US GENERAL ELECTION MEGA-THREAD II: Clinton vs. Trump

[Uxupox]

I did pretty well in a combat environment which didn't place in the United States with civilian observers, thank you.



And I did. By giving him so well deserved candy.

Your first reply I don't doubt. Your attitude remains a dangerous one, however.

Your second reply I have my doubts about, unless "candy" is a code for some sort of non-lethal reprisal.

I did give some candy. Fucktard didn't deserve it but I did so he could go away.

[Freefall11111]

Not enough people care so strongly about NATO to risk an election flipping. Foreign policy rarely influences elections, with few exceptions (WW2, Vietnam, Iraq). The vast majority of voters just want jobs that pay them enough to live comfortably. They couldn't care less about NATO.

Whether Trump loses or wins, the damage will be done and trust in NATO will be eroded. That's not good. Not in my opinion, anyway.

Public trust in NATO doesn't matter. Not on the level we're talking about. To have the public actually turn on NATO so strongly that it'd affect policy would require a monumental failure on the part of NATO, which isn't likely.

[AiliailiA]

Once again, what's your evidence for this?

@USS Monitor ... you've made similar claims, you too are invited to provide evidence.

Best I can do on short notice, the trend of him taking equally has continued afaik.

I agree with the blogger's method. That's the approach I took too: compare polls Clinton/Trump with polls Clinton/Trump/Johnson.

However, when I looked more carefully at the polls reported on RealClearPolitics as "three way" (ie Clinton/Trump/Johnson) I found NONE. Every single one is actually a 4-way (Clinton/Trump/Johnson/Stein) which RCP didn't report the Stein numbers from.

This is a huge problem, because even with smaller numbers for Stein, if she's in the same question as Johnson her "vote splitting" power is compounded with his. There could be a huge "take" from Clinton to Stein and it would mask a smaller but still quite significant "take" of Johnson from Trump. Or vice-versa.

Most polls break down each candidates support by party allegience (registration Dem/GOP/Independent). There's a very strong trend of registered Republicans going far more for Johnson, than registered Democrats do, but we can't infer a lot from that because there are more registered Independents than either, and logically I'd expect both Green and Libertarian leaners to be the swing voters who would register Independent. We know that Independents support Johnson the most, but what we don't know is how they would vote if he wasn't on the ballot at all (or any other Libertarian).

There's a couple of polls which ask first for a voting preference between four candidates, then to those who answered Johnson or Stein they ask how they'd vote if there was only Trump and Clinton. This is absolutely the way to find what we're trying to find, and they gathered the data but didn't report it. Incredibly frustrating to me: they have second preferences of Johnson voters in their data, and they have second preferences of Stein voters and they could separate those, but they don't. They merge them together, so again we don't know if there's opposite flows cancelling each other out or whether both Stein and Johnson take equally from the major candidates.

I haven't given up on finding a way to measure who Johnson is "taking" most from. The link in Matt Welch's blog just points to the latest ten polls on RCP, not the ten which were the latest when he used them. But he says "since the beginning of May" and there's a date on his blog so I can find the ten he used. MAYBE with luck there's just one in there which is a true 3-way without Stein.

[New Chalcedon]

Afghanistan did a mighty fine job of destroying the unstoppable bear, why can't another more well funded and disciplined force do what they can't do?

Leaving entirely aside your repugnant "We've got ours, screw them and theirs" mentality, you're woefully uninformed about military realities for someone who claims to be a soldier. The mujahideen succeeded in derailing the Soviets for largely the following reasons:

1. Extensive foreign material support - the US heavily funded and sent large amounts of weaponry to equip, arm, train and support the anti-Soviet forces, as did Saudi Arabia and several other countries.
2. Terrain and society favourable to asymmetric warfare - the Baltics aren't nearly so well-endowed with the first, although they hate the Russians enough that the second may help any resistance forces.
3. Due to the two factors above, the Afghan insurgents were able to stymie the Soviet occupation troops long enough for the political will to deploy them to fade. That, combined with the shaky underpinnings of the Soviet economy and the increasing distance between the political class and their people, was what led to the dissolution of the USSR.

If you think that the Baltics - individually or collectively - could do the same to Russia, then you're wrong.

[New Chalcedon]

Best I can do on short notice, the trend of him taking equally has continued afaik.

