Tag: 2016

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Battleground Maps Show Trump Starts General Election With Significant Challenge

NBC News is out with their first electoral college projection map for the 2016 presidential race, and it shows Donald Trump and the Republicans begin with a much steeper, uphill climb than Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

From NBC News:

That map gives Clinton and the Democrats a 253-190 edge in electoral votes, with 95 in the tossup column.

And here’s why Dems have the advantage: They surpass the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency by just winning one of Florida or Ohio.

Or a combination of Colorado and Virginia.

One other thing: Our Tossup designations are very conservative; it’s where we think things *could* be later this summer. But right now, there are more polls showing Clinton ahead in these states than ones with Trump leading.

The Washington Post posits a similar situation, albeit from a different angle.

Were Hillary to win the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Dem has won since 1992, she gets to 242 electoral votes. If she wins Florida’s 29 electoral votes – Boom! She reaches 271 and the presidency. Clinton currently leads Trump by 13 in Florida according to a recent poll.

Additionally, Hillary currently leads in the ten most likely “swing” states.

However you slice it, the Trumpster begins with a tough map to overcome.

For the record, here’s how states have gone in the last six presidential elections (click to enlarge).

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Bernie Sanders Supporter George Takei Calls For Democrats To Unite Behind Hillary Clinton

TV icon and political activist George Takei posted a video to his Facebook page yesterday calling for all Democrats to unite behind Hillary Clinton as the presumptive presidential nominee after her huge primary wins on Tuesday night.

As a Bernie Sanders supporter, Takei points to the obvious delegate math saying Hillary Clinton will most likely be the nominee and we should all take a pledge to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho.

From Raw Story:

“Ultimately, we Democrats know that a bit of a tussle isn’t a bad thing — it makes us stronger. Keeps us sharp,” he said. “And really, it’s like a family squabble, where only family — those very close to us — can truly get under our skin. But remember this, too: it’s precisely because we like and respect each other that the words and criticisms sting as much as they do.”

In the video, he noted that both candidates agree on issues like womens’ reproductive health, LGBT rights advocacy, separation of church and state and supporting the Affordable Care Act. He also recalled Sanders’ statement last November that if Clinton won the general election, she would be “an infinitely better candidate and President than the Republican candidate on his best day.”

“If Bernie believes that, his supporters can, too,” Takei said.

One fan suggested Takei for veep, but he declined saying such duties wouldn’t leave him “as much time for cat memes.”

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Bernie Sanders Announces Huge Campaign Staff Cuts, Shifting Focus To Winning California

Just a day after losing four of five state primaries for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced he will be trimming campaign staffers by the hundreds, and shift his focus to winning the June 7th California contest.

Via the New York Times:

Despite the changes, Mr. Sanders said he would remain in the race through the party’s summer convention and stressed that he hoped to bring staff members back on board if his political fortunes improved.

“We want to win as many delegates as we can, so we do not need workers now in states around country,” Mr. Sanders said in the interview. “We don’t need people right now in Connecticut. That election is over. We don’t need them in Maryland. So what we are going to do is allocate our resources to the 14 contests that remain, and that means that we are going to be cutting back on staff.”

When asked how many people would be let go, Mr. Sanders didn’t give an exact number but did say many people would be affected.

“It will be hundreds of staff members,” Mr. Sanders said. “We have had a very large staff, which was designed to deal with 50 states in this country; 40 of the states are now behind us. So we have had a great staff, great people.”

At last count, Sanders trails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by about 300 pledged delegates.

Super-stats guy Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website predicts that Clinton currently has an 89% chance of winning California.

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Donald Trump Lags Behind Previous GOP Presidential Candidates

Harry Enten at FiveThirthEight.com has compared past performances of non-incumbent Republican presidential nominees and found that current front-runner Donald Trump is way behind his predecessors at this point in the primary season.

Trump’s 37 percent of the cumulative primary vote and 46 percent of delegates won so far may sound impressive, but his percentages make him the weakest Republican front-runner, at this point in the process, in decades.

Past GOP nominees such as George H.W. Bush in 1988, George W. Bush in 2000, Bob Dole in 1996 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 had bigger shares of the vote at this point, even if they started out slowly. You’ll also note, however, that the two most recent Republican nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, weren’t doing too much better than Trump is now.

McCain and Romney, though, were far ahead of Trump at this point in the delegate race. All the eventual nominees studied here won a majority of the delegates allotted1 by this date. Trump remains short of a majority.

Unless something radically changes, Trump will finish the primary season with the lowest percentage of the primary vote and the lowest share of delegates of any Republican presidential primary vote leader since caucuses and primaries became the main method for selecting nominees.

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Has Paul Ryan Released A Pre-Presidential Campaign Ad?

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has released a new video that has many wondering if it’s a prologue to a possible Republican presidential campaign.

Ryan has repeatedly said he has no interest in being the 2016 Republican presidential candidate should their be no current candidate arrive in Cleveland for the GOP convention without the requisite 1,237 delegates. But many have pointed to Ryan as someone the party could rally to in 2nd or 3rd ballot votes for a candidate.

And this video definitely has a “campaign flavor” to it.

In the video – titled “Politics These Days” – Ryan calls for uniting, not dividing the country.

“What really bothers me the most about politics these days is this notion of identity politics: that we’re going to win an election by dividing people, rather than inspiring people.

“So let’s have a battle of ideas. Let’s have a contest of whose ideas are better and why our ideas are better.”

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Political Insiders Say Trump Needs 1,237 Delegates Or Bust

According to Politico, a majority of Republican insiders say Donald Trump should not get the GOP presidential nomination if he falls short of 1,237 delegates. That’s the magic number, according to Republican rules, that guarantee the nomination.

The POLITICO Caucus — a panel comprised of strategists, activists and operatives in seven key swing states – say 58% of Republicans want the party to nominate another candidate if Trump finishes with a less than the required 1,237-delegate majority necessary to claim the party nomination.

“Rules is rules. You have to get a majority,” said a Virginia Republican who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously.

The same political insiders say 9 in 10 Democrats feel former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would fare better in the general election.

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Donald Trump: “I Think You’d Have Riots” If I’m Not The Nominee

Republican front-runner Donald Trump, speaking to CNN’s Chris Cuomo, threatened the possibility of “riots” at the GOP convention this summer should he be denied his party’s nomination:

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically.

“I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.”

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The Economist Ranks A Trump Presidency As A Top Risk To Global Stability

For all those folks who think the United States would be better off economically with Donald Trump in the White House, think again.

The Economist’s Intelligence Unit ranks the idea of a Trump presidency as one of the ten worst risks to financial stability in the world.

From the BBC:

Donald Trump winning the US presidency is considered one of the top 10 risks facing the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The research firm warns he could disrupt the global economy and heighten political and security risks in the US.

However, it does not expect Mr Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton who it sees as “his most likely Democratic contender”. He is rated as riskier than Britain leaving the European Union or an armed clash in the South China Sea.

China encountering a “hard landing” or sharp economic slowdown and Russia’s interventions in Ukraine and Syria preceding a new “cold war” are among the events seen as more dangerous.