Hillary's Enthusiasm Gap
Deep into the political silly season, it seems the pundits are getting rather tired of being so very, very wrong in predicting the imminent demise of Donald Trump's candidacy, so instead they all seem to have turned to a new summertime storyline: predicting the imminent demise of Hillary Clinton's candidacy. This is what passes for conventional wisdom inside the Beltway in the dog days of August, but it's likely going to turn out to be just as wrong as the endless refrains of "surely this will sink Trump!" which preceded it. For anyone so disconnected from reality to understand what I'm saying here, a handy reminder that we have over fourteen months before the 2016 election. Even the first primaries are still a half a year away. And anything can happen in that amount of time in politics.
Hillary's campaign, to read the headlines, is in such a sorry state that it's a wonder she hasn't just hung up her hat and gone home. If you just woke up from a coma and read only the past week's headlines, you'd be wondering when Clinton will be scheduling her concession speech, as she prepares to exit the race. That this is patent nonsense seems to have escaped everyone.
The pundit world is gleefully ignoring a few facts, since they are inconvenient to the "Hillary is toast!" talking point. Let's begin with her poll ratings, which continue to dominate the race. Hillary Clinton, right now, commands support from more voters -- of either party -- than anyone else in the race, by far. Donald Trump is making big news because he has hit a plateau (or perhaps ceiling?) of roughly 25 percent of Republican primary voters. The other Republicans in the race are fighting over the crumbs left behind -- Trump routinely posts polling numbers twice as high as his nearest competitor, and whenever any Republican candidate breaks 10 percent in polling it makes the news. Only a handful have managed to do so in the entire race, so far. Trump's the only one to break 20 percent in even a single recent poll, in fact. And Clinton regularly charts twice the support from Democrats that Trump gets from Republicans. Heck, even Bernie Sanders has more Democratic support than Trump manages from the Republicans. The Democrats' second-place candidate is doing better than the Republican frontrunner, to put this another way.
Hillary's actually doing better in the early polling than just about any recent candidate at this stage in a presidential race (with the obvious exception of a sitting president running unopposed for re-election). She has been maintaining this incredibly high level of support for the entire campaign, in fact. She is still far and away the favorite to win the Democratic nomination. She has had a recent minor slump in polling, but in real numbers this means "her first poll below 50 percent of Democratic voters' support." Any other candidate in the race (of either party) would be overjoyed to have 49 percent at this point, to put this into a bit of perspective. Even at 49 percent, Clinton's still showing twice the support among her party as Trump is among his -- and over five times the support most of the Republican candidates are now getting.
Having said all of that in defense of Clinton's chances, her campaign does seem to be recently showing signs of three particular problems. The first is largely (but not entirely) beyond the campaign's control -- how the Clinton campaign is being portrayed in the media. The second is the level of perceived enthusiasm Hillary has created among voters. And the third is the most worrisome, because it was her downfall the last time she ran for office -- how slow the Clinton campaign can be in identifying what they're doing wrong and in moving on to trying something different.
The first problem is no secret. Clinton has precious little love for the media, and it shows. She is entirely justified in her disdain, considering the history of how the media has treated both her and her husband. At the start of her campaign, she tried stonewalling the media almost completely (remember all those cameramen chasing the Scooby Van in Iowa?). She finally realized that this wasn't the best way to get her message out, and began actually taking questions from reporters. This has helped, but she's never going to be bosom buddies with the press corps assigned to her campaign.
Hillary Clinton's campaign was always destined to take place under the media's microscope. She was the biggest name in the Democratic field, so the lion's share of coverage was inevitably going to be about Clinton. What this has meant (and will continue to mean) is that every tiny little glitch or stumble is going to be widely reported -- a level of scrutiny other candidates won't receive for months to come (if at all). Hey, that's part of the game, though -- both for the first plausible female president and for the first spouse of a former president running. She had to know this level of attention would be focused on her from the very start. No matter what Clinton's team does, there will be pundits out there second-guessing the decision and giving advice on what to do differently (I am no different, it bears pointing out, as this article proves). "Hillary's going too fast! She's going too slow! She's not being specific! She's being too wonky! She won't give me an interview about [fill in the "scandal" du jour]! She's being mean to the media!" These were all going to happen, no matter what Hillary did. She could bake cookies every day for the media plane travelling with her, and she'd still get all of this and more from political pundits.
