2016 elections - because it's never too early

[garbon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for-president.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Our endorsement is rooted in respect
for her intellect, experience and courage.

HILLARY CLINTON
FOR PRESIDENT

In any normal election year, we'd compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)

But this endorsement would also be an empty exercise if it merely affirmed the choice of Clinton supporters. We're aiming instead to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton — because you are reluctant to vote for a Democrat, or for another Clinton, or for a candidate who might appear, on the surface, not to offer change from an establishment that seems indifferent and a political system that seems broken.

Running down the other guy won't suffice to make that argument. The best case for Hillary Clinton cannot be, and is not, that she isn't Donald Trump.

The best case is, instead, about the challenges this country faces, and Mrs. Clinton's capacity to rise to them.

The next president will take office with bigoted, tribalist movements and their leaders on the march. In the Middle East and across Asia, in Russia and Eastern Europe, even in Britain and the United States, war, terrorism and the pressures of globalization are eroding democratic values, fraying alliances and challenging the ideals of tolerance and charity.

The 2016 campaign has brought to the surface the despair and rage of poor and middle-class Americans who say their government has done little to ease the burdens that recession, technological change, foreign competition and war have heaped on their families.

Over 40 years in public life, Hillary Clinton has studied these forces and weighed responses to these problems. Our endorsement is rooted in respect for her intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service, often as the first or only woman in the arena.

Mrs. Clinton's work has been defined more by incremental successes than by moments of transformational change. As a candidate, she has struggled to step back from a pointillist collection of policy proposals to reveal the full pattern of her record. That is a weakness of her campaign, and a perplexing one, for the pattern is clear. It shows a determined leader intent on creating opportunity for struggling Americans at a time of economic upheaval and on ensuring that the United States remains a force for good in an often brutal world.

Similarly, Mrs. Clinton's occasional missteps, combined with attacks on her trustworthiness, have distorted perceptions of her character. She is one of the most tenacious politicians of her generation, whose willingness to study and correct course is rare in an age of unyielding partisanship. As first lady, she rebounded from professional setbacks and personal trials with astounding resilience. Over eight years in the Senate and four as secretary of state, she built a reputation for grit and bipartisan collaboration. She displayed a command of policy and diplomatic nuance and an ability to listen to constituents and colleagues that are all too exceptional in Washington.

Mrs. Clinton's record of service to children, women and families has spanned her adult life. One of her boldest acts as first lady was her 1995 speech in Beijing declaring that women's rights are human rights. After a failed attempt to overhaul the nation's health care system, she threw her support behind legislation to establish the Children's Health Insurance Program, which now covers more than eight million lower-income young people. This year, she rallied mothers of gun-violence victims to join her in demanding comprehensive background checks for gun buyers and tighter reins on gun sales.

After opposing driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants during the 2008 campaign, she now vows to push for comprehensive immigration legislation as president and to use executive power to protect law-abiding undocumented people from deportation and cruel detention. Some may dismiss her shift as opportunistic, but we credit her for arriving at the right position.

Mrs. Clinton and her team have produced detailed proposals on crime, policing and race relations, debt-free college and small-business incentives, climate change and affordable broadband. Most of these proposals would benefit from further elaboration on how to pay for them, beyond taxing the wealthiest Americans. They would also depend on passage by Congress.

That means that, to enact her agenda, Mrs. Clinton would need to find common ground with a destabilized Republican Party, whose unifying goal in Congress would be to discredit her. Despite her political scars, she has shown an unusual capacity to reach across the aisle.

When Mrs. Clinton was sworn in as a senator from New York in 2001, Republican leaders warned their caucus not to do anything that might make her look good. Yet as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she earned the respect of Republicans like Senator John McCain with her determination to master intricate military matters.

Her most lasting achievements as a senator include a federal fund for long-term health monitoring of 9/11 first responders, an expansion of military benefits to cover reservists and the National Guard, and a law requiring drug companies to improve the safety of their medications for children.

Below the radar, she fought for money for farmers, hospitals, small businesses and environmental projects. Her vote in favor of the Iraq war is a black mark, but to her credit, she has explained her thinking rather than trying to rewrite that history.

