admin_270

@Vcczar re #3, it depends on what 'impeachable offense' means. Given the way some people are talking, a minor campaign finance violation (whether Cohen's actions actually broke campaign finance rules or not) is an impeachable offense, or paying someone to not make damaging public allegations (whether Clifford's allegations are true or false) is an impeachable offense. Is 'collusion' an impeachable offense? There is no crime called 'collusion', and as Comey recently testified, the FBI does not use the term 'collusion'. So if Trump had contacts with certain Russians who were aiming to change the outcome of the election, is this impeachable? Well, impeachment is essentially a political action, and it's up to the House Democrats (in particular) to decide if something is impeachable, even if it means stretching the typical meaning of terms such as 'high crimes and misdemeanours'. Impeachment can backfire, as it did with Bill Clinton when the House Republicans impeached him, so the question is more 'Does the public think this is something worthy of impeachment?' A Biden-O'Rourke ticket is, at the moment, the strongest one I can think of as far as Democrats who look likely to run at this point for the general election.

If Quebec is simply keeping McGill, Concordia, or Bishop's open to appease English speakers, it should close them or convert them to French-speaking promptly! English-speaking students in Quebec have *lots* of options in Canada, including many that are close by (Ontario and the maritimes). Look at Bishop's, which is among the top ranked undergraduate institutions in Canada in terms of student satisfaction. Only 30% of students are from Quebec, so this university is probably bringing in a significant amount of money for the province. McGill, as mentioned, is one of the most prestigious in the world and a boon for Quebec's economy. These institutions make sense for Quebec to keep open *because they make Quebec money*. The Ontario government cancelled the proposed French-speaking university because they believed *it would cost them money*.

@Edouard But they *are* keeping their French options (as mentioned, Université d'Ottawa or Université Laurentienne, placed in the places in Ontario with the most French speakers), they're simply not getting a *new* university. There are more people whose mother tongue is *Chinese* than French in Ontario, and those people have *no* bi-lingual English-Chinese universities in Ontario.

It depends on how you define 'anglophone'. For relevant purposes (should there be tertiary education in a given language?) the more relevant definition would be something like English-as-first-official-language, as here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_Quebecers In 2011, that category was 13.5% of Quebec's population and rising. Having said that, I view McGill as more an economic boon for Quebec, acting in significant part like a tourist magnet (bringing in students from across the country and world). If Quebec wanted to convert it to French-only, which would probably undermine its reputation and status as a tertiary magnet, I would say that's their business. There are lots of options in Ontario for studying at the university level in English, for people who so desire.

"There is no francophone university in Ontario for the same number of francophones versus 3 anglophones universities in Quebec (McGill Concordia and I lost the last) for the same proportion of inhabitants" I don't think I understand what you're saying. Why would Ontario have to have an equivalent number of francophone universities as Quebec has anglophone ones? Anglophone Quebecers are 15% of that province's population (about 1.2 million people), francophone Ontarians are about 500K out of 13.6 million = 3.7%. In other words, there are very few native French speakers living in Ontario. Having said this, for those who want to study at a university in French in Ontario, they can do so at Université d'Ottawa or Université Laurentienne, which are logically placed in the two major French speaking parts of the province, Ottawa and Sudbury.

@Edouard "If Quebec had to apply the same logic at the same proportion than Ontario with its minority, then the 3 anglophone universities in Quebec should be closed." My understanding is that the Ontario government cancelled 3 proposed English-language university expansions and 1 proposed French-language university in Toronto. This is not really like closing 3 existing anglophone universities in Quebec. Of course it depends on the universities (McGill is one of the most prestigious in Canada, is that one you're including in the 3?), but if the Quebec government wanted to save some money by cutting back on English-language post-secondary options, I would say that's their choice. I'm also pretty lax about increased independence for places like Quebec, where they want more autonomy because they are significantly different from the rest of (in this case) Canada in terms of language and culture. Would increased autonomy be good for Quebec? For the rest of Canada? I think it's easy to make the case that it would. I tend not to like compelled political association, and barring very strong mitigating factors, am happy to have new countries be created, the loosening of federal bonds, and so on. If Albertans want to create their own oil state in a majority vote, then I would say go for it! Quebecers want the freedom and autonomy that comes with their own country? Great - give it a try. I think people have an irrational fear of greater autonomy and independence for fledgling countries.

In Ontario, French is spoken widely mainly in parts of Ottawa (capital) and certain parts of northern Ontario (including Sudbury and Timmins). It's a small % of the population there speaking French as a first language. In British Columbia (second most populous province not including Quebec), people speaking French in public is almost nonexistent outside of French immersion schools. If living in Vancouver (largest city west of Toronto), languages that are more useful than French to know are Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, Tagalog, probably Spanish, and perhaps some others.