However, this brings up the second problem. If the campaign has a limited amount of sway over how the media is portraying the Clinton campaign, it is still falling down on providing many moments of excitement for the public to see. This may be a side-effect of Clinton's personality or her agenda, at least to some extent. Clinton is perhaps most accurately described politically as a cautious incrementalist. She wants to move both the Democratic Party and the country forward in a definite direction, but she is much more content than the base voters in accepting incremental progress towards distant goals. Part of this is her political experience -- she saw what Bill faced in getting things done with a very hostile Congress (back in the days of Newt Gingrich). She knows that even if a Democrat wins the White House in 2016, he or she will have a big problem getting any agenda enacted into law -- because even if 2016 is a Democratic wave election, there'll still be enough Republicans in Congress to gum up the works. So Clinton is setting rather reasonable expectations for her eventual presidential agenda.
To put this another way, Clinton is already essentially running her general election campaign. She's trying to woo moderates and not scare suburbanites with anything too radical. The problem with this is that it is out of sync with where the primary campaign currently is. Primaries, after all, are all about exciting the base and creating as much enthusiasm as possible. So far, if Hillary's been exciting much of the base, it's been a pretty closely-held secret, at least in the media.
This is a shame, since even Clinton getting nominated will be historic for women. In 2008, she tapped into this energy and it was apparent from her supporters. "First woman president" was a big draw, and it likely will be again for Clinton. But, so far, it hasn't really materialized. Clinton has chosen a rather low-key and slowly-ramped-up start to her campaign, which is understandable since we do have a long way to go. She doesn't want to peak too early. And those poll numbers prove she's got a lot of voter support, even if they aren't all that excited yet.
However, Clinton is not yet (much as she'd like to be) in the midst of a general election campaign. There's still that whole pesky business with primaries and caucuses to get through, after all. And even though the race has narrowed to a field of three plausible Democratic candidates (one of whom isn't even running yet), it is far from over. Whether Joe Biden jumps in or not, Bernie Sanders is the one causing excitement among the base right now. Lots of excitement. Lots and lots more excitement than any other presidential campaign is currently showing (even Trump's). Sooner or later -- even with the inevitable "Clinton drew smaller crowd than Sanders" headlines -- Hillary's got to hold more conventional campaign rallies than she has so far. With Bernie out there barnstorming the country, Hillary's got to show that she too can cause a little excitement in a large group of supporters. She's got to at least make an attempt at closing what might be termed her "enthusiasm gap" with Sanders. Co-opting a few of his ideas and throwing her support behind them would certainly help.
This leads to her campaign's third problem, however -- the one that should be most worrisome for Clinton supporters. Last time around, Clinton famously asked the "3:00 A.M." question: Who do you want answering the red phone in a crisis? She was trying to hit Barack Obama on his inexperience, and show that, in contrast, she'd be a calm leader in a storm. But answering the phone in the wee hours of the morning means a major crisis is demanding some deft decision-making and leadership. So far, the Clinton campaign shows no real evidence of being able to react quickly to much of anything. Time and again, something newsworthy happens and we get nothing but silence from Team Clinton. Then -- usually days later -- Hillary comes out with a pre-parsed answer for how she would have reacted.
This is not the same thing as decisive, 3:00 A.M. decision-making. In fact, it's the opposite. It smacks of focus-group testing and "Which answer will hurt us the least?" thinking. This is precisely what led to Hillary's downfall in 2008. She had a master plan. She stuck to it, and chose to largely ignore the threat Obama presented to her campaign. She was positive all would be well, and that all challengers would disappear after she stunned everyone on Super Tuesday. She refused to deviate from this plan, and it led her to disaster. After Super Tuesday, Barack Obama racked up victories in state after state (many of them caucus states, where voter enthusiasm is crucial), and Hillary's campaign was left flat-footed because they didn't seem to have a "Plan B." From all appearances, they had literally not considered that their master plan could be flawed or could ever fail. When it did fail, they scrambled for a month before they really got back on their feet again, but by that point it was really too late.