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was charged with repairing American credibility after eight years of the Bush administration's unilateralism. She bears a share of the responsibility for the Obama administration's foreign-policy failings, notably in Libya. But her achievements are substantial. She led efforts to strengthen sanctions against Iran, which eventually pushed it to the table for talks over its nuclear program, and in 2012, she helped negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Mrs. Clinton led efforts to renew diplomatic relations with Myanmar, persuading its junta to adopt political reforms. She helped promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an important trade counterweight to China and a key component of the Obama administration's pivot to Asia. Her election-year reversal on that pact has confused some of her supporters, but her underlying commitment to bolstering trade along with workers' rights is not in doubt. Mrs. Clinton's attempt to reset relations with Russia, though far from successful, was a sensible effort to improve interactions with a rivalrous nuclear power.

Mrs. Clinton has shown herself to be a realist who believes America cannot simply withdraw behind oceans and walls, but must engage confidently in the world to protect its interests and be true to its values, which include helping others escape poverty and oppression.

Mrs. Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, governed during what now looks like an optimistic and even gentle era. The end of the Cold War and the advance of technology and trade appeared to be awakening the world's possibilities rather than its demons. Many in the news media, and in the country, and in that administration, were distracted by the scandal du jour — Mr. Clinton's impeachment — during the very period in which a terrorist threat was growing. We are now living in a world darkened by the realization of that threat and its many consequences.

Mrs. Clinton's service spans both eras, and she has learned hard lessons from the three presidents she has studied up close. She has also made her own share of mistakes. She has evinced a lamentable penchant for secrecy and made a poor decision to rely on a private email server while at the State Department. That decision deserved scrutiny, and it's had it. Now, considered alongside the real challenges that will occupy the next president, that email server, which has consumed so much of this campaign, looks like a matter for the help desk. And, viewed against those challenges, Mr. Trump shrinks to his true small-screen, reality-show proportions, as we'll argue in detail on Monday.

Through war and recession, Americans born since 9/11 have had to grow up fast, and they deserve a grown-up president. A lifetime's commitment to solving problems in the real world qualifies Hillary Clinton for this job, and the country should put her to work.

[Legbiter]

McClatchy has Clinton up 7 nationally and Rasmussen has Trump up 5 nationally.

Yeah something's off about the polling. 

Hillary Clinton Does Not Have a Six-Point Lead Over Donald Trump

For those of you who read and follow People's Pundit Daily, particularly our election projection models, you know I am a true believer in the average of polls and aggregate data. I do not believe in "unskewing" the polls nor the practice of weighting polling results for party identification. Party identification, which is fluid, is not the same as party registration and respondents should dictate to pollsters what the party breakdown of the electorate will be, not the other way around.

That being said, the 2016 presidential election is testing my faith. First, there are too many polls and not enough pollsters. Simply put, the same firms that completely blew the 2014 midterm elections and, subsequently, the 2016 primary elections, are doubling down on being statistically stupid. Most clearly refuse to improve on their model's assumptions and methodologies and, as a result, the aggregate polling is over the place.

National polls, for those who aren't polling junkies, are typically thought to be a leading indicator of state polls. In 2012, it was certainly the other way around, though they inevitably coalesced. Yet, despite clear movement in most battleground states toward Trump, the national averages remain skewed by suspicious outliers. Take the polling released in the past month, for instance.

Clinton's dominance during the month of August, which was the combined result of her convention bounce and a media barrage covering Trump's self-inflicted wounds, was shattered with the release of a CNN Opinion Research Poll. Trump led by 2 points in the four-way race and 1 point in the fictional two-way race. The TIPP Poll, conducted for Investors Business Daily, which is one of the most accurate, highly-rated pollsters analyzed by the PPD Pollster Scorecard, had the 4-way race tied.

Clinton also lost her roughly 6-point lead on the PPD U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll after Labor Day and was clinging to a small lead on other trackers such as Reuters, Rasmussen and YouGov. Battleground states–including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Colorado–either moved to BATTLEGROUND, LEANS TRUMP or LIKELY TRUMP on the PPD 2016 Presidential Election Projection Model.

Republicans haven't won Maine since 1988, yet it's currently a BATTLEGROUND with Trump poised to at least claim the Second Congressional District. Rhode Island is a 3-point race due to large-scale defections from former supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (more on that to come).

Then, national polling went dark. It was a black out.

