Donald Trump has apparently picked a boring old white guy as his running mate (nytimes). It is tough to believe that more than a handful of voters will be motivated even to research Mike Pence’s biography (and if they did they would learn that Pence was yet another lawyer-turned-politician).
More than a year ago I wrote a post about how it seemed impossible for any Republican to win the Presidential race. Donald Trump is not exactly a standard Republican, e.g., he promises various forms of protectionism so that American workers will enjoy a higher income without working harder or developing better skills. However, he is an older white guy, a concept previously rejected by American voters.
Does this choice of VP doom whatever chances Trump might have had? Could he not have found a 40-year-old non-white female running mate? (Though of course we must always recognize the possibility that a running mate identifying as “female” in July could identify as “male” by October or November…)
Readers: Are you shocked by this choice? Does it not seem that Trump could have enhanced his chances with a non-white female?
I guess if Mike Pence is considered old (b. June 1959), it’s definitely all over for disgraced former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, also b. June 1959. And current Prez (b. 1961) has few good years left?
I’m not shocked at all. If Trump picked any kind of minority/traditionally oppressed person as his running mate, it would be perceived as a pure PR / pandering maneuver, and it would not earn him any points with the demographic he is counting on to elect him.
I think Pence makes the most sense because Christe and Gingrich are faces which are already known to the public (and have their own negative baggage), whereas most people (myself included) had no idea who Pence was until now. He’s a blank slate.
Clinton’s choice for VP is far more interesting. A lot of people seem to want Elizabeth Warren (perhaps to shore up her cred with the left), but she (Warren) might not want the job, and Clinton might be worried that an all-female ticket would be too “scary” for white males in swing states who normally vote Democrat.
Alex seems to be saying Trump is avoiding backlash with the religious right (as they are all assumed to be racist xenophobes), but doesn’t he already have that demo sown up? Aren’t you supposed to pick a VP candidate that EXTENDS your demographic reach? Well, if Trump had any hope of appealing to moderates, it’s gone now. Conservatives already love Pence, but liberals hate him with a passion. (The exercise of figuring out why is left to the reader.) The media has specifically dragged him through the mud on the RFRA business — despite Indiana being the TWENTY-SEVENTH state to implement a FEDERAL statute signed into law by BILL CLINTON — precisely BECAUSE they knew a day in the national spotlight like this was coming, and wanted to have those embers of hate ready to fan into flames again. I think Trump just scuttled his (already-slim) chances.
Clinton is all-in for the anti-white anti-Christian vote. Those people are increasingly voting based on identity politics, so they will vote for Clinton. Trump’s only hope is to get the white Christian vote. Pence is a safe choice.
From day one Trump went after the angry white working class vote (those who pay enough taxes to feel justified in Boston tea party like indignation). Brilliant if it was knowingly deliberate. The tidal pull of his bar room message with working class whites (mostly men) brought in political drifters and the “somewhat educated” but hopelessly poor thinkers (don’t believe in evolution, don’t even know what it is). Momentum was building. And the rest of the R-field was clearly not comfortable in a bar room setting where three fingers of whisky and a frosty draft beer are sold 100:1 for every daiquiri. And of course as he marched to the nomination, right-wing Hillary haters jumped on board. Trump can win. Depends what happens from here on out, world events, U.S. terror, and home town “black lives matter” marches.
“I love the poorly educated.” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpdt7omPoa0
MIT Tuition: Nine months’ 2015–2016 is $46,400. Not counting undergraduate room, board, and books.
Assertion (guess): Not 5 in 100 MIT professors will vote Trump. These are smart people.
http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html
Paul K: there is a correlation between academic intelligence and liberalism, but I think it is more about the academic part than the intelligence part. There are a lot of very smart conservatives, though it’s true that Trump is not their natural representative.
Peter Thiel is an outlier, but it’s important to remember that he’s also crazy. And I do sort of enjoy the irony of him speaking at homophobe Pence’s national debutante ball. Trump doesn’t seem to be bothered by homosexuals, though I suppose if they’re brown enough or adequately foreign, he’d need to do something about them.
