美国总统候选人简评

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-3-6 12:30
感觉真有可能等到全国代表大会~ 现在除了Trump，其他人快有400张票了。 然后快500张票如果到了其他人手上 ...

Trump昨天得了大约33%的票，比以前一直挺稳定的35%还稍有下降，说明过去几天对他的攻击可能有点奏效。而且他在辩论的时候吹嘘自己阴茎大的那些话，有点太vulgar了，就是以他的标准都有些过度，可能对他有些损害。Cruz能赢Maine，我觉得是反对Trump的选民里可能在进行tactical voting。如果tactical voting普遍的话，对Trump是个很坏的消息。现在我估计Kasich能赢下Ohio，但是Rubio在Florida有点悬。估计需要寄希望于tactical voting。他们两个人能赢下这两个州的话，全国代表大会来决定的可能性非常大。

Dracula

澹泊敬诚 发表于 2016-3-6 15:00
退选的人在之前那些州里的的票怎么处理 不计入总票数 还是大伙按比例分？ ...

那退选的人还有可能在第二轮复活？

第二轮以后不仅是退选的人，就是没参选的人都可能加入战局。现在有时提到的名字是众议院议长Paul Ryan。电视剧The West Wing中有一集就是关于brokered convention，里面的一个州长在Iowa之前就退选，但是代表大会的时候重新加入。

2012年共和党新加了一个规定，叫做rule 40，是说只有赢了8个州的才能成为候选人。当时加这个规定是为了保证在大会上推举Romney顺利进行，防止Ron Paul生事。目前满足这个条件的只有Trump，Cruz刚赢了这两个州以后也接近了，但是这两个人共和党的establishment都不喜欢。很有可能在这次代表大会之前把这个规定废除掉。

另外brokered convention自1972年采用primary制度后就没出现过，到时候可能发生什么很难预测。

Dracula

澹泊敬诚 发表于 2016-3-7 03:45
选到一半 改掉rule 40 就是让Trump上梁山单干啊 还白送一批同情票 象党药丸的节奏 ...

rule 40 是2012年共和党全国代表大会开会的前一天才制定出来的。这次在开会以前再改回来，也算是遵循传统。

对好多共和党人来说，这次总统大选的输赢事小，如果Trump是他们的候选人的话，会威胁到整个共和党的生死和灵魂。Trump如果当选为总统的话，会是国家的灾难。共和党会和他的名字紧密联系在一起，几十年不得翻身，都可能由此被彻底打垮。有人甚至警告Trump当选会对美国民主制度的根基造成威胁。因此Mitt Romney前几天才会以那么严厉的措辞攻击Trump，我上面引过的一篇文章，不少共和党人说他们宁可投希拉里的票甚至给希拉里捐钱也不会支持Trump，最近共和党内有议论如果Trump是他们候选人的话，他们应该推出一个主流共和党以第三党身份参选，同Trump划清界限，尽管他们知道这么做，意味着把胜利拱手让给希拉里。因此对他们来说只要能挤掉Trump，就是他会以第三党身份参选也是值得承受的风险。

最近有一些评论认为共和党内最近的内讧，可能会是60年代后期，民主党南方北方派别分裂后，美国政治版图最大的改变。有人甚至将其同19世纪中期辉格党的分裂瓦解相类比。（共和党就是在辉格党覆灭的灰烬上诞生出来的，从1856年一直到今天美国一直维持着民主共和两党政治。）

Dracula

王不留 发表于 2016-3-7 08:09
说实话。米国的民主制度已经受到冲击。。
为了不让川普当选，共和党老梆子们也算是费尽了心机。到底是群 ...

如果Trump赢得超过半数的代表他当然就是共和党候选人。如果他赢不到，怎么能说他是代表共和党选民的民意呢？过去1个多月Trump的得票率一直在35%左右。他在共和党选民内的favorability rating也只有49%（4年和8年前Romney和McCain都是在70%左右）。现在不只是党内的大佬同Trump过不去，而是有相当数量的共和党选民对Trump无法接受，我上面转过的一篇文章就说明这一点，有的一直的共和党选民准备支持希拉里甚至为她捐款。因此现在才有评论共和党可能分裂，这可能是60年代以来美国政治版图的最大改变。随着美国民意的变化，政党内的联盟当然随着变化，这怎么能说是美国的民主制度受到冲击呢？

另外1972年以前的smoking room幕后交易的制度也不好说就那么差。艾森豪威尔、杜鲁门、罗斯福乃至林肯都是这么给推举出来的。像艾森豪威尔是许诺加利福尼亚州长Earl Warren最高法院法官的职位获得了加利福尼亚那么多票的支持，顺利成为共和党候选人。而Earl Warren后来也美国历史上影响最大的最高法院法官之一。

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-7 05:39
如果提升到这样的高度（第六政党系统的终结），那还真值得好好关注一下初选

加拿大这里喜欢川普的看起 ...

