This isn’t good news for Trump. Even the military rank and file are trending away from him. 2. Who Is Trump’s Base? A note from a friend who works in politics who we’ll call Professor Peter Venkman: Bill McRaven's op-ed endorsing Joe Biden got me thinking about two things: First, it's extraordinary that so much military brass—people who Republican voters would've looked to for guidance circa 2000 - 2015—have abandoned Trump publicly and, in some cases, thrown in for Biden. Kelly is essentially a defector. Mattis is anti-Trump. Hayden is pro-Biden. And just the sheer number of people in the defense and nat-sec establishments is staggering. For what it's worth, I think McRaven's piece is a Bee-er Eff Dee than Mattis's: It appeared in a forum read by Republicans (the WSJ op-ed page in print instead of The Atlantic dot com), and the author went out of his way to identify himself as "a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative." That statement has a lot of "See? I'm just like you" energy for a particular audience. The second is: We know by now that generals and admirals are speaking out in extraordinary ways, but what about the rank-and-file military vote? Where does it stand in this election? I haven't seen much coverage of it. I checked out Stars and Stripes and the Military Times, and the most recent, germane story is this one in the Military Times from August 31: "Trump’s popularity slips in latest Military Times poll — and more troops say they’ll vote for Biden." MT partners with Syracuse University for its polling, so I'm inclined to give the survey the benefit of the doubt. The caveat is that the respondents were identified just as "active-duty troops," not active-duty troops who also are likely voters. With that in mind, this is still striking: Trump's favorable / unfavorable among active-duty troops is -12 (38 / 50). More active-duty troops have a "very unfavorable" rating (42 percent) than a "very favorable" and "favorable" rating combined (37 percent). For presidential preference, it's 41 percent for Biden, 37 percent for Trump(!), and 13 percent for a third party. That's compared to a 20 / 40 / 34 split for Clinton-Trump-third party in October 2016. So it's gone from Trump +20 to Democrat +4. According to CNN's exits, military veterans made up 13 percent of the vote in 2016. And the group went 60-34 for Trump. So *even granting* that the MT / Syracuse poll is imperfect . . . it's wild to see a swing like this among such a staunchly Republican constituency. Even if the poll overstates Biden's strength, it's a certainty that Trump stands to lose a lot of ground among the military vote this year. This invites another question: What, exactly, is "Trump's" base right now? Because it doesn't include the military. It doesn't include seniors, apparently. Who is supposed to replace the people dropping from this coalition? That’s not a crazy question. Trump is getting blown out with Jewish voters; losing badly among Catholics and black and Hispanic voters. He’s losing voters under 30 and voters over 65. He’s going to lose women by a historic margin. What does that leave? White Protestant men with a high school education between the age of 35 and 64? Some quick back-of-the envelope math: No candidate has ever received more votes that Barack Obama did in 2008, when he won 69,498,516 votes. Looking at the polling averages it is likely that Joe Biden is going to eclipse that number. If Biden gets ≥ 51 percent of the vote and turnout is over 136 million—which is the most likely scenario—then he will wind up winning more votes than anyone to ever have run for president.
A slightly different approach to predicting the election outcome is to see where the betting is. While giving Trump only an approximately 1/3 chance it’s significantly better than polling predictions. We’ll see in a couple of weeks. https://www.johnstossel.com/bet-the-election/
i have spoken before about this interesting phenomenon online where idiots avoid arguments by accusing their opponents of being angry or upset. they think this puts their opponents on the defensive. this does not work on me. i will just identify that what you are trying to do is stupid and move on. seems like maybe you are just unhappy that it showed you are wrong. why are you so angry? did mueller hurt you feewings?
Rank and file military people should be happy that Trump hasn't started a war and shipped them off to some God forsaken third world shithole where everybody they encounter could potentially be somebody who would kill them even if it cost their own life. The top brass, on the other hand probably love a good war. Let's them show their stuff. War is the reason why those guys chose a military career in the first place.
Look, Winston is right. The 976 active duty members in Wisconsin are going to really turn the state to Biden. Muh Military polls....
Yea you do liar.... 1st, you started this thread: http://tigerfan.com/threads/trump-his-taxes-and-the-russians.128107/ Maybe you should re-read it. Its filled with you complaining and speculating "where" Trump made his money.
