US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

How did the town hall go?

[Rusty Edge]

We DVR'd the Town Hall, and the Mrs. has other viewing priorities.
I haven't seen it yet.

Predictably the complaints are mostly coming for Libertarians complaining about a lack of ideological purity.

Then there are those who claim that Gary is for open borders, when that is not his position. He is for the liberal issuing of work visas, so that the job-seekers will have background checks and pay Social Security and other taxes. [Sleezebag]'s Alma Mater Wharton has done a study which proved  that is the strategy with the greatest economic growth.

[Buster's Uncle]

I imagine he's for the generous issuing of work visas, not so much the liberal... [blinks]

[Rusty Edge]

Yeah.


SO, I saw most of it.  As to be expected, they're more polished after all of the interviews they've done. The camera didn't return to the gallery once they'd asked their questions, so I don't know how satisfied people were with the answers, and Johnson/Weld  must have told they had to hold it to 1 minute answers.



A Bernie supporter who'd been considering Jill Stein asked what they had in common, to paraphrase, he said about 75%- civil rights, marijuana reform, foreign non-intervention, fighting crony capitalism, etc. Where we part ways is economics, my theory and I may be wrong, is that most Sanders supporters seek equality of opportunity rather than equality of condition. Government can't really equalize us economically and we wouldn't be happy about it if they tried, but if it's about fighting against unfair advantages, I've always done that. Pivoted into vetoes as Gov.

At which point Cooper was kind of stunned and explained he couldn't remember hearing a politician say "I may be wrong", or "I don't know" before. Applause. Gary explained- If you always tell the truth, you don't have  to remember what you said. If you can't admit your mistakes, you can't fix the problem. More applause.

Well, I have to leave and do stuff. See you later.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'll look forward to it.

[Rusty Edge]

It's happening already... that article the other day where I said "the dude has a point"-

FOX has Johnson at 12% post convention, before the CNN town hall.

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/third-party-included-presidential-debate/

SHOCKING: Debate Commission May “Give An Inch” to 3rd Party for 15%


 Darrell England
 
 August 3, 2016
 
[Sleezebag]’s debate complaints may have just unintentionally helped Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson

By: Darrell England

One of the keys to getting elected as President of the United States of America is to first participate in the presidential debates. However, actually getting into the debates has almost always been a problem with “third party” candidates.

Gary Johnson, who is currently the closest by far to reaching the minimum debate commission requirements of 15% in polling, filed a lawsuit in September of last year to include both Libertarian and Green candidates in the debates. But the lawsuit may not be necessary for Gary Johnson to be included after all, as CNBC reports that Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, suggested the commission:


… might consider giving an inch to a third-party candidate who is close enough to the cutoff point.

This is following Republican Nominee Donald [Sleezebag]’s complaints about the debates using the term “rigged”, even though the commission set the debate schedule over a year ago.

[Sleezebag] is complaining about two scheduled debate dates while the “minor” parties have complained for decades that there is an active effort to keep them out of the debates entirely, especially after recently raising the requirements to 15% in polls while commonly being unmentioned in the actual polling. [Sleezebag] has enjoyed the republican party’s “major” party status, to always being mentioned in the polls, and yet voices dissatisfaction beyond the privileged polling to the debate commission. However, he may have triggered the commission to show some leniency to a “third party” in response to a growing concern of “minor” parties feeling “blocked” from the debates. This act of good faith may actually help put out some of the negative images the bipartisan commission has received concerning a “rigged” system for many others if this reach is actually extended to include a “third party” candidate.

Even Roger Stone, Political Insider and [Sleezebag] confidant, tweets:
paraphrase- [Sleezebag] should insist the Johnson and Stein be included in any televised debates.

However, [Sleezebag] may not want to share the debate stage with what he describes as “fringe” candidates. If he’s complaining about two dates, wouldn’t he also complain about sharing his speaking time? It appears the commission’s more important concerns may be to become more generous to “minor” party complaints rather than a couple of dates that were scheduled over a year ago. Also, it may be considered less “rigged” if there was a future tripartisan, rather than just a bipartisan commission consisting of only the two current “old” parties.

Read more: http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/third-party-included-presidential-debate/#ixzz4GOUafeWJ
Follow us: @TheLibRepublic on Twitter

[Buster's Uncle]

Man, Johnson gets into the debates and doesn't come off stupid fringe -he won't- or somehow get marginalized/not-called-on -definitely possible- he gets 20% or more in the general for not being Clinton or Pig, automatically.

Predict that forces behind the scenes (for one, members of the House o' Reps, who I bet desperately don't want to be put in the untenable position of picking on the Republican side) realize this and he never gets into the debates...

[Rusty Edge]

All I know for sure politically is that anything can happen this year, and already has.

