Cleveland RNC 2016


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Sovereign Court

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BigNorseWolf wrote:

We're spending a lot of money just to finance the debt, how would spending that money elsewhere not be a good thing?

If that is a false dichotomy. Debt financing is the "correct" choice when the overall gain from financing more-than-offsets the cost of the debt. Whether that is the case or not is what economists argue about (I think).


BigNorseWolf wrote:
We're spending a lot of money just to finance the debt, how would spending that money elsewhere not be a good thing?

Would be a great thing. Since rates are low we could borrow more and spend that too, which would be a better thing.

If we could somehow make us not have borrowed that money in the past and not have that change the rest of the current situation at all.

In reality, debt drives growth. Without that past spending we wouldn't be here now.

What you spend the money on matters of course. Somethings are far better than others.

Or, more simply, if we had not borrowed money in the past and thus didn't have to spend anything to finance the debt and we were doing our part and not borrowing anything now, we'd actually have less money to spend. The deficit is larger than the interest on the debt.


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Sure. In theory, one should always borrow as much money as possible as long as one can earn a higher return on the money than what is paid in interest. In practice, it doesn't matter what the expected rate of return is if you encounter a liquidity crisis. All the bridges in the world won't matter if we miss a bond payment.

If I had my druthers I'd up the capital gains tax, the corporate tax rate (which, despite what you may have heard, isn't anywhere near the "highest in the world."), and the social security tax ceiling. I'd also quash offshore tax shelters. Then I'd invest the resulting windfall in education, infrastructure, and paying down debt. I'd also ramp down military spending, and release pretty much the entire non-violent prison population as quickly as feasible.


thejeff wrote:
bugleyman wrote:


P.S. punctuation marks always go inside quotation marks. :)

It's a rule I'm happy to break. If it's in the quotation marks, it should be part of the quote, not something I've added.

Most obvious with question marks: Who said "Brevity is the soul of wit?"

Hmmm...upon looking this up, I was mistaken. It is only periods and commands that always go inside quotation marks.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

One of the things that's bothering me of Trump v. Clinton is this:

Hillary has been married once to one person and *she is still married*.

Trump has been married what, three times?

Which candidate is holding closer to 'traditional family values'?


bugleyman wrote:

Sure. In theory, one should always borrow as much money as possible as long as said money is invested at a higher rate of return that one is paying on what is borrowed.

In practice, I'd rather not have to trust politicians of *any* stripe to do the right thing (invest the money wisely). Also, it doesn't matter what your expected rate of return is on the money you're investing if you encounter liquidity crises. All the bridges in the world won't matter if we can't miss a bond payment.

All that said, if I had my druthers I'd up the capital gains tax, the corporate tax rate (which, despite what you may have heard, isn't anywhere near the "highest in the world."), and the social security tax ceiling. I'd also squash offshore tax shelters. Then I'd invest the resulting windfall in education and our crumbling infrastructure. Also, I'd cut military spending and release pretty much the entire non-violent prison population.

I guess all that makes me a "tax and spend," big government liberal (although my suggestions would probably decrease the size of the government by cutting the active duty military).

Well, I'd probably do similar things. But I'd be motivated more by the direct effects those taxes and those spending and policy would have on our country and economy than by worries about the debt

.
If you can't trust politicians to invest the borrowed money wisely, you also can't trust them to spend the taxed money wisely. And yet not letting the government spend money at all is disastrous.

The US is in the advantageous position of borrowing in US dollars. We can't hit that liquidity crisis. We can always make the bond payment (unless the government decides not to, but that speaks more to political dysfunction than anything else.) If nothing else, we can print money and hand it over. The threat is hyperinflation, but you won't get that if your borrowed money is actually growing the economy.


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Wei Ji the Learner wrote:


One of the things that's bothering me of Trump v. Clinton is this:

Hillary has been married once to one person and *she is still married*.

Trump has been married what, three times?

Which candidate is holding closer to 'traditional family values'?

Trump, of course.

He's a rich old man with trophy wife. That's pretty damn traditional.

She's a working woman who doesn't show proper subservience to her husband.


thejeff wrote:

Well, I'd probably do similar things. But I'd be motivated more by the direct effects those taxes and those spending and policy would have on our country and economy than by worries about the debt

.
If you can't trust politicians to invest the borrowed money wisely, you also can't trust them to spend the taxed money wisely. And yet not letting the government spend money at all is disastrous.

The US is in the advantageous position of borrowing in US dollars. We can't hit that liquidity crisis. We can always make the bond payment (unless the government decides not to, but that speaks more to political dysfunction than anything else.) If nothing else, we can print money and hand it over. The threat is hyperinflation, but you won't get that if your borrowed money is actually growing the economy.