爱坛里喜欢他的好像不少，刚才我去西西河看到对他支持的也很多，甚至有的认为他接受3k党的支持是理所应当，没什么过错。我猜测华人对强人政治还是挺有好感的，没有几个像很多美国人一样对Trump可能对三权分立制度的践踏忧心忡忡，这可能算是我们前几天聊过的中国文化和美国文化区别之一吧。还有我觉得不少华人就是对针对华人的歧视很反对，对针对其它种族、宗教的歧视不在乎，甚至还有不少赞同。Trump针对墨西哥非法移民和穆斯林的言论可以说也是说出了他们的心里话。这我觉得很短视，支持Trump的那些教育程度低的白人是一种排外情绪，对同他们争工作的亚裔移民同样是敌视，就是从自身利益来讲，在美国人口占很少数的华人也应该反对一切的种族宗教的歧视。

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-3-7 10:11
为啥他会对三权分立造成践踏?米国制度的设计不就是为了保证任何一个个体都无法践踏三权分立么?怎么一个Tr ...

有人担心他不喜欢的最高法院的判决他会不执行。现在他和别的共和党一样批评Obama的executive action违法，但他要当上总统的话，很可能要厉害的多，甚至可能从国会那儿得不到的就直接用executive action来代替立法。Obama过去2年有一点这么做，但是整体来说很克制，Trump就不一定了。他如果真这么做的话会引发宪法危机，要国会弹劾他才能解决。

Dracula

冰蚁 发表于 2016-3-7 13:03
喜欢 Trump 那真不至于。几个都烂的候选人里比较看得过去罢了。要说歧视穆斯林，老墨，Trump 在这两者身 ...

NET FAVORABLE RATING AMONG HISPANIC VOTERS(% FAVORABLE - % UNFAVORABLE)

Clinton: +37%
Sanders: +37%
Rubio: +8%
Kasich: +6%
Cruz: -5%
Trump: -64%

https://www.washingtonpost.com/g ... ision-poll-2016/en/

单单是这个数字，加上拉丁裔人口比例的增长，Trump想赢general election会非常困难。

共和党的主流都反对非法移民，也都对穆斯林没有好感，仅仅是持这个立场并不会在共和党establishment和媒体里激起那么大的反弹。Trump的问题是他煽动性的语言murderers and rapists，确实是种族主义，他禁止一切穆斯林入境的主张，也确实是越了界，和美国政教分离的宪法精神相背离。在这些方面他确实是极右。

Trump代表的那种情绪对合法移民包括亚裔同样是很敌视，觉得也是在抢他们的工作。花巨款盖那堵墙并不意味着合法移民的配额会增加。我不觉得华人支持他们是明智之举。

关于已经在美国的非法移民的身份。就算是Trump当选为总统，将1100万非法移民驱逐出境也不可能发生。这些人总会是待在美国。那么问题就是给他们合法身份，让正常交税，更好的融入美国的主流文化好呢，还是现状好？我认为给他们合法身份是更好的选择。当然负面效果是可能会鼓励更多的非法移民过境。

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-7 05:39
如果提升到这样的高度（第六政党系统的终结），那还真值得好好关注一下初选

加拿大这里喜欢川普的看起 ...

刚看到的

This isn’t about winning the presidency in 2016 anymore. This is about something much bigger. Every 50 or 60 years, parties undergo a transformation. The G.O.P. is undergoing one right now. What happens this year will set the party’s trajectory for decades.

Since Goldwater/Reagan, the G.O.P. has been governed by a free-market, anti-government philosophy. But over the ensuing decades new problems have emerged. First, the economy has gotten crueler. Technology is displacing workers and globalization is dampening wages. Second, the social structure has atomized and frayed, especially among the less educated. Third, demography is shifting.

Orthodox Republicans, seeing no positive role for government, have had no affirmative agenda to help people deal with these new problems. Occasionally some conservative policy mavens have proposed such an agenda — anti-poverty programs, human capital policies, wage subsidies and the like — but the proposals were killed, usually in the House, by the anti-government crowd.

The 1980s anti-government orthodoxy still has many followers; Ted Cruz is the extreme embodiment of this tendency. But it has grown increasingly rigid, unresponsive and obsolete.

Along comes Donald Trump offering to replace it and change the nature of the G.O.P. He tramples all over the anti-government ideology of modern Republicanism. He would replace the free-market orthodoxy with authoritarian nationalism.

He offers to use government on behalf of the American working class, but in negative and defensive ways: to build walls, to close trade, to ban outside groups, to smash enemies. According to him, America’s problems aren’t caused by deep structural shifts. They’re caused by morons and parasites. The Great Leader will take them down.

If the G.O.P. is going to survive as a decent and viable national party, it can’t cling to the fading orthodoxy Cruz represents. But it can’t shift to ugly Trumpian nationalism, either. It has to find a third alternative: limited but energetic use of government to expand mobility and widen openness and opportunity. That is what Kasich, Rubio, Paul Ryan and others are stumbling toward.

