A republican cannot win the general without Texas.

I know how my cousins will vote. If insults are all you have, bye bye.

That's all I need to know.

Bye!

Be afraid, be very afraid!

a washed-up, divorced actor who played second banana to a chimp. Be very afraid.

He has gotten Billions in fee tv and they will not stop in promoting him. Hillary has almost lost to a small state senator with little or no name recinition that the media has tried to hide from the public. Hillary has unloaded every thing she can against Bernie and he is still standing while Bernie has hardly gone after Hillary personally, in the GE Trump will unload tons of crap on her, and my concern is that she will get steam rolled. While Bill was a natural campaigner Hillary has shown herself to be a weak campaigner. Bernie has refused to go after Hillary on her emails, family foundation or Bill's past with extermartial affaires, Trump will not be so kind look how he has destroyed all of thoes republicans who were running. Once Trump has locked up his nomination he will change his tune and take the middle ground not only attacking Hillary on her and Bill's Baggage but on her War stance and support for NAFTA &TPP.

I am afraid that our party is about to nominate a candidate who not only has the highest unfavorable rating of anyone we have nominated before but is under an FBI investigation who will be going up against a very smart self promoter backed by the Main Stream Media.

but I expect Hillary to give as good as she gets.

This is the strangest election I have ever seen.

though some found it strange.I voted for Jimmy.

This will be a battle royal, make no mistake about it, if Trump is their nominee.

Hillary has huge obstacles to overcome.

They'll fight him tooth and nail on the rest of his agenda.

He's for ending ACA,health insurance to be sold across state lines,and for HSA's (Health Savings Accounts). In other words back to what it was before ACA.

Trump did not oppose the Iraq War although he lies about having done so. He wants to spend more on our military and "The U.S. should send in troops, wipe out ISIS, and get out."

Trump is more like Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover on trade than he is like FDR and Truman. Bernie will 'renegotiate' NAFTA. Trump will 'rip it up'. "Left" may be in the eye of the beholder on that one.

Right-wing populists are dangerous campaigners even if their actual policies would devastate the people they pretend to be appealing to. You are right that we should not underestimate him no matter who our candidate is.

Of course Trump lies, and Hillary needs to bear down on that. But my point was not that Trump has the advantage on war and peace but that Hillary has a problem there. She needs a way to neutralize that. Lies or not, Trump is not very credible on war and peace.

how he wins without women and minorities.

Closing polls, picture ID laws, purging voters, artificially weighting opinion polls, denying felons the right to vote and then declaring everyone with the same name a felon, threatening to enforce warrants at the polls, caging, fractional vote counting, vote flipping, tossing elections into the conservative courts and state legislatures, and so on.

The way President Obama overcame all of that was by building an overwhelming consensus of opinion in his favor, so that no vote theft could be statistically hidden.

Fortunately for us, the Republicans have done an excellent job of spotting us ten points, which can't be statistically explained away. But it only works if we mend our fences and then make sure that everyone who wants to vote can, and everyone who does is counted.

Trump needs at least 40% of the Hispanic vote. Explain how that happens? Not to mention AA's and women (with Hillary's historic chance to be first woman president).

Trump doesn't have a chance in hell barring something crazy shit happening, and even then.

We should still fight like we're 10 points behind and we will, but get real, Trump is an unmitigated disaster for the GOP and they know it. The House might even be in play if he's the nominee, not to mention what happens when they Ratfuck the nomination from him at the convention and he goes third party.

It's just as bad to overestimate him. He's a clown and a joke but dangerous with his violent rhetoric and needs to be mocked and ridiculed and tied hand to foot to the GOP. That's the realistic way to view him. We should dismiss him as an electoral threat, but treat him seriously as a demagogic and existential one.

His "jobs" message resonates.

I don't have a perspective on what will happen in the general, but it is very, very foolish to believe the spin. He potentially has a pretty broad base.

And with blacks he will win more votes than any R candidate for a long, long time, because a lot of blacks feel the illegal immigration is too much.

I know PhDs and MDs that are vocal Trump supporters, and I know at least three immigrant Hispanics that are Trump supporters, two of whom were Obama voters. I know at least two blacks who are Trump supporters.

We don't know that he will be the nominee, though.

I agree that in the general it will come down to the younger/Independent crowd. I don't know how they'll react.

Uh huh.

But it won't change the fact that these people exist, because they do.

Whatever you say.

There are far far more Trump supporters than you want to believe.

Their #1 issue is illegal immigration.

I think if it is Trump on the GoP side, Sanders would have a better chance against him.

Of course, by now there are all those things that can't be said on DU, but there's a problem. There are some who would vote for either Sanders or Trump, but not a Cruz or a Clinton. But there are a lot of desperate people out there who just need a meaningful change - any change. They are so distrustful of corporate-guided politics that they would take any option to try to break the status quo.

There is a very good reason the Republican leadership is panicking over Trump being the nominee. They can see the demographic difference between the primary and general election.

They know Trump will be a disaster in the General.

In terms of getting broad support from independents, she's the weakest candidate we could field.

All the "Trump is a clown, he can't win" has been put to the test and he has overachieved every time but one. Clearly there are some here who haven't taken the lesson -- "Oh, it will be different this time" is on the list of famous last words just ahead of "Hey, Bubba, watch this."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/sanders-is-right-on-super_b_9695718.html

Clinton isn't going to the convention with any sort of mandate or broad popular appeal. The democratic party needs Sanders supporters, including the independents, and especially needs to keep the young people he brought into the tent.