First, because I love moving targets, I substantially edit my post. Sorry.

Second, countries rarely borrow money because they think they won't be able to pay it back. Investment by definition involves risk. I'd sleep better knowing we had a modest debt than one that could blow up in our faces with one or two bad political cycles.

Sovereign Court

thejeff wrote:
CBDunkerson wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:

No. Just no.

No single party controlled federal gov has been truly fiscally responsible since Coolidge.

The 90's had a balanced budget due to a combination of a two-party deadlock where they shut down each-others' ideas and the tech boom bringing in more tax money than anyone expected.

Setting aside the questionable accuracy of that assesment of the 90s...

balanced budget != fiscally responsible

Most of the time you either want to be running a deficit to fund growth or a surplus to pay off debt. The instances when you would actually want government receipts to equal outlays will be few and far between.

Exactly. Fiscally responsible isn't what many think it is. Nowhere near so simple as "balanced budget".

I'd argue that you really want to be funding growth, pretty much regardless. Paying off debt is mostly irrelevant, if you're growing the economy.

Now, you might want to pay down the debt in cases where you want to cool off the economy, to keep a bubble from blowing up, for example, but again that's actually economic policy, not for the purpose of paying off debt.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree there. That smacks of Keynesian economics style thinking where the gov can jump-start a slow economy - which I consider to be a load of bunk.

(Yes - we could start to argue economic theory - but we'd probably both just get grumpy and not convince each-other of anything.)


bugleyman wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Well, I'd probably do similar things. But I'd be motivated more by the direct effects those taxes and those spending and policy would have on our country and economy than by worries about the debt

.
If you can't trust politicians to invest the borrowed money wisely, you also can't trust them to spend the taxed money wisely. And yet not letting the government spend money at all is disastrous.

The US is in the advantageous position of borrowing in US dollars. We can't hit that liquidity crisis. We can always make the bond payment (unless the government decides not to, but that speaks more to political dysfunction than anything else.) If nothing else, we can print money and hand it over. The threat is hyperinflation, but you won't get that if your borrowed money is actually growing the economy.

First, because I love moving targets, I substantially edit my post. Sorry.

Second, countries rarely borrow money because they think they won't be able to pay it back. Investment by definition involves risk. I'd sleep better knowing we had a modest debt than one that could blow up in our faces with one or two bad political cycles.

Nah, there's a big difference between borrowing money you think you can pay back and borrowing money that you can print if you need to.

There are consequences to doing that, but they're not as drastic as default. And the only way it happens is if we already can't borrow more money, which is the biggest consequence anyway.


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Unity day? There is less people in attendance than a Twins game!

Liberty's Edge

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bugleyman wrote:
If I had my druthers I'd...

Nice list. All high priorities for me too. Though if we're imagining Shangri-La I'd also want to move quickly to a single payer healthcare system and replace most forms of social assistance with guaranteed employment.

Charon's Little Helper wrote:
We're just going to have to agree to disagree there. That smacks of Keynesian economics style thinking where the gov can jump-start a slow economy - which I consider to be a load of bunk.

That's always the problem in modern politics. One side's 'load of bunk' is the other's observed reality. cf. Great Depression, New Deal, WWII

Sovereign Court

CBDunkerson wrote:


That's always the problem in modern politics. One side's 'load of bunk' is the other's observed reality. cf. Great Depression, New Deal, WWII

You mean how the New Deal extended the recovery from The Great Depression drastically relative to every other economic recovery and WWII made the US recover by blowing up the rest of the world so that everyone had to buy stuff from the US, and they were all too broke to continue with Keynesian spending? (Plus women started to join the workforce in #s for the first time which increased the workforce relative to the population.)

It's hardly conclusive.

Liberty's Edge

So many Chicago school myths...


Charon's Little Helper wrote:


2. Bush Sr: "Read my lips" didn't help, but mostly in that case Perot played spoiler and helped Clinton win because the bulk of Perot voters would have otherwise voted for Bush.

Nice talking point, but it's not actually true. (And for those who can't stream video for some reason, here's the transcript of the same segment.) According to exit polls, Ross Perot's voters said that, had Perot not been in the race,

a)38% would have voted for Bush
b)38% would have voted for Clinton
c)24% would have stayed home.
Ross Perot, according to the people who voted for him, took an equal amount away from Bush as he did from Clinton.

