This makes superdelegates sound less shady. Great job GOP, you really pulled off looking the worse of the two terrible parties. Quick question...who among the two first proposed to build the wall?
You can't blame the "establishment" that 70% or more of the country dislike Trump and think he's a joke. The rules are what the rules are and if Trump knew more about what he was trying to do, and hired better, more competent people to run his campaign, then they'd have worked like the Cruz campaign did and tried to secure those delegates. Trump is simply a whiny b**** who has the mentality of a 5 year old and is upset that he is going to lose and can't comprehend that he's going to lose fair and square because he ran a bad campaign and people simply don't like him. By all means though, continue parroting Trump's BS, it won't make it true though. All this does is solidify the image of Trump and his worshipers as nothing more than childish douchebags who shouldn't be taken seriously.
The Republican primary, as convoluted a process as it seems, in some ways can weed out the dopes pretending to know what they're doing. Trump has no clue how to organize. His kids didn't even know when to register to vote for him. Cruz is schlonging him in this process because the egghead actually studies the rules. If Trump is getting so badly outmaneuvered now, imagine if he became President. The poor b*stard would get bamboozled into letting the UAE annex Connecticut.
No, it isn't the conspiracy. The 'establishment' in Washington can't make Republicans in some local congressional district vote for this or that delegate. They can't make the state's party leadership appoint this or that delegate. They can go around and talk to leadership in the 50 states and the umpteen districts, be active in the local party decisionmaking, but no one can force the local organizations to do anything. A lot of those guys had potential to be sympathetic to Trump, who apparently has broad appeal. But Cruz's campaign got to all those guys and Trump's did not. As an outsider, Trump didn't know how to do it.
Local party still need to register with FEC if they want to be involved with election related activities and granted funds. Some states have different regulations on how much they can be funded before being required to register but the party guidelines explicitly states that once registered with the FEC they are operating under the same federal committees. So, when you put 'establishment' in quotation like somehow the GOP party establishment doesn't exist and have no influence at the district level is quite naive. Even at the district level nobody would bite the hand that feeds them, and to be fair most of the district chairs have already been pre-screened anyways as people who would toll the GOP agendas. Could Trump have been more proactive in trying to sway these people, probably, but it would have been a difficult and costly task. Being someone that is on the fence between Sanders/Trump, I feel like Trump's negligence has only helped him. His poll results have jumped considerably since the Colorado thing happened, and from what I can tell on other Bernie discussion sites, many of his supporters are now more sympathetic and open to the idea of supporting Trump in general if Sanders is not nominated. Whether Trump did this intentionally or through dumb luck, it seems like the right move and has only benefited his stance on being the outsider/anti-establishment.
In your estimation, is the pool of voters who are on the fence between Sanders/Trump larger, smaller, or roughly the same size as the pool of people who wake up in the morning trying to decide between going out and buying a Prius/Harley?
I'm skeptical, but figure you might be right. I'm related to someone who's been active in local party machinery before, so I've asked him for his perspective. If he has any interesting insight, I'll bring it back here.
I assume you are trying to be funny, so I will answer the best way I know how. That pool as far as I know is 1, me, as I can't speak for others. I don't know what would lead you to believe I know such things, as there really isn't a public forum for people who are "on the fence for Sanders/Trump", and nowhere in my post do I allude to knowing such said group. Perhaps tomorrow when you wake up you can decide between making another irrelevant post on the forums or getting some reading comprehension classes.
I would be happy to hear any other perspective out there, as this is one of the most interesting things happening right now for both parties. The sad truth, that both parties being private organizations, means they have the right to do as they please, and we the people should just be happy they are letting us vote the nomination process at all. It's just a big shocker when all of a sudden, when 2 separate candidates are being so blatantly opposed by the establishment parties, it makes you wonder why we are even stuck in a 2 party system anyways.
Ted Cruz started laying the groundwork in California a year ago. It took his campaign a solid five months to find 159 delegates and 159 alternates in the state's 53 congressional districts, along with 10 more state wide and their alternates. The top three leaders of the California Republican party will also be delegates. Five months it took the extremely efficient and well organized campaign to work through this process. They are finished. But Donald Trump just hire his California state director yesterday. He has 24 days to not only get up and running, but to complete this process in its entirety. According to California rules, if you do not have a slate of delegates properly submitted for a district, even if you win the vote, you will not receive the delegates. And the Trump campaign may want to be sure and vet these delegates pretty thoroughly, lest they inadvertently nominate people who turn out later to be sleepers for another candidate. Of course these rules have been publicly known for a long time. Nobody is conspiring against anyone here, regardless of what the incessantly whining Donald Trump says to the contrary. You have to compete by the rules if you want to win, Donald. If you fail to do that, or fail to do it well, you have nobody to blame but yourself when you lose.
On this I think we can agree. The parties are not the government, they are just civic institutions. They can set their rules on how to pick their nominees. If members don't like it, they can use the institution's own rules to change the way they operate or else leave. And of course, they are under no obligation to support the nominee. Maybe Trump's first mistake is trying to be an outsider and yet use the machinery of an insider organization. If he is genuinely anti-establishment than he's not really a Republican and it shouldn't be surprising that his co-opting of the Party wasn't going to be tolerated. Run third party if you're a real outsider. Since he's obviously not going to get the Republican nomination, I hope he does exactly that. It'd be so anti-climatic if he just gives up after the convention.
It was half-jesting, I'll admit. I'm sorry if I came off as dismissive, but it's just difficult to believe that anyone can vacillate between the two solely based on the anti-establishment / anti-free-trade angle and just overlook every other area where they are just diametrically opposed (policy, temperament, etc.). From your perspective then, what else is it that leaves you on the fence between the two? Opposition to the remaining choices?
These are very valid points. Trump is not really a republican on policies or anything else, he does not like other republicans, he does not like the republican party, he does not like the republican party bosses, he does not like the republican mouth piece (Fox news) ... He continues to bash all of them on most everything, it's really strange that he still runs under the party's banner and makes them suffer through all of these diatribes. I can almost feel sorry for the republican party, .... almost ... :grin:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">At Pennsylvania rally, Donald Trump calls to "bring back" Penn State coach Joe Paterno. <a href="https://t.co/oM6mZ5W548">https://t.co/oM6mZ5W548</a> <a href="https://t.co/5KsTnFG4nJ">pic.twitter.com/5KsTnFG4nJ</a></p>— ABC News (@ABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC/status/720416395947819008">April 14, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
FREE THE PEDOS! MAKE MURCA GRATE!! If he pulls half the delegates from here on, he'll really have to shoot someone to get this monkey off his back.