I agree with the blogger's method. That's the approach I took too: compare polls Clinton/Trump with polls Clinton/Trump/Johnson.

However, when I looked more carefully at the polls reported on RealClearPolitics as "three way" (ie Clinton/Trump/Johnson) I found NONE. Every single one is actually a 4-way (Clinton/Trump/Johnson/Stein) which RCP didn't report the Stein numbers from.

This is a huge problem, because even with smaller numbers for Stein, if she's in the same question as Johnson her "vote splitting" power is compounded with his. There could be a huge "take" from Clinton to Stein and it would mask a smaller but still quite significant "take" of Johnson from Trump. Or vice-versa.

Most polls break down each candidates support by party allegience (registration Dem/GOP/Independent). There's a very strong trend of registered Republicans going far more for Johnson, than registered Democrats do, but we can't infer a lot from that because there are more registered Independents than either, and logically I'd expect both Green and Libertarian leaners to be the swing voters who would register Independent. We know that Independents support Johnson the most, but what we don't know is how they would vote if he wasn't on the ballot at all (or any other Libertarian).

There's a couple of polls which ask first for a voting preference between four candidates, then to those who answered Johnson or Stein they ask how they'd vote if there was only Trump and Clinton. This is absolutely the way to find what we're trying to find, and they gathered the data but didn't report it. Incredibly frustrating to me: they have second preferences of Johnson voters in their data, and they have second preferences of Stein voters and they could separate those, but they don't. They merge them together, so again we don't know if there's opposite flows cancelling each other out or whether both Stein and Johnson take equally from the major candidates.

I haven't given up on finding a way to measure who Johnson is "taking" most from. The link in Matt Welch's blog just points to the latest ten polls on RCP, not the ten which were the latest when he used them. But he says "since the beginning of May" and there's a date on his blog so I can find the ten he used. MAYBE with luck there's just one in there which is a true 3-way without Stein.

There aren't any three-way-only (Clinton v Trump v Johnson) polls? Huh, go figure.

[New Chalcedon]

MEGGGGGGAAA TTHREEAAD

Will you shut up with your content-free spam?

[Geilinor]

The Trump Taj Mahal is closing. Trump doesn't own it anymore but he saddled it with massive debts.

[Freefall11111]

Afghanistan did a mighty fine job of destroying the unstoppable bear, why can't another more well funded and disciplined force do what they can't do?

Leaving entirely aside your repugnant "We've got ours, screw them and theirs" mentality, you're woefully uninformed about military realities for someone who claims to be a soldier. The mujahideen succeeded in derailing the Soviets for largely the following reasons:

1. Extensive foreign material support - the US heavily funded and sent large amounts of weaponry to equip, arm, train and support the anti-Soviet forces, as did Saudi Arabia and several other countries.
2. Terrain and society favourable to asymmetric warfare - the Baltics aren't nearly so well-endowed with the first, although they hate the Russians enough that the second may help any resistance forces.
3. Due to the two factors above, the Afghan insurgents were able to stymie the Soviet occupation troops long enough for the political will to deploy them to fade. That, combined with the shaky underpinnings of the Soviet economy and the increasing distance between the political class and their people, was what led to the dissolution of the USSR.

If you think that the Baltics - individually or collectively - could do the same to Russia, then you're wrong.

It should be noted that even then, the Soviet-Afghan War was seriously costly to Afghanistan. It took a decade for the Mujahideen to win with a quarter of a million combatants. Even then, 90k Mujahideen died and 75k were wounded. On top of that, somewhere between a million and a million and a half civilians died. Two million were internally displaced, and five million left the country completely. Three million civilians were wounded. That's a quarter of the population at the time. Afghanistan never recovered from the war. There are still over four million Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan alone.

[Uxupox]

Afghanistan did a mighty fine job of destroying the unstoppable bear, why can't another more well funded and disciplined force do what they can't do?

Leaving entirely aside your repugnant "We've got ours, screw them and theirs" mentality, you're woefully uninformed about military realities for someone who claims to be a soldier. The mujahideen succeeded in derailing the Soviets for largely the following reasons:

1. Extensive foreign material support - the US heavily funded and sent large amounts of weaponry to equip, arm, train and support the anti-Soviet forces, as did Saudi Arabia and several other countries.
2. Terrain and society favourable to asymmetric warfare - the Baltics aren't nearly so well-endowed with the first, although they hate the Russians enough that the second may help any resistance forces.
3. Due to the two factors above, the Afghan insurgents were able to stymie the Soviet occupation troops long enough for the political will to deploy them to fade. That, combined with the shaky underpinnings of the Soviet economy and the increasing distance between the political class and their people, was what led to the dissolution of the USSR.