Of course, it is possible for a strong independant to swing the election. If, hypothetically, Ted Cruz had won the Republican nomination and Trump ran as an independent, he probably would have taken more away from Cruz than from Clinton. In the particular case of Ross Perot, though, it didn't happen: Perot had no affect on the 1992 election's outcome. And, for all the hype about how "viable" he was as a candidate, he came away with a grand total of zero electoral votes.

The last time an independent candidate was really strong enough to make an impact was 1968, when George Wallace carried five states. Granted, Wallace wasn't enough to swing the election (even if all 45 of his electoral votes had gone to Humphrey, Nixon still would have won), but its still a heck of a lot more than Perot got, and more than either Gary Johnson or Jill Stein can realistically hope for (both of whom are currently polling distant thirds in their respective home states.)


thejeff wrote:
Wei Ji the Learner wrote:


One of the things that's bothering me of Trump v. Clinton is this:

Hillary has been married once to one person and *she is still married*.

Trump has been married what, three times?

Which candidate is holding closer to 'traditional family values'?

Trump, of course.

He's a rich old man with trophy wife. That's pretty damn traditional.

She's a working woman who doesn't show proper subservience to her husband.

’90s Scandals Threaten to Erode Hillary Clinton’s Strength With Women

"Even some Democrats who participated in the effort to discredit the women acknowledge privately that today, when Mrs. Clinton and other women have pleaded with the authorities on college campuses and in workplaces to take any allegation of sexual assault and sexual harassment seriously, such a campaign to attack the women’s character would be unacceptable."

Sounds pretty traditionally subservient to me.


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Charon's Little Helper wrote:


No single party controlled federal gov has been truly fiscally responsible since Coolidge.

The 90's had a balanced budget ...

Having a balanced budget has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. It's actually fiscally irresponsible for the government of a country that is increasing in either productivity or population to run a balanced budget.

Basically, the Republicans and the Libertarians both are trying to move into a bigger apartment in a time of rising rents --- but they're only willing to pay the exact same aount in rent, regardless of what the landlord charges. The people who are actually fiscally responsible are the one who note that this will last only until the landlord evicts them for nonpayment.


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Charon's Little Helper wrote:
CBDunkerson wrote:


That's always the problem in modern politics. One side's 'load of bunk' is the other's observed reality. cf. Great Depression, New Deal, WWII
You mean how the New Deal extended the recovery from The Great Depression drastically relative to every other economic recovery

Only if the word "extended" means "made the recovery happen more quickly and powerfully."

You can see that here, a chart which covers the period immediately previous to the Great Depression (1925-9), the actual Depression (1929-32) and the New Deal recovery afterwards.

Notice first that the Depression hit the USA a lot harder than the rest of the world, as noted by a greater dip between 1929 and 1932, but post-1932, the USA was the only country in the list that actually had per-capita income growth.

In other words, the New Deal made the USA recover; the rest of the world, lacking the New Deal, also largely lacked the recovery.

And once again the Libertarians prove that reality-influenced economics is not only not their friend, but someone they are actively feuding with.


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CBDunkerson wrote:

Charon's Little Helper wrote:
We're just going to have to agree to disagree there. That smacks of Keynesian economics style thinking where the gov can jump-start a slow economy - which I consider to be a load of bunk.
That's always the problem in modern politics. One side's 'load of bunk' is the other's observed reality. cf. Great Depression, New Deal, WWII

But the further problem is that observed reality has a well-documented liberal bias (see my previous post); if the loads of bunk were distributed anywhere close to evenly, it would be less of a problem.


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bugleyman wrote:

Sure. In theory, one should always borrow as much money as possible as long as one can earn a higher return on the money than what is paid in interest. In practice, it doesn't matter what the expected rate of return is if you encounter a liquidity crisis. All the bridges in the world won't matter if we miss a bond payment.

That's literally not possible (for the US government).

The US goverment borrows in dollars and also creates dollars (via the Fed). The Fed is about as likely to run out of dollars as the NFL is to run out of points. (The only exception is a politically manufactured crisis, where the government could make the payment but choose not to, such as the debt crisis last year).

Now, you're right that simply creating dollars out of thin air can have nasty effects if done badly --- you are putting more money into circulation, which will create higher inflation. Since inflation right now is below the Fed's general target, that's not a problem; it's something that should be done anyway.

So issuing more bonds will not cause a liquity crisis in the USA -- and while it might have some other economic effects, those effects are desirable right now for other reasons.


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bugleyman wrote:
Kryzbyn wrote:

Coincidence. It's a thing.

Yes.

But this isn't it.

These guys calculated just how unlikely a coincidence this would have been.

I don't think I've seen the word "septillion" used with precision and intent before.

