an alternate candidate in through a bloody convention, be it Kasich, a risen-from-the-dead Mitt Romney or some other random candidate. That leaves a general election. Hillary wins the Dem nomination 99.9% of the time so let's not bother entertaining Sanders scenarios. Clinton vs Trump is our most likely scenario and polling has Clinton ahead by about 10% here. I actually think it will be a larger win for Clinton than that because all of her skeletons are long since out of the closet while Trump will get vetted in a way he never has before if he becomes the nominee. I'd say it ends up being something like 60% of the vote for Clinton and I think she wins that election with like a 98% certainty. That's how unelectable Trump is in front of the general population. A Clinton vs Cruz election is polling at something like a 3-5% advantage for Clinton but again, Clinton really doesn't have any room to go down. She's been part of the American consciousness for 25 years, is completely vetted and basically everyone who cares enough already dislikes her. She can be beaten, but not by these clowns. Cruz is absolutely despised by almost everyone, even in his own party and the exposure to the full lights of the campaign would only make him appear in an even less favorable light. I'd expect something like a 50-43 split in her favor and I think wins that election with a 80-85% certainty. Clinton vs random other candidate hasn't really been polled in any meaningful way. I think if this occurs you're looking at Romney. This would be closest, because while Romney is also an asshole he's not in the league of the other two. I'd expect like a 44-41 win for Clinton here but I'd say her winning is only like a 55% certainty. Unfortunately for any Republican readers, that's extremely unlikely to happen. Hopefully that answers your question, Ichabod. 
I've got some dirt on my shoulder, can you brush it off for me?
To give you guys a game thing to discuss in case you want to avoid the toxic cauldron of politics - the neighbor we met is REM and he found our explorer with his explorer to the east of Richard Nixon.
Two cent thoughts - REM is neither the best nor the worst neighbor we could have encountered first. He has shown a propensity to get aggressive (bad) but he doesn't have one of the super military leaders (good) nor is he as good as the absolute best opponents (good). Also he is not the weakest opponent (bad.) I don't expect any violent overtures from us here, but the potential for losing a pink dot war against IMP guy is pretty high, so he could easily turn into this game's Gavagai (see PB16 for details.) Discuss.
I've got some dirt on my shoulder, can you brush it off for me?
That was some top-tier political analysis, Gaspar. I'm wouldn't describe myself as extremely liberal, and prefer Clinton to Sanders (but would happily vote for either), but I think you're 100% correct about how the election will play out.
(March 29th, 2016, 13:03)ipecac Wrote:I was hoping for a Trump vs Biden foot-in-mouth special. It would have been epic!(March 29th, 2016, 12:53)Ichabod Wrote:Here's hoping for a Trump vs Sanders showdown
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. |
Let Bernie win 