The risk of Sanders acquiescing to the demands of many (half?) of his supporters to run third party or tacitly support a write in campaign is very real.

The party needs a unity nominee, which means:
1) no concession from Sanders.
2) Clinton needs to give his supporters what they want; an end to superdelegates, fundamental reform of state primaries/caucuses and the corrupting influence of super pacs.

I don't think that Clinton supporters are thinking beyond the primary, nor do I think they care to. They want Clinton to be the nominee, period. The general election is a win-win either way; either she becomes president or her loss is a validation of the "this country is soooo misogynist!" narrative.

With a stressed electorate tired of war and hungry for change, the path to a win IN NOVEMBER is narrow. Clinton needs the full throated support of Sanders supporters, and she'll only get that by acknowledging that democracy, and the party, are broken and credibly promises reform.

But she won't do that because any system in which she can wrangle a win is a good system.

So... voters are left wondering which is worse; Strategic war and centrist SCJ's or bellicose peace and Sarah Palin as secretary of the interior.

Looking ahead, which occupant of the white house gives a greater likelihood of retaking congress in 2018 and beyond?

will run as the candidate with the highest disapproval ratings in recent history.
His defeat will be Goldwaterian.

It's likely it will be difficult for him to win.

I don't see a corporate CEO or a Theocrat getting those voters either.

Trump's voting base is white supremacist, aging and/or dying.

One could say that about an incident that starts off with "HEY, PUCKER . . . HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS!"

I'm SO overjoyed that these people can so non-chalantly throw the rights of women, the LGBTQI community, labor and children's future so they can watch a slow-motion apocalypse.

"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED???"

win all the red states. This election will, as has become the norm, be decided by the vote in a few swing states -- Ohio, Florida, Virginia, perhaps Nevada and Colorado. I agree about Trump. He's a political outsider in a year in which voters are done with the status quo.

The reich-wing always rallies behind their strong man leader.

Usually, when the agenda is to railroad someone into the White House (and YES, Virginia there is such a thing as an agenda and stuff like "justifying the lying", a point dismissed as both beyond the pale of sanity AND/or too obvious to be worthy of consideration), there are many signs of it in the MSM and at the astroturf roots of US politics

For example, in the 2000 election cycle, when W didn't know who the heads of state of India and Pakistan were, there was all kinds of falling over each other down to the astroturf roots that that 'wasn't important' or something Jack Kennedy might not have known in 1960. Then, when Bill Maher briefly came out for Gore, he quickly shifted on his program, without explanation or acknowledgement that he had, to supporting Nader -- a choice many people of conscience did (tho I didn't) make. But the way it happened suggests that word came down thru the network that such an endorsement was NOT OK, even though Dennis Miller in the 2000s could come out for W. A third illustration was how the MSM again fell over each other over Gore 'rolling his eyes' during the first TV debate w/W, even though that and much more happens in candidate debates all the time (and not just this election cycle with Repukes) w/o comment. The list goes on and on, and a similar list could be drawn out about the 2004 election if I wanted to take the time

Another example was the HUGE and unwarranted fuss over the slightly more red meat than medium-rare speech by Howard Dean after the Iowa Caucus in 2004, the "scream", w/endless protestation at the astroturf roots (which you would still have today, including by people who may not even feel themselves influenced by crowd emotional dynamics). (Howard Dean has since learned to be a "good boy" and doesn't raise stinking issues like 'the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party' any more.

Instead of having a clear anti-war candidate at the top of the 2004 ticket (which would have made a HUGE difference w/in the Democratic Party for its direction), there was this massive "consensus" for Kerry supposedly to beat W & then AMAZINGLY unsurprisingly Kerry turned out to be an awful candidate, and there still were election shenanigans in Ohio to insure result. (Much more about how no response to flipflop spin for months and months, and other press coverage I went on at length about at the time)

At any rate, w/Trump. Aside from the immense, not w/o handwringing media attention advantage he has had, here's a particular:
at the time of the leadup to the Iraq War there was much discussion, even though "social media" were only in their infancy, about all kinds of internet chatter among jihadis giddy and gloating about the prospect of the US blundering into Iraq, and how this would (obviously) assist jihadism (which it unsurprisingly did do). I don't follow these discussions (in Arabic and other languages I don't know) but surely there is at least SOME similar stuff by Jihadis about someone like Trump. But the MSM is again "doing the job", and I am not aware of any significant coverage of that issue, despite OCEANS of discussion of Trump

If it is Hillary vs Trump, I think the Dems will be in a landslide loss.
Now some may laugh at me but those who do aren't realistic and laugh aside many factors about Hillary. Perhaps 3 of the biggest;

She is despised by the majority of Americans.
Ongoing FBI investigation
A Hillary nomination would make the Republican base show up in record numbers because they think she is Satan.

I've been saying this all along, it would be a perfect storm. Trump is absolutely nuts, none of us question that but he shouldn't be taken lightly. He isn't damaged like Hillary. Sure he says stupid things which are completely out of control but he represents the GOP base of hatred, what else would you expect?

Personally I think Republicans will have a contested convention and Paul Ryan will get the nod. Trump will go indy.

I knew this would happen. And it should scare the shit out of any Democrat with an IQ above room temperature.

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/21/meet_the_new_donald_trump_hes_reinventing_his_campaign_and_that_should_terrify_the_republican_party/

Trump appeals to a great many Democrats, I think?