2016 US Presidential Election Predictions

2016 Election Predictions

(Since this is a history group let’s find a historical context for our comments; anyone can spout opinions.)

I predict Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States.

Why? Simple. America votes with its heart and not its head. Clinton is a policy wonk and Trump is truly visceral. In a contest of intellect vs. emotion, the voter will always go with his gut.

My historical precedents are:

1-Adlai Stevenson vs. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“Stevenson was defeated in a landslide by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.

2-In 1956 Adlai Stevenson was again the Democratic presidential nominee against Eisenhower, but was defeated in an even bigger landslide.”wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II

3- Ronald Reagan vs. President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

4- Ronald Reagan vs Walter Mondale in 1984.

5-et. al……

Given the choice between decision making based on the intellect and raw meat, the American electorate has repeatedly throughout shown that it will choose raw meat every time.

So, IF Donald Trump does not for some reason implode along the way, and anything can happen, he will be the next US president.

Of course most people don't know what The Donald thinks and certainly Donald doesn't either. Just check his website:

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/

For a person to have so few position papers on his website at this late stage in the game certainly speaks volumes.

If you have an opinion, share with us your reasoning for your choice of who will be the next president based on historical precedents.

NB…I would have liked Bernie but he called for a revolution and people never came. You need people to have a party...

I predict that Trump will come to the Republican Party convention with a majority of delegates, but he will be denied the nomination. He will find a way to turn this to his personal advantage. The Republican Party will suffer badly and the nominee — probably the callow and uninspiring Marco Rubio — will be soundly defeated by Hillary Clinton in a low-turnout anticlimax in which most voters cast ballots against rather than for someone.

IOW this could be something of an inversion of the Democratic Party's punishment during the Nixon era, 1968-74. If we are lucky it will force the GOP to abandon its radical rightism. If we are unlucky we will see growing fissures in an ever more mutually mistrustful society, with a few people resorting to sensational violence to express their political views. This too has some precedent in the '60s plague of assassinations.

Just for shits and giggles I'd like to see Trump get elected, now that Ted "Grandpa Munster" Cruz failed to deliver. As Bernie does not have a snowball's chance in hell America will continue on the road towards craziness and total annihilation anyway.

>2 Muscogulus:

I think that's a very reasonable scenario and it wouldn't surprise me at all if you're right about this. On the other hand, I could also see it happening with this twist: Trump could become the Republican nominee-or, indeed, run as an independent if he's not the nominee--and, in either case go down to defeat.

The people of the U.S. get another utterly conventional power-serving creature of their corrupt political system, one who, as Obama has done, satisfies the shallow and petty-minded fools who imagine that a black man like Obama or a woman like Hillary Clinton in the presidency somehow represents some respectable kind of progress. Another four or eight years of precious time which cannot be afforded us shall again be uselessly wasted.

Idiots shall say to themselves "See? The system worked. Sanders had a shot but didn't make it. And we have passed a new and historic mile-stone."

It has been proven that an utterly conventional black man can become a U.S. president; and Hillary's election shall demonstrate the same thing about a woman.

an utterly conventional black man can become a U.S. president;

What's wrong with "utterly conventional" people becoming presidents?

We can all dream up our own ideal leaders, but most of us are grown up enough to realise dreams aren't in the running.

>1 Urquhart:

"Clinton is a policy wonk and Trump is truly visceral."

While those are both true, Obama was and is, if anything, an even more bloodless, calculating policy-wonk than Clinton; and his defeat of first of Cain/Palin and later of
--good grief, was it Mitt Romney! ?-- doesn't conform to your theory.

>7 proximity1:

You already posted that in >4 proximity1:.

>5 LolaWalser:
'What's wrong with "utterly conventional" people becoming presidents?'

The system's complete corruption makes any such person the creature of that corruption.

>8 LolaWalser:

My browser shows no such post # 4. It displays 1 - 3 followed by 7.

