2016 USA Presidential election thread I: The warm-up

[BerenTebogo]

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-li...r-talk/2916002

That was pretty damn funny for Hillary lol

[myreality]

Smooth move Hillary.

[Acevalefor]

This time maybe. How many kids die because they are unsupervised with guns though? Way too fucking many.

And honestly, if we had someone drowning multiple children in a pool this fucking often, yeah, people would wanna try and fix that shit.

I agree. So why does half the nation cry foul any time a national level politician tries to do something about it? This is actually one of the big reasons that Sanders is unelectable.

[Sho]

Jeb didn't make an argument about the federal vs state governments though, that was my addition. Jeb's statement was that we shouldn't overreact to a single event (which, as Archi pointed out, ignores all the previous events).

The problem with this is that it devalues the fact that a tragedy HAPPENED. This is honestly no different from people saying "black lives matter" and then having someone else interject with "all lives matter." Of course all lives matter, but it devalues the cause that people are standing up for in a nation where black lives are being taken left and right in tragedies. Same thing in this instance.

"Stuff happens" -- tragedies happen all the time. All the more reason to examine the problems behind these tragedies instead of sidestepping the problem at hand, be it a gun issue or a mental health issue. We should be in overreact mode when it's happening at the rate of once every 2-4 weeks. We aren't living in a 3rd World nation, we can solve this problem.

This nation is complacent with pandering to special interest groups instead of solving very obvious problems. The politicians in turn simply make up excuses, create ad hominem attacks on others, or sidestep the problem entirely.

[thetruepandagod]

This is honestly no different from people saying "black lives matter" and then having someone else interject with "all lives matter." Of course all lives matter, but it devalues the cause that people are standing up for in a nation where black lives are being taken left and right in tragedies. Same thing in this instance.

More whites are shot and killed by police officers in similar situations than blacks. Convince blacks that blacklivesmatter and maybe they will stop raising pistol homicide rates.

[Churchill]

got em

[Sho]

More whites are shot and killed by police officers in similar situations than blacks. Convince blacks that blacklivesmatter and maybe they will stop raising pistol homicide rates.

Whites don't exactly have a history of slavery, civil rights, and racism compounded by years behind them to motivate any sort of movement to be like the one spurring Black Lives Matter. The situation between how blacks view other blacks and how people of other races (mainly white) view blacks is not mutually exclusive.

[kuronosan]

Serious question. If tomorrow everyone magically jumped on board and racial profiling was a federal offense, and urban communities were immediately given economic relief, does anyone really think the social climate would change?

[thetruepandagod]

If tomorrow everyone magically jumped on board and racial profiling was a federal offense

God how I wish racial profiling was mandatory in airports, the airport was the single greatest thing in Israel barring their crazy delicious fast food. Felt less hassled by a dude carrying a rifle next to my face asking me where I was going rather than some poor 50 yr old fat guy patting me down desperately trying to avoid my balls for fear of mutual awkwardness.

[Sho]

Serious question. If tomorrow everyone magically jumped on board and racial profiling was a federal offense, and urban communities were immediately given economic relief, does anyone really think the social climate would change?

Yes, across the board. It wouldn't help everyone 100% -- there is a set of people who love that ghetto life, but for the most part you'd see a large, positive increase in the social climate if economic relief is less of an issue or a non-issue. People don't live in the ghetto or in impoverished urban communities because they want to.

[notorious bum]

Your utopian scenario ignores structural racism in politics. Where's my Bernie v Hilldog updates? Slackers.

[Blubbartron]

Serious question. If tomorrow everyone magically jumped on board and racial profiling was a federal offense, and urban communities were immediately given economic relief, does anyone really think the social climate would change?

Not really. Racial profiling is a thing because statistics is a thing. I imagine that economic relief might help some fraction of the communities, but it won't change things on the whole, and certainly not long after that relief has ended (unless you're suggesting we subsidized minorities forever, like a people version of corn). If we're talking about inner city schools, we're talking about a significant percentage of them who believe that being smart is a bad thing. A lot of them have a positive mental association with criminal behavior (street cred). These are learned beliefs from their social group, and that kind of culture doesn't just change overnight.

[Cantih]

Where's my Bernie v Hilldog updates? Slackers.

Picture from the Boston rally

20k attendees, twice what Obama pulled in Boston eight years ago.

[Serra]

Week 29 update:
Democrats -- Hillary still number one (mid 40s), Sanders in second, Biden in third.
Republicans -- Trump's lead has grown again (25%), Carson is in second (16%), Rubio and Fiorina are tied for third (8%) and Cruz rounds out the top five (6%). Crazy that Bush isn't even in the top five currently.

Based on the latest poll -- Pew Research

[Rooney]

Not surprised that Bush is that low in the polls. He's come across as weak and unable to stand up for himself. The republican party is also pretty much pants on head crazy at this point and will be until primaries are over.

[Andalusian girls]

the latest IDB/PTT poll paints a slightly different picture showing Carson assuming the lead with 24% to Trump's 17% (the first major poll to show Trump out of the top spot in three months), with Rubio, Fiorina, and Bush rounding out the top 5



one note to remember throughout the election process is that aggregate polling is more accurate than the vast majority of individual polling (in some election cycles it has proved more accurate than every one) and we should be wary of overreacting to any single poll, especially if it functions as an outlier. for example, recent polls show Trump's lead shrinking from around 14% to the mid-single digits following the 2nd debate but the above poll is the only one to show Carson in the lead, strongly suggesting Carson is not actually in the lead, unless that value is reinforced by subsequent signals.


http://election.princeton.edu/2008/1...l-aggregation/


as i'm sure you're all aware Real Clear Politics has an easy to read meta-analytics page that does aggregate polling results, though i sometimes wonder why they include notoriously biased pollsters over less prominent but more accurate competitors.
here's a quick guide to locate the worst offenders (or don't trust Rasmussen when they say a Republican is going to beat a Democratic)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/interacti...lster-ratings/

[Not Kuno]

Sanders seems to be doing better than Hillary vs Repubs in IA and NH. In some cases, way better.

http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-pres...8491?cid=sm_fb

[notorious bum]

[BerenTebogo]

Anyone who still thinks "free tuition" means anything knows abso-fucking-lutely nothing about how paying for college has evolved since you were born.

Free tuition for all gets passed -> every school in America suddenly and inexplicably has a "fees" increase equal to or greater the previous value of tuition.

Has been a progressively growing problem. Schools talking about "lowering tuition" or offering grants / awards that only cover tuition while almost yearly increasing overall fees. As far as I know, even for public schools, there is no regulation or limit to how much/how often fees can be arbitrarily raised (but I am not 100% sure on this point).

Letting your vote be swayed by the tuition argument is silly as shit.


Edit: many of the fees (at least in the 3 states I've lived in) cannot even be opted out of. Say the gym fee is $100 for the year, but you already have a gym membership or the like so you have no intention of ever using the gym. Too bad, cant opt out. Etc etc.

[Quicklet]

No joke. That also doesn't even include living expenses which for many institutions ends up being the dominant expense. I imagine there are some rules about what counts as tuition vs fees, but fees are a huge problem because scholarships/loans often won't cover them.

I'm actually fine with the concept of free tuition, but we need to do much more than that to fix the problem. The entire higher education system needs some serious overhauling, from the loan system to overall funding levels.