Match Day Thread Trump v Clinton

Yup, he may have a chance. Brexit and the 2015 General Election polls turned out to be completely wrong.

On another note, I agree with Happy. It's easy to disregard Trump as stupid because of his bigotry but I think people underestimate his intelligence. He's a scumbag, no doubt, but I genuinely think a lot of the bigotry he spouts is a charade to win over America's bigoted population who've been left behind by the worst excesses of capitalism who think they've got nothing to lose. Deep down, he's probably somewhat of a liberal, both economically and socially. Remember, a few years ago he used to be best pals with a lot of liberals and Democrats, the Clintons included. He's seen what has happened under successive Republican and Democrat administrations and he's thought to himself 'I can tap into that disillusionment and distrust of establishment politics for my own benefit'. Huey Morgan made a really good point of Question Time last week about how a lot of Americans, both moderates and conservatives, are sick of establishment politics and politicians. They're willing to go to extreme lengths and support a maverick firebrand who's an outsider to politics because they want change. He's still an arsehole though. Even if he isn't personally racist or an extreme bigot, pretending to be those things out of sheer opportunism to win votes is equally is bad. He's a charlatan. If he did win, I highly doubt he'd enact any of the crazy policies he's proposing; one because he doesn't believe in it himself and two because Congress would block him at every turn. Half the Republican party are against him. There are a lot of Republican senators who would veto his proposals even if he tried to push them through. It's one of the reasons why I think he's less dangerous than Clinton. He wouldn't get anything done during his four year administration and after those four years the Americans might start to take their republic a little more seriously and start to question their partisan system.

 

Well yes if there was a strong third party candidate like a Ross Perot yes just having more electoral college than either of the other candidates would be enough.

 

You do know that George Soros, one of Clinton's bankrollers and the man who made a mint at the expense of the UK on Black Wednesday, is closely involved with the company providing the electronic voting machines in 16 of the states don't you?

 

Al Gore won the popular vote but didn't get into the White House.

 

Yes votes don't convert evenly into electoral college votes. It can happen here too. Tory Ted Heath won most votes in February 1974 but Harold Wilson won more seats for Labour.

 

What are electoral college votes? Are they like our constituencies?

 

The Electoral College is the body of people who each have one vote to cast for the President (538 people, 538 votes). They base that vote off of how their states set up the distribution of their votes. Most of the States give 100% of their electoral college votes to the winner of their State. The qty per state is described basically in that other post I did but for example

California has 55 Electoral College Votes
Texas has 38
Virginia has 13
Florida and New York each have 29
DC has 3
Wyoming has 3
Georgia has 16
Washington has 12
etc

 

This is a useful digest of the emails

(not sure why it needs music, but there you go) Some of it is damning - not least the donations to the Clintons from various foreign governments in return for arms sales.

 

This bloke's tweets are a cracking read.

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald

 

How apt...

 

Not if the government there have followed proper procedure, unlike our lot...

 

Nope, I wasn't 'claiming you think that', I was merely suggesting that you shouldn't think that, in case you were going to.

If you're gonna try and dissect this, you're gonna have to do a lot better than you are.

 

That video from 2012 kind of supports my earlier point that Trump is somewhat of a liberal. In the context of 2012, Trump was criticising the Republicans for being too tough on immigration and mean-spirited and wanted Obama to reform immigration so undocumented immigrants could receive citizenship easier. Only four years ago, Trump criticised Mitt Romney and the Republicans for being anti-immigration and wanted Obama to make pro-immigration reforms.

He's an opportunistic liberal pretending to be a hard-right conservative for personal political gain.

 

I think he was more likely to have been pretending back then. Either way, he's a bigoted, duplicitous twat.

 

Really? Four years ago he was just a billionaire and wasn't involved in politics at all, unless he was making donations to the Democrats. He was very critical of Mitt Romney for being anti-immigrant and he encouraged Obama to make immigration reform so undocumented migrants could receive citizenship easier and quicker. It's much more likely his opinions four years ago were his true liberal colours and everything during his Presidential campaign has been a bigoted charade.

If he was truly a racist bigot, he would have kept his mouth shut in 2012, not criticise the Republicans for being too anti-immigrant. The only thing he cares about is money.

 

It's not only immigration he's done a 360 on since he started his campaign. He used to be strongly in favour of abortion rights, LGBT rights, gun control (ban on assault weapons), favoured universal healthcare and even favoured higher taxes for the rich. Now he's strongly anti-abortion rights, a Second Amendment fanatic, against any form of universal healthcare, including Obamacare, and wants to lower corporation tax. He's a liberal masquerading as a conservative for Middle America's votes.

 

If it was an act he'd at least make an attempt to not come across as clueless when it comes to the electoral process.

 

Do you have links to those former views? Having a debate with a conservative mate who is convinced Trump has always been a conservative.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ich-donald-trump-was-once-a-liberals-liberal/

This article has a compilation of quotes by Trump on certain issues.

 

A couple more.

http://reverbpress.com/politics/donald-trump-liberal-quotes/

He's never been a conservative all his life.