The Mad World of Donald Trump

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

This is Scott Adams, writer of the Dilbert Cartoons, on why Trump will be the next President of the US. Trump was still a rank outsider at the time:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/126589300371/clown-genius

I like this one in which Adams suggests that Trump should adopt the cunning plan of promising to issue Hilary with a presidential pardon when he becomes president.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/142294599851/the-presidential-persuasion-pardon

Malthusian

I like the way Adams thinks but his repeated assertion that Trump "wrote the book on negotiating" invites the question: if Trump is such a brilliant negotiator, why has he lost so many hundreds of millions of dollars in his property business. (Compared to the benchmark of selling the business as soon as he inherited and sticking the proceeds in a stockmarket tracker fund.)

I believe the minds of politicians are simply too irrational for his models to serve as a useful predictor of what Clinton or Trump will do next. For example, he says that Trump offering a pardon will give Clinton a reason to subconsciously want to lose. (I don't fully understand why winning the election wouldn't be equally good for Clinton as this secret emails business would almost certainly be quietly dropped if she was President, but let's ignore that.) Fair enough, but it could also cause Clinton to want to win even more, out of a sense of pride or the potential humiliation of being pardoned by Trump. Which of these competing impulses will be stronger in Clinton's mind? I don't know and neither does Adams.

Behavioural economics often works on a theoretical or macro level but falls down when you attempt to use it at the micro level, i.e. to predict the decisions of a single individual. If you roll a dice a million times you can predict that the total is most likely to be somewhere around 3,500,000. (Obviously it could be anything from 1,000,000 to 6,000,000 but it is far more likely that it will be somewhere around 3,500,000, following a normal probability distribution.) However, knowing that the average score of a fair dice is 3.5 tells you nothing about what it will land the next time you throw it. You can make useful predictions about the aggregate of a million dice rolls but very little about a single one. Same with humans.

Generali

A brilliant piece on the NY Republican Primary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/upshot/can-donald-trump-win-every-delegate-in-new-york.html?_r=1

To avoid a contested convention, Mr Trump needs just shy of 500 votes more from the 850 still available. By getting more than 50% of the vote in most NY districts he gets about 75 delegates according to the article. After NY the only big state left to vote is CA with a whopping 172 delegates up for grabs.

As CA only awards 13 of the 172 delegates on a Winner Takes All basis, Mr Trump's lead in the polls in CA is unlikely to take him over the line as things stand.

Unless Mr Trump scores big in NY, a contested convention looks all but nailed on.

Generali

Meantime, in the Cruz household:

Ted Cruz’s Post-Honeymoon Stockpiling of Canned Soup Isn’t Weird. It’s Endearing.

It does make me wonder whether the Republican party has signed a pact with the Democrats to make the USA a one party state. There are millions of Republicans in the US. You'd imagine that they could find one that wasn't a complete space cadet.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

Meantime, in the Cruz household:

Ted Cruz’s Post-Honeymoon Stockpiling of Canned Soup Isn’t Weird. It’s Endearing.

It does make me wonder whether the Republican party has signed a pact with the Democrats to make the USA a one party state. There are millions of Republicans in the US. You'd imagine that they could find one that wasn't a complete space cadet.

He sounds like a closet prepper. Even more so when combined with machine gun bacon

(Link reposted for anyone who missed it previously)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EaZGaJrd3x8


Dopester's dog should watch its back.

antrobus

Just to note that Trump has won big in New York (it's his home state) and thus will gets almost a clean sweep of the available delegates.

In other news, Sanders didn't win in New York, and so the chances of dear Hilary getting the nomination is now about 99.9% as opposed to being about 99.0%.

michaels

What are the current odds on Trump getting there without a brokered convention?

Would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Hilary had been running against a stronger opponent, say one who would have carried the minority vote (ie another Obama)

antrobus

michaels wrote: »

What are the current odds on Trump getting there without a brokered convention?...

50:50?

michaels wrote: »

...Would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Hilary had been running against a stronger opponent, say one who would have carried the minority vote (ie another Obama)

If there had been another Democratic candidate who had the minority vote in their pocket, then Hilary would not have stood a chance.:)

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

50:50?



If there had been another Democratic candidate who had the minority vote in their pocket, then Hilary would not have stood a chance.:)

Betfair has the chances at about 25:75 contested:uncontested, i.e. if we ran the remaining primaries from here then 1 set of scenarios would end with a contested convention and 3 with uncontested conventions.

The market isn't massively liquid though (there's almost a 30% spread between back and lay on an uncontested convention) so I wouldn't read too much into it.

Generali

1237 whats?

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/22/go-ahead-donald-get-1237-it-wont-matter-rnc-delegate.html

According to The Meeja, Mr Trump needs 1237 delegates at the Republican National Convention in order to become the Republican candidate for the Presidential election. The above is an interview with a many who is one of the 2473 from whom someone is seeking 1237 votes. Actually he's quite a special one of the 2473 as he sits on the rules committee of the RNC.