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Evan McMullin Is Happy with Hillary as President
In a recent interview, Evan McMullin outlined his strategy for victory. He then stated that if he could not force the issue to the House by stopping both candidate from getting 270, he would be happy to have stopped Trump from being elected. According to the candidate himself, voting for Clinton or McMullin will lead to the happy outcome of a Clinton win.
Published in GeneralMcMullin Admits Preventing Trump From Winning is Goal pic.twitter.com/Batqj3iZTv
— MicroSpookyLeaks™ (@WDFx2EU7) October 23, 2016
If McMullin such a no-name, non-factor, what does it say about Trump if he let’s the guy beat him?
If, as you McMullin supporters claim, the people who are voting for him would never have voted for Trump, then how is he going to prevent either candidate from getting an electoral vote majority? How is he going to be happy because he stopped Trump from being elected? By not siphoning votes from Hillary, not Trump?
What do you know that your candidate doesn’t?
But, then again, maybe I don’t get it. After all, I don’t understand why a vote is cast for one of the two candidates who has a chance of winning the election is completely inconsequential but a vote cast to support a candidate who has no chance whatsoever is deeply significant, despite the lectures from our resident logicians.
It seems to me the Trumpers are the ones who believe our votes consequential, no matter who we vote for. Most of us are simply voting for the person that we feel wouldn’t be awful as president.
As for McMullin, I believe his hope was to win one or two states, with the thought that Trump would keep the election tight. If neither got an electoral majority, the congress chooses from the top three candidates, of which he is likely to be one should he take Utah. Alas, Trump appears to be a total loser, and is doing his best to hand his pal’s wife the election.
No, if McMullin were to campaign in states that he was unlikely to win but that were swing states, he’d be handing the election to Clinton. By campaigning in states that he is not likely to hand to Clinton he is avoiding the spoiler effect. If McMullin wins Utah, he’s not going to hand the election to Clinton (she might win anyway if Utah if she has 270 votes elsewhere; indeed, this is the most likely outcome, but McMullin wouldn’t impact that result; if Clinton doesn’t have 270 votes, the House isn’t going to pick Clinton as the next President).
Those who think that it important to maximize Trump’s chances should indeed be campaigning (or calling in) to Florida, Ohio, and such (probably not Virginia). They should also be grateful that McMullin isn’t doing much more than fundraising in swing states.
I’m so in for it I’ve decided I’m not voting for any of the down ticket GOP this time. If Hillary! is OK, I want to help her get the job done.
@jamesofengland has it right @jager McMullin winning UT and ID or MT cannot hand the election to Clinton. It just isn’t possible. It CAN prevent Trump from winning which is a good thing in my view and in McMullin’s.
I live in Texas as an example and while Texas is now a Toss-Up state by RealClearPolitics its still unlikely to go for Clinton. There is an extremely slight chance that my and the few thousand others that will vote for McMullin in Texas might be the difference between a Clinton win and a Trump win of Texas. But honestly, if Trump loses Texas it, even by one vote because I voted for McMullin…then do you honestly think that he has a chance of winning anywhere? We are at the point where the GOP candidate is so toxic that we will are likely to see a State not go for a third party for the first time since 1968. Considering the hammerlock that the parties have had on the elections this century this is a good thing in and of itself.
So doesn’t that mean that voting for McMullin is helping to elect Clinton? McMullin seems to think so.
There have been a lot of arguments here that voting for someone like McMullin is not helping elect Clinton. Maybe some of the Ricochet people need to get in contact with McMullin and let him know.
Heh.
Why is it not Trump’s failure to quell the doubts and fears of the traditional supporters, instead of boasting he doesn’t need conservative support?
It would take a lot more money to run in those states, and he’d have little chance of winning them. His only real hope, given the time and financing available when he got in, was to go after a couple of small states. His hope was simply to win one electoral vote, to be eligible if the vote went to the House. He had to hope that neither Trump nor Clinton would get to 270 on their own – he never had the power to stop them on his own.
If he takes enough votes from Trump that Clinton wins an extra state it could give her the presidency.
First off, Trump isn’t going to keep her below 270. He MIGHT keep her below 350…that is an attainable goal and right now I think Trump keeping a 5 point lead in Texas will be a win.
Outside of UT and perhaps ID most of the voters for McMullin are, like me, people who had already made up our minds to not vote for Trump and he gives us an actual candidate as opposed to my friend who voted for Condi.
That may be, but the point is that saying a third party spoiler cannot be a third party spoiler is wrong.
If it only gains significant numbers of votes in states that are unattainable to a hostile party it won’t be wrong. The one election in which it isn’t totally absurd to call Republicans a third party in, for instance, the 1854 midterms, didn’t see them spoil a single race; in every election that they ran a candidate they either won (almost all of their races) or they came second to a non-Democrat. Likewise, the Dixiecrats weren’t spoilers, although they ran a risk of being so in Maryland and Virginia.
It is conceivably possible that Clinton could win Montana, Idaho, or Utah. 538 puts her chances at 8.7%, 0.6%, and 5.9%, respectively. What’s much, much less likely is that they would be the tipping point states; at that point you’re in one in a thousand level chances.