I didn't know if the Libertarians had enough pragmatism to nominate Johnson Weld. I don't know if they'll make it into the debates. I am pretty sure they'll reach 5% in the general this year and establish the party so that it won't be so difficult or expensive to get on the ballots in the future. I will consider it a defeat if that doesn't happen.

But as Gary has said all along, with Weld to lend the ticket solid credentials as well as fund raising skills, they can get some main stream exposure, make it into the polls and make it into the debates.

After all, they are qualified, candid, and since they don't have enough legislators to ride their coat tails, they will have to be bi-partisan, rather than polarizing. Those are things people say they want for a change.

If that happens, they could win the whole thing outright, and I think they would be favorites in a House election if it goes past a first ballot.

But having experienced the Perot campaign, and seeing the networks convince half of the would-be Perot voters that he didn't have a chance to win, I'm not holding my breath awaiting a Johnson victory. I guess I don't have faith in the national electorate.

But I do have faith that Clinton will be Clinton-  high-handed and disingenuos, and [Sleezebag] will be [Sleezebag]- egotistical, narcissistic, bullying, greedy, and uninformed. Both teams will be digging for dirt and throwing mud. At some point, either or both will slip again, and if Johnson is standing there to take up the slack something significant could happen.

Who knows, we might even amend the Constitution, to abolish the electoral college and institute a ranked voting system.

It's that kind of year.

[Buster's Uncle]

Much as I hate the Electoral College -without let or hindrance, I do- I pretty much oppose to the death anyone going within a mile of the Constitution in the prevailing climate.

[Rusty Edge]

True, not the best climate for it.

Gleanings-

* NPR- "And right now, the prevailing story line has the greater voting public perceiving T rump through the wrong end of its telescope — a figure no longer larger than life but much reduced, and getting smaller every day."

* ABC- "Donald T rump's campaign is admitting that the Republican presidential nominee never saw a video of the U.S. offloading wooden pallets of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies in Tehran, even though he described such a video in full detail yesterday. "

I guess he musta missremembered it.

*538- T rump May Start Dragging GOP Senate Candidates Down With Him

* Politico- "Republican presidential nominee Donald T rump, have said she came to the United States legally, her own statements suggest she first came to the country on a short-term visa that would not have authorized her to work as a model. T rump has also said she came to New York in 1996, but the nude photo shoot places her in the United States in 1995, as does a biography published in February by Slovenian journalists.

So, there are indications that she was one of those illegal immigrants, taking jobs from Americans while posing as a tourist. We'll probably hear more about it soon.

[Buster's Uncle]

Siiigh.  It's just sad.

Did I bother to mention how colossal my contempt for the Pig was last year after he announced but before he started getting publicity, or did I wait?  I swear he was on my radar by the mid-80s, and I've always thought he was horrible...

[Rusty Edge]

I must admit I'm surprised. I thought that the judge would continue to stall on this case until it became moot.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/05/judge-quashes-gary-johnsonjill-stein-deb

Well, I seem powerless to highlight anything beyond the url on that page today.

The judge threw it out on grounds that Johnson and Stine had no standing in the matter on first amendment and anti-trust challenges, had suffered no personal harm, and the debate forum was private rather than public.

Semi-personal anecdote: In connection with the Reform party, I became acquainted with an attorney who regularly tried cases before the state supreme court, and in higher courts in Philadelphia. He was running for a seat on the state supreme court, in order to point out the corruption there at the time, such as one justice hiring his son as a law clerk for $100K/year, which was real money in the late 80s. Another justice had  spent a similar amount on office renovations ( I think it was wood paneling and gold leaf), as he believed that each justice was equal to the governor in status and deserved grandeur accordingly. Basically they suffered from hubris and had no respect for taxpayer's money.

Years later he filed in federal court in Philadelphia about a candidate's legal eligibility for office, and the judge threw it out, saying he didn't have legal standing. It was a Democratic judge and a Democratic candidate. I would have thought that any citizen who would be represented by an illegal fraud could claim they were cheated.

Oh well. They went to law school, and I didn't.

I would think that any debate which is broadcast is no longer "private", as they would have no expectation of privacy.

[Rusty Edge]

Computer crashed and restarted-

From another Reason article-

[As far as I know, a second separate lawsuit with the intention of getting into the debate is still in process. That suit is against the Federal Elections Commission, very roughly arguing that the Court should "grant summary judgment for Plaintiffs, and direct the FEC to do its job, which is to enforce the law and put an end to the CPD's biased, anti-democratic, and fundamentally corrupt and exclusionary polling rule."]

http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/05/gary-johnson-debate-lawsuit-lawyer-bruce

[Rusty Edge]

Lots of links and supporting graphics in this one.

 http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-georgia-becoming-a-battleground-state/?ex_cid=2016-forecast

Is Georgia Becoming A Battleground State?
By Harry Enten

Filed under 2016 Election

Hillary Clinton is riding high in the polls. How high? A poll released by the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Friday found Clinton leading [Sleezebag] in Georgia, 41 percent to 38 percent. That follows other Georgia polls published this week also showing a close race in the Peach State. A Democratic presidential nominee hasn’t carried Georgia since 1992. So how big a deal is it that Clinton could win Georgia?