Amid all the vulgarity and pettiness, that is what is being fought over this month: going back to the past, veering into an ugly future, or finding a third way. This is something worth fighting for, worth burning the boats behind you for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/0 ... lumn%2Fdavid-brooks

Dracula

澹泊敬诚 发表于 2016-3-6 15:00
退选的人在之前那些州里的的票怎么处理 不计入总票数 还是大伙按比例分？ ...

刚看到纽约时报上的一篇文章对共和党全国代表大会规定的介绍。我以前写的有些错误。文章里的一些图表我贴不过来，下面是原文的链接。

How Trump Could Be Blocked at a Contested Republican Convention

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-7 05:39
如果提升到这样的高度（第六政党系统的终结），那还真值得好好关注一下初选

加拿大这里喜欢川普的看起 ...

刚看到的

Conservatives Face an Impossible Choice

They can back Trump, or run a candidate of their own—but either way, they’ll bring this era of American politics to a close.

DAVID FRUM

http://www.theatlantic.com/polit ... ty-solution/473499/

The accelerating likelihood that Donald Trump will win the Republican presidential nomination outright thrusts an agonizing dilemma on Republican politicians. Leave aside their own personal feelings about Trump. The most likely consequence of a Trump nomination is a severe Republican defeat in November, and not a defeat for Trump alone. Some significant number of Republicans just won’t vote for Trump. When people don’t want to vote for the top of a ticket, they often stay home altogether, dooming every close race lower down on the ticket.

Republicans have Senate seats at risk in Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—sufficient to put the Republican majority in question. The House looks safer, as does the Republican hold on state governments, but who knows? Trump is most objectionable to the most reliable and loyal Republican voters, exactly the kind of people who vote Republican for every office all the way down to county commissioner. Perhaps the very most reliable and most loyal will show up no matter what, skip the top line, and otherwise vote the straight ticket. Or perhaps not.

So talk is rising in the Republican world of some kind of independent candidacy, using some minor-party ballot line. It’s hoped that such a candidate—Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska? Mitt Romney?—would offer anti-Trump Republicans a reason to show up to vote, and thus save the Senate.

That’s the hope. But the third-party solution has risks, too, bigger risks than anyone is calculating right now.

When people bolt their party, the party changes behind them.

Take, for example, the Progressive Republicans. When they bolted the party to follow Teddy Roosevelt’s independent campaign in 1912, they left conservatives in control of the Republican apparatus. Before 1912, it was very much an open question whether the reformist movements of the 20th century would find their home in the Republican or Democratic Party. After 1912, the most important of those reforms would be carried out at the federal level by Democrats, and opposed by Republicans. When Republicans regained the White House in 1920, it would be under the leadership of the man who’d delivered the nominating speech for William Howard Taft at the 1912 convention. The young people who’d looked to Teddy Roosevelt for change in 1912 would in many cases end up as followers of his cousin Franklin in 1932—most notably, the former Bull Moose who ran most of the early New Deal, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes.

Or consider the example of George Wallace. When he bolted from the Democratic Party in 1968, he offered downscale Southern whites the same political mix they’d supported since Reconstruction: populist economics joined to racial conservatism. His bolt was intended to frighten national Democrats to jettison Kennedy-Johnson liberalism and return to something like the old ways. Instead, the 1968 election confirmed the Democrats as the party of black interests and black votes. Wallace accelerated the great political realignment of the 1970s: minorities and highly educated whites moving into the Democratic party; downscale whites leaving it, especially in the South.

Or take Ross Perot’s 1992 insurgency. The Republican Party dominated presidential politics from 1968 through 1988, winning every election except 1976, and gaining in 1972 and 1984 two outright landslides: 60.7 percent and 58.8 percent of the vote, respectively.

But in 1992, Perot smashed the old Nixon-Reagan coalition. He won over 20 percent of the vote in the state of California—a solid Republican state before 1992, and never again thereafter. His very best state—Maine—had likewise been a Republican stronghold before 1992, and would never vote Republican again. Perot exposed Republican vulnerabilities in the new purple states of the South, notably North Carolina, where Bill Clinton finished within less than one point of George H.W. Bush.

The white voters most resistant to the Perot message were those who attended church most often. Post-1992, the GOP redefined its base vote in religious rather than economic terms. And while that redefinition reestablished the party’s competitiveness, it also denied it the majority support it had enjoyed pre-Perot. Only once after 1992, in 2004, would the Republican win more than 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election—and then only barely.

Which brings us to the present day.

An anti-Trump bolt will appeal to ideological conservatives, to libertarian leaners, and to the most religiously observant Republicans: what Republican strategist Grover Norquist has called the “leave us alone coalition.” What happens if that coalition does not run strongly in 2016? If it picks up something more like John Anderson’s 1980 6.6 percent of the vote, rather than Ross Perot’s nearly 20 percent? John Anderson ran as a liberal Republican who could not accept Ronald Reagan’s leadership—a group we have not heard much from since 1980. That’s the risk of political tests of strength: Sometimes you lose, and afterward nobody fears you ever again.