If you think that the Baltics - individually or collectively - could do the same to Russia, then you're wrong.

They can and they could.

1. Their Western allies could provide much needed material support to the Baltic states not to mention that if NATO (Without the US anyway) would open multiple fronts against the Russians if needed be.
2. In terrain association since the Baltic states are heavily urbanized they can and they will strip the Russians of their numerical superiority. A well disciplined enemy attacking a city will find itself quickly disorganized if the city can be taken within the first week. And while the T-14 is a completely state of the art weapon any type of technological superiority achieved in Urban combat is negated when you do not realize where exactly is the enemy and you don't know who is the enemy when we take civilian considerations.

The Baltic states collectively are a force to be reckoned if they used their defensive mechanisms correctly and astoundingly.

[Freefall11111]

Leaving entirely aside your repugnant "We've got ours, screw them and theirs" mentality, you're woefully uninformed about military realities for someone who claims to be a soldier. The mujahideen succeeded in derailing the Soviets for largely the following reasons:

1. Extensive foreign material support - the US heavily funded and sent large amounts of weaponry to equip, arm, train and support the anti-Soviet forces, as did Saudi Arabia and several other countries.
2. Terrain and society favourable to asymmetric warfare - the Baltics aren't nearly so well-endowed with the first, although they hate the Russians enough that the second may help any resistance forces.
3. Due to the two factors above, the Afghan insurgents were able to stymie the Soviet occupation troops long enough for the political will to deploy them to fade. That, combined with the shaky underpinnings of the Soviet economy and the increasing distance between the political class and their people, was what led to the dissolution of the USSR.

If you think that the Baltics - individually or collectively - could do the same to Russia, then you're wrong.

They can and they could.

1. Their Western allies could provide much needed material support to the Baltic states not to mention that if NATO (Without the US anyway) would open multiple fronts against the Russians if needed be.
2. In terrain association since the Baltic states are heavily urbanized they can and they will strip the Russians of their numerical superiority. A well disciplined enemy attacking a city will find itself quickly disorganized if the city can be taken within the first week. And while the T-14 is a completely state of the art weapon any type of technological superiority achieved in Urban combat is negated when you do not realize where exactly is the enemy and you don't know who is the enemy when we take civilian considerations.

The Baltic states collectively are a force to be reckoned if they used their defensive mechanisms correctly and astoundingly.

If you think NATO would exist without the US, you've lost the plot.

[Uxupox]

They can and they could.

1. Their Western allies could provide much needed material support to the Baltic states not to mention that if NATO (Without the US anyway) would open multiple fronts against the Russians if needed be.
2. In terrain association since the Baltic states are heavily urbanized they can and they will strip the Russians of their numerical superiority. A well disciplined enemy attacking a city will find itself quickly disorganized if the city can be taken within the first week. And while the T-14 is a completely state of the art weapon any type of technological superiority achieved in Urban combat is negated when you do not realize where exactly is the enemy and you don't know who is the enemy when we take civilian considerations.

The Baltic states collectively are a force to be reckoned if they used their defensive mechanisms correctly and astoundingly.

If you think NATO would exist without the US, you've lost the plot.

It obviously wouldn't exist but a defensive alliance would have to prop up in it's place in the European theater.

[AiliailiA]

The primary reason, yes. If Russia had successfully transitioned into a capitalist liberal democracy in the mid 90's, there's a good chance NATO would've ceased to exist (and a not insignificant chance it wouldn't, but still).

Maybe. Although, NATO might have been restructured and reorganized to go stare down some other world power. Namely China.

An alliance to "stare down" (ie counter military threats from) China would have different nations in it. Australia, Japan and South Korea for instance, and you wouldn't count on those European members of the current NATO to be committed to it. China's a long way away from them, even by land.

Trying to extend the current NATO that way doesn't seem like a good idea. With or without keeping NATO together, it would be better to start over with a Pacific Treaty Organization.