In all of the tracking polls, including those like PPD that track the race daily, the race is either tied (YouGov) or Trump is slightly leading (Reuters, PPD). In the Rasmussen White House Watch Poll, he has a slightly larger 5-point lead. Nevertheless, this week, the national polling clearly showed movement in favor of the Republican candidate.

Yet, to Hillary's rescue, an AP-GfK poll, which hadn't released a poll in 10 weeks, and a McClatchy/Marist Poll, which hadn't been out for 7 weeks, showed Mrs. Clinton with an identical 6-point lead, bucking the daily and weekly tracking polls and mirroring what appeared to be an outlier NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. The latter repeatedly underestimated Trump's vote share during the primary. Remember when they had Cruz +2 before South Carolina, because I do?

To be honest, I'm not sure what is going on behind the scenes anymore. Another trusted pollster I recently spoke with says he's convinced "they are putting their thumb on the scale." To this pollster's credit, he's one of only two pollsters who caught Trump's true vote share during the primary. No honest assessment of the media coverage this election could conclude anything other than anti-Trump bias. So, maybe polling bias is the new norm, too. I don't want to believe that, but something doesn't jive.

Hillary Clinton does not, in fact, cannot have a 6-point national lead over Donald Trump. Nor does she have 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote, which is one of the several inaccurate assumptions these pollsters are making.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote, yet losing Ohio. In 2012, President Obama won the Buckeye State by just over 2 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points (3.9%).

https://www.peoplespunditdaily.com/news/elections/2016/09/23/hillary-clinton-does-not-have-a-six-point-lead-over-donald-trump/

And on and on. What's interesting to me is that Rhode Island is a battleground state according to this analysis. Tim's powers are even more potent than we feared. 

[CountDeMoney]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for-president.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Our endorsement is rooted in respect
for her intellect, experience and courage.

HILLARY CLINTON
FOR PRESIDENT

All that does is increase Trump's numbers.

[CountDeMoney]

Just saw a poll where 44% expect Clinton to win the debate, while 33% expect Trump to win.  So, Hillary needs to outperform Clarence Darrow and Trump just has to make sure he doesn't drown a handicapped toddler with his own hands.  Anything else is a Trump win.

[lustindarkness]

Just saw a poll where 44% expect Clinton to win the debate, while 33% expect Trump to win.  So, Hillary needs to outperform Clarence Darrow and Trump just has to make sure he doesn't drown a handicapped toddler with his own hands.  Anything else is a Trump win.

Tim is no longer a toddler.

[garbon]

Now the Trump campaign has said it is hilarious that the Clinton campaign thought they had invited Gennifer Flowers.

[Phillip V]

What's the narrative for why Trump and Clinton are almost tied in Colorado?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/co/colorado_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5974.html

[Admiral Yi]

What's the narrative for why Trump and Clinton are almost tied in Colorado?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/co/colorado_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5974.html

Pothead Bernie Bros being dicks?

[lustindarkness]

Is there a reputable webpage (other than languish) that will be fact checking the debate real time?

[garbon]

[Phillip V]

Debacle: What Al Gore's First Debate Against George W. Bush Can Teach Hillary Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/25/us/politics/george-w-bush-al-gore-2000-presidential-debate.html

[jimmy olsen]

Most recent polls

Morning Consult - Clinton 44, Trump 42
ABC/Post - Clinton 49, Trump 47
ARG - Clinton 47, Trump 44

[jimmy olsen]

And on and on. What's interesting to me is that Rhode Island is a battleground state according to this analysis. Tim's powers are even more potent than we feared. 

A lot of deep blue and deep red states are going to be very close this time around. I posted a map a week or two back that shows the swing by state. Rhode Island had the largest swing, +19 for the GOP, Texas and Utah had swings nearly as large towards the Dems IIRC.

[Admiral Yi]

Fucking Portagee.

[Savonarola]

Once every five minutes somewhere in Florida a pro-Hillary ad is aired.  Conventional wisdom is that if Hil can get the non-Cuban Hispanic vote out in Florida she should take the state.  Consequently I wasn't entirely surprised to hear a Hil ad on the Spanish language radio channel out of Orlando the other day.  What was a surprise is that it was narrated by Tim Kaine.  Unfortunately Kaine's Spanish isn't much better than mine; and even I can tell he has a heavy gringo accent.   I doubt that's really going to get out the Spanish speaking vote.  It could be a target for mockery, except neither candidate for president nor Pence speaks Spanish.