This should be the worrisome part for Clinton supporters. Because Hillary Clinton seems to now be walking down exactly the same path. She has a master plan, and she's so committed to it that she refuses to change her strategy to match shifting political realities. To give but one example, her master plan no doubt has a bullet item on it somewhere charting out precisely when Hillary will do her first sit-down interview with a Sunday political talk show. This was likely determined months ago. And, obviously, the date of that first appearance was set far into the future -- as far as they thought they could get away with. In the meantime, Bernie Sanders has been on Sunday television almost every weekend. That's an unexpected development for two reasons -- one, Bernie was never expected to do this well (haven't seen many Lincoln Chafee or Jim Webb Sunday appearances, in other words); and two, it's astonishing the mainstream media is even allowing a "Democratic socialist" any airtime at all. They've pretty much been forced to, by the size of his rallies. But Bernie has always been eager to talk to the press, because he knows that whatever stupid questions they throw at him, he'll still be able to get some of his main message out to a whole lot of people who haven't yet heard it.
Clinton's been -- so far -- largely ignoring Sanders. But while her support has recently slipped in the polls, his is slowly rising. The gap between them went from Hillary pulling 59 percent of the Democratic vote to Bernie's 25 percent a month ago, to the most recent poll showing her at 49 percent versus him at 30 percent. She's still 19 points ahead of him, but that's down from 34 points only a few weeks ago.
Team Clinton, obviously, thinks Sanders has a built-in ceiling of support, and that that ceiling is low enough that she doesn't really need to worry about his campaign. She has been -- again, incrementally -- tailoring her position papers towards at least limited support for some of Bernie's issues. Everyone expected this, so it was likely included in Clinton's master campaign plan ("We'll move precisely this far towards the progressive position, because any further and we'll risk losing independent support in the general election"). So, a few good (baby) steps in the right direction, but not really enough to even begin to close the enthusiasm gap.
Hillary Clinton needs to get her face in front of the media. She needs to do some interviews, even if they're going to ask her about scandals. She should sit down and practice with her husband the various techniques to deflect such questions (since he's a master at it), but she's got to shake the image of "Hillary Clinton, waiting for her coronation, disdainfully dismissing the media." Sure, there'll be tough questions. With either Clinton, there will always be a current scandal (or a trumped-up "scandal") for the media to ask about, so this really should have been part of her master plan all along. But once she plows through those questions, she'll then have an opportunity to make her case directly to the public -- why she'd be a great president and where she wants to lead America.
And, yes, she's got to expand beyond intimate town halls and chats with hand-picked citizens. She's got to hold some big-time rallies, even if she runs the risk of pulling smaller crowds than Bernie Sanders. She's got to hone her applause lines and practice getting voters fired up. Because so far, not much evidence of this has leaked out to the general public. Hillary Clinton can indeed be an exciting presidential candidate -- she proved that the last time she ran. She can fire up women in particular (by speaking about the glass ceiling once again, perhaps) and get some people just as excited about electing the first woman president as they were about electing the first African-American president eight years ago. After all, her platform may be rather incremental but it's still miles better than anything any Republican has put forward.
To do any of this, however, she's got to go back and build a little more flexibility into her master plan. She's got to do a lot more contingency planning for both expected and unexpected future events. She's got to be a lot faster on her feet than she has yet been. Americans want to see presidential candidates who can adapt to shifting circumstances. And they also want a heck of a lot more excitement out of a candidate than Hillary Clinton has so far given them.
-- Chris Weigant
Cross-posted at The Huffington Post
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Chris,
The pundit world is gleefully ignoring a few facts, since they are inconvenient to the "Hillary is toast!" talking point.
Actually, it's not nearly as bad as you think. The pundit world isn't really ignoring anything and they don't take their fun with the "Hillary is toast!" tp very seriously, at all.
Do you want to know how I know this? How any Biden supporter knows this?