A “true conservative” independent race for president may offer anti-Trump Republicans a way to vote their consciences without endorsing Hillary Clinton. But it may also expose “true conservatism” as a smaller factor in U.S. presidential politics than it’s been regarded as since the advent of the Tea Party. And it will leave the instrumentalities of the GOP in the hands of people who were willing to work with Trump, and whose interest post-Trump-defeat will be in adapting his legacy to the future rather than jettisoning it.

Which is not to argue against it. Sometimes a political movement must and should go down fighting. Many conservatives will feel that way about opposing Trump in November 2016. The alternative—ticket-splitting between Hillary Clinton at the top and Republicans down-ballot—also carries daunting dangers. But whatever is decided by conservatives who refuse to board the Trump train, that decision is best made without illusions and false hopes. This election closes a long period in American politics. Whatever comes next, that period will not return.

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-7 05:39
如果提升到这样的高度（第六政党系统的终结），那还真值得好好关注一下初选

加拿大这里喜欢川普的看起 ...

刚看到的

http://www.theatlantic.com/notes ... 473955/#note-474624

To round out today’s internationally themed dispatches, a reader in Canada says that the Trump era has already arrived there:

We in Toronto have already elected Donald Trump, in the person of Rob Ford, a populist, wealthy son of a demanding father who made a political point of not owing anyone anything.

If our experience offers any guide, the election of Donald Trump would lead to disaster for the United States, and a worse disaster for Donald Trump. By the end of his first term, even his worst enemies would pity him. The United States might well simply lose four years, in the sense that Rob Ford's term as mayor stopped some important initiatives cold and brought no new ones to the table.

Of course, losing direction in a city government, even an alpha world city, has many fewer potential consequences than dysfunctional or even malignant government in the planet's leading economic and military power. Unlike Donald Trump. Rob Ford had and has expertise in responsive government; he got elected partly on his well earned reputation as the quickest councillor to return phone calls. Unfortunately, even a major city mayor cannot handle the whole business of a city by returning phone calls, and most analysis I have seen suggests that Rob Ford quickly found himself well out of his depth as mayor. The mismatch between Donald Trump and the skill set required of an American president appears much greater.

Rob Ford enjoying a moment of levity during a Toronto city council meeting in 2013. (Mark Blinch / Reuters)

Dracula

凡卡 发表于 2016-3-23 16:04
伯爵能不能给讲下克林顿的运尸袋（Clinton's body bag)是怎么回事，前几天去美国友人Roger家蹭饭，他给我 ...

这个是Clinton Haters编造传播的阴谋理论，没有什么事实根据，不要信。我最近在写一篇关于克林顿伪证弹劾案的文章，刚写到克林顿在琼斯性骚扰案的deposition里作伪证那一节，那篇文章里涉及到这个以及其它和克林顿夫妇有关的阴谋理论。那篇文章我目前是发在酒庄，等我写完了以后，或许会发到主版来。

Clinton's Body Count这个阴谋理论的传播起源于1993年7月20日，白宫法律副顾问Vince Foster尸体在弗吉尼亚的Fort Marcy Park被发现，据阴谋理论认为是克林顿夫妇为了防止他在白水门事件上泄密而杀人灭口。警方的调查结论则是自杀，后来的特别检察官Robert Fiske和独立检察官斯塔尔的调查报告也都对此证实。斯塔尔的独立性应该没有什么疑问，而且他作为独立检察官，权力极大，在人力和资源上没有任何限制，他查了好几年没查出任何东西来，我觉得可以肯定这就是个阴谋理论的谣言。但是这些阴谋理论的传播却不消停，反而越传越神，凡是和克林顿夫妇能扯上点关系而死的人，都被算进Clinton's Body Count里，被杀人灭口的名单现在已经增长到60多个。比较邪乎的比如白宫的一位实习生Mary Mohane，和2个朋友到咖啡店，正好咖啡店遭抢劫，3个人当场被打死，也被认为是因为要在莱温斯基事件上作证而被灭口。克林顿夫妇在道德方面上，尤其是和金钱有关的问题上是有些问题，比如白水门事件，比如我以前写过的希拉里炒作活牛期货，但是这种非常邪乎的阴谋理论不要信。

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-23 21:56
瀑布汗......有一定心理准备啦

他得的是一种罕见但相当aggressive的恶性肿瘤。

我昨天看了两篇关于他的obituary，觉得他这个人很有意思。希望将来能有人写一本高水平有深度的关于他一生的传记，估计会很好看。

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-3-23 11:53
原来比利时已经这么恐怖了。。。

比利时说法语和说Flemish族群的对立造成其政治上的瘫痪，有其特殊的问题。

http://www.bloombergview.com/art ... ountry-is-in-denial

Belgium, My Country, Is in Denial

There was a time when Belgium was at Europe's vanguard. It was the second country in the world to industrialize, the founder of art deco and surrealism, and a producer of Nobel scientists who discovered -- among other things -- the God particle.

I was born and bred in this country, but I fear we are now trailblazing a much less positive path for Europe.

Although Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, they were also symptoms of a profoundly Belgian failure. The institutions of a well-policed and efficiently governed state have been evaporating for decades.