First, [Sleezebag] is still a favorite in the state. He has a 55 percent chance to win there,1 according to our polls-only forecast, and a 72 percent chance per our polls-plus model. (Our now-cast for Georgia, which projects each candidate’s chances of winning a hypothetical election today, show Clinton has a 59 percent chance.) Chances are that a Clinton win in Georgia would merely be an electoral cherry on top of an election blowout. Georgia has 16 electoral votes (tied for eighth most in the nation), but it has only between a 3 percent and a 4 percent chance of providing the decisive vote in the Electoral College, according to our models.

Still, the mere fact that Georgia has more than a minuscule chance of determining who wins the election is remarkable. We ran the different scenarios in which Georgia proves crucial in Clinton’s winning, and they all seem to have a fairly familiar theme. They look something like this (image’s from 270toWin.com’s handy mapmaker):

In these maps, Georgia is part of a “New South” backup plan for Clinton if [Sleezebag]’s plan to win states in the Midwest and Northeast is successful. In these examples, you’d imagine [Sleezebag] appealing to white voters without a college degree in states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Clinton then counters these victories by appealing to voters in the more diverse Southern states with growing populations, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. All of these states are at least one-third nonwhite.

The African-American population in Georgia, in particular, has grown a ton in recent years. Black voters made up just 23 percent of Georgia voters in the 2000 election compared with 30 percent in the 2012 election. Much of this growth has occurred in the Atlanta suburbs, in Rockdale and Clayton counties. Not surprisingly, those two counties are also first and fourth, respectively, in terms of the U.S. counties that trended the most Democratic from the 2000 to 2012 election.

Of course, having a large minority population isn’t a guarantee that a state will go Democratic (see Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, etc.). The white population in most of these states leans overwhelmingly Republican, but a Democrat, in order to carry the state, has to do not terribly with white voters. In 2012, President Obama lost white voters by about 60 percentage points in Georgia. That’s better than he did in Alabama and Mississippi but not good enough to carry the state. Obama lost white voters by between 25 and 35 percentage points in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in 2012, all states he carried that year. The AJC poll, meanwhile, has Clinton losing white voters by just 37 percentage points. That movement probably is because of voters with at least a college degree, as we are seeing nationwide. Clinton is winning college-educated voters by 11 percentage points according to the AJC poll, after Obama lost them by about 20 percentage points in Georgia in 2012. Clinton and [Sleezebag] are tied among non-college-educated voters, which is about the same result as in 2012.

Combine the trend of well-educated voters and [Sleezebag]’s earning of just 2 percent of support black voters in the AJC poll, and Clinton has a real shot to win Georgia.

[Rusty Edge]

The Green Party Convention started yesterday in Houston.
I'm struggling to find news about it.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/02/politics/jill-stein-ajamu-baraka-vice-presidential-candidate/

Green Party candidate Jill Stein names running mate
By Eugene Scott, CNN
Updated 3:14 PM ET, Tue August 2, 2016


Washington (CNN) — Presumptive Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has named Ajamu Baraka, an international human rights scholar and activist, as her running mate.

"Ajamu Baraka is a powerful, eloquent spokesperson for the transformative, radical agenda whose time has come -- an agenda of economic, social, racial, gender, climate, indigenous and immigrant justice," Stein said in a statement Tuesday. "Ajamu's life's work has embodied the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Stein, a doctor, is expected to be formally nominated as the Green Party's presidential candidate Saturday at its national convention in Houston.

Stein spokeswoman Meleiza Firueroa told CNN that Baraka was preparing a statement in response to his selection.

Baraka was the founding executive director of the US Human Rights Network and coordinator of the Black Left Unity Network's Committee on International Affairs.


Cornel West endorses Green Party candidate Jill Stein

Baraka also has served on several boards, including Amnesty International, the National Center for Human Rights Education and the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is a member of the Green Shadow Cabinet and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Stein said in her statement that she considered offering the spot to former Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator.

"The fit just wasn't right, as Senator Turner is still committed to try to save the soul of the Democratic Party. While we may not agree on whether that is possible, I respect her passion to fight for the people and wish her the best in her effort," Stein said.

A CNN/ORC poll released Monday found Stein polling at 5% with registered voters. Democrat Hillary Clinton leads with 45% and Republican Donald [Sleezebag] has 37% of the vote, with Libertarian Gary Johnson receiving 9%.