Because, "Hillary is toast!" only until the discussion turns to a possible third and final Biden presidential run. Then, all of a sudden - in the same breath, even - Hillary not only isn't toast, anymore but, she's actually running a pretty strong campaign.
Meanwhile, a substantive discussion of the issues will have to wait ... for a Biden campaign announcement that he's all in, if ya'll are lucky.
To put this another way, Clinton is already essentially running her general election campaign.
She is toast.
Elections are decided by turnout. The winner in a general election is whoever gets their voters to show up, while their opponent's voters don't.
Hillary already has about eighty strikes against her (bringing her to two outs in the ninth, with the last batter at two and oh) because of how absolutely she energizes the Republican base. If she runs her general campaign with the goal of making the Democratic base stay home, she might as well be using her third-string pitcher as well, to ward off any chance of extra innings.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Capuano."
-- Dan Wylie-Sears
For anyone so disconnected from reality to understand what I'm saying here, a handy reminder that we have over fourteen months before the 2016 election.
That's true..
That means we have FOURTEEN MONTHS for more revelations about Hillary to come out..
I mean, honestly.. Do you think that we are going to find out anything GOOD about Hillary in the next 14 months??
As far as the polls.. Yes, if you look at JUST the numbers, Hillary is doing good in the polls..
But, if you look at the TRENDS... If you look at where the polls were 3-6 months ago and compare them to now??
The polls tell a completely different story..
This is a shame, since even Clinton getting nominated will be historic for women. In 2008, she tapped into this energy and it was apparent from her supporters. "First woman president" was a big draw, and it likely will be again for Clinton.
I kinda doubt it... "First xxxxx President" has already happened and it was a big... a HUGE disappointment...
"First"s don't seem to be a very good reason to vote for someone..
So far, the Clinton campaign shows no real evidence of being able to react quickly to much of anything. Time and again, something newsworthy happens and we get nothing but silence from Team Clinton. Then -- usually days later -- Hillary comes out with a pre-parsed answer for how she would have reacted.
Hay, don't blame Hillary... It takes a while to organize focus groups and distill and analyze the results....
{/snark} :D
It smacks of focus-group testing and "Which answer will hurt us the least?" thinking.
Uh.. yea.. Like that... :D
From all appearances, they had literally not considered that their master plan could be flawed or could ever fail. When it did fail, they scrambled for a month before they really got back on their feet again, but by that point it was really too late.
And history is repeating itself with Hillary's Nixon-esque email scandal..
Hillary Clinton needs to get her face in front of the media.
Hillary has a "TWO WEEKS" problem whenever she is actually interviewed...
Which is why her staff is NOT letting her do interviews that they cannot completely control...
Hillary Clinton can indeed be an exciting presidential candidate -- she proved that the last time she ran. She can fire up women in particular (by speaking about the glass ceiling once again, perhaps)
YYAAAAAWWWWNNNNNNNNN
"Vote for me because I am a woman and I will be a First"!!
That just doesn't inspire excitement in Americans these days..
Americans are thinking, "Maybe a "First" is not a good reason to vote for someone..."
"I've heard this bed time story before.."
-Indiana Jones
Great commentary... :D
But I gotta agree with DSWS...
Hillary *IS* toast....
She simply is NOT a good candidate.. She has flaws.. The skeletons in her closet have skeletons in THEIR closets...
And, if by some miracle, she is actually elected POTUS, it will be Nixon all over again....
Michale
Here's the thing...
I think we can ALL agree that this entire mess could have been avoided if Hillary had just followed the rules like everyone else..
Can we agree on that??
Assuming yes, then her entire judgment is called into question...
All Party loyalty aside, ya'all have to ask yourself one question..
"Do I really want a POTUS with such bad judgment??"
The *ONLY* reason to vote for Hillary *IS* Party Loyalty...
Michale
I’m a Hillary Clinton fan. But I hope she bows out with grace
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/17/hillary-clinton-white-house-too-much-baggage
Even Hillary Clintonistas are resigned to the fact that their candidate, their "warrior" is mortally wounded...
Michale
So, if not Hillary, then who?
Liz,
I don't think that anyone on the Dem side can win...
