It's a good thing rational adults don't care about that.

Ok. I just did. It was awesome.

Nope

gawd

democracy has nothing to do with rational adults.

That's the first time we've ever agreed on anything.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we ... ssion=true

Most of this is Steyer.

Since she’s now officially not running for re-election in Hawaii, one assumes Tulsi is either gearing up for the third party run she swore she wouldn’t do and shame on Hillary Clinton for saying otherwise, or she’s auditioning to join Fox News. Either way, she comes preloaded with Republican spin.

lol

No.

Eh, "centrist" is a very vague term that doesn't have much meaning.

Again, depends on how you want to define a centrist.

I would. The hardcore Trumpists aren't going to go away from their man, and mainstream Republicans have determined they're going to sink or swim with him. So I don't there's anywhere else to siphon votes than from the left side of the spectrum.

It wouldn't take that many otherwise Democratic votes to peel off to wreak havoc. The margin of victory in MI, WI, and PA was all under 1% and under 50,000 votes. Democrats need every vote they can get if you want Trump defeated.

The Never Trumpers, by definition, didn't vote for Trump the first time around, going to either Johnson or McMullin. And guess what, Trump ended up winning. Their strategy was flat out stupid if they thought voting that way was going to ensure a Trump defeat.

If they were capable of nominating Jill Stein, they're capable of nominating Gabbard.

I agree that there will be leftier-than-thous that will never dare despoil their precious vote for anyone that doesn't fit their litmus test. There's not much you can do about them, but we don't need a prominent third party run from the left tempting people that can be reasoned with.

====

Look, here's the cold hard truth: if you want to see Trump defeated, you have no choice but to vote for whoever the Democrats nominate, no matter how disappointed you may be in that candidate. I know that I felt sick voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but that's the grim reality of how the US form of government is set up. If you're tired of being presented with giant douchebags and turd sandwiches, you need to advocate for the end of the Electoral College and the implementation of some form of ranked choice voting, not to just vainly vote for a third party. Of course, the former requires much more hard work to do than the latter, so here we are.

So I just heard somebody make the following argument a few days ago, which is extremely unlikely at best, but the Tulsi stuff from the last couple days makes it more interesting to consider. According to him the Republicans best strategy is:

Senate Republicans need to tell Trump that they will convict him in an impeachment trial and try to force him to resign ASAP. Pence becomes president for the rest of this term but they nominate Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate with Tulsi Gabbard as his running mate on a unity ticket and run a campaign based on centrism, dialing back rhetoric, moving away from Trumpism, etc.

The main problem with this is if Trump or a Trumpist candidate wreaks enough havoc to either crash the Republican primary, like Trump did (unless they just nominate Romney by fiat, which I wouldn't put pass them), or to run a third party campaign that, as I detailed above, is doomed to failure.

Yeah, this is probably right. I think the starting point for this is the assumption that Trump won't win reelection and that Pence couldn't win a national election. So if you're a Republican and you believe those two things, what do you do? The Mitt coup idea is interesting because it could be coordinated by Senate Republicans, who ultimately have the power to get rid of Trump. I think they'd be counting on the Democrats nominating a candidate well to the left of center, allowing Mitt to overwhelmingly winning moderate/independents.

I think most Republicans, for better or worse for them, think that Trump can be reelected. That's why I don't think this plan will be seriously considered and he won't be removed from office.

But I will say this: I do believe that Romney really wants to be president, and he is positioning himself right now in a way that if Trump were to get tossed, he'd be right there to take advantage of it.

I say this entirely dispassionately, since it will never come to pass, but: Bernie Sanders would beat Mitt Romney in a landslide.

Barring a third party splitting one side's vote, I don't see anyone winning the presidency in a landslide in today's America.

While I'm obviously on a very anti-third party rant right here, I just discovered this fun fact:

Woodrow Wilson won a smaller share of the popular vote (41.8%) in 1912 than William Jennings Bryan did in 1908 (43%). But not only did Wilson win and Bryan lose, Wilson dominated the electoral college (435 out of 531, or 82%) because the GOP was hopelessly split between TR and Taft.

This. He doesn't have the courage to step out and openly lead Republican impeachment support, but he's waiting in the wings for a chance to emerge from the rubble if Republicans do ever turn against him.

Highly recommend everybody here consider the decision to sell Trump hotel in DC, when fretting about Trump’s potential to pull off a magic victory.

They’ve been swimming in high profile clients for three years, as countries and organizations seek to win the president’s favor. There’s no gain in selling now, if you think you’ll still be in a position to pull this grift in 2020-24. On the other hand, if you think you’re going to lose the election, then the time to sell is before the big spenders start to realize the same and disappear.