[quote=poorgradstudent]
Sounds like a truly awful model.
Trump wins the nomination, the Hillary Machine grinds him under her heels. He’s taken advantage of quirks in the Republican party and republican primary system. Moderate republicans don’t like him. Swing voters HATE him. He’s very poorly positioned to pivot to the middle for the general election campaign. He lacks the strong ground game Barrack Obama had in certain key swing states that helped give him the edge in 2008.
A Trump nomination could be catastrophic to Republicans down-ticket. Right now, if the Republicans nominate Rubio, I can see them keeping the Senate with 51 votes to 49 Democrats (and keeping the House by a healthy margin until 2020 because of gerrymandering). With Trump? The Democrats are likely to take the Senate and might even give the House a fight.
There hasn’t been a candidate quite like Trump before, so any model is likely going to have some issues.[/quote]
I don’t know about this analysis. Doesn’t Hillary share a lot of these same draw backs. I don’t know a lot of Democrats that are all that excited about voting for her. They probably will when push comes to shove against Trump, but Hillary certainly doesn’t seem to excite the liberal base. Those that want to preserve the status quo like her but that’s about it. Trump may be pompous and a bully, but policy wise he’s pretty in the middle. Maybe his rhetoric on illegal immigration is a little extreme but doing something to prevent more illegal immigration is certainly popular. He’s not going to be calling for banning gay marriage or abortions as far as I can tell.
Also does Hillary even have a machine. I mean you lost to Obama the last go around when you were the sure thing. You’re scrapping by Sanders this go around and you have the potential to be indicated for improperly handling classified information. I’d almost be willing to bet Trump is the Republican nominee before I’d bet Hillary is the Democratic nominee at this point.