Clinton has so poisoned the well she has irrevocably damaged the Democrat Party name..
The Dems have such an electoral advantage that this election would have been a shoe-in for any conventional Democrat candidate..
But Hillary has really fraked things up.. Like I said above, we have 14 months until the election.. Does anyone honestly believe that there is GOOD news out there that will erase the bad??
Does anyone really believe that there is an ATTA-BOY out there large enough to erase a million OH-SHITs???
And ANY candidate that steps up to fill the Hillary vacumn will automatically start with a deficit as "the Junior Varsity"....
About the only way a Dem Candidate can prevail is if Trump is the GOP candidate..
And even THAT is not a sure thing...
Which says, more than anything else, how far the Dem Party has fallen...
Michale
So, if not Hillary, then who?
there's the rub, isn't it? sanders is a lightweight, biden doesn't seem interested, and nobody else is even on the map. the likelihood of another "rock star" type like 2008 obama spontaneously showing up is extremely low (and those who feel let-down by the obama presidency are less likely to go that direction even if someone similar did show up). hillary is smart, committed and has the political chops to actually do the job once elected.
as to the e-mails, everyone wants to label everything "the next watergate," and the media have been doing so for the last forty years. i'll believe it when i read the contents, as i'm sure we all eventually will.
regardless of whether or not the allegations are true, chasing clinton scandals is generally a losing political strategy. so unless the charges stick and hillary actually goes to jail, harping on that stuff is as likely to strengthen the clinton campaign as weaken it.
-JL
Here's the visuals on Hillary..
As the United States Secretary of State, she was using a private email server that was housed in a bathroom closet in a studio-loft of a small start-up....
Are you shitting me!???
The negative ads just write themselves..
Michale
Which means that Hillary lied when she said the server was housed at her home, physically guarded by the Secret Service...
I asked it many times before and never got an answer..
Is THIS the best candidate that the Democrat Party can field??
Michale
Joshua,
Why do you so easily dismiss Biden, saying that he doesn't seem interested?
You know, don't you, that he lives, eats and breaths policy and everything that is still good about the political process ...
Why do you so easily dismiss Biden, saying that he doesn't seem interested?
Well for starters, he hasn't made any statements to indicate he's going to run for president.
JL
That is not much to be basing your assessment on.
That is not much to be basing your assessment on.
how about the fact that biden tends to be completely up-front about his views and intentions. perhaps other politicians would flirt this way and waffle that way, but if joe were serious about running he would say so. being as he has not yet said so, i think it's a reasonable conclusion that at the moment he doesn't seem interested. i'm sure he's open to changing his mind, but at the moment it seems like his answer is no thanks.
JL
There seems to be quite a lot that you are missing - about who Biden is, the family tragedy he has recently been dealing with that is wholly tied up in what his future plans may be, his current responsibilities as vice president and, he knows full well how the average American voter feels about a Biden candidacy, if they think about it at all.
Biden's reasons for not being in the race are certainly valid ones, and yes i am aware of his son's death and the work he's been doing as VP. As to the average american voter... after living through the growing pains of the last two presidents, i think the country is ready for someone with a wealth of experience in national politics.
That's encouraging.
CW - more people ought to be listening to you than probably are.
Liz - as thought experiments, go yours outlined in both 1 and 6 carry a lot of logical freight.
Everybody else. What the hell is your setting for toast? 5% chance of getting the nomination? 10%?
50%? Please put hard numbers on your toaster settings!
Over at BetFair the market is currently putting Hillary's implied odds of winning the nomination at around 77% It's tracking down a little from her high, but hasn't changed much over many months. That doesn't smell like burnt toast to me, but hey, if you know something I don't (definitely possible) or all the punters (less possible), betting against Hillary sounds an awesome play! As a point of comparison, BetFair's highest probability of winning the Republican primary goes to JEB! (at just 40).% JEB! would kill for those numbers.
(and those who feel let-down by the obama presidency are less likely to go that direction even if someone similar did show up).
Aye, there's the rub....
as to the e-mails, everyone wants to label everything "the next watergate," and the media have been doing so for the last forty years. i'll believe it when i read the contents, as i'm sure we all eventually will.
