It’s a shotgun marriage, this odd relationship between Donald Trump and the Republican Party that he now calls his own. Can it hold together for another four months, long enough to reach the November finish line and accomplish the only real goal that the party has, namely, defeat Hillary Clinton?
Trump’s new significant others (Republicans) have signed on, and they don’t really seem all that interested in exactly what Trump would do as president, or how he would do it. Details, they have been told, are for losers. Policy, in some form or another, will come later, as soon as the Evil Beast has been vanquished. No one wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of raising the minimum wage, how to grow the economy, pay down the debt, or even be told how ISIS would be defeated. They already know that Donald Trump will do the right thing, because — well, because Hillary Clinton would do the wrong thing.
Besides, when Trump does talk specifics, he doesn’t feel the need to hold his line.
He won primaries by promising to keep Muslims out of the country, but has modified that stance three times since then.
He said he would force the military to torture and kill the families of suspected terrorists, then changed his mind less than 24 hours later.
He said he would self-fund his campaign, but has accepted donations via his website and, in an apparent violation of U.S. law, has solicited help from government officials abroad.
He has had four different positions on whether the federal minimum wage should be raised and changed his mind three times in the same day when asked about abortion.
Yet Trump still has a puncher’s chance at becoming the next president of the United States and leader of the free world. After all, much of what he’s doing is an embodiment of Richard Nixon’s famous advice to Republicans: run hard to the right in the primaries, then steer back to the center for the general election.
Bush 41 and Bush 43 both took the advice to heart and won. However, Mitt Romney twisted himself into a pretzel doing it, and was soundly defeated. Now it’s Trump’s turn to explain to the American public why he might not do the ultra-conservative things he’s heretofore promised.
“Everything is negotiable,” Trump recently said in an interview with the New York Times. That explanation will be good enough for people already leaning to the right, but what about the truly undecided?
For independents, this general election is a nightmare, forced to decide between the caricature that is Donald Trump and the seemingly robotic duplicity of Hillary Clinton. But it’s a choice that must be made. After all, it’s a two-party system, right? No third-party candidate could garner enough votes to impact the outcome. Or could they?
As the Republican National Convention draws to a close and the Democrats get ready for their quadrennial coronation, I look at the odds for all the meaty questions leading up to the general election.
Let’s start with the big one …
Presidential Election Odds
Odds to be the next president of the United States
Hillary Clinton: 7/20 (74%)
Donald Trump: 3/1 (25%)
Gary Johnson or Jill Stein: 200/1 (<1%)
Clinton has a solid four or five-percent lead in most polls, and it’s hard to find a Trump path to the presidency when you start looking at his numbers with minorities and the electoral college. But the man proved to be very hard to beat in the primaries and has ample time to win over voters with his simple rhetoric. This race is not over. It’s scarcely begun.
Odds to be Hillary’s running-mate
Tim Kaine: 3/1 (25%)
Tom Vilsack: 5/1 (17%)
Julian Castro: 5/1 (17%)
Elizabeth Warren: 8/1 (11%)
Sherrod Brown: 12/1 (8%)
Bernie Sanders: 15/1 (6%)
Tom Perez: 15/1 (6%)
John Hickenlooper: 24/1 (4%)
James Stavridis: 49/1 (2%)
FIELD: 24/1 (4%)
Virginia and its 13 electoral votes aren’t in the bag for Clinton. They would be with Kaine as VP. Vilsack would have a similar impact in Iowa (six electoral votes). Both would help Clinton with the white male demographic, nationally.
OVER/UNDER on Trump’s percentage of the New York vote
O/U: 45% (OVER +150)
Both candidates can claim New York as their home state. But New York has gone to the Democrats in every election since 1984, getting bluer and bluer in each of the last three. Trump should do better than Romney and “Dubbya,” but hitting 45-percent is going to be tough.
OVER/UNDER on third-party candidates’ percentage of the popular vote
O/U: 3.2% (OVER -150)
In 2012, third-party candidates received 1.7-percent of the popular vote. The likely third-party candidates this time around – libertarian Gary Johnson and green Jill Stein – aren’t going to be huge draws, but (as previously mentioned) a lot of independents won’t be able to stomach voting Republican or Democrat this year. (Some card-carrying GOP members won’t be able to stomach it, either.) That means a rise in the third-party vote.
In most polls, the third-party candidates are garnering more than 3.2-percent. But when it comes to actually pulling the trigger on election day, voters tend to be slower to “throw their votes away,” so to speak.
OVER/UNDER on Trump’s percentage of the African-American vote
O/U: 4.5% (OVER +135)
He’ll get more than zero-percent of the vote in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but he certainly won’t get 26-percent nationally. According to Gallup, Romney received five-percent in 2012, while McCain garnered just one-percent in 2008. Bush did a little better in ’04 with seven-percent.
The divisive racial epoch we’re currently living in will make it hard for the GOP to better Romney’s numbers, no matter the candidate.
OVER/UNDER on Trump’s percentage of the Hispanic vote
O/U: 21% (even)
Bush received 44-percent in 2004, John McCain 31-percent in 2008, and Mitt Romney 27-percent in 2012. Some polls support Trump winning more than Romney, others show him winning historically few Hispanic votes. You don’t need to climb atop a border wall to see which are closer to reality.
Odds to win Nevada
Hillary Clinton: 100/99 (49.75%)
Donald Trump: 50/49 (49.5%)
Third-party candidate: 200/1 (<1%)
Ahh Nevada, home to our beloved Las Vegas. Trump has ample ties to the gambling world and won the GOP caucus handily with nearly 46-percent of votes. But he’s trailing Clinton by a couple points in the Silver State and Obama carried its six electoral votes in 2008 and 2012.
