Supporting Trump fits perfectly into this: if he loses, he gets egg on his face (which most people will forget fairly soon) and may lose out on a little startup dealflow, but if he wins, he becomes the sole connection between the Presidential Administration and Silicon Valley. That's worth a lot more than $12.5M.
I think he thinks the country is broken and _someone_ has to fix it. He's supporting Trump and investing in his campaign even at this late, seemingly forgone stage, in order to build credibility with Trump's base and conservatives in general. If he wasn't an immigrant I would think he might be aiming for the presidency himself, but he probably just wants to be an influencer or power broker.
> Famously, the only reason he went to seek fortune in the Silicon Valley was because he was denied a highly prestigious clerk position for a Supreme Court justice.
> It seems to me that Thiel originally wished to become a politician, and only stopped pursuing that path to seek his fortune in the Silicon Valley when he hit his first setback when applying to clerk for the Supreme Court.
Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Peter-Thiel-supporting-Donald-T...
Also, he's not U.S. born, which disqualifies him from being president anyway. He could potentially seek some other office...but I really doubt that he would want any position that makes him just like 99 other or 434 other people.
This will be opportune world for all kinds of right-wingers whose ideas are too extreme or too kooky to have been taken seriously before, but who are more toughtful than Trump.
In very different ways, Paul Ryan and Peter Thiel are positioning themselves for that world. As are a lot of others.
Though I find even that a bit odd. Would people not take a pledge seriously without having seen his demonstrated willingness to lose large sums of money?
The worst thing to happen to a famous brand is not bad press but rather becoming irrelevant and falling out of discussion.
Even if the Trump political brand crashes and burns, the broader trump brand of success and money just gets stronger...
This election was the ultimate win win for Trump.
This is why he can take all the risks he is taking, he has nothing to lose...which is the ultimate trump card!
Edit: spelling correction
No doubt starting a cable network is a good fallback position, but I don't buy the idea that this is all according to plan.
More likely, some in his campaign know he's going to lose and are looking for an out, while others (maybe including the candidate) still think he may win.
His brand recognition is way up throughout the world and my experience tells me that the negative view will not translate into his business brands once his political brand is not front and center.
I've studied branding extensively and I think, if he loses, his presidential run will still be a net win for him and his brand once the political fallout falls out of the news cycle.
edit: changes nothing to little
You have the personalities in Trump and Giuliani etc. You have the news content courtesy of Brietbart. You have lifestyle content courtesy of his real estate assets e.g. golf/travel shows etc. And he already owns a TV production company that made the Apprentice.
And don't forget that Lachlan Murdoch is now firmly in charge of Fox News and has always talked about it being less alt-right and more centre-right. This will leave a massive opening for Trump in the alt-right space. The real question is whether Fox will allow it on their global cable platforms.
Trump isn't conservative. He's a big government populist. Completely different despite him having an 'R' next to his name.
He is about as close to Cruz as Sanders was to Clinton (in terms of policy philosophy.)
By the way, I understand downvotes because I mentioned Cruz in a positive way, however let's keep in mind that we can disagree with economic philosophy and role of government and still be friends!
I want a flat tax and a repeal of FATCA and Cruz was the only candidate that supported that. If some Democrat comes along with that proposal, they'd get my vote too.
FATCA and it's unintended consequences have caused serious harm to many Americans overseas, so that was my primary issue this election.
The only reason I support the RNC this election is because they have FATCA repeal in the platform while the Democrat side both enacted FATCA as wel as expressed support for continuing it.
Here's an article that delves deeper into FATCA if anyone is interested: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21605911...
If a candidate had proposed to switch to only taxing US residents, plus apply some international pressure to close down tax havens, then I could see the point of repealing FATCA.
As bad as Trump is, at least he is not a theocrat.
Others may be reassured to hear Trump has only a 15% chance of winning, but it terrifies me. In Silicon Valley 15% is a good chance.
If there are 10 competitors and they all have between 5-10% chance of winning you have 15%. Compared to a 15%/85% split.
With an election it can usually be summed to important event: the vote. So that's why it doesn't terrify me at all. There's enough evidence now and in previous elections to show me he's not going to win the election. If the situation were say closer to Gore/Bush or even Romney/Obama pre-vote polling numbers, then maybe I'd be scared.
Agreed. (Though FWIW $1.25M is the amount he invested)
I hesitate to be explicit about what I think is actually going on but if you've read my posts on the Stagnation Hypothesis or watched Peter Thiel's videos on Youtube (low view counts, so I know you're not watching them!) you'll know there is a rather disturbing big picture which most people are oblivious to.
It's not something that can be both summarized and understood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpmfaE9bII
Look this isn't really a temporary interest for me, I'm something of a 'Thiel-logist'. You know how there exist Kremlinlogists? Same thing as that. I watch every video and read every book he writes or reads. This is not some celebrity fetish, but to do with the rich vein of ideas.
