The 2016 US American Election Thread

[peter12]

Originally Posted by direwolf

Panel on CBC a few minutes ago agreed that it's highly unlikely that we'll know all the facts regarding these emails before election day, which means this will stay in the news cycle every single day until it gets resolved. The Clinton campaign is gonna have to spin the hell out of this if she wants to maintain her current lead. Even if these emails turn out to be nothing, these last 11 days are gonna be pretty rough on the Dems.

This is clearly the best thing to happen to Trump's campaign since this whole nightmare began, and no doubt the Republicans are gonna run this story into the ground from here on out.

She has been her own worst enemy. People talk about Clinton getting lucky with Trump, well the opposite has, in my opinion, been even more true. If Trump was running against anyone but Clinton, he would truly be getting slaughtered.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

Semantics. This *could* turn out to be tremendously serious for the Clinton campaign.

The language used in the letter sounds to me more like the FBI Director covering his own ass more than it being serious problems for the Clinton campaign.

[Looch City]

Has Trump released his tax records yet?

This is great distraction for him, perhaps he coordinated this with the FBI chief....hmmmm

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by peter12

So keep your pride intact, and do something else. Don't vote. Both of these candidates are awful.

This election has been a total humiliation for the US. If pride mattered no one would vote at all as a protest to this #### show. Besides this is the country people vote against their own interests all the time. There isn't much pride to begin with.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by rubecube

The language used in the letter sounds to me more like the FBI Director covering his own ass more than it being serious problems for the Clinton campaign.

Ok.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

This election has been a total humiliation for the US. If pride mattered no one would vote at all as a protest to this #### show. Besides this is the country people vote against their own interests all the time. There isn't much pride to begin with.

Why do you keep blaming ordinary Americans for this mess? It has been a situation created entirely by elites repeatedly putting their interests above the vast majority of their fellow citizens.

It is a fully justifiable backlash against a system corrupt from the top-down.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by peter12

I don't think it is an either/or. You can write in a candidate, you can vote for a third-party, you can spoil your ballot.

Originally Posted by peter12

So keep your pride intact, and do something else. Don't vote. Both of these candidates are awful.

I don't agree. One of Hillary or Trump will be President, with all of the attendant consequences.

If there are only two results that have any reasonable possibility of occurring, people should be actively trying to ensure the better potential result - regardless of whether both options are fantastic and one is just somewhat more fantastic, or whether both options are utterly atrocious and one is just somewhat less atrocious.

I understand that there are arguments to the contrary, that long-term consequences of having people vote in this pattern forever is what got the USA here in the first place, but the salient consequences here are I think quite clearly the immediate ones.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by peter12

Why do you keep blaming ordinary Americans for this mess? It has been a situation created entirely by elites repeatedly putting their interests above the vast majority of their fellow citizens.

It is a fully justifiable backlash against a system corrupt from the top-down.

Did I miss when America became a dictatorship? Americans vote for their leaders, hence why they get the blame. They could have voted third party for years, they could have voted blue in staunchly red districts to send a message. Instead congress has a 90% incumbency return rate. So yeah, the people deserve the blame. All of it. If there was robber and stores kept leaving their doors unlocked and their stuff keeps getting stolen, would you really blame the robber?

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/statu...12714457972736

That would indicate that Huma is the one responsible, not Clinton. Again, this all boils down to dissemination and intent. If Huma did this with intent, she is in trouble. If she did not and there is nothing with a data label on it, there's nothing here. If this is truly what they are investigating they are going to be very hard pressed to link any of this to Hillary Clinton. This is looking like more smoke than fire.

[direwolf]

Nate Silver's take on today's news.

"My hunch (like The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel’s) is that Weiner is such a tragicomic figure, and such a lightning rod for news coverage, that he could insulate Clinton from some of the fallout she might have suffered otherwise. There are also fewer undecided voters now than there were in July, voter choices are more locked in, and many people have already voted — which could lessen the impact.

Even so, the news could get Republican partisans riled up, increasing turnout, and could play into a closing message for Trump about Clinton’s “corruption” — if he’s disciplined enough to sustain one. At a minimum, there’s no upside in the story for Clinton.

To repeat, our forecasts won’t show any impact until and unless the polls do. But in general, FiveThirtyEight’s models are relatively quick about detecting trends from the polls. At the same time, they account for a greater amount of uncertainty than most other models, which results in a better chance for the trailing candidate (in this case, Trump). Our forecast already saw Clinton as less of a sure thing than other models, which variously give her a 92 percent to a 99 percent chance of winning as compared with our roughly 80 percent chance, and that gap could widen in the coming days."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...nthony-weiner/

[Flamenspiel]

nm

[Cube Inmate]

The arguments about "people should vote differently to send a message" ignore the fact that groups do not vote, individuals do. Ironically, election day is the least effective time to send a message because any message gets lost in the statistical artifact that is the election result.