(And, yeah, as far as I can tell, the numbers check out. Claude Shannon calculated the entropy of English at about one bit per character, so the odds against exactly duplicating N bits are (2^N)-1 to 1 against. )


Alex Jones vs. the Industrial Workers of the World

Who, for the record, are anarchists, not communists, Alex.

Liberty's Edge

So anyone know when Little Donnie will get his first briefing from the Alphabet Agencies? It'll be interesting to see if his self preservation instinct manages to override his ego once he realizes what he'll have to deal with if he's actually elected.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

Alex Jones vs. the Industrial Workers of the World

Who, for the record, are anarchists, not communists.

Yet are not afraid to arise for worker rights, if memory serves?


They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

Or, yes.


Krensky wrote:
So anyone know when Little Donnie will get his first briefing from the Alphabet Agencies? It'll be interesting to see if his self preservation instinct manages to override his ego once he realizes what he'll have to deal with if he's actually elected.

Typically the briefings start in early fall, around Labor Day (first week in September), but there's no specific date as far as I know.

Certainly not before the actual nomination, since there's no reason to brief candidates who end up not even running in the general election.


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Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

To be replaced with..?


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Krensky wrote:
So anyone know when Little Donnie will get his first briefing from the Alphabet Agencies? It'll be interesting to see if his self preservation instinct manages to override his ego once he realizes what he'll have to deal with if he's actually elected.

Typically the briefings start in early fall, around Labor Day (first week in September), but there's no specific date as far as I know.

Certainly not before the actual nomination, since there's no reason to brief candidates who end up not even running in the general election.

It must be bad to think that his ego can be overridden.

Liberty's Edge

BigNorseWolf wrote:
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

To be replaced with..?

The usual.

Warlords, rule of the sword, etc.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

To be replaced with..?

You'd have to ask them, I've never been a member.


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Krensky wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

To be replaced with..?

The usual.

Warlords, rule of the sword, etc.

Oh, please.

Dark Archive

Comrade Anklebiter wrote:
Krensky wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

To be replaced with..?

The usual.

Warlords, rule of the sword, etc.

Oh, please.

We use firearms now, man! They're totally lit.


Wiki page covers their glory years, roughly 1905-1918

Present day

Liberty's Edge

Sharoth wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
Krensky wrote:
So anyone know when Little Donnie will get his first briefing from the Alphabet Agencies? It'll be interesting to see if his self preservation instinct manages to override his ego once he realizes what he'll have to deal with if he's actually elected.

Typically the briefings start in early fall, around Labor Day (first week in September), but there's no specific date as far as I know.

Certainly not before the actual nomination, since there's no reason to brief candidates who end up not even running in the general election.

It must be bad to think that his ego can be overridden.

Little Donnie always gets while the getting is good and before his cons fall apart or he actually has to do work. Being POTUS is possibly the hardest and most stressful job on the planet (just look at some before and after pics). It would be perfectly in keeping with his track record to nope out of the office the minute he realizes what he'll have to deal with everyday for the next four years.

Liberty's Edge

Comrade Anklebiter wrote:
Krensky wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

They're anarcho-syndicalists, which, briefly, means they believe in international proletarian anarchist revolution.

To be replaced with..?

The usual.

Warlords, rule of the sword, etc.

Oh, please.

It's not what they would do, or what they want, but it's where anarchy winds up.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

What if Donald Trump...


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Well, I've never been an anarchist, except for when I'm using the Undead Leon Czolgosz avatar, but there's never been a successful anarchist revolution anywhere on the face of the planet, so we have no idea where it winds up.

IIRC, though, the IWW gave us: industrial unionism, freedom of speech (yes, really) and a labor movement that didn't discriminate on the basis of race, national origin or gender. I believe their plan was to build "one big union" and replace capitalism with "industrial democracy."

Sounds pretty good to me.


Speaking of which,

Republicans, remember the fate of McKinley!

[Rat-a-tat-tat! Ka-boom!]

Propaganda of the deed!

(I wasn't a syndicalist.)


Orfamay Quest wrote:
bugleyman wrote:
Kryzbyn wrote:

Coincidence. It's a thing.

Yes.

But this isn't it.

These guys calculated just how unlikely a coincidence this would have been.

I don't think I've seen the word "septillion" used with precision and intent before.

(And, yeah, as far as I can tell, the numbers check out. Claude Shannon calculated the entropy of English at about one bit per character, so the odds against exactly duplicating N bits are (2^N)-1 to 1 against. )

But Claude Shannon studied at University of Michigan. Michigan is the state where Mitt Romney was born. Mitt Romney is Mormon. Mormons are a cult that oppose traditional family values, so anything Claude Shannon said is part of the conspiracy to degrade American values.