My best guess at this point is Boehner's source is Michael Wolffe's book Fire and Fury. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/melania-trump-was-in-tears-as-president-won-election-book A summary of the relevant part from the book in the article is "First lady Melania Trump, who was assured by President Trump that he would never win the election, was in tears on election night as the numbers tilted toward her husband, a new book on the president’s first year in office says." I wouldn't put faith in any particular claim from Wolffe's book.

@Patine After more searching, although I can find a report claiming Trump and Boehner golfed together at some point, I can find nowhere a claim by Boehner that Trump told him his presidential bid was a PR stunt, or anything similar. The only quote I can find from Boehner addressing something like this is the above one, where he says "I think Donald Trump promised Melania." There's no indication of why he thinks that, and he doesn't seem to claim he has direct insider knowledge from what I can tell. I'd be happy to be corrected! Barring that, you're going to have to find a better example of someone holding this theory. This theory doesn't make sense on multiple levels to me, but again, I'm happy to consider countervailing evidence.

The only thing I can find after an admittedly brief search was iterations on this: "“I think Donald Trump promised Melania that he would not win, she didn’t have to worry about ever living in the White House,” Boehner said at the Mackinac Policy Conference in Michigan. “It’s probably why she doesn’t look real happy every day—well, maybe one reason,” he said, chuckling." https://www.newsweek.com/melania-trump-doesnt-look-real-happy-because-donald-promised-he-wouldnt-win-954654 This quote is pretty weak, and isn't exactly what you're attributing to Boehner, so I assume there's another quote out there relating to this.

I'm asking because Trump announced in mid-June 2015. The first poll completed after that of the Republican primaries had him in first place. A few weeks later, he was consistently polling in first place. There was no point after that where he didn't consistently poll in first place. Can you give a link to Boehner's claims here? I'm trying to get exactly what Boehner claimed.

Changed.

When did he surprise himself and start winning?

At what point do you think Trump switched gears, and went from a PR vehicle to a genuine bid?

@Patine Did you follow the 2015-16 Trump campaign in detail?

If you mean personal energy, then I would agree that Ron Paul didn't evince the kind of energy Sanders did - the dogged campaigning-until-his-voice-is-hoarse sort of campaign trail energy. This was probably another weakness of Ron Paul's as a campaigner. One of the more impressive feats of the Trump 2016 campaign was his authenticity to a large part of the electorate - he was a billionaire Manhattanite who was running a populist, working-class campaign. But I agree he had all 4 of those in his campaign.

What exactly do you mean by energy (personal energy?)? Putting it in these terms, I would say Sanders had energy, authenticity, and message, but not charisma (a major deficit, but Clinton didn't have charisma either, so not a relative deficit in the primaries). Sanders was in this sense similar to Ron Paul, who also had energy, authenticity, and message, but not charisma.

Can you be more specific when you say it happens when you 'click on a state'? Are you saying you click on a state on the Main Map to select that state? Or is it clicking twice?

Which game is this for?

I will need a link to the campaign, along with a detailed description of how to create the error (or you can send an e-mail with it to https://270soft.com/contact ).

What's your operating system?

"This shows a lot of Republicans would prefer someone other than Trump, but they aren't agreed on who that person should be." Right, but they would *have to* agree for that someone to mount a decent challenge to Trump. So, the question is who are the 2nd preferences for a lot of those other candidates. However, 'Not sure' was 2nd in GOP rankings at 16%, and 'Not voting' was 3rd at 7%. This effectively makes the head-to-head comparisons out of 77%, and Trump gets 44% of those, or 57%. So, 57% of the sample prefer Trump over any other candidate listed. That still leaves 43%, which is a significant number. What of those? Note that the poll sample for these numbers includes both Republicans and Independents. If you look at the Republican part of the sample, Trump's numbers are 60%, and the 'Not sure' and 'Not voting' are much lower at 9% and 1%. Effectively Trump's numbers for Republicans who have a choice and intend to vote is about 66%, which is 50% higher than the initial number (44%) makes it seem. Contrarily, Kasich's number below is significantly lower among Republicans (4%) than Independents (9%) in the sample. What this means for primaries I am not sure. A lot of the potential candidates listed could reasonably be described as 'NeverTrumpers' or highly critical of Trump - Romney (6%), Kasich (6%), J. Bush (3%), Flake (2%), and Sasse (1%). If you add up their %s, you get 18%, which effectively is 18/77 = 23.3%. Even there, though, how many who support Romney or J. Bush in this sample would support Trump before Kasich? My guess is many, so you probably can't just add up these numbers to get an Anyone-But-Trump. Similarly for others in the list, such as Ryan (5%) and Cruz (5%). Cruz is now 'Beautiful Ted' and Trump played a significant part in making sure Cruz got re-elected. My guess is that Ryan is more a choice of conventional GOPers, and Trump would probably be 2nd choice for many of them.

Thanks!

Ok, I've noted this to test. Thanks for this info.

Do you have a link to the poll details?