Belgium has been torn by the demands of its warring Flemish- and French-speaking communities. At the same time it has been squeezed by an ambitious European project that subsidized and empowered the country's regions at the expense of the state. Belgian institutions were left hollowed out, impotent to address the strains of immigration and incompetent to penetrate a rising extremist threat.

This is at root a story of failed investment in all forms of capital -- physical, human and institutional. For election cycle after election cycle, politicians squandered the wealth of the state to buy their way back to power. Investment became superfluous, vote-buying and social spending the priority. Belgian voters, who allowed this state of affairs to persist, share some of the blame.

When Belgium's ironworks and coal mines were closed, governments preferred to deny the inevitable outcome and borrow to subsidize these loss-making industries. The nation's public debt burden soared to a peak of 140 percent of gross domestic product. Rather than meet debt reduction requirements for joining the new euro currency in the 1990s, Belgium's government chose to fudge budgets, airbrush statistics, sell assets at fire-sale prices and bring critical investment to a standstill. The result was catastrophic.

Public spending on investment fell by more than half, to just above 2 percent of GDP, from 5 percent in 1980. At first, the effects could be ignored, because Belgium was able to rely on past stock, but that cushion disappeared long ago.

For 30 years, there has been talk of building a Brussels commuter train service, similar to the RER in Paris or London's new Crossrail. The land was bought, but the track remains half-built. Nor have we maintained the infrastructure we have. Potholes on the highways routinely force four bands of traffic to cram into one. Museum roofs leak while masterpieces stand unprotected. Recently, the tunnels of the capital's main traffic artery were closed for months, because 20 years without proper maintenance had left them a safety hazard.

Funds were available for all of these priorities, but politicians funneled the money elsewhere. Social transfers, a sure vote winner, increased from to 30.7 percent of GDP in 2014, from 23.5 percent in 1980. The increase, went to handouts such as lifelong unemployment benefits and early-retirement pensions starting at 50.  

As if that wasn't enough, Belgium's political parties divided public sector employment between them. To be a journalist in the public television station, one needs to have a political party affiliation. The same goes for even minor jobs at the municipal level. Political connections, rather than merit or hard work determined advancement.

Brussels, my city, was worst affected. Unable to agree on a peaceful divorce, because both sides claimed the capital, French-speaking Wallonia and Flemish-speaking Flanders plundered it. Brussels may be Europe's third wealthiest region in per capita terms, providing a fifth of Belgian GDP, but it can only collect taxes from its residents, not from the many workers who commute from outside the city limits. The city treasury is forever empty as a result.

Police districts and the city's 19 councils weren't merged because the Flemish community, which accounts for just 10 percent of the capital's population, would by law hold half of the city's ministerial posts. Inefficiencies and lack of coordination followed.

This is why it took so long for police to find Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man after November's terrorist attacks in Paris. For four months he hid under the nose of Belgium's security apparatus, in the Brussels district of Molenbeek.

Faced with soaring marginal labor tax rates, too many of the able young have left the country. High levels of remittances and of Belgian graduates moving to other developed economies suggest a brain drain. Those who stay go into the private sector, depriving public institutions -- including the police and security services -- of excellence. Those who try their best are overwhelmed by the size of the problems, running from one emergency to another, unable to focus on the long term challenges.

As Belgians left, poor uneducated migrants from North Africa arrived. Heavily subsidized by Belgium's over-generous welfare system, but at the same time despised, much of this immigrant population has turned inward, alienated from wider society. Too many young men and women have been radicalized. A failing state was unable to either stem illegal immigration, or to generate a business environment in which the private sector could create jobs for young second generation immigrants. They were left instead to fester in ghettos such as Molenbeek, marred by high unemployment, crime and an extensive drug economy.

Terrorist attacks such as those that struck Zaventem Airport and the Brussels metro system on Tuesday can happen to any country -- Belgium did not invent the Islamic State. But my country needs to stop living in denial. It was the logical conclusion of our failures that Brussels should produce so many of the perpetrators of jihadist atrocities in Europe. We need to keep calm, as the British say, but not to carry on. This week's tragedy must, finally, become the catalyst that forces Belgium to change.

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-7 05:39
如果提升到这样的高度（第六政党系统的终结），那还真值得好好关注一下初选

加拿大这里喜欢川普的看起 ...

How Republicans Rebuild After the Trump Disaster

By Megan McArdle

http://www.bloombergview.com/art ... -the-trump-disaster

A few weeks back, I interviewed Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics about strategic #NeverTrump voting: How would people do it, and was it a real effect? This week, as the race consolidates, I followed up with Trende to talk about we’ve learned from recent primaries, and more importantly, what the prognosis is for the Republican Party.

People have started throwing around the word “realignment” -- the tectonic upheavals that periodically roil American politics, as previously solid coalitions suddenly rupture, and a new political order emerges around different issues and different coalitions of interest groups. The last such realignment was the emergence of Reagan and the solidification of the Republican Party around small government ideology. Could we be witnessing another such moment today? And if so, what would that look like? I asked Sean, who among his many accomplishments is the author of "The Lost Majority," a terrific book on coalition politics.