However, barring something genuinely huge, Trump cannot win. Hillary has a lock on something like 246 of the required 270 electoral votes. Trump would need to win 8 of 10 swing states to prevail.
What kind of events could turn the tide for Trump? Usually the GOP can bank on some foreign drama or teeth gnashing at least. But Hillary is actually a bigger hawk than either Trump or Pence.
Maybe if a transgender woman in a public restroom shoots up some evangelical children who would have been gun owners if not for the oppressive laws that block AK-47 sales to minors…that’d create quite a stir.
Regardless, we’re all going to die (apologies to Lenny Bruce) but not before we suffer the indignity of the last few months of electoral stupidity. And the embarrassment of Cruz 2020, which will begin at the RNC this week. And Bill back in the White House. I do hope that Hillary bars him from the Oval Office, on the grounds that revisiting the site of his Monica dalliances would make for bad optics.
We get the government we deserve.
The VP choices these days are almost always irrelevant (I would’ve said always, given the low bar Quayle set without having noticeable effect, but Palin showed it is possible for a presumably competent candidate to make a pick that could hurt the ticket somewhat. Although by Election Day, it almost appeared McCain was trying to throw the election so as not to get hit by the blowback from the Great Recession). The last one to help the ticket was LBJ in 1960, when he had the machine in place to be able to guarantee delivering Texas.
I mean, have you ever heard anyone in the last few decades go “I was going to vote for X or stay home, but I like Y’s VP candidate so much I’m getting out and voting for Y”? The only option I can think might have some effect would be if Hillary chooses a Hispanic running mate, but Trump’s already alienated that voting block enough that it might not make any difference at this point.
Trump is going to win in a landslide. I informed phil of this a year ago well before Trump sealed the primaries and he would delete my comments at the time while making snarky digs.
Your models are useless because the GOP of the last 30 years was just destroyed and is being reformulated while the Democrat party is in the process of melting away in its stew of aggrieved crazies and minorities. This is a new election without modern precedent and polls don’t work. It kinda boils down to “Trump takes way over half of the white votes, with high turnout.”
(Another Tom)
My impression is the left is quietly sighing with relief that they now have someone conventional to trot out conventional game plans against. But it would be the same thing with basically anyone, so game on.
As to converting voters: If I were a police officer, there is no way I would ever vote Hillary after the last few weeks. It’s simply a personal safety issue. I wonder what their union will do?
The military types might be disgusted with Hillary being too grand to get indicted for deliberately doing something worse than what has ended many a career before her, and will end many more after her. Will the next President be able to get a security clearance after such a showing?
It will also be interesting to see whether the Bernie bros are demoralized by Bernie kneeling before someone directly opposed to all he campaigned for. Will the Bern victims stay home on election day and do some weed or go and pull the lever shuddering with disgust?
Finally, it will be most interesting to see who Clinton chooses for VP. A glimpse of the future of America, one might say.
@Tom (other): there’s no doubt that HRC got special treatment, but in fairness a) that always happens, b) she had already resigned her job, and c) criminal charges in such cases are rare. And d) the absence of *intent to cause harm* is a strong defense.
She’s still a terrible candidate, and I’m sorely disappointed that the GOP couldn’t post a plausible competitor. I wouldn’t have voted for a typical faux-righteous demagogue either, but at least Hillary wouldn’t have her illusions of superiority vindicated by the plurality.
I hope she picks Elizabeth Warren for VP. She won’t, and Warren shouldn’t accept if she does, but I’m having some trouble with the thinly concealed sexism in the Bernie Bro camp. Just like the thinly concealed racism in the anti-Obama camp. Not all, and not even most…I’m not making a grand statement. But I want to see the toxic people get their noses rubbed in it.
Andrew,
We certainly know Hillary and her voters are, if anything, not racist, sexist homophobes. Perhaps America now can, at long last, get the government it deserves, one that can zealously implement the policies you propose. However …
“the absence of *intent to cause harm* is a strong defense.”