[Shrillland]

They can and they could.

1. Their Western allies could provide much needed material support to the Baltic states not to mention that if NATO (Without the US anyway) would open multiple fronts against the Russians if needed be.
2. In terrain association since the Baltic states are heavily urbanized they can and they will strip the Russians of their numerical superiority. A well disciplined enemy attacking a city will find itself quickly disorganized if the city can be taken within the first week. And while the T-14 is a completely state of the art weapon any type of technological superiority achieved in Urban combat is negated when you do not realize where exactly is the enemy and you don't know who is the enemy when we take civilian considerations.

The Baltic states collectively are a force to be reckoned if they used their defensive mechanisms correctly and astoundingly.

If you think NATO would exist without the US, you've lost the plot.

Moreover, it might not just be Russia that would attack. CSTO would still be around without NATO, and Russia could cajole Belarus, Kazhakstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and a slew of other nations to assist them. They may not be as big, but they all have Russian-made armies. Only a strong Western counter-weight including the United States and its nuclear arsenal keeps this from happening. For now.

[Freefall11111]

And since you claim to know so much about the Baltics being able to defeat Russia, maybe you should start a think tank. Or we could just reference the existing one. The Baltics would be taken over in a matter of days at most with NATO support.

[Liriena]

Could someone explain to me how the lives of millions of innocent people are worth less than the lives of a handful of people who chose a profession that explicitly revolves around the use of lethal force and the high probability of suffering a violent death?

What's the rationale here? Nationality? A pathetic load of tribalistic bullcrap. Loyalty to a piece of coloured fabric is a sorry excuse for that sort of apathy and egotism. The lives of a platoon are worth as much as the lives of any other platoon. and the lives of a million innocent people are worth as much as the lives of a million innocent people.. No more, no less, regardless of what territory between a set of imaginary lines they were born in.

[Liriena]

The Trump Taj Mahal is closing. Trump doesn't own it anymore but he saddled it with massive debts.

Geesh, it's almost like he's not even a fraction of the successful businessman he pretends he is.

[AiliailiA]

I agree with the blogger's method. That's the approach I took too: compare polls Clinton/Trump with polls Clinton/Trump/Johnson.

However, when I looked more carefully at the polls reported on RealClearPolitics as "three way" (ie Clinton/Trump/Johnson) I found NONE. Every single one is actually a 4-way (Clinton/Trump/Johnson/Stein) which RCP didn't report the Stein numbers from.

This is a huge problem, because even with smaller numbers for Stein, if she's in the same question as Johnson her "vote splitting" power is compounded with his. There could be a huge "take" from Clinton to Stein and it would mask a smaller but still quite significant "take" of Johnson from Trump. Or vice-versa.

Most polls break down each candidates support by party allegience (registration Dem/GOP/Independent). There's a very strong trend of registered Republicans going far more for Johnson, than registered Democrats do, but we can't infer a lot from that because there are more registered Independents than either, and logically I'd expect both Green and Libertarian leaners to be the swing voters who would register Independent. We know that Independents support Johnson the most, but what we don't know is how they would vote if he wasn't on the ballot at all (or any other Libertarian).

There's a couple of polls which ask first for a voting preference between four candidates, then to those who answered Johnson or Stein they ask how they'd vote if there was only Trump and Clinton. This is absolutely the way to find what we're trying to find, and they gathered the data but didn't report it. Incredibly frustrating to me: they have second preferences of Johnson voters in their data, and they have second preferences of Stein voters and they could separate those, but they don't. They merge them together, so again we don't know if there's opposite flows cancelling each other out or whether both Stein and Johnson take equally from the major candidates.

I haven't given up on finding a way to measure who Johnson is "taking" most from. The link in Matt Welch's blog just points to the latest ten polls on RCP, not the ten which were the latest when he used them. But he says "since the beginning of May" and there's a date on his blog so I can find the ten he used. MAYBE with luck there's just one in there which is a true 3-way without Stein.

There aren't any three-way-only (Clinton v Trump v Johnson) polls? Huh, go figure.

Not necessarily a conspiracy. Pollsters probably just think they're being fair including two minor parties not just one.

Recounting the data they already have (at least some polls), they could separate the Johnson and Stein first-preferences. That they don't is maybe suspicious: that information would be very interesting to the major parties who will decide whether to campaign against the minors (for splitting their party's support) or tacitly encourage the minors (for splitting their opponent major party's support). Could they be paying for exclusive access to that data?