Nevada also has a large and growing Hispanic population, roughly 27-percent according to the 2010 census. I refer you back to the border-wall joke in the prop above.
In sum, there are reasons to like both candidates’ chances. With so much time left before the election, Nevada is a true toss-up. Can we say the same of the other key swing states? Some yes, some no …
Odds to win the major swing states
Florida
Hillary Clinton: 1/1 (50%)
Donald Trump: 50/49 (49.5%)
Ohio
Donald Trump: 49/50 (50.5%)
Hillary Clinton: 24/25 (48.9%)
Pennsylvania
Hillary Clinton: 2/3 (60%)
Donald Trump: 17/11 (39.29%)
Odds to have more signatures as of Aug. 1
The petition to pardon Edward Snowden: 2/5 (71.5%)
Hillary Clinton’s open-letter to Donald Trump: 5/2 (29.5%)
The pardon petition has a 67,000-signature lead, at last check.
Odds Hillary Clinton is charged federally pursuant to her email scandal
No: 1/4 (80%)
Yes: 4/1 (20%)
The DOJ did re-open its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, and there could be serious repercussions for Clinton, especially if she’s found to have lied to the House Select Committee. But nothing, to date, suggests that charges will follow from her handling of the emails, themselves.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (Donald Trump) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
The term is “shotgun wedding”, Larry, you insufferable leftist queer.
“Larry Josephson, long a New England resident, leans left politically. He formerly worked for Barney Frank and Elizabeth Warren, and was a delegate to the Mass. Democratic convention which endorsed Deval Patrick. He’s also a former writer at Covers.com, where he penned several political stories as they pertained to the Las Vegas scene.”
—– from the source link.
Good job, ed. I love googling authors. They are usually exactly what you think they are
I know it star. Google me and I’ll turn out to be an old indin retard. But we already knew that. ahaha
I don’t pay much attention to polls. I believe they’re propaganda for the mentally challenged.
The idea is, we are all lemmings and I’m going to do what all those other lemmings are doing and jump off this cliff. Call me a deviant lemming, I ain’t jumpin’.
The Demos are fixated with polls and I wonder how accurate they really are. I bet they’re skewed to present the desired result.
I can see, happening, more and more polls in the next few months showing the Democratic candidate, “She, who shall not be named” in the lead.
See also: “push poll”.
Yin to the Yang:
Professor Claims His Statistical Model Shows Who Will Become President
http://fortune.com/2016/02/26/stony-brook-professor-trump/
“Prof. Helmut Norpath, appearing on Fox and Friends this morning, says Trump’s odds of winning the presidency are between 97-99%. Norpath says his calculations are based on historical models of primaries that have proven largely accurate for over 100 years.
Norpath says his model has only fallen short on one election since 1912 – the Bush-Gore race of 2000 (when Gore, in fact, won the popular vote).”
Most of the liberal media spouts the fact that Hillary is unbeatable just as this guy did with his verbage, however having been a Trump supporter from the beginning over a year ago he apparently fails to see the tremendous support that Trump has in many places who have not been a part of the “media polls” that attempt to forecast doom and gloom on his candidacy, he has fought off sixteen challengers, the established republican party hiearchy and the liberal left wing and is still standing…..Trump is going to be our next president in spite of the black votes who always vote the democratic welfare ticket, and the liberals who will vote democratic in spite of ruining our country……Trump may not win by a landslide, but he will win…….
Trump is going to win and the Democrats, “Progressives” and liberal dipshits know it. That is why they are undergoing acute intestinal distress right now, probably soon leading to a soiling of underpants. This will be followed by orderly transportation to delousing stations and rock quarries, where they will have ample time to ponder their idiocy.
I understand that Michael Moore is unhappily predicting that Trump will be the winner.
Michael Moore knows the election is going to be lost in the rust belt. He is from Michigan. He is right.
VegasBob is a registered Democrat. That will soon change, because VegasBob has morphed into a swing voter.
VegasBob voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Obama won easily.
VegasBob was disgusted with Obama’s first term, and voted 3rd-party in 2012. Obama still won, but with 10 million fewer votes than in 2008.
VegasBob will vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Donald Trump is a leader. Hillary Clinton is not a leader. VegasBob thinks Donald Trump will easily beat Hillary Clinton.
You are doing a Bob Dole, there, Vegas Bob. Dole used to refer to himself in the 3rd asshole..I mean person.
I predict that Larry is like a fat over educated Ivy League Pig that can’t see out of the Democrat pig pen much less get out. When people watch the New Clinton Chronicles and Hillary’s America, your Leftist pig predictions and the crooked MSM pig polls will end up being just so much more pig shit for your kind to wallow in. Go on and schmooze for the NWO pigs which you and the RINOs obviously suckle (for now).
Hitliary Rotten Cuntpus can’t be allowed to be POTUS. It’s a guaranteed entre’ to WWIII which will be nooclur (as “W” would have pronounced it). At the very least it would be Oblunder’s 3rd term and this country won’t survive that.
“Dewey Wins”
” No one wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of raising the minimum wage,”
that’s because only economic ignoramuses think a minimum wage is a GOOD idea. Major fail, author not worthy of being taken seriously.
And this guy gets paid for writing.
So much is wrong with it there’s no place to even start.
The navel gazing is about to come to an end.
What are the odds that Trump wins the popular vote but Clinton carries the electoral college??
Its in the bag!