No one ever got to hear the missing 18 minutes of the Nixon tape...
That didn't prevent Watergate from being Watergate...
regardless of whether or not the allegations are true, chasing clinton scandals is generally a losing political strategy. so unless the charges stick and hillary actually goes to jail, harping on that stuff is as likely to strengthen the clinton campaign as weaken it.
Has Clinton ever been criminally investigated by the FBI under a DEMOCRAT administration??
The problem ya'all have is the EXACT same problem the Clinton campaign has...
Ignoring the problem and hope it goes away..
Over at BetFair the market is currently putting Hillary's implied odds of winning the nomination at around 77%
Thanx, TS... That's the best laugh I have had all week!! :D
Michale
M -19
You are free to offer your own probability, which I'm pretty sure is near zero.
Considering all of Clinton's baggage and skeletons that are growing exponentially by the day( a few to 10-20 to over 300)???
Yea... ZERO sounds about right...
Put another way... Your 77% might be accurate if there wasn't ANY Clinton scandal...
But Clinton is up to her neck in scandals... And more is coming..
drip, drip, drip, drip...
Yea, scandals don't mean a damn thing to the Democrat and Republican kool-aid drinkers...
But they DO mean a LOT to the Independents...
Michale
The idea that Hillary can have ALL of this grief from her own poor judgement and her own mistakes and it NOT have any consequences??
On what planet???
Michale
"Over at BetFair the market is currently putting Hillary's implied odds of winning the nomination at around 77%"
Can you tell how much money has been bet?
"betting against Hillary sounds an awesome play!"
BetFair has a horse racing TV channel that I watch and they relentlessly promote their online casino, but I've never looked at their website until now. I have to admit that I don't understand it. Are they giving odds or is it exchange wagering?
http://www.hillarymen.com/latest/great-american-brainwash?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork
So tiresome.
Karl Rove: Victory Through Dishonesty!
Yea...
It's ALL a "vast right wing conspiracy"...
They forced a private server on Hillary Clinton..
The conspiracy forced Hillary to hire some cut-rate broom-closet company who kept the UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE mail server in a bathroom closet...
Hillary is completely innocent...
Anyone who actually believes that is in the VAST minority of this country...
Michale
Rather apropos since today, 17 years ago, Bill Clinton was exposed as a blatant and unequivocal liar..
The Left defended Bill then as voraciously as they defend Hillary today..
The Left was totally wrong then...
The Left is totally wrong now...
Michale
Karl Rove: Victory Through Dishonesty!
Lame deflection, considering the blatant lies that the Clintons are famous for.......
This isn't about Rove...
It's about Hillary and the fact that her trustworthy poll numbers are in the toilet...
Michale
Clinton pulls plug on testy presser over server questions
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/251413-clinton-pulls-plug-on-testy-presser-over-server-questions
The Queen is getting a bit pissy that her subjects would DARE question her...
The IMPLOSION is coming...
Michale
"Mrs Clinton, did you have your email server wiped?"
"What? Do you mean, like with a cloth or something?"
And THIS is who ya'all will vote for President???
SERIOUSLY!??? :^/
Michale
So, if not Hillary, then who?
Do you want me to answer that?
Oh, wait ...
So tiresome.
I know ... posting links in lieu of a comment is a sign of laziness, I think. :)
Ya see how Hillary equivocates and changes her story to fit the facts??
When all this first came out, Hillary unequivocally stated that she did NOT send classified information via her home-brew bathroom-closet email server..
Now that it has been discovered that she HAD, in fact, sent classified info via her private mailserv,
NOW her story changes..
NOW her story is that she didn't send MARKED classified information via her private email server..
My gods!!!
This woman was THE SECRETARY OF STATE for the United States..
Are you telling me that OUR SecState couldn't recognize classified intelligence just by reading it!!???
And the fact that people will still VOTE for Hillary??
WOW....
Michale
I know ... posting links in lieu of a comment is a sign of laziness, I think. :)
"Ouch! And the ref takes a point away!!"
-Jim Carrey, LIAR LIAR
:D
Michale
Do you want me to answer that?