I seem to recall that that’s normally no defense at all. Also, the worst possible outcome from a feminist standpoint would be if Hillary got off lightly because she’s a woman.
@Tom: you’re wrong in every way.
First, I proposed no policies. You have misinterpreted my political leanings, though I made no effort to be clear about them.
Second, the intent to cause harm to the United States is literally the defining criteria for the relevant criminal charges. You get fired for mishandling classified info, but she had already quit, so that’s null. You get prosecuted for intent to cause harm, which no reasonable person can argue here.
Third, she got off lightly (disregarding the inappropriate rebuke from the equally-awful Comey) simply because she’s American royalty. The (D) doesn’t matter, an (R) wouldn’t matter, her gender doesn’t even enter the picture. It’s revolting, but even the minor princelings like Scooter Libby get away with flaunting the rules they create/advocate/prosecute. If she had any sense, she’d have done the right thing in the first place; if she had any honor, she’d stand down now. Sense and honor are not big in the Clinton household. Chelsea seems OK, if a little entitled.
Well Andrew, as far as I can interpret your words above, you wanted to rub the faces of toxic people into anti-sexism and anti-racism. I have to admit I made the assumption that included anti-homophobia too. My apologies if I was mistaken, but that sure sounded like policies to me.
Regarding “intent to harm”, the situation surely seems more complex than just getting fired if you hadn’t none. Apart from the person now known as Chelsea Manning, we have for example David Petraeus, who presumably had no ‘intent to harm’, yet was prosecuted (rather than fired). E.g.,
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cia-head-david-petraeus-plead-guilty/story?id=29340487
So Petraeus got prosecuted rather than just fired without intent to harm. Morton H Halperin, senior adviser, Open Society Foundation and apparently well acquainted with these issues, summarizes the situation as:
p.3-4 http://right2info.org/resources/publications/Halperin_CriminalPenaltiesforDisclosingClassifiedInformationtothePressintheUnitedStates.pdf
In short, I don’t think this ‘intent to harm’ is a generally accepted principle of judgement in these cases.
Regarding Scooter Libby, I’m not sure what you mean. From Wikipedia:
So Libby too did get sentenced (though not for leaking classified information) and his judicial appeal failed. It seems like an example of going through the justice system in an ordinary, if strict, way. But how is this relevant to Hillary Clinton not getting prosecuted at all?
(I can in no way equate the conduct of Comey with that of Clinton by the way.)
Your description of Clinton as pretend-royalty lacking sense or honor and aided and excused by a fawning system of justice, is concerning. She is, after all, the next President of the United States.
@Tom: I don’t propose a policy of nose-rubbing, I’d just like for people holding sexist/racist/homophobic opinions to be shown that those opinions are unpopular, in addition to being ignorant and toxic. It’s a small thing, but marginalizing the marginalizers seems fair.
Regarding *intent to cause harm*: you’re probably correct in the absolute legal sense, I will defer to your research. Nevertheless, Comey’s specific criteria for *recommending* prosecution does include that factor:
> Comey said decisions to file charges in previous similar cases have been based on some combination of three factors: intentional mishandling of classified information, large quantities of classified information exposed in such a way to suggest intentional wrongdoing and “indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.” Because the bureau found no evidence of those factors, Comey said, the FBI recommended against filing charges against Clinton.
And re: Scooter Libby, I was mistaken. I meant Sandy Berger, but it turns out he was prosecuted after all. Not under any statute pertaining to *mishandling* of classified info, but for unauthorized removal and destruction of documents (stolen from the National Archives, though I don’t think anyone really knows why he did it; the best guess seems to suggest either a sycophantic relationship with the Clintons, or a flunkie doing their bidding and taking the fall).
Either way, we agree on the most important point:
> Your description of Clinton as pretend-royalty lacking sense or honor and aided and excused by a fawning system of justice, is concerning. She is, after all, the next President of the United States.
Quite. On the other hand, it’s an ordinary sort of concern, whereas the future runner-up is a whole new kind of concerning.