Update: Lola, _now_ the intervening posts are visible. So--I think--I deleted one of the two. ;^)

>1 Urquhart:

"If you have an opinion, share with us your reasoning for your choice of who will be the next president based on historical precedents."

Hillary Clinton--a prediction, certainly not _my_ choice. Based on U.S. electoral precedent since George Washington.

In the last hour (per The Guardian (London) )

George Clooney: Trump is a xenophobic fascist.

Mitt Romney: Trump is a phony, a fraud...playing the American people/public for suckers.

In my view, Trump thinks he is sincere--not the corrupt power's useful idiot intended to frighten voters into the clutches of their own Hillary Clinton.

It really doesn't matter who wins the election. Some will be pleased and some will not. In 2020 we all will be asking what happened and wondering what BS to believe from the next crop of idiots.

>13 LamSon: Oh no - it *really* matters who wins the election. Do you think it didn't matter that George W. Bush became president instead of Al Gore? Gore might not be your cup of tea, but we'd be living in a very different world today had he been president.

Same in the UK, where I am. A hard-right government got in last time and is making huge changes which are having massive negative effects on ordinary people's lives.

It really, really matters who wins.

>14 IanFryer:

I agree with your point as a matter of general principle. But as a practical matter in these two specific cases (i. e. contemporary U.S. & U.K.) the real differences between Cameron and Miliband or between Trump and Hillary Clinton--or Bill, for that matter--are exaggerated while the difference between any of them and either Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders is significant.

It doesn't matter. Each candidate, when they aren't calling each other names, are promising something just this side of utopia. Of course they never really say how we'll get there. So, in four years there will this same debate, about the evils of right/left and nothing will have changed.

If elections changed anything they´d be illegal.

>16 LamSon::
>17 Phlegethon99::
British elections change things, Canadian elections change things, but Do American Elections and French ones change things?
C. Northcote Parkinson wrote an essay on whether the shape of the legislative chamber has an effect on effective change. His conclusion was that the rectangular box-shaped chambers like the House of Commons do have strongly varying parties, while those countries with very small differences in policies have semi-circular chambers...is this borne out in the USA? what about your country Phlegethon? Box or semi?

>15 proximity1: The reality on the ground (to pick just two examples)is that the Conservatives are making a sustained effort to destroy the National Health Service and the BBC. Much as the Red Ed stuff about Milliband was nonsense dreamed up in the right wing press to frighten the electorate, this would never have happened under a Labour government, for all the party's faults.

>19 IanFryer:

True, the Tories are doing those things; however, from that fact to the supposition that Miliband (with those he had around him) could be counted on to effectively counter those destructive Tory policies, for me, simply defies the evidence we had and have. Miliband simply lacks Corbyn's focus and fire. The best thing he did for those institutions was to lose his position to Corbyn--who now can present a genuine alternative to the Tories as Miliband never could or should have done.

Bernie threw a revolution and nobody came? Judging by media coverage that seems to be true but its not. He went from an unknown to giving Secretary Clinton a real contest. The vast majority of democrats under 30 and the majority of them under 45 support him. The "news" media refuses to cover him. Since only six corporations control the US media I see that as a sign that he is the working citizen's best chance at a fair shake. The media is obsessed with Trump, a media insider who freely admits to using the pay to play system to his advantage. I won't predict what social changes he would bring as president but there is no doubt that business interests, not citizens, would be his administrations number one concern. Even more than it has been for every administration since Jimmy Carter.

>21 TLCrawford: I doubt if the interests of any business not owned by D. Trump would be a concern of President Trump. Utterly self-serving and unprincipled.

>22 IanFryer:

Bankers will feel right at home with him. They might even have some of his markers and could call those in.

"Sir, I have Goldman-Sachs for you on 'one.' "

"Thank you, I'll take it. This the President of the Free World."

"President The Donald! ((tm)/(c))--
How are you !? How about dinner? Are you free?"