Our conversation follows, lightly edited for format and flow.

Megan McArdle: To follow up from our last chat, I have to ask: Did we see strategic #NeverTrump voting? Is it a thing?

Sean Trende: Obviously not enough of it for Rubio, but I do think we saw some.

I think if you look at Ohio, for example, Rubio got 3 percent of the vote. That's waaaay lower than in any other state. Kasich's 7 percent in Florida was likewise quite a bit lower than what we've seen post-Super Tuesday. So some of this is hometown favorites, but some of it is strategic voting.

MM: So we really are seeing the #NeverTrump folks come out! Where does the party go from here? It seems unlikely that Cruz can get to 1,237 delegates.

ST: Right, it is virtually impossible for him to get there at this point.

The only question is whether *Trump* gets 1,237. Or in that general vicinity. I mean, Trump has to get about 60 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to clinch. Cruz needs 90 percent of the remaining pledged delegates, while Kasich needs 120 percent. (In other words, he’s mathematically eliminated.) There are winner-take-all states remaining that complicate the calculus somewhat, but most of them are at the very least Trump-curious, so I think it's either a brokered convention or Trump at this point.

MM: Is there any chance that Cruz even starts beating Trump in the late states?

ST: The answer is "it depends." So much depends on what Kasich decides to do.

Given demographics and the way these primaries have turned out, Rubio's voters probably go disproportionately to Kasich, when the Cruz folk desperately need them.

So, this race probably comes down to Kasich. If he stays in, there's a good chance Trump clinches. If he drops out after a couple of races, it probably goes to the convention.

These last races split between races west of the Mississippi, where Cruz has run well, and east, where Trump has dominated, so the playing field makes it possible.

MM: So let's say that Trump goes to the convention with more of the delegates, but not enough to win outright. The party has two unappetizing choices: Hand it to a guy who didn't get the plurality, or give it to the guy who is going to destroy your party downticket. They could always stage a third-party run to protect those downticket races, whether or not he gets an outright majority, but that creates quite a few problems. Most notably the one that David Frum has talked about: Whoever bolts the party probably loses control over its future.

ST: Right. I personally think the third party is a terrible idea for Republicans. Ever since Perot (and Nader with Democrats) the mantra of the GOP elite has been "you can't run a third party, you'll just hand the race to the Democrats." And a lot of people have sucked it up and voted for candidates they really didn't like because of this logic. Now, the first time the establishment loses a race, it's going to pick up its toys and go home? There will be a splinter candidate every four years forthcoming.

As for the non-plural option, I just don't accept the framing. You can't win the nomination without a majority of the votes, period. So no one with a plurality of delegates will win.

MM: I'm not arguing that it's unjust, just arguing that the Trump supporters will probably perceive it that way and stay home if they don't get their man.

I don't think he'll run third party, because he doesn't have enough money. But I assume that means the GOP loses in November.

ST: Oh I know you're not! I just think it's important for readers to realize that this is a 160-year-old rule, not something ginned up to cheat Trump. A lot depends on how Trump handles it (not well, I assume). But regardless, I think the GOP thinking is that it either loses with Trump or without him. But you'd probably keep the House and have an outside shot at the Senate without him.

MM: So let's get to the future forecasting. People are starting to talk about realignment. I myself have been trying to game out what a realignment might look like in the future, and I have just failed to see it. There are too many groups that can't be in the same party with both the anti-immigrationists and the evangelicals (who I assume stay).

It's one thing to say the cosmopolitan pro-business types move to the Democrats, but who moves to the GOP? Do we end up with a rump party that can't win national elections?

And if no one's moving, what do the suburban establishment types get out of the Democrats, except not being associated with Donald Trump?

ST: I wrote this piece back in 2012 after Iowa:

Rick Santorum may well be the future of the Republican Party. While I find it highly unlikely that he’ll be the nominee this time out, there’s a good chance that the Republican coalition will fundamentally change in the next 20 years and move toward Santorum’s style of politics. Twice in a row now, the party has toyed with nominating a candidate who combined social conservatism with economic populism; Santorum’s speech last night was essentially a northern version of a speech Mike Huckabee could have delivered in 2008.

It goes on, but you get the gist. Finding an outsider to build a new coalition is always tricky. I mean, no one really thought Democrats could win without working-class whites -- Howard Dean's point post-2004 -- yet Barack Obama showed the way they could. And I'm not sure anyone else could have put together that coalition.

The key for Republicans would be finding the right candidate. A candidate like Trump, but without his, erm, excesses.

Quite frankly, I think the only way Republicans break away African-Americans and Hispanics from Democrats is with a sort of class-based appeal like Trump makes. The problem is that the folk who make these appeals often have heavily racialized sentiments.

MM: And can that appeal be made without the racial/immigration element?

ST: That's the tricky part! I think there is a way to be opposed to immigration reform (which I'm not) without the accusations of raping and pillaging that Trump makes. And I think the trade/immigration combo has quite a bit of salience to African-American voters, whose attitudes on immigration look a lot more like whites' than Hispanics'.