"A big message was sent this election...10% of people voted Libertarian! Wait...who cares!?! Trump won anyhow and now...hold on...President-Elect Trump appears to be sending us a message in sign-language...."

The options are not: "Bad," "Worse," and "We Can Do Better!" It's just Bad and Worse. Your choice as to which is which.

[Swift]

Spoiler!

"Dickileaks" is a very good pun, though sounds like something you might want to see your doctor about.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by peter12

She has been her own worst enemy. People talk about Clinton getting lucky with Trump, well the opposite has, in my opinion, been even more true. If Trump was running against anyone but Clinton, he would truly be getting slaughtered.

The evidence doesn't bare this equivalence out. Go to the ABC poll on people who are voting for their candidate vs against the other candidate. Numbers for Clinton are typical.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by peter12

Why do you keep blaming ordinary Americans for this mess? It has been a situation created entirely by elites repeatedly putting their interests above the vast majority of their fellow citizens.

It is a fully justifiable backlash against a system corrupt from the top-down.

The ineffective nature of congress is clearly on Republican primary voters.

[Azure]

So what am I missing? There were emails sent back and forth between some person and Clinton? Big deal.

What could possibly be in those emails that would make the FBI could out in public and say 'ohhhh we've found something, but we won't yet tell you what.'

Obviously there are a lot of politics involved, and I'm sure they had to get approval from the director of the FBI to bring this whole thing out into the public spotlight, and he probably had to get approval from his boss, who I guess is the director of national intelligence who is obviously an Obama appointee so fat chance the Whitehouse didn't know about it before it came out.

Hell of a deal.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Azure

So what am I missing? There were emails sent back and forth between some person and Clinton? Big deal.

What could possibly be in those emails that would make the FBI could out in public and say 'ohhhh we've found something, but we won't yet tell you what.'

Obviously there are a lot of politics involved, and I'm sure they had to get approval from the director of the FBI to bring this whole thing out into the public spotlight, and he probably had to get approval from his boss, who I guess is the director of national intelligence who is obviously an Obama appointee so fat chance the Whitehouse didn't know about it before it came out.

Hell of a deal.

Well, if you want to deal in worst case scenarios, it would be classified information got passed to one of those recipients (and they weren't cleared for it) and it was another email that she didn't disclose to the FBI.

That is almost guaranteed to be jail time / impeachment and obviously what Republicans are hoping for.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/statu...12714457972736

Brutal, there is nothing, can be nothing before the election, yet it's enough to disrupt an election with speculation and innuendo for some reason.

If it'd been a former democrat that had done this there'd already be calls for resignations and investigations.

Again, where's the letter that they're investigating Stone's connection to Russian email hacks, if progress updates are now public?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...ecutors-230467

"I got a lot of respect for Jim Comey, but I don't understand this idea of dropping this bombshell which could be a big dud," said former federal prosector Peter Zeidenberg, a veteran of politically sensitive investigations. "Doing it in the last week or 10 days of a presidential election without more information, I don't think that he should because how does it inform a voter? It just invites speculation ... I would question the timing of it. It's not going to get done in a week."

Nick Akerman, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, was more critical: "Director Comey acted totally inappropriately. He had no business writing to Congress about supposed new emails that neither he nor anyone in the FBI has ever reviewed.”

"It is not the function of the FBI director to be making public pronouncements about an investigation, never mind about an investigation based on evidence that he acknowledges may not be significant," Akerman added. "The job of the FBI is simply to investigate and to provide the results of its investigation to the prosecutorial arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. His job is not to give a running commentary about any investigation or his opinion about any investigation. This is particularly egregious since Secretary Clinton has no way to respond to what amounts to nebulous and speculative innuendo.”

[Senator Clay Davis]

I do like the fact that 24 hours ago all Trump supporters wanted Comey fired and indicted, and now 24 hours later all Hillary supporters want Comey fired and indicted. I guess if there's one guarantee out of this election it's that Comey will be getting fired (indicted, probably not).

[photon]

Clinton had a press conference in Iowa, calls for more information.

"We are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes. Voting is already underway in our country. So the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts, immediately," Clinton said. "The director himself has said he doesn't know whether the e-mails referenced in his letter are significant or not. I'm confident whatever they are will not change the conclusion reached in July. Therefore it's imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...te-server-case