Especially he ones that have bailed out his failed businesses in the past.

See the _revised_ post, above.

In the OP, I predicted Trump for President for 2016.

Yesterday, a local high school senior was fixing my computer and told me all the kids in his high school are chanting Trump in 16 in the halls.

Yesterday also I was talking with a next door neighbor, of about 54 yrs. of age, re the election. On the topic of Obama and Hilary she was totally out of control and couldn't vent enough re her anger over their short comings. (i of course said nothing...)

My wife says Clinton will win, but I say it will be Trump.

Others might disagree:

http://fortune.com/2016/02/25/casinos-gambling-president-odds/

(ps: am i the only person in America that finds Donald Trump's taste in women to be bizarre? I mean for a sit down coffee and a fun chat give me Jane Sanders (Bernie's wife) or Dorothy Hamill- people you can talk to, but Melania Trump or Ivana Marie Trump? I don't think so....)

>26 Urquhart:

To have predicted a Trump victory back at the first of March when there were still few indications of how well Trump could do in the primaries--the near totality of which still lay ahead--is a remarkable piece of political prognostication on your part!

At the time of your post, there was virtually no one of any prominence in the news profession who gave Trump any chance at all to win the nomination, let alone the race itself--still an open question.

The other thing I did not foresee was that Sanders would pose such a challenge to Clinton that she'd have to go so far as to openly defraud the primary elections' procedures.

>27 proximity1: The other thing I did not foresee was that Sanders would pose such a challenge to Clinton that she'd have to go so far as to openly defraud the primary elections' procedures.

Can you source that?

Republican Stalwarts see Trump as the person he is ... a vain and vanglorious bully with so little understanding of the issues that they are all but sure he would seek them out for guidance, were he ever elected. Of course they would manipulate him to believe the decisions are his and his alone, but, even now he has begun to rely on their better judgment. They only have to make certain he gets all the credit.

Personalities in the world are divided into introvert, extrovert, and narcissists-or blends there of.

A recent article in the Atlantic -I believe-not sure- quoted a Yale psychology prof. as saying that he thought he had to make up some scripts and videos for his students to explain the narcissist personality type. However in watching Donald all he had to do was collect what he saw of Donald and use those for class.

Donald is an unadulterated narcissist showman. He sucks oxygen out of the room just by breathing. He just can't help saying outrageous things and being the center of attention.

In my family when I was growing up, if I said what Donald said, then I would be sent to my room and told not to come downstairs until I calmed down and was willing to behave in a civil manner with the rest of the adults at the meal table. Seriously.

And yes, I have put down money that Donald will win.

Living in a country led by the Donald, is very much like riding on a big time Roller Coaster, in as much as you have no control over it and yes they have been known to go off the tracks. So relax; you can't do anything other than move your chips to the center of the table and bet on Donald to win.

The Roman Circus wants Raw Meat and not policy statements.

I find Predictive History fascinating; more people should write solid predictions based on history. If I can do it anyone can.

>28 JerryMmm:

CAVEAT : I have not read all of the following yet but, unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard about NY & NV -- These two examples are just the best-known, most glaring. Have you watched video of the NV Caucus and ghe chair's outrageous rulings in favour of Clinton?

I recommend you do a little youtube searching --it should not be difficult. Judge for yourself--if you're honest.

In your favourite search-engine, type the following : Clinton cheating

Voters Report Suspicious Irregularities in Three Different ...

http://usuncut.com/politics/election-issues-primary/

Clinton Does Best Where Voting Machines Flunk Hacking Tests ...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/16/clinton-does-best-where-voting-machines-f...

New York voting irregularities under investigation after primary - NY ...

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-voting-irregularities-investigat...

Nevada State Caucus: Hillary Clinton Operatives Utilize Common Thuggery to Deny Sanders Delegates/Supporters Voice

https://electionfraud2016.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/nevada-state-caucus-utilizes-...