[Freefall11111]

If you think NATO would exist without the US, you've lost the plot.

Moreover, it might not just be Russia that would attack. CSTO would still be around without NATO, and Russia could cajole Belarus, Kazhakstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and a slew of other nations to assist them. They may not be as big, but they all have Russian-made armies. Only a strong Western counter-weight including the United States and its nuclear arsenal keeps this from happening. For now.

Fun fact: Russia + other CSTO members would number just under a million versus 46k Baltic troops. For comparison, Russia deployed 115k troops (plus 55k local forces) in the Afghan war, fighting a quarter of a million Mujahideen.

[USS Monitor]

There aren't any three-way-only (Clinton v Trump v Johnson) polls? Huh, go figure.

Not necessarily a conspiracy. Pollsters probably just think they're being fair including two minor parties not just one.

Recounting the data they already have (at least some polls), they could separate the Johnson and Stein first-preferences. That they don't is maybe suspicious: that information would be very interesting to the major parties who will decide whether to campaign against the minors (for splitting their party's support) or tacitly encourage the minors (for splitting their opponent major party's support). Could they be paying for exclusive access to that data?

Some Republicans seem like they are tacitly encouraging any 3rd party that wants to run, regardless of who it hurts.

[Freefall11111]

Also worth noting that any urban-centric strategy in the Baltics would sacrifice a third of the population immediately to Russian control, and put the other two thirds at risk of being caught in the crossfire (which the Rand Corporation already noted: "Quality light forces, like the U.S. airborne infantry that the NATO players typically deployed into Riga and Tallinn, can put up stout resistance when dug into urban terrain. But the cost of mounting such a defense to the city and its residents is typically very high.")

[AiliailiA]

Not necessarily a conspiracy. Pollsters probably just think they're being fair including two minor parties not just one.

Recounting the data they already have (at least some polls), they could separate the Johnson and Stein first-preferences. That they don't is maybe suspicious: that information would be very interesting to the major parties who will decide whether to campaign against the minors (for splitting their party's support) or tacitly encourage the minors (for splitting their opponent major party's support). Could they be paying for exclusive access to that data?

Some Republicans seem like they are tacitly encouraging any 3rd party that wants to run, regardless of who it hurts.

Well I guess that would get some voter turnout and while they're there to vote against Trump they might still vote GOP down the ticket.

[Myrensis]

Hmm, so Trumps Twitter is unusually quiet today, just a few generic thank you's to his campaign stops. Rumor is that there's an 'intervention' underway to try to get Trump under control lest large parts of the GOP openly break with him.

I imagine there are also quite a few calls to Assange demanding to know why he hasn't released the next batch of e-mails yet so people will stop listening to Trump talk.

[USS Monitor]

Some Republicans seem like they are tacitly encouraging any 3rd party that wants to run, regardless of who it hurts.

Well I guess that would get some voter turnout and while they're there to vote against Trump they might still vote GOP down the ticket.

I think it's more like the Republicans are just so embarrassed by Trump they can't keep it to themselves.

[Yumyumsuppertime]

Hmm, so Trumps Twitter is unusually quiet today, just a few generic thank you's to his campaign stops. Rumor is that there's an 'intervention' underway to try to get Trump under control lest large parts of the GOP openly break with him.

I imagine there are also quite a few calls to Assange demanding to know why he hasn't released the next batch of e-mails yet so people will stop listening to Trump talk.

"GUYS! I'M UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE! HURRY UP WITH THOSE EMAILS, AND MAKE SURE THEY LOOK RIGHT THIS TIME!"

[Shonburg]

Could someone explain to me how the lives of millions of innocent people are worth less than the lives of a handful of people who chose a profession that explicitly revolves around the use of lethal force and the high probability of suffering a violent death?

What's the rationale here? Nationality? A pathetic load of tribalistic bullcrap. Loyalty to a piece of coloured fabric is a sorry excuse for that sort of apathy and egotism. The lives of a platoon are worth as much as the lives of any other platoon. and the lives of a million innocent people are worth as much as the lives of a million innocent people.. No more, no less, regardless of what territory between a set of imaginary lines they were born in.

Agreed