But like I said, it is tricky. There's probably no one besides Obama who could have increased African-American turnout like he did without scaring away an awful lot of whites. It is just a matter of finding the right candidate.

MM: So let's say that happens. There are a number of people in my Facebook feed who seem to be excited by the prospect of uniting all the cosmopolitan professionals into one party. Yet it seems to me that putting the 20 percent of the country that's doing pretty well into one party is not a recipe for a calmer, less gridlocked politics, but rather, for a war of the 80 percent on the 20 percent. Which the 20 percent seems likely to lose, so I’m not clear on why my educated, secular, urban friends are so excited about it.

ST: Indeed. I think upper-middle-class seculars -- and even upper-middle-class religious folk -- don't realize just how much of a minority they are in this country.

People go apoplectic on both sides whenever a candidate says something critical of evolution, and I always think to myself: "Yeah, but you do know that the evolution viewpoint is still a minority in this country, right?"

I'm guessing most of my friends never interact with people who think the world is 6,000 years old, or who are strongly opposed to gay marriage, or who didn't go to college, but these are not obscure viewpoints/experiences in this world. And the more the "elite" decide to band together in a single party, the more the anti-elite folk will congeal.

I remember a few years after I graduated high school, this horribly unpopular guy won homecoming king. And he did it by putting up posters all over the school that just said "there are more of us than there are of them." I could see a similar thing happening in U.S. politics, and it isn't going to be pretty.

MM: One way of telling the story is that over the last 40 years, the elites have banded together to do a bunch of stuff that wasn't popular: trade, immigration, deregulation. All of that stuff works in an economics textbook, but it doesn't work politically. And on both sides, the elites won by sublimating those impulses to other stuff -- culture war stuff.

Now that the culture war has been largely "won," what you're left with is rearguard skirmishes about religious liberty. And the populist identity politics that was sublimated is now unleashed.

ST: And the PC identity politics stuff as well, which seems to be of increasing salience. But that's exactly right: What do the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times agree on? Trade and immigration. Even this rough truce we have on the top tax rate being between 35 and 39.6 percent.

The problem is that there really are short-term losers with trade and immigration. Anyone who points this out gets a healthy dose of "listen to your betters!" Which I'm guilty of at times, even though I'm aware I'm a clear economic winner in these fights.

MM: I look at the list of policies that Democrats are offering, and with the exception of the mass incarceration stuff -- which is also gaining currency on the right, so it's not even that big of a wedge issue -- and the $15-an-hour minimum wage, it's all stuff the professional class wants, which may also benefit the working class, but really isn't primarily for them.

And of course, the GOP has tax cuts. I regret that text cannot convey the volume of the sigh I would like to issue about their fixation on tax cuts.

ST: But Reagan! Really, that's what it comes down to, even though there's a world of difference between a top rate of 70 percent and 40 percent.

At a time when we're having a slow recovery that really does skew to the benefit of the upper classes, it's just odd that no one is really making suggestions for working- and lower-middle-class folks. I think Democrats assume that they can keep African Americans and Hispanics in the tent with identity politics, and Republicans seem determined to prove them correct.

However, I'm not sure that works in the medium to long term. Tom Edsall had a good piece in the Times a few days back that asked whether there would be an African-American revolt against the Democratic Party in the near future. I think he's probably correct.

MM: Interesting. Why do you think that?

ST: Y'know, before Trump, if you looked at the African-American vote in 2012 by age, and registration numbers, there was less loyalty to the Democratic Party among younger blacks than older blacks. Not massive, but still notable, and replicated across multiple datasets.

If you look at how blacks left the Republican Party, it is just a familiar story. Republicans started to take blacks for granted, had no solution to the Great Depression, and the last generation that remembered Lincoln was dying off.

It's a sort of similar situation today. I'm not talking about 80 percent of blacks voting for Republicans anytime soon, or even 20 percent. But I think as identity politics gradually lose salience and especially because Clinton (I assume she will be president) is almost certainly going to be hit with a recession, it makes things a bit interesting for the first time in a long time.

MM: I keep coming back to the same question, though: How do you get African-Americans in the same party with what we saw at the Trump rallies?

ST: That was the Democrats' problem for decades, and it is part of the Republicans'!

Look, Trump has certainly set this back quite a bit. No doubt about that. But I also don't know that African-Americans are naturally part of a coalition that is dedicated to making sure that it is as easy as possible for capital to flow across border, to automate everything, etc.

It's an odd moment in American politics. We've had this red/blue map basically since 1992, and this political divide since 1968. Now it just feels like things are falling apart. And when things have fallen apart in the past, the outcomes are very strange. Who would have thought that 12 years after the Democratic convention deadlocked over whether to condemn the KKK (in 1924), a Democratic president who refused to pursue an anti-lynching law (Franklin D. Roosevelt) would win 70 percent of the black vote?

MM: Yes, that's the thing that people always forget: When realignments happen, they usually break open over issues that haven't been issues in politics for the previous few decades. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't be a realignment.