Things to consider:

Brand New Congress

http://brandnewcongress.org/home

>31 proximity1: in >27 proximity1: you said: The other thing I did not foresee was that Sanders would pose such a challenge to Clinton that she'd have to go so far as to openly defraud the primary elections' procedures.

That means you accuse Hillary of her campaign of defrauding the election procedures.
While the incidents you mention seem to be irregularities, I don't see evidence the Clinton campaign orchestrating these or them committing outright fraud.

There is a climate being created of complete mistrust in officials. They're people, they do make mistakes, and often that's because they're not professional bureaucrats, but regular people trying to serve their country. I believe the maxim of Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Or in most cases incompetence, because those election board officials are not strupid. They're just not properly trained.

What I do see is a severely disorganised voting apparatus throughout the USA. The fact you can have 2 systems of electing state party representatives (caucus and primary) in different states is strange enough. The fact that there doesn't seem to be a real effort on either parties' part to properly coordinate and standardise primary election procedures is even stranger.

When it comes to the general election I do see more evidence of malice when talking about disenfranchising voters, mostly by GOP controlled election boards. It's not incompetence when you're specifically creating laws right after getting into office that eliminate voting places and put up restrictions to voting that overwhelmingly affect those voters who tend to vote for the other party.
(This besides the fact that the whole voting registration system is just silly. Just make it like Oregon now and make everyone eligible at 18 by default).

Sanders has now been given 5 to Hillary's 6 delegates at the party platform committee, partly as a response to the Nevada meeting. That wasn't as bad as some people reported btw. There are a lot of people coming in to politics that don't know how things work, and when they don't get what they want or hear what they want to hear, cause a stir. But there are rules in place for a reason. Doesn't mean you can't change the rules, but there are rules for changing those rules as well, and they should be followed, not shouted down.

background: I'm from .nl, but would vote D in elections in the US. I think Hillary would get more done with congress, and Bernie has good ideas.

>33 JerryMmm:

"Just make it like Oregon now and make everyone eligible at 18 by default)."

Yes. Indeed! I would ask in every instance where such an obvious and simple course is not the norm, "Why isn't it already the case?"

My answer rejects as simply naive and too simplistic the view that much can be explained just as well by honest mistakes and incompetence.

When one looks carefully and closely at the whole political order in the U.S. (or in the U.K.) one finds too many things which operate in concert toward the same reasonable end: a thwarting of regular and reliable democratic processes by which a majority of citizens can effectively participate in a political order which is free, fair, democratic, open and reliable.

Whenever and wherever this is not the case the reasons are that powerful interests have worked to preclude these conditions--they cannot be reasonably explained as accidents or routine incompetence because if that were the case, the system would not reliably keep effective control out of the hands of ordinary voters.

But it does. And that cannot just be an accident-- not when billions--or, really, trillions-- of dollars depend on these conditions.

Though honest errors and ordinary incompetence are always a factor, what's more important is determining what is happening as evidenced by patterned trends and behaviours which span large areas.

Also, all of these authorities are people who are acting in offices of public trust. In such a circumstance "amateur incompetence" is not an acceptable excuse. A state party caucus (at which delegates to a national party convention which nominates the candidate for the office of the presidency of the United States shall be selected) is too important to be run by someone who is not well experienced in the duties of a chairman and the party's rules of order at official meetings.

