Thread: President of the US of A

Originally Posted by NewellVW

Hillary will win for the same reason Obama won. People, especially the 18 to 20 something crowd, women and the misinformed will vote for her so they can help make history!

By the same argument you would say that Cruz or Rubio should win.

Obama won in large part because he had superior campaign organization both to Clinton and to McCain.

That's also why I think Clinton will win this time around - the republican side is way too fractured to pull together behind one candidate. Trump seems unelectable given his unpopularity with general elections voters. Cruz seems to have alienated the party machine to the point that people joke about voting for Sanders before voting for him. Rubio is as conservative as Cruz but acceptable to the establishment and seems like the only one that everybody can get behind, but so far he seems to have less support and money than Cruz.

Clinton vs. regular republican nomination should be a toss-up given the fundamentals of the race (no incumbency, average economy, demographics). But it seems that Rubio will have a pretty hard time getting to the nomination and doing so may still cost him enough Trump/Cruz supporters to lose the general election.

Still the votes next week will show exactly what do Trump's numbers mean. It could turn out that they do not translate to real votes.

“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
-GW Bush

I'm pretty sure the US public can be fooled again.

Just think, if the entire media decided they would never even mention trump ever again. He'd be finished. It's a tall wag the dog situation. The media really has the power to elect the office seeker. Unfortunately the American public has no ability to make critical decisions on their own the do what they are told or based on rumors they hear.

Part of the problem is only 50% ( about ) of registered voters actually vote. And God knows how many are not even registered. That leans the whole system in favor of the hardcore Dems & Reps that rally the votes for their candidate.

Also, polls mean absolutely nothing. They are consistently incorrect.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Just think, if the entire media decided they would never even mention trump ever again.

But this is not China, Russia, or North Korea and it's the 21st century - if the major media outlets decide collectively to ignore something important they'll simply create an opportunity for the minor players to displace them.

Something being popular simply means that a lot of people want it. For example, the media in US keeping pornography out hasn't made pornography disappear - it's a thriving business and its 'market share' in internet traffic surpasses anything else by far.

Following Trump is really appealing to many americans - it's a fact that will not change no matter what, the only question is whether that will translate into votes.

As far as polls like anything else there are good, bad, really bad, and really good. Really good pols have always been correct.

In a voting system as stratified as the US (from what I can tell anyway) a really good poll would have to mimic that voting system in some way to be at all accurate.

It's kind of similar here in Australia. We have "electorates", and a candidate must win in their electorate to be voted into parliament. Then, the party with the most "electorates" in parliament wins government. It is entirely possible because of this process that a party may win greater than 50% of the overall vote across the country but still lose the overall election because those votes were not distributed across the electorates in the "right" way.

A poll that doesn't take this electorate system into account when it collects its data won't tell you too much about who will win the next election I'm afraid.

James.

Auntie Jimbo for President!
Amen,
Bruce

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Just think, if the entire media decided they would never even mention trump ever again. He'd be finished. It's a tall wag the dog situation. The media really has the power to elect the office seeker. Unfortunately the American public has no ability to make critical decisions on their own the do what they are told or based on rumors they hear.

It's true the news media has a huge influence on things.....but a lot of people do get their news from other sources instead of the main stream news media. The internet has a wide variety of ways to influence people. It has it's good points and bad ones. Truths and lies. You have to make the decisions on what you believe or not. Only thing IMO the main stream news media is good for is to report the "happy" stories about someone doing a good deed or such.....which seems to fewer and fewer stories these days.

Even if the news media decided to not to report about Trump or whoever, people would still want to know what is going on with them and will find ways to get information.

The ones who "do as they are told" by news media are no more than sheep in the herd...... Is that what has become of people today?

I think when it comes to media it's useful to have critical thinking skills: develop the ability to think critically about the source of the information, why they use the words they use, who are they aiming it at, who owns the information, how was it collected, who owns the media source, was money exchanged, etc etc.

Let's face it. Today we live in the "information-saturation" age. In fact, I think we have surpassed saturation and have moved on to the "information-precipitation" age (to borrow from my schoolboy chemistry knowledge...!). If we as individuals do not learn to sift the wheat from the chaff - information-wise - we'll sink under the weight of it. Or, as a lot of people do, just focus on a small and manageable subset of it that suits our mindset, thus becoming both narrow-minded and, in the overall sense, ill-informed.

In Google We Trust.

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

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It's kind of similar here in Australia. We have "electorates", and a candidate must win in their electorate to be voted into parliament. Then, the party with the most "electorates" in parliament wins government. It is entirely possible because of this process that a party may win greater than 50% of the overall vote across the country but still lose the overall election because those votes were not distributed across the electorates in the "right" way.

IIRC Al Gore won the popular vote but once Florida was given to Bush 2 (hanging chads) by the supreme court Bush had the electoral votes and the presidency.