McMullin’s efforts in other states, where he’s not likely to get nearly as high, are significantly more likely to work as spoilers. For each of Colorado, Florida, and Nevada, I’d say that he has north of a five percent chance of exceeding the margin between Clinton and Trump. That isn’t the same as him being a spoiler; I’ve talked to plenty of people who were on the fence about Johnson and Trump, but I’ve never spoken to a McMullin/ Trump swing voter. He’s also likely to be beaten by Johnson in those races where Clinton wins and McMullin’s votes exceed the Trump/Clinton margin. Still, as Nader voters know, and as Libertarian voters would know if they were comfortable looking at their party’s involvement in the Minnesota Senate election that gave us Obamacare (and with looking at how close they came to giving us a President Gore by spoiling Bush in New Mexico in 2000), very small numbers of voters can be decisive.
McMullin has the right plan to be a third party guy who supports the downticket ballots, but he may not have been effective enough at avoiding swing states to avoid being a spoiler. That said, it doesn’t make sense to complain about his presence in Utah, Montana, or Idaho on the basis of a fear of Clinton.
Let’s also realize that many McMullin voters, like myself, think Hillary Clinton is preferable to Donald Trump and for several reasons:
Also, if Evan McMullin were not a candidate, I would either vote for Darrell Castle (Constitution Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) or I would have written in the name of either Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, Ben Sasse, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal or John Kasich. I’m betting most McMullin voters would have acted similarly.
I don’t understand the confusion here. It’s a pretty simple concept.
Forget your assumptions of how everyone will vote. That’s not the point. If the race is close enough that Utah or Idaho decides the winner, then it’s possible for McMullin to through the election to Clinton. The point isn’t about the probability or desirability of it happening, just that it can. I addressed the claim that it can’t happen. The claim that he won’t take any votes from Trump is absurd.
But that’s only because he believes, as I do, that Trump is worse. You can believe otherwise, but it’s about time that Trump supporters, reluctant or otherwise, at least admitted that people who are decent and well-meaning conservatives can hold to the position that Trump is terrible, and that does not mean that they are RINOs or somehow deluding themselves into thinking that if Trump loses Hillary doesn’t win.
If that’s how it has to be, that’s how it has to be. Whatever it takes to stop Trump.
Thus it is proven that NeverTrumpers are all for the Hilldebeast.
I understand the idea that you can think Trump is worse than Hillary. This is an intellectually honest position.
The problem I have is with people who state they are both bad, so they will vote for McMullin. If you vote for Clinton or McMullin you are helping elect Clinton. McMullin says so, it is one of his goals. If that is fine with you, then good.
Where I take issue is with the idea, that has been argued on Ricochet, that voting for McMullin is not helping Clinton.
This is why I raised the example of the Dixiecrats. By competing seriously only in the states where Clinton will come third, like the Dixiecrats, McMullin is able to avoid this danger. If the election is close, McMullin winning Utah wouldn’t throw the election to Clinton. Clinton is not likely to outperform her polls in Utah because there is very little in Democratic GOTV there and the Democrats mostly come from the gentiles in SLC, and they’re not particularly enthusiastic voters generally and particularly not this cycle (McMullin just isn’t that scary; indeed, I suspect there are a lot of Clinton voters who will vote for him there for the satisfaction of seeing Trump lose the reddest of red states.)
McMullin likes medium rare steak. This is not proof that NeverTrumpers are all fans of any particular kind of meat at any particular temperature. Indeed, some NeverTrumpers are vegetarians or even vegans. McMullin’s beliefs are proof of McMullin’s beliefs alone. I’m a little disappointed in him for various reasons, so I think I’m back to Stein being the only good choice, but even if I liked him more, I wouldn’t agree with him on everything.
This comment uses my comment totally out of context. I said the failure at this time of those who claim to be republicans to support the republican nominee will make the coming demise of the Republican Party a long and troublesome process instead of what could be a quick process. McMullen claims to be a traditional republican, I assume, since he has been a staff member in the House and he thinks he would be supported by elected republicans, but I don’t see him as a republican at all since my sole criterion for failing that test is failing to support the nominee, a simple test. Any here who would claim to be republicans and not supporting Trump fail my test as well. My favorite elected senator fails but my less favored senator does not.
Is there something specific that you’re referring to?
It’s unfortunate that we have mislabeled two sets of players to this rupture within the Republican Party as #NeverTrumpers and #Trumpers. Trump is the result, not the cause of the rupture.
Your comment at #49.
The only good choice is Trump, whether in terms of policy or strategy.
Okay. I suspected that, but I wanted to make sure.
I suppose I’m wasting keystrokes here, but I’ll say it anyway
No. NeverTrumpers are not all for “Hilldebeast.” We’re just opposed to Donald Trump.
Well, maybe. Accepting that Trump is the only good choice does not mean that those who make poor choices favor Clinton. There are many third party voters whose second (or third or fourth, but before Clinton) choice is Trump. If you want to argue that they’re being dumb, then I understand where you’re coming from, but McMullin’s views are not all that relevant to their relationship with Clinton even if they support McMullin. If you’re a Castle, Stein, or Johnson voter, McMullin’s views are even less relevant.