This is because I am convinced something very very important is going on and I want to understand more. I think I understand about half of it and I had a holy fuck mind blown moment a few years ago. Remember how Thiel took out Gawker nearly a decade later. This is as nothing in comparison, this is the grand-daddy of all long games.
Ah, so it's not real then.
RenTec is not supporting Trump.
Mercer is.
Simons, for what it's worth, is supporting Clinton. As, I'm almost sure, does the majority of employees. Mercer is the outlier.
I have considered this in wondering why he would support Trump.
Yes, this poll is an outlier because their methodology is very different than most other polls.
Yes, Nate Silver has a very different outlook on the election, but Nate Silver was also not very reliable during the primary season (although that is, by his admission, because primaries don't have very good polling).
If I had to make a[n extremely uneducated guess], it's because most polling is done over the phone, and I don't think "people who answer their phone when they don't recognize the number" is a very good random sampling of voters in the US.
I don't think this race is nearly as over as most people seem to believe, which is why, if you want to beat Trump, it is REALLY IMPORTANT (all caps!) that you get out and vote!
It's, of course, very possible that "this time it's different" as they say every time. He is certainly an unconventional candidate. However, I'll throw my lot in every time with the MANY polls who are trying to account for this, and the MANY poll aggregators who are trying to make sense out of this madness.
I think 538 was actually quite reliable during the primary season. Pretty much bang on, in fact.
Everything they said anti-trump was basically opinion and they have been roundly chastised (as deserved) for treating punditry as fact.
The reasoning is that pollsters have herd behaviours - they believe publishing an outlier they will lose them credibility so they suppress inconvenient results and will rework methodologies and weightings to avoid it. For many, election polling is a loss leader - its publicity to get their name out there for commercial services. The credibility of the outlier is increased because it has escaped the herd pressure despite the incentives.
To extract information we need to carefully revise methodology behind outlier predictions, and such an activity is a complex task for skilled data analyst.
This feels a lot like the atmosphere over here (in Britain) just before the Brexit vote.
Many people thought it was a guaranteed Remain vote, and woke up to a terrible fright on that Friday morning.
If you look at states that are contested, things look bad for Trump, even in the ones where demographics favor him he is not getting polling results that point to a win (an example would be Pennsylvania).
Where they eliminated that one 19 year old, and saw very little effect on the poll.
How is that a compelling answer?
It's like if a news investigation found that a company had poor quality control and features a photo of a defective product in their writeup and the company's response was "we issued a refund for the product the news team purchased."
All I can say is that you sound an awful lot like the 2012 talking heads who were convinced Romney would win despite all the polling pointing to the contrary. For the record, Nate Silver's biggest mistake in the primaries was not listening to the polls enough. For him (and every other data-driven forecaster) to be getting the general wrong they'd have to be making the exact opposite mistake as before.
I'd be happy to give you 10:1 odds on Trump losing. And I'm biased here: a few months ago, I was convinced Trump would win.
1 responder should not move a 2500 person poll by 1%
That seems highly disingenuous a response.
I say so because of its polling methodology, which is unique.
If you're a politics/polling nerd, this poll is interesting. If you're not, then yes, you are probably better off either just reading 538, or looking at the RCP polling average.
https://news.usc.edu/109339/why-the-usc-dornsifel-a-times-pr...
But this poll performed well in 2012[1] with the same methodology. As a polling nerd, wouldn't you be interested in why it is producing unusual results this year and what implications that might have for polling in general?
[1] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-poll-faq-20161006-...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old...
There are plenty of aggregation sites which are far better at smoothing out any issues:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-...
They all show Trump losing in a landslide with Clinton getting around 330 EC votes.
We don't know who is right/wrong until after the election so it is better to assume that a range of different polls taken at different times with different methodologies is likely to be more accurate.
Now I can't sleep...
1. They're the best data we have
2. We have no reason to believe they're incorrect
3. There is REALLY no reason to believe they're dishonest
Is 100% intellectually dishonest.
This is exactly what happened 4 years ago, and apparently some people have not learned from their tremendous mistake.
If you want to know why "turnout at a campaign event" is a crappier metric than "real actual scientific data", I don't know how else to help, other than to point to other instances in which it has failed:
"Mitt drawing larger crowds" http://www.politico.com/story/2012/10/mitt-drawing-larger-cr...
"Donald Trump continues to draw YUGE crowds. That matters less than he thinks." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/28/do...
"Trump brags about crowd size but will it turn into votes?" http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d74fbd472f7a420a90737e55cfb20...
I do not know or care who you support in the Presidential election. However, I suggest you get realistic about your metrics, as you're way off in fantasyland at the moment, as far as I can tell.