Well, in Canada, you can vote in a general election, even if you are in jail for a felony, and we recently defeated a government that was apparently intent on voter reduction on the pattern of the Republicans in the USA. Therefore, I'm with the Oregon pattern overall.
Someone will, I'm sure, advance the argument that the two political parties are, at the bottom, COMMERCIAL entities, entitled to make whatever restrictions they deem necessary in determining their nominees. Thus the welter of methods for the conduct of primaries and/or Caucuses. I have to use "And/Or because at least one state has both a Primary and a caucus! (Good Grief!)
This has validity, if you believe that the commercial pattern is the only way a candidate for your elected offices can be brought before the public. But in my opinion, the USA should change that, by fiat from your electoral oversight bodies.
Our Federal parties, choose their leaders, and thus their candidate, by voting delegates to party general meetings, always called before the next general election....except for the ruling Liberals who do so by appointing an interim leader following the death or resignation of the previous leader. They have a year until the membership either confirms the appointed interim leader, should the interim leader choose to syand as a candidate for permanent leader or elects another person who has put forward their name for leadership. Thus, an election could be conducted with the appointed leader as the possible Prime Minister candidate. Usually, however, the elections do not occur in the interim leader's reign.
To, me this is vastly clearer than the Primary system you currently employ down there. But, as Proximity1 has pointed out, Clarity and simplicity may not be the goals of the Two Party USA system.

Trump will win. Note that I don't consider this an optimal outcome; merely a likely one.

We are pattern seeking apes, poorly equipped to recognize when there are none.

It leads to conspiracy thinking, jesus on toast, man in the moon and Paul is dead backwards.

You're right when you say it's no excuse for party officials to bungle such an important stage in the process. But one has to wonder who's principally responsible for that. Most of them are elected. Is the fact that they put themselves forward enough to elect them? When the choice is between one from your party and one from the other, you choose the one from your party generally, or you don't vote. Either way, you get what you vote for. Being electable is no guarantee for being competent.

There are a lot of incompetent people in the world.

****cough**inhofe***snowball*in**winter**proves**global**warming**isn't**happening**cough**

>37 JerryMmm:

Jerry --

I'm not one who finds conspiracy is the explanation for everything. Should I list examples?

But I actually think that _more_ people too readily discount conspiracy where there exist good grounds to suspect it---we're herd-like, comfort-in-conformity-seeking apes--- than who properly take its possibility into account where facts suggest it is a warranted suspicion.

So, people ought to ask (but too rarely ask) :

¤ is there reasonably significant motive for fraud and collusion? (is there significant "payoff" for fraud?)

¤ is there sufficient opportunity if the motivation is there? ( _Could_ circumstances be corrupted, manipulated, defrauded, if motivated people were in enough key positions--could they conspire? )

And what, if any, security measures would _prevent_ their doing so?

The trouble with automatically dismissing all suspicion of fraud and conspiracy is that

it creates a climate which invites conspiracy:

"No one's going to suspect this. We'll shrug them off as "conspiracy nuts."

it naively supposes that people are either honest and fair or, when it seems they're not, it's due to accident or incompetence.

If caught, we'll say we just made honest mistakes;
"we're amateurs doing a complicated job."

For decades people warned that goverment agencies were spying illegally on the general population's private communications. Despite occasional whistle-blowers coming forth and confirming those suspicions, the people doing the warning were consistently and effectively silenced, dismissed, as swivel-eyed conspiracy nuts

If there is motive, opportunity and a climate where trust is too easily granted, eventually some are going to exploit the opportunities for fraud. Police and prosecutors know this. Why don't more of the rest of us?

11/09/2001 was just as it seemed: a straight forward terrorist attack, not an "inside job."

NASA astronauts really did land on the moon.

There's no good evidence at all for a "second" (or other) "shooter" operating in Dallas at Dealy Plaza on 22 November, 1963.

But! plenty of people sold sub-prime mortgage-backed securities and the wildly ridiculous credit-default-swaps which were said to create a secure trading environment for investing firms and individuals when, instead of spreading risk across a large community which could absorb large-scale losses, and by doing so they disguised risks of default, making it impossible for even some experts to properly evaluate their exposure to default and made themselves at the very least complicit in widescale securities fraud. Many of these people had good reasons to be aware of what they were doing. Similarly, a deliberately deregulated, unregulated investment industry is tailor-made for those who have deep-pockets and can profit from the completely predictable boom-and-bust culture created from it, riding out the storms of market turmoil and swooping in later for bargains when things come crashing down.