Oh, wait ...
I thought I did..
If I were a Democrat, I wouldn't like any candidate that kissed the ass of special interest groups...
And, really, the only person who hasn't done that to date is Biden....
So, I would hope that Biden throws his hat into the ring...
But, of course, once he does, he will likely start puckering up as well... :^(
Michale
Just to let ya'all know how much trouble Hillary is in??
She is leading TRUMP in the polls by ONLY 6 points....
If THAT doesn't tell ya'all how serious Hillary's problems are, she could murder someone right in front of ya'all and ya'all would be perfectly OK with it..
Michale
M - 19
Here's another laugh for you. Ladbrokes puts Clinton's winning the nomination at 80%.
It's called evidence. Backed up with by punters credit cards. .... And a good record in predicting US presidential politics.. All could change, but it has't yet.
Ladbrokes puts Clinton's winning the nomination at 80%.
Stop it!! Yer killing me!!!! :D
I don't believe that Hillary will go the distance in the Primary.. DSWS made a great case for that....
But it would not surprise me if she did.. Party Loyalty is a powerful force...
But in the General???
You just *HAVE* to know that the GOP is saving the big guns for the General...
If, like Paula claims, all of this is just the "vast Right Wing Conspiracy" (which is funny since it's all DEMOCRATS who are doing the actual investigating) then can you imagine what the "BIG GUNS" are going to look like?? The devastation that they will cause...
She is polling only SIX POINTS above Trump, fer chreest's sake!!
That should be a clue and a half for you...
Michale
M - 37
You and DSWS have laid out a scenario for Clinton failing to win the nomination. It's plausible, but how likely is it to occur? Horse race polls don't tell you that, at least not directly, they might if you have the right model and more types of data. A 3% lead in a two way election CAN be a decisive lead, enough to call the election with maybe 90% confidence. But not always.
Futures markets with real money give you a means to estimate the probability of a discrete event occurring. Historically, markets do this about as well as the best "scientific" approaches. Especially about 14 months out from the election.
As of yesterday, the only two money-changing-hands futures markets which I can track both give Clinton about a 75% chance of winning the Democratic Nomination. This estimate has not changed a lot over the past few months. The crowd (in its collective wisdom) is discounting the impact of the Clinton (Alleged)Scandal. Nate Silver, with a more a more wonky approach goes a little higher, about 80%
The markets give substantially different numbers if you ask what the probability of Hillary winning BOTH primary AND the general election is: about 46%. The highest ranking Republican, JEB!, has about a 17% chance in the same markets. Trump, 5%, and Walker 4% So who exactly is toasty here?
This doesn't mean the markets think the general election is all that lopsided. The markets say the probability of some Democrat winning the election is about 60%.
Now if you believe your own analysis,and that's your call, I humbly suggest you get your credit card out and mouse over to Ladbrokes or Betfair - you will be able to get a very high payoff - if your hunch right.
But you say, all this will change. It might, you have 14 months. It hasn't changed much yet.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it Amok time."
http://seanmunger.com/2013/10/23/stravinsky-in-space-the-classic-fight-music-from-star-trek-audio/
Long version!
As I said, I don't think she can go the distance...
By definition, the odds-makers cannot factor in the Scandal-Factor... They go with tangibles, not "what if"s..
But, in Clinton's case, the "what if"s are near certainty, given Hillary penchant for ignoring the established rules and making up her own...
I don't think she will win the nomination.. But it won't surprise me if she does...
Nice Trek.. :D
Michale
By definition, the odds-makers cannot factor in the Scandal-Factor.
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????
By your definition maybe. I'll have to remember that rhetorical sleight of hand - abracadabra, "By definition!"
Anyway, I'm having a bit of trouble resolving toast:I think:not surprised. Maybe a bit of moderation in your position?
By definition, the odds-makers cannot factor in the Scandal-Factor.
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????
By your definition maybe. I'll have to remember that rhetorical sleight of hand - abracadabra, "By definition!"
What's magic about it??
Odds are computed based on KNOWABLE factors...
What's "knowable" about Hillary's unknown scandals??
