The Donald rocking his 150-word vocabulary.

Need a drinking game for the debate, like every time Trump calls something a "disaster".

Would be willing to bet a significant % of my net worth that Trump works "You're fired!" into a debate answer somehow

Crowd erupts in wild applause of course

Yes! A "you're fired" ought to be worth 2-3 pts in the polls all by itself!

Don't be misled by the recent Trump polls. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/27...referrer=&_r=0

Fox should run the tier 2 debate like a poker satellite. Put the top 9 candidates in the main debate, and leave one spot open for the winner of the kiddie table debate.

How would Trump fare as a 3rd party candidate vs. Kasich and Kerry?

How about a survivor type elimination process?

Somewhat off-topic, but this post reminded me. Slate's Whistlestop podcast is awesome:
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/whistlestop.html

It's John Dickerson (Slate Political Gabfest, Political Director of CBS News, host of Face the Nation), doing half hour commentaries on presidential campaigns throughout history. I think my favorites have been the 1980 Democratic campaign (Kennedy v. Carter) and the 1976 Republican Campaign (Ford v. Reagan), but all have been very good.

Yeah, a drinking game could be great.

Hair joke - drink
crowd boos - drink
someone says "rapist" - drink
someone says "oven" - drink
someone says "polygamy" - drink
Christie interrupts someone - drink

Plus you can pick first candidate to say: Benghazi, Repeal, Social Justice, race-baiting, etc. and then choose someone else to drink if you hit.

Everybody finishes their drink if Trump proposes a bet (ala Romney).

Oh yeah obviously the McCain stuff might not even affect him right away, totally.

Let's check at what this Nate Cohn's fellow 538 writer, one "Nate Cohn"(presumably no relation), said about this stuff at the time, though:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/21...ing-point.html

Looks like last week's Nate Cohn and this week's Nate Cohn need to have a real sit down about when and where an inflection point will be reached.

538 is aiming to be Politico with a few pie charts

"Trump's candidacy is dead" is the new "we've turned the corner in Iraq" for the establishment media. It's like some bizarre wishcasting where taking a dump on old Johnny McCain will instantly outrage everyone, well, except for that 40% of America that listens to Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh and reads Ann Coulter and Brietbart who have been ****ting all over McCain for twenty years and not coincidentally makes up a big percentage of GOP primary voters.

Besides them, though, his candidacy is totally sunk with everyone else.

Remember when the left got all pissy when Cohn said that the Dems had no chance of taking back the House in 2014? http://m.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/...r-to-Nate-Cohn

Yeah man, gurion05 never lived that down. Being wrong about an election is a career ender, right?

Not relevant. Cohn said Trump hit an inflection point last week. This week he says Trump will eventually slide in the polls (I agree) but that could happen at any point in the future. That's the chicken**** way of saying "I was wrong."

2014 kos something something is not relevant.

Like obviously Donald Trump will never be President. He'll never be the nominee of a party that can muster a single professional politician to debate him or one that has a nomination process with rules that are written down.

Cohn is the one who is making the same mistake gurion05 made here. He's the one who is looking at poll data, deciding he doesn't like it, and disregarding it because, well, you know. Something about a media driven surge.

So we all agree it is just a matter of time?

Yes, Repubs will dutifully walk of shame back to boring old Jeb(!) after their fling with bad boy Trump

From your lips to Reagan's ears.

looooooooooool more blatant misuse of polls

Last Week Nate Cohn thought that time was last week when Trump said mean things about old man McCain. He is clearly incorrect.

I do think it's a matter of time but I think this Trump train might roll a long while longer. It's of course subjective but I'm guessing he's going to crush these debates with his target audience of reactionary racist angerbears.

The polls and the results in the primaries will probably coalesce around Jeb!, or maybe Rubio or Walker, once the other 17 horses or whatever fade from the race. I like Jeb and his 100 million dollar bankroll but that's neither here nor there.

I expect Trump is relatively few GOPers second choice and he'd be getting beaten handily if he were heads-up versus Bush or Rubio.

But he's not right now and might not be for a long time. Hard to see what derails him from his 20-30% of support until the field is winnowed down. Last Week's Nate Cohn is going to have to wait a while now for Trump to fail (relatively speaking), just as This Week's Nate Cohn admitted.

There's also like some potentially bad case scenarios where the GOP field stays large long into the process and Trump starts to amass delegates and win primaries. Then it's not like inconceivable he builds actual momentum. Not like Summer 2015 Pollmentum but like actual influence in the proceedings. Remember Barry Goldwater did not win the 1964 primaries decisively, coincidentally or not the last true outsider reactionary politician to capture a party's nomination -- he basically outlasted a large field of orthodox 1960s GOPers (Rockefeller, Stanton, Lodge) -- kind of alot like 2016. Goldwater only won 7 states outright. But back then not all the states even held primaries and you expected these things got ironed out at the convention.

But something like that seems like a worst case scenario for the GOP: no one decisively claims the mantle of anti-Trump/establishment until it's messy to sort out. I mean we're all popcorn.jpg but some kind of massively chaotic GOP primary that ends up undecided at the convention and Trump is involved, holy ****, better bring Orville Redenbacher back from the grave to produce all the necessary popcorn for that event. It won't happen but one can dream. #onetime

When was the last true brokered convention, where no candidate arrived with enough delegates to win?


1980 doesn't count, as Carter had enough delegates and Kennedy's only hope was to flip a bunch of them.

I've noticed in this thread that the consensus is that Jeb! will eventually be the nominee, with people saying "Don't count out Rubio."

It seems that Walker is getting criminally underrated here and in the media. Walker is the most credible conservative candidate in the last few cycles, and the GOP base are desperate to run an honest to god conservative instead of lib'rul RINOs like McCain and R.Money. Also, the Kochs love him.

I'm going to make my first bold prediction, which is that Walker will win the GOP nomination. I think he's over 50% to pull it off.

CAVEAT: I have been wrong about everything else in this campaign.

1968 DNC, in the wake of RFK's assassination.