Multi-Millionaires and billionaires do not fund the political and electoral systems out of public-spirited generosity. They are business-minded men and women who expect a great deal in return for their contributions and if their expectations weren't met, those contributions wouldn't continue.

Finally, in addition, there are simply a great many opportunities which arise from the existence of coincidences of interest--not always designed with fraud in mind but which easily lend themselves to fraud as soon as those with the means to take advantage notice these coincidental opportunities.

A good example is off-shore financial havens. For many, these were perused for legitimate and reasonable motives while others saw the same structures could be used for other quite illegal and disreputable purposes.

It's as bad to be too trusting as it is to be too suspicious.

_trump_is_going_to_win

This is a long and very meandering article but I think it makes a good point: The Donald will win.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/23/donald_trump_is_going_to_win_this_is_why_hillary...

As a person whose primar....principal interest is in history, how things work out over time, I am less a believer in large overarching (and overreaching) conspiracy, than in the explanation that there are a very large number of interlocking conspiracies, whose interactions create the larger historical movements, and the result of all those interactions being a system that very closely resembles chaos. And I don't think the essentially opportunistic Trump campaign will not result in a Trump presidency. I think Americans have more sense. I may be an optimist, but... (What if the Supreme Court stages a coup comparable to the one that gave you Bush2 rather than Gore?)

>40 DinadansFriend:

. "I may be an optimist, but... (What if the Supreme Court stages a coup comparable to the one that gave you Bush2 rather than Gore?)"

Indeed, we know now that that is a possibility. But I wouldn't cite it as a cause for an optimistic outcome. It would represent another betrayal of popular sentiment as expressed through votes and, just as Bush v. Gore was, another serious repudiation of democratic practice rather than its vindication. So popular trust in elections would be further eroded--the last thing we need now.

I am aware that most people don't think a Donald Trump thread can be rooted in history but this one definitely is.

Homer's Iliad starts with speaking of rage and continues on throughout about rage and how it affects people's lives.

Donald is giving voice to all the rage so many people feel for so many different reasons at this particular time in America's history. Hilary is not; she is sitting back and hoping to reason with rage.

Note to Hilary:
You can't reason with full blown
rage.

I will never understand why it is that Freud's theory of sex as the great motivator for the personality was never set aside for a theory concerning rage

It is rage when linked with narcissism that knows no limits.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_%28mythology%29

Yup, I am moving my chips to the center of the table and betting on Trump.

>42 Urquhart:

The Iliad isn't history. It's an epic poem. We have no evidence that Achilles ever really existed. So citing the Iliad is not rooting one's commentary in history.

You started an interesting thread asking for historical counterparts to Trump, and the group proposed several. But I think the consensus of The Wise is that Donald Trump is unprecedented. To borrow a very different literary allusion, he's like The Mule in Asimov's Foundation, the unlikely historical actor who throws off all the confident historical forecasting by superpundit Hari Selden.

After all, presidential elections only happen every four years, so the number of data points we have since the founding of the National Security State after WW2 is only 16. This year's vote will be no. 17. That's not a large number of events to induce patterns from.

That said, I don't think Trump's victory is assured; in fact, I think he has a much tougher road to winning than Hillary Clinton does. Yes, I know current polls have them in a dead heat, but the voting is still half a year away. Most of those who will vote have not even begun to take the contest seriously. Even many of his outspoken supporters speak in self-justifying terms about him, distancing themselves from some of his behavior and attitudes while supporting him as a means of protest against the establishment.

The most important fact about public opinion, I think, is the high degree of dissatisfaction with the choice that the party system has disgorged for us this year.

