The Third Party Candidate

Quote: AZDuffman

The "lost cause" thing makes me chuckle. Trump went from some kind of fringe thing to taking the nomination ahead of 16 others. He gets more energy than anyone in memory from the GOP. He is going against a candidate with huge negatives and who may be on trial by the election. If it was the Super Bowl where the Patriots got that first field goal against the Bears the leaders of the GOP would consider the game lost.

Trump and Clinton both have huge negatives. If you don't think Trump has negatives, you are naive. It maybe negatives you personally don't give two dimes about, but there's plenty of stuff you can sling as Trump.

It doesn't stick much, but Trumps biggest obstacles is he is a divisive figure. Have too many voters already made up their mind about him? I suspect yes. I also suspect he might be the fire that takes out the dead wood in the Republican party. What is left and grows may not be a party you want but I certainly can see it challenging the old entrenched Democratic interests. And the republican ones too. The Dems are starting to look like a party who also needs to blow out a few cobwebs. H.Clinton I can see being a one term president.

That's my take.

"Lost cause" is an interesting phrase to use, by the way Paco and AZD.

Quote: TheCesspit

It doesn't stick much, but Trumps biggest obstacles is he is a divisive figure.

It doesn't look that way to his supporters, because he's obviously united the bigot vote.

As electability goes, his biggest negative is he has thrown away the Hispanic vote in one fell swoop. No presidential candidate in recent times has won without it.

Quote:

H.Clinton I can see being a one term president.

Too early to tell, but it's likely. Still, the last one-term president looked like a sure thing halfway into his term.

Quote: TheCesspit

Trump and Clinton both have huge negatives. If you don't think Trump has negatives, you are naive. It maybe negatives you personally don't give two dimes about, but there's plenty of stuff you can sling as Trump.

It doesn't stick much, but Trumps biggest obstacles is he is a divisive figure.

I know he has negatives, but I look at who those negatives are strongest with. They are strongest with voters the GOP will never get anyways. Obama was also a divisive figure. Obama had energetic voters. Hillary is a divisive figure. Hillary has no energy. Last summer I was doing delivery work and noticed loads of "BERNIE!" Bumper stickers. I think I saw 1 for Hillary. Point being, divisiveness can be overcome.

As to the parties, Dick Morris brought up how this may remake things for a generation. We are kind of due. Looking at what can be seen, I see a few things. I see Democrats even more writing off working class whites and driving them from the party. Same as the GOP establishment hates conservatives, the Democrat establishment seems to find working class whites an embarrassment ("clinging to guns and religion!) They will take their votes to be sure, but they do not want the social values that come along with them.

The GOP can easily pull this group in. Trump is showing how one-sided NAFTA turned out to be (I was wrong on it 25 years ago!) for the USA. If he can show how much illegal immigration has hurt the average middle class American he will really have something. If he can show how much all these guest tech worker expats are hurting white collar workers, he will have even more.

On the other side, there will be some RINOS who just bolt. These are the people who claim they have voted GOP for 20 or 30 years but are leaving because they claim the party has just moved too far right. It hasn't, the Democrat Party has just moved so far left as to make it appear so.

Leadership of both parties is a geriatric ward. Will take time to see what happens, but it is going to happen right in time for my prediction of 2020-2030 being a decade of huge social unrest.

there are plenty of other parties in the US, and they all, I suppose, have candidates for President. The "ballot access rules" vary state by state, and make it difficult enough to get named on an official ballot that it seems to me this is the primary means the US has of preserving the 2 party system.

ways to get on the ballot:

*An individual can seek the nomination of a political party. [just the two I guess]

*An individual can run as an independent. Independent presidential candidates typically must petition each state to have their names printed on the general election ballot. For the 2016 presidential contest, it was estimated that an independent candidate would need to collect in excess of 900,000 signatures in order to appear on the general election ballot in every state

Or

*An individual can run as a write-in candidate.

All the above from the below link, which also has a map showing state deadlines "November 2015 and earlier (10%),December 2015 (26%),January 2016 (22%),February 2016 (14%),March 2016 and later (16%),Unknown (12%)"

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates

IIRC sometimes I see a third candidate, usually the Libertarian. Due to lack of any real possibility of getting many votes, this is not considered a "real" third party candidacy it seems.

I'd like to see the 2 party system go, and to do it we need to see all these old rules get less strict, since winning the Presidency is so critical to making a new party valid. I'm about done with looking it up, but I think another problem is winning an electoral vote without winning a majority of the votes ... run-off elections needed?

btw Ross Perot got about 18% of the vote and not a single electoral vote

Quote: odiousgambit

*An individual can seek the nomination of a political party. [just the two I guess]

There are two major, but many minor ones. NY is a perfect example. They have several smaller parties, one being the Conservative Party. When there was a governor election, 2000 IIRC, there was a radio ad series to vote for Pataki on the Conservative line not the GOP line. Vote still went for him and all votes on any party line would be aggregate. But it let the Conservative Party have ballot access, presumably so they could put things and people on down ballot. There were other parties, I forget most of their names because I voted on that line just the one time. Pretty sure there was a Liberal Party, maybe Green, and a few others.