Dracula

It’s Probably First Ballot Or Bust For Donald Trump At The GOP Convention

Dracula

What Sarah Palin Should Have Taught Donald Trump

By James Fallows



I made one very bad call about the 2016 election, which I quickly confessed! It was the same bad call most other people made: that Donald Trump’s lack of political experience and knowledge would make him the Herman Cain of this campaign cycle, and he would not get this far in the race. (I’m sticking by my call that he is not going to become president.)

To be fair, I made a very good call two cycles earlier concerning the Trump of that era, Sarah Palin. As soon as her selection was announced as John McCain’s running mate in 2008, I wrote in this space (in the middle of the night, from China) that despite her then-red-hot popularity she would be a huge liability for the ticket. Why? Because running for national office is a lot, lot harder than it looks. And if you come to it with no experience, you are simply guaranteed to make a lot of gaffes.

Let’s go to the charts. Here’s what I wrote when McCain announced her as his choice:

Unless you have seen it first first-hand, as part of the press scrum or as a campaign staffer, it is almost impossible to imagine how grueling the process of running for national office is… The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they've worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues -- Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it -- and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.

You can see where I am going with this, after Trump’s misadventures of the past week:

The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying "Taiwan and mainland China" versus "Taiwan and China." The first is policy as normal; the second -- from an important US official -- would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.

So back in 2008 I was arguing that in just two months on the campaign trail, no beginner in national-level campaigning, like Palin, could learn all the lingo on these issues. Thus gaffes were sure to ensue, as they did. (This accurate call is all the more heroic in retrospect, since we’ve now learned that I was practically at death’s door, in China, when I filed that post! Ah the plucky life of the reporter.)

***

Until this point in Trump’s campaign, he would seem to be the walking refutation of all such established wisdom. Gaffes? Never heard of ‘em! I’ll say whatever comes to mind, and the crowds will cheer for more!

The difference we’ve seen, with Trump’s sequential fumbles on abortion policy, and nuclear policy, and war-and-peace in Europe and Asia, etc is that until the past ten days he’s managed to be “outrageous” mainly on personal-performance matters. He’s been (as often noted) a figure straight from pro wrestling. He is not Rush Limbaugh called from behind the microphone; he’s Howard Stern. You can’t make fun of John McCain for his war record, can you??? Trump could! And did. You can’t mock your opponents to their face — Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted — and be taken seriously, can you??? Trump could! And did. The equally outrageous Howard Stern-style policy claims he made — let’s build a wall! and make Mexico pay for it — somehow didn’t register as “gaffes,” precisely because there is no chance whatsoever he could actually deliver on them. It was all in the fashion of pre-bout preening before a wrestling match: “I’m gonna smash him down so hard he’ll be cryin’ for his Mama, and the only words he’ll remember will be Wee, wee, wee all the way home!”

The setup of the GOP “debates” so far allowed Trump to get away with this, at least with his base. The “point” of each debate was to see who could bully or disconcert whom. And in his omnipresent “interviews,” Trump also got away with shunting any question into a discussion of how strong his polls were, how successful he had been, and how great things would be when he was in charge. Leading to this Onion-esque but apparently serious emission yesterday:


Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Over the past two weeks, we’ve had the Washington Post editorial board interview, with its revelation of the vacuum that is Trump’s knowledge of policy; and the long NYT interview with Trump’s loose talks about bringing nukes to Korea and Japan; and his fateful interview with Chris Matthews, who to his credit was the first person really to push Trump for an answer on abortion; and the similar gaping-emptiness of Trump’s knowledge revealed in his Washington Post interview today.

What’s different now is Trump is being forced to talk about actual policy choices, like abortion, as opposed to talking about his own machismo, or striking purely symbolic “we’re gonna win again!” poses. And that he’s actually being forced, most impressively by Chris Matthews. You can never count him out, but the damage is beginning to show.

He is a more resourceful performer than Sarah Palin was, and he has changed politics more than she could. But she is actually better informed than he is, and finally that is catching up with him. That’s what we’re seeing now.

Dracula

MacArthur 发表于 2016-4-5 00:08
甭管别人说什么。。。 坚定不移地押床铺，一百大洋～

目前的betting market，Trump赢得共和党提名的概率已经跌倒50%以下，https://electionbettingodds.com/。我觉得Nate Silver讲的有道理，如果是contested convention的话，Ted Cruz赢的可能性更大，而昨天Wisconsin的结果出来后，contested convetion变得越来越现实。

http://fivethirtyeight.com/featu ... ntested-convention/

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-5-3 09:48
突然发现Megyn Kelly 好性感~~

Fox News在挑选女主持人的时候，好像外表性感是个特别重要的因素。Fox News我没怎么看过，但是瞟过几眼感觉里面的女主持长得都很不错。

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-5-3 23:43
哦~~ 原来是这样~ 我是看了她challenge Trump的视频，觉得很有气势~~~

美国新闻节目主持人里我觉得最漂亮的是CNBC 的Kelly Evans