Tag: politics

Notice something very informative about the wildly divergent national polls?

• Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein Quinnipiac Clinton 47, Trump 40, Johnson 7, Stein 1 Clinton +7
• Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein IBD/TIPP Clinton 40, Trump 41, Johnson 8, Stein 6 Trump +1
• Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein Bloomberg Clinton 47, Trump 38, Johnson 8, Stein 3 Clinton +9
• Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein Economist/YouGov Clinton 42, Trump 38, Johnson 6, Stein 1 Clinton +4
• Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein Reuters/Ipsos Clinton 42, Trump 38, Johnson 6, Stein 2 Clinton +4
• Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein Rasmussen Reports Clinton 42, Trump 42, Johnson 7, Stein 1 Tie

The number of percentage points being allocated to Johnson and Stein is between 7 and 14. In 2012, the combined Libertarian/Green vote was 1.35 percent. In 2008, it was 0.96 percent.

Now, let’s be generous and pretend that the combined Libertarian/Green vote will be 2 percent, which would be a 48 percent increase from 2012 and 108 percent from 2008. That means that the national polls are, at a minimum, off by between 5 and 12 points.

I can’t say that there is evidence of a Trumpslide at this point. On the other hand, I can’t take seriously the evidence that suggests Hillary Clinton is going to win by Mondalean proportions either. The trick, I think, will be to watch what happens as the polls go into the final week. If they tighten dramatically, that means the pollsters have been playing games and are attempting to cover themselves, which suggests Trump will win. That’s what happened with Brexit.

If, on the other hand, the polls continue to indicate significant leads for Hillary, that means they are not concerned about their accuracy and will tend to suggest a Hillary win, albeit a little closer than they’re predicting.

UPDATE: Trump appears to have revived his momentum again. Remember, he pushes, then coasts, pushes, then coasts. It looks like he’s gearing up for the stretch run.

It’s too early to measure the impact of last night’s final presidential debate, but Republican Donald Trump now has a three-point lead nationally on Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online White House Watch survey finds Trump with 43% support among Likely U.S. Voters to Clinton’s 40%. 

National Review finally comes around on Trump, in the form of a lengthy VDH article:

Something has gone terribly wrong with the Republican party, and it has nothing to do with the flaws of Donald Trump. Something like his tone and message would have to be invented if he did not exist. None of the other 16 primary candidates — the great majority of whom had far greater political expertise, more even temperaments, and more knowledge of issues than did Trump — shared Trump’s sense of outrage — or his ability to convey it — over what was wrong: The lives and concerns of the Republican establishment in the media and government no longer resembled those of half their supporters.

The Beltway establishment grew more concerned about their sinecures in government and the media than about showing urgency in stopping Obamaism. When the Voz de Aztlan and the Wall Street Journal often share the same position on illegal immigration, or when Republicans of the Gang of Eight are as likely as their left-wing associates to disparage those who want federal immigration law enforced, the proverbial conservative masses feel they have lost their representation. How, under a supposedly obstructive, conservative-controlled House and Senate, did we reach $20 trillion in debt, institutionalize sanctuary cities, and put ourselves on track to a Navy of World War I size? Compared with all that, “making Mexico pay” for the wall does not seem all that radical. Under a Trump presidency the owner of Univision would not be stealthily writing, as he did to Team Clinton, to press harder for open borders — and thus the continuance of a permanent and profitable viewership of non-English speakers.

Trump’s outrageousness was not really new; it was more a 360-degree mirror of an already outrageous politics as usual. One does not need lectures about conservatism from Edmund Burke when, at the neighborhood school, English becomes a second language, or when one is rammed by a hit-and-run driver illegally in the United States who flees the scene of the accident. Do our elites ever enter their offices to find their opinion-journalism jobs outsourced at half the cost to writers in India?

It sounds to me as if the conservative media is beginning to worry that they went too far and are beginning to understand that they have lost a significant portion of their audience. They preened and postured, and now, if Hillary wins, they will be tied to her like an anchor forever.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but as for me, they simply have no credibility as political observers. Their position never made one single iota of sense.

John Derbyshire awakes to the reality of the bifactional ruling party:

 I don’t know whether people nowadays still read George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. It’s a bit of a Cold War piece. The Cold War did happen, though. And, as I’ve remarked elsewhere, it was a very big deal. It has lessons to teach; and Orwell was one of our best teachers.

The story of the novel is that the farm animals, under the leadership of the pigs, stage a revolution against the human owners of the farm. They drive out the owners and take the place over, again under the pigs’ leadership.

In the last chapter, though, an odd thing happens. The pigs start behaving like humans. One day, as the other animals are hard at work weeding the turnip field, the pigs invite a delegation of neighboring farmers—all humans, of course—to inspect the pig-owned farm. Then the pigs and their human guests have a party in the farmhouse.

The other animals hear laughter and singing from the farmhouse. They sneak up to look in through the windows at what’s going on. They see the pigs and the humans in happy concord, making flattering speeches and toasting each other. Last line of the novel:


The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Watching the GOP’s response to this media-manufactured outrage, I’ve feeling a bit like one of those farm animals. Do we really have two political parties, each representing a broad interest? Or is the current party system just a hoax on the rest of us by an Establishment who all fundamentally believe the same things?

The latter. Next question?

In the meantime, the Establishment has spoken. Voting is unnecessary. Hillary has already won the pre-election. Please to take your now-demoralized populism home and refrain from voting for the Literally Hitler Donald Trump on November 8th.