This would be a way to lessen the two-party system. Most House races are considered uncompetitive. But say a liberal party runs someone in districts like San Francisco. Conservatives do the same in Utah. But in the end, what happens? Positive is you would get some real dealing for votes. As it is now after a bright young person gets elected on their second day in office (parties on the first!) they get called in, mafia-style, to the office of the leader of their party or that person's designate. They get told the way things work.

"Son, you want to follow your conscience go right ahead. But if you want to ever move up the ladder; ever want to get a bill introduced; ever need a favor for your district; you need any of that then you are going to be told how to vote."



A person who won on the Conservative line would owe far less to the GOP, ditto liberal and Democrat Party. There would still be the same favor owing, but that is the same anywhere.

Quote:

I'd like to see the 2 party system go, and to do it we need to see all these old rules get less strict, since winning the Presidency is so critical to making a new party valid. I'm about done with looking it up, but I think another problem is winning an electoral vote without winning a majority of the votes ... run-off elections needed?

btw Ross Perot got about 18% of the vote and not a single electoral vote

Perot was the protest candidate of the time. Had he not dropped out and had he had a good VP candidate he might have gotten twice his 18%. He got what, 10% in 1996? Means you are talking 10-20% of people really fed up.

As to electors, you just need a plurality, not a majority. Bill Clinton got a majority in just AR and DC, Bush got a majority in none.

Quote: Nareed

As electability goes, his biggest negative is he has thrown away the Hispanic vote in one fell swoop. No presidential candidate in recent times has won without it.

There are some people who believe that the Latino (Catholic) vote got President Kennedy elected in 1960. In a close election any demographic group can sort of claim that they were instrumental.But with a Latino population now larger than the population of Spain (46-47 million) or Colombia (48-49 million) they can't be thrown out or bought back with a photo of Trump eating a taco salad saying "I love hispanics".

Quote: terapined

Trump needs to win just about all the battleground states

The five critical battleground states that GW Bush won both elections (2000 & 2004) are Florida (29), Ohio(18), Virginia(13),Colorado(9), and Nevada(6).
Bush also won New Hampshire in 2000 which was necessary to push him over 270. In 2004 he also won New Mexico and Iowa (but lost New Hampshire). But these states were just icing in 2004.

So Trump does need to win all the states won by Romney in 2012 plus those five states.

Pennsylvania's has 18 congressional districts and 13 Republican congressmen. But it has not voted Republican for POTUS since George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992. But Donald Trump had 892,706 primary votes compared to 810,934 who voted for ALL THE CANDIDATES in 2012. Hillary Clinton had 1,273,764 votes in 2008 when she defeated Obama, but only 918,694 votes in 2016 when she beat Bernie.

GOP optimists pointing to the huge increase in voting for the GOP primary, and another large loss in voting for the DEM primary think that it will translate into a massive Republican turnout for the general election that could finally swing to Trump.

Quote: Pacomartin

Pennsylvania's has 18 congressional districts and 13 Republican congressmen. But it has not voted Republican for POTUS since George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992. But Donald Trump had 892,706 primary votes compared to 810,934 who voted for ALL THE CANDIDATES in 2012. Hillary Clinton had 1,273,764 votes in 2008 when she defeated Obama, but only 918,694 votes in 2016 when she beat Bernie.

GOP optimists pointing to the huge increase in voting for the GOP primary, and another large loss in voting for the DEM primary think that it will translate into a massive Republican turnout for the general election that could finally swing to Trump.

I am wondering where he picked up the most. Democrats win PA mostly based on Philly, blacks, and union members. If rank-and-file union members go Trump that might be the difference.

Quote: AZDuffman

I am wondering where he picked up the most. Democrats win PA mostly based on Philly, blacks, and union members. If rank-and-file union members go Trump that might be the difference.

Trump and analysts are openly speculating that Pennsylvania (19) and Michigan (16) could be Trump's path to victory. Both states have Republican congressional majorities with each having 5 Democratic districts, but neither state has voted for a Republican POTUS since 1988 when they both voted for G.H. Bush.

Electoral vote in 2012 was 332 to 206 which means that if Trump win's the same states that Romney won he needs another 63 delegates for a tie. Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could give him the victory by one vote (if he also wins the states that Obama lost in 2012).

The last presidential election where someone won without winning both Florida and Ohio was 72 years ago (1944 when FDR beat Thomas Dewey). Dewey carried 11 states but one of them was Ohio.

Electoral College Votes (change since 2010 census) 9 largest states only
16 Georgia(+1), Michigan(−1)
18 Ohio(−2)
20 Illinois(−1), Pennsylvania(−1)
29 Florida(+2), New York(−2)
38 Texas(+4)
55 California

Post 1996 only Florida and Ohio seemed up grabs. The other major states have voted consistently

Quote: Pacomartin

Electoral vote in 2012 was 332 to 206 which means that if Trump win's the same states that Romney won he needs another 63 delegates for a tie. Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could give him the victory by one vote (if he also wins the states that Obama lost in 2012).

My gut tells me if all three flip enough else will have flipped that the margin will be wider than 1 elector. Right now Trump is appealing to a lot of the old Reagan Democrats. He is mostly not talking social issues. And a biggie is he is on offense all the time. He will not be caught being accused of a "war on women" because Hillary will be busy denying whatever Trump has said first. The Donald seems to understand what the GOP does not; that if you make the statement first you control that news cycle. That will be big.

A libertarian party candidate said that his party can put a candidate on the ballot in 50 states.