If you turn out to be incorrect, I hope you learn from this experience. I know I will, if the data turns out to be wrong.
When the polls show him to be ahead, it's evidence that the voters love him. When he's behind, it's evidence that the polling is rigged.
Campaigns also conduct their own internal polling which may or may not have biases, but they're not released; they're used for the campaign. So it only benefits them to know what's actually going on. Trump's is one of the few campaigns that seems only interested in good news, and in not learning from what their internal polling tells them.
That said, of course all campaigns will selectively brag about the polls that make them look good, and quietly ignore those that don't.
Again, the polls are extremely reliable in this country. If you can't see that, you're unlikely to be swayed by yet another data point when this election is complete.
You can find signs that people in the establishment personally favored the establishment candidate – the least surprising revelation in political history – but there's no evidence that lead to any concrete action. That's why the only claims of rigging have been intentional misrepresentation based on the knowledge that some people like you would repeat those claims without checking the sources.
Hint: it's the same reason why the alleged victim is going around telling his supporters to vote for Hillary. If you trusted his judgement enough to think he should be president, why not trust his analysis now?
And that reason is elementary game theory. The only people with incentives to claim that the Democratic primaries were rigged are those who will be left with no political influence if the Democrats fare poorly.
When the Republicans do well, it's because they value party unity over literally everything else. One of HRC's strengths is that she brings the same thinking to the Democrats. For anyone within the party, working against her carries no conceivable upside. And as we've seen in DWS's case, working for HRC means you'll be well taken care of, no matter what.
Basically, if Sanders or anyone else on the left has beef with the DNC, they will be much better off if they wait to bring it up until after the election. And maybe not even then.
Is it not (in absence of any evidence) equally plausible that the type of voter that will vote for Trump is more predisposed to attend a campaign event than other voters?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United...
Seems to not support that claim.
Polls are objective not subjective.
I get what you're trying to say, and most polling seems to be pretty objective, but you can absolutely do subjective polling. You just have to target the right demo and you can make any poll say anything you want.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-23/bookies-pl...
Just say you were going to vote for Trump. Someone stops you on the street, or call you up; would you admit it?
I wouldn't.
The guy is an absolute joke of a person on so many levels. He's stupid. He's just aweful.
But there's a tiny bit of Trump in a lot of us buried deep in that ID.
Personally, I do think we need to get much more vigilant on immigration, even though Obama has sent more illegials home than any other president. Would I admit this in public--hell no.
And I have never believed in Globilization. Would I admit this at work--hell no.
I really think a lot of people will vote for Trump in the privacy of that booth.
I won't because I won't vote for a president this year, or will I?
I think so too. There is an interesting phenomenon there. Just guessing but suspect on the surface it is a very accepting, liberal place, perhaps one which encourages and celebrates diversity.
Where can I find the source for this? I may need it when arguing with people...
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-deportation-machine-ob...
Of course, I'm more than open to being wrong; certain classes of illegal immigrants have been given defacto amnesty, and Obama's spoken in their favor, but no doubt others continue to be persecuted.
Sorry to tell you, data is in, and it's helping to pull billions out of abject poverty around the globe.
The real problem with being a true check is partisanship on the court. By now, it seems to be essentially accepted that there are "liberal judges" and "conservative judges", and that they will rule accordingly. I cringe every time I hear that, because SCOTUS, like any other court, is supposed to rule on what the law is, not on what it should be; and one's political affiliation should not affect the former. In practice, of course, it does matter these days, and it is a really bad thing, especially in an institution that is 1) so small, and 2) not providing any mechanism to hold them responsible.
Other types of fraud (ballot stuffing, voting multiple times, voting when you're not allowed to etc.) are exceedingly rare, and it would have to happen at a massive scale for it to make an actual impact.
That's just not going to happen, especially with it being a felony.
And there is no evidence that electoral fraud is likely to decide the election. In fact it's looking like efforts to prevent it e.g. in Indiana are far more likely to influence the election.
He is down by on average 7 points nationally for a reason.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/for-many-gop-women-party...
And a candidacy that threatens opponents with prison, encourages voter intimidation, enlists foreign powers for cyberwarfare, intimates that any result will be rigged, distroys the norms critical to government functioning and a dozen other things, is the best investment someone who hates public control of policy could make win or loose.
Or do we just put this in the "expensive new hobby" section and leave it at that.
----
Update: I want to hijack my own comment to ponder something.
As someone with no money and no influence, I find it hard to think about how to use money to buy influence as part of a grand plan, like many of the comments here are suggesting.
As a layman, I think in simple terms like discrimination, racism, sexism, etc... and my belief in fighting against all those things.
Am I short-sighted? Is there some greater human social structure that I am not aware of that can only be achieved by making such calculated investments? Despite all the immediately negative rhetoric.