Trump's personality in each its various particularities can be found exampled in others (elected politicians) and especially in other ultra rich egotistical businessmen; only Trump's own combination of these characteristics sets him somewhat "apart." He's a bit like "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, like Ross Perot --though Perot, unlike Trump, really did start from "scratch"-- and like so many self-obsessed rich business tycoons. The best place to go looking for Trump's rich, philistine counterparts may be among the now-less-well-known "Robber Barons" of the 1870s to 1920s, the period which resembles our own period's moral decadence in so many ways. Indeed, those who see Trump's rise as the sign of the coming of the End Times ought to read The robber barons: the story of the great American capitalists 1861-1901 by Matthew Josephson even though Trump himself cannot be called a great American capitalist in the sense these earlier men were.

Politicians and the wealthy who owned and financed them resembled Trump in numerous ways--usually without anything of his strain of populist anti-Washington-Insider renegade.

Since our politics is a private game-room for the rich, we have to see Trump as one of the rare examples of the rich-people-on-offer who isn't a dreary clone of the monotype. If we're stuck with multi-millionaires and billionaires, we should not react in shock and horror when we're presented with one who, for better and for worse, stands out from the usual cardboard cut-out figures. This, as appallingly pathetic as it is, is a kind of weird "progress," where both Obama offered and the Clintons offer none at all.

43 Muscogulus

See threads i have posted to address the issues you have raised.

While we are discussing Trump, let's go to Plutarch's lives and examine the curious case of Marcus Licinius Crassus, a man who parlayed a career in a sad style of disaster capitalism, land speculation and political ambition into a role as a triumvir. And as Trump has a "crass" act, I just thought of this sidelight. :-)
>44 proximity1::
Bernie Sanders is a still better example of the man from nowhere, and he offers real change, not a lip-sticked pig!
>43 Muscogulus::
As long as we are discussing "Rage" as a political meme, that brings us to Henry II of England whose rages were epic, and Richard I who was also a tent-sulker of serious proportions.

>42 Urquhart: "I will never understand why it is that Freud's theory of sex as the great motivator for the personality was never set aside for a theory concerning rage"

Actually, Freud's theory covers both. His proposition holds that the two basic drives in human psychology are sex and aggression. Rage would be an intense manifestation of aggression.

>42 Urquhart::
>47 stellarexplorer::
For serious motivators we come to the homicide detective's checklist: 1) Money. 2) Offended Vanity Rage? 3) Sex/Love.
And the most popular of these motives for murder, is.... 2) Offended vanity. Rage is offended vanity.

No doubt you extend the theory. Mine was a mere clarification of Freud.

I obviously am not well read on Freud. Thanks for the correction.

>47 stellarexplorer:

My two-bits "worth" (?)

Freud should have been benefited greatly from the work of Konrad Lorenz. A pity he missed it. (But we haven't)

Perhaps it's unfair to Freud to attribute to him such a rather simplistic "sex / agression" dichotomy (excuse me if that interpretation is taken too far; and my fuzzy memory on it is that Freud saw a close relation between sex drive and agression) but (certainly, if Freud did not, then) I think Lorenz teaches us that there is no clear line separating sexual passion and agression--and, for you (female) feminists, that includes your passions, too.

On Aggression

Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)

---------------------

>48 DinadansFriend:

Agreed.

Sanders for President! Now!

Scott Adams of Dilbert has been posting some interesting blog posts on his blog (duh).

He goes a bit off the deep end re: Clinton in his latest though. But the remark about or (in)ability to predict the future are spot on.

>53 JerryMmm:

I generally agree with most of Adams' points but I think he overstates the case against having a well-founded negative opinion of a person's political record. He discounts the critic's views as based on counter factual arguments. There is something to that. It ignores a lot of things, however. In almost every important political decision, during the process of deliberation, one or more advisors, colleagues or consultants will raise practically all of the negative aspects of the action (or inaction) proposed.

When someone repeatedly, often, usually or nearly always warns that the director's plan is flawed for X reasons and those criticisms are actually borne out, then that person demonstrates better judgement than the one ignoring his or her advice. That's not in itself proof that a competing course should certainly have succeeded or proven more effective but that's what the smart money would tend to favor as a probability.