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Sarcasm Dragon wrote:


But Claude Shannon studied at University of Michigan. Michigan is the state where Mitt Romney was born. Mitt Romney is Mormon. Mormons are a cult that oppose traditional family values, so anything Claude Shannon said is part of the conspiracy to degrade American values.

And thus the true foundations of mathematics are laid bare.

Russell and Whitehead were wrong. Math isn't based on set theory. Even in 1910, math was merely a plot to make sure the yet-to-be-born Hillary Clinton became president.

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Orfamay Quest wrote:
Sarcasm Dragon wrote:


But Claude Shannon studied at University of Michigan. Michigan is the state where Mitt Romney was born. Mitt Romney is Mormon. Mormons are a cult that oppose traditional family values, so anything Claude Shannon said is part of the conspiracy to degrade American values.

And thus the true foundations of mathematics are laid bare.

Russell and Whitehead were wrong. Math isn't based on set theory. Even in 1910, math was merely a plot to make sure the yet-to-be-born Hillary Clinton became president.

I've heard crazier conspiracy theories.


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Paul Watson wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
Sarcasm Dragon wrote:


But Claude Shannon studied at University of Michigan. Michigan is the state where Mitt Romney was born. Mitt Romney is Mormon. Mormons are a cult that oppose traditional family values, so anything Claude Shannon said is part of the conspiracy to degrade American values.

And thus the true foundations of mathematics are laid bare.

Russell and Whitehead were wrong. Math isn't based on set theory. Even in 1910, math was merely a plot to make sure the yet-to-be-born Hillary Clinton became president.

I've heard crazier conspiracy theories.

Agreed. The problem isn't with the theories themselves, but the degree of acceptance they seem to have. When the candidate himself is blaming his opponent for his wife's badly written speech -- what, did she disguise herself as Meliana's speech writer? Or did she chloroform Meliana herself and have a double deliver the speech in her stead? -- there's a bit of an issue.

We must not allow an incredibility gap! We will make America gullible again!


Time travel is causing troubles again? Where is the Doctor when you need him?


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I guess someone didn't tell Meliana's speechwriter he was supposed to fall on the sword.


So someone give me a day 2 recap please. I have kids at home so I can't watch the "R" rated stuff during the day.


Trump was actually nominated. (Big surprise.) There were some shenanigans, mostly shut down by the chair. States reported split delegate counts, based on the actual primaries, and the chair reported them as all for Trump.

Beyond that, this was the economic "Make America Work Again" day, so the speeches focused on emails, Benghazi and jailing Clinton. Ben Carson linked Clinton to Lucifer, in a way I couldn't even follow, but was still a high poitn of the evening.


I'll admit I haven't paid much attention to the conventions in the past, I'm more of a debate guy, is it usual to preach to the choir? I mean, I didn't quite get the "work" portion of the day. As thejeff points out, the entire evening was a hit on Clinton. Is it usual to avoid talking about party policy and the nominee and simply disparage the other side?


That's politics baby!


Orville Redenbacher wrote:
I'll admit I haven't paid much attention to the conventions in the past, I'm more of a debate guy, is it usual to preach to the choir? I mean, I didn't quite get the "work" portion of the day. As thejeff points out, the entire evening was a hit on Clinton. Is it usual to avoid talking about party policy and the nominee and simply disparage the other side?

There's usually a lot of it, but this did seem extreme.

We can compare what the Democratic one looks like in a couple weeks.

Sovereign Court

137ben wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:


2. Bush Sr: "Read my lips" didn't help, but mostly in that case Perot played spoiler and helped Clinton win because the bulk of Perot voters would have otherwise voted for Bush.

Nice talking point, but it's not actually true. (And for those who can't stream video for some reason, here's the transcript of the same segment.) According to exit polls, Ross Perot's voters said that, had Perot not been in the race,

a)38% would have voted for Bush
b)38% would have voted for Clinton
c)24% would have stayed home.
Ross Perot, according to the people who voted for him, took an equal amount away from Bush as he did from Clinton.

Oh - I totally agree that the votes alone wouldn't have swung it. (Though based upon actual #s of how they voted for other federal positions, slightly more would have voted for Bush, moreso in the swing states.) However, Perot also changed the campaign season since he ran a largely anti-Bush campaign. (From what I've read - I wasn't paying attention to politics yet at the time.)

I'm not saying that Clinton wouldn't have still won, but it would have definitely been a tighter race.

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