Michale
Maybe a bit of moderation in your position?
Moderation???
Hi, I'm Michale... Nice ta meetcha...
:D
Michale
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rnc-selling-hillary-branded-secret-server-wiper_1014763.html
hehehehehehehe
Now THAT is funny!! I got to get me one of those for my computer shop... :D
Michale
I just ordered mine!!! :D
Do you have a secret server you need to wipe clean? Having trouble clearing out those pesky Top Secret emails? Well Hillary's got just the thing: the Secret Server Wiper.
Don't worry about all that "digital" nonsense. Wipe away your worries with this advanced, state-of-the-art "cloth"...."or something"...
WARNING: May Not Fool the FBI
Too funny.... :D
I mean, honestly.. What kind of moron gives the enemy so much ammo??? :D
Michale
Hi, I'm Michale... Nice ta meetcha...
Heh.
So, if not Hillary, then who?
Whoever the Republicans nominate. Eep.
You and DSWS have laid out a scenario for Clinton failing to win the nomination.
What? I think she has a lock on the nomination. I was talking about how she's running her general election campaign.
By definition, the odds-makers cannot factor in the Scandal-Factor.
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To your response, I'll just add, !!!!!!!!etc.
Odds are based on whatever the betting population is influenced by. Bookies offer bets on all possibilities, at whatever odds the bookie thinks will get people to take all the bets in equal quantity. If a significant number of prospective bettors believe that voodoo is going to influence the event they're betting on, a bookie's job is to know that. If a would-be bookie tries to insist on a rational basis for everything, they wind up as just another bettor.
Let me put it this way...
The bookies computing the odds for a Hillary win won't factor in things like being abducted by aliens or being found in bed with a dead man or a live woman because those types of things are unknowable..
One thing that IS knowable is that we haven't heard the last of Clinton's scandals..
But since the seriousness of the scandals is unknown, the odds ignore that which is not quantifiable...
In other words, it's as ridiculous to quote odds NOW for an event that is taking place in 14 months as it is ridiculous to quote POLLS now for an election that is taking place in 14 months...
It's as meaningless as:
"HILLARY IS TOAST!!!"
"YEA!! WELL, IT'S GOING TO RAIN TOMORROW!!!"
See what I mean??
Michale
No one knows how serious the scandals will turn out to be. But people have various guesses. A bookie who took bets on the subject, but ignored what people believe, would soon be out of business.
I don't really have some strong belief that Hillary has a lock on the nomination and then is toast in the general election. It's mostly just my habitual political pessimism.
No one knows how serious the scandals will turn out to be.
That's true..
The email server scandal is a perfect example..
Everyone on the Left tried to pooh it away as nothing.
Now it's a CRIMINAL investigation...
Michale
“She had her, um, she had — what happened was she — state department came to all the former secretaries of state last fall to ask for — to ask for whatever records they may have because they realized that, um, uh, they didn’t becau- because, uh, not just Hillary Clinton but other secretaries of state may have used personal email they may not have captured everything.
So she had, she asked, uh, her lawyers to look at this so she had some legal minds on the case to see which emails were state department and which were personal and, uh, turned over the state department ones, uh, anything that was business related and, and then chose not to retain the ones that she, the ones that were personal.
She deglided, um, because she didn’t, I mean, these are, these are personal emails and I think that everyone understands even Hillary Clinton gets a zone of privacy and she decided that she, uh, she retains a couple months-worth of emails so you can, you know, so she can, uh, uh, find personal emails she needs to but after that, she doesn’t need them anymore. So, she made this decision, I think is, obviously, you know, she was former secretary of state, so we want to be sure people understand, uh, how she handled classified information when shew as secretary of state, she was very careful with it, she didn’t deal with it online, she dealt with it on hard copy, in meetings, not on the computer.”
-Clinton Campaign Spokesperson..
Well, I am glad that she cleared up THAT....
W.T.F.!???
Michale
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/21/us-usa-election-clinton-emails-idUSKCN0QQ0BW20150821
drip, drip, drip, drip....
Michale
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422863/bill-clinton-pardon-classified-documents
drip, drip, drip....
Michale