By his own account, Adams has not done a terrific job of assessing presidents' prospects for doing well or badly. Others weren't surprised at George W. Bush's bellicose tenure. They read and took proper account of indicators which Adams could have known.

Before he was elected, I wrote that Obama was making lavish promises to an electorate which had just suffered the ravages of two Bush terms in the White House and that Obama's overpromising, his raising the public's expectations of a president when public trust and confidence had been so long and so badly abused, was dangerously reckless of him because there were good reasons to doubt that he'd actually be able to accomplish as much--even providing that he fought like a lion to get things done.

That he turned out to be no real fighter at all was even more disastrous than if he'd fought courageously and still failed to achieve much of anything.

---------

P.S.

There are two factors I forgot to include so this is to add them.

I suspect that close proximity to presidents makes even a wise advisor's judgment more prone to error than if he or she were observing from a more detached and objective point of view. In short, "it is harder to read the tea leaves from inside the cup."

On the other hand, some personal experience in a national presidential campaign has impressed on me the importance of having first-hand knowledge of and acquaintance with both the principals involved and their trusted advisors and their thinking on issues--because without that one has practically no idea of what and who are actually influencing the political judgments and how and why they are. Much that seems strange from outside the closed circle of the political actors makes at least some arguable sense from within it. It's a paradox.

My OP re Donald Trump winning the presidency in Novermber 2016 regretfully did not take into account the entertainment factor of his running.

By that I mean to suggest that like a favorite song or a favorite drug, one can have too much of a fun thing; in fact anything. More and more of anything, after a point, is no longer fun.

In The Donald’s case I did not factor into the equation that the media would be so responsive to his every utterance. Because they behave as they do, I sense that an element of “media burn” or fatigue with Donald is very likely to kick in before November.

By November, if he keeps going at this pace and the media continues behaving like a “cat on a hot tin roof” with his every utterance, then it is entirely possible people will just become bored by him, start to turn elsewhere and thereby discredit him.

It is no secret to anyone that celebrities have to beware the over exposure issue and I believe Donald is quickly approaching that point. TV shows like celebrities have their time, and at this pace Donald could burn through all the media exposure that people are willing to consume.

I worked for NBC TV for many years and saw shows come and go. Becoming predictable and boring with your entertainment is just not good for ratings. Ratings matter in entertainment and politics.

The Circus constantly searches for new distractions but can become easily bored.

Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson that said in order for a democracy to work properly, you need to have a knowledgeable electorate. Most of our citizens don't try to understand and become aware of the most pressing issues of the day. So, this is what we have today, a situation where I find myself voting against a politician instead of for a statesman. Neither party seems interested in putting forth their best people. Not sure who will win, but, I'm tired of professional politicians!

>56 JaneAustenNut: In this quadrennial affair of ours, who among the people running for the Presidency aren't politicians? My dictionary defines politicians as seekers of public office who are more concerned about winning favour than about maintaining principles. That appears to include every single candidate. The only real difference is who each politician is trying to please.

>42 Urquhart: "Yup, I am moving my chips to the center of the table and betting on Trump."

How much money have you invested in a Trump victory in the prediction markets?

I am a long time big bettor; I don't pussy foot around.

Back in March I bet $1.00 for Trump to win the nomination.

In April I bet $2.00 for him to win the Presidential election.

I don't pussy foot around.

I'm thinking of moving my betting operation out to Las Vegas but I am not sure the mob could handle the competition. Also, I am too busy with other things right now.

Although now I confess that by November there is the real chance that Trump will bore people as a result of the "media burn" or exposure, and people will just stop listening to him. I know I have. I had not thought of that before.

That "media burn" could be my Black Swan event. Black Swans are tricky, and I thought I had thought of everything.

Some days I look around and see nothing but possible Black Swans. I am not sure but I think that is a contradiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

>1 Urquhart: Urquhart, what is your prediction for 2020?