The larger point is that in many cases the victim doesn't remember the exact details.

The exact timing of  Clinton's comings and goings in this instance might mean something IF there hadn't been rape and other such claimed time and again and IF Monica had sent her little blue dress to the cleaners.

Where there is smoke there is fire comes to mind.

And FYI I have never called for Bubba's impeachment for his sexual activities.

But, since you consider yourself such a staunch defender of female rights...aren't you aware that sex between a subordinate and a senior manager is considered to be close to rape and a firing offense in every corporation that I was employed by.

Donald Trump is poised for the strongest primary performance in modern history

For months, the press and the Republican establishment alike have been expecting the Trump bubble to implode. Now that it's clear Trump isn't going anywhere, we're seeing stories about a long slog of a campaign or even a brokered convention. But there's a very real possibility that, far from those kinds of days of reckoning, Donald Trump could actually "run the table." Ironically, Trump not only could win -- he could win more decisively than any non-incumbent Republican contestant for the nomination since the dawn of the modern primary system

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If Trump wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, and then goes on to win South Carolina and Nevada -- as he is favored to do -- he could very conceivably win every contest, or at worst lose a favored son state or two like Cruz's Texas. Nobody has run the table like that -- not Nixon in 1968, nor Reagan in 1980, nor Bush in 2000.

Trump plus 10 others (none / 0) (#105)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jan 25, 2016 at 07:17:14 PM EST
Some numbers from RCP.  Trump + Cruz = 54%.  If you add in Carson it's 63%.
Supposedly the most common second choice for those guys is one of the other.  So the last one standing will probably win it seems to me.  We can argue about who that will be.  I think it will be Trump.
Now, if you add the next  7 others, including Marco, you get 29%.
Numbers

LINK

that's nationally.  If you look at state polls he is often leading by significantly more that that.

Parent | Reply to This

The point I intended to make (none / 0) (#108)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jan 25, 2016 at 07:34:45 PM EST
Is the real question is not who Marcos supporters will go to.  It's who Cruz and Carson supporters will go to.   Do you think that will be Marco?  Jeb!  Kasich?
I do not.  I think it's most likely the outsider vote will stay outside.
We will know in 7 days.

Parent | Reply to This

Welcome to a 2016 Republican presidential primary unlike any other. A crowded field, angry electorate and uncharacteristically divided establishment, not to mention the wild-card role of super PACs, have already made this nominating contest more frenzied and unpredictable than its recent predecessors. It's become conventional wisdom that, whatever the chaos of the early campaign, a winner is most likely to emerge by mid-March. This cycle, we can't be so sure. In fact, the better you understand how the 2016 calendar works, the more likely it seems we can face a messy slog that runs into late spring and possibly even into the July convention--an unlikely fate at this point but one that's no longer impossible.

For starters, the 2016 calendar quite deliberately avoids having a mid-March nominee.

In past cycles--2008, 2000 and 1996--the eventual GOP nominees won quickly by concentrating their attention on the first four or five state contests, leveraging their momentum into a front-loaded Super Tuesday and becoming inevitable by early to mid-March. After the 2008 GOP primary, in which 34 states voted by February 5, Republican Party leaders concluded that the frontloaded calendar had given John McCain a too-early primary win and allowed the Obama-Clinton primary to capture a lopsided share of attention. In response, those GOP leaders pushed through new calendar rules designed to create a longer, more contested race: They encouraged states to push their primaries later, and required states voting during the first two weeks of March to agree to allocate their delegates proportionally according to the voting results, rather than in a winner-take-all fashion, making those contests far less decisive. (The period is two weeks shorter in 2016 than it was in 2012, but about as many delegates will be chosen.)

The 2012 presidential election was the first time the new rules took effect, and they dramatically prolonged the primary season. In every election since 1996, the GOP had settled on a clear nominee in March--as early as March 4, in McCain's case. Although Mitt Romney did as well as any of his predecessors early on in the 2012 primary--effectively tying Iowa, winning New Hampshire, losing South Carolina, and then winning Florida and Nevada--he didn't have enough delegates to secure the nomination until April 24, after 41 states had voted. Critics blamed Romney's long slog on weakness as a candidate, but the changes in the primary calendar certainly played a major role.

The 2016 rules are much the same as the ones that dragged out Romney's victory, but the circumstances of the race all point to a longer, harder fight. Traditionally, the Republican nominee is known when more than 68 percent of the delegates have been chosen, which won't happen until April 19 this year. On top of that, the race itself is far more complex than it was in 2012: Romney's anti-establishment challengers petered out relatively quickly, while the two candidates currently leading the polls this year--Donald Trump and Ted Cruz--are themselves anti-establishment candidates, and are continuing to gain momentum just as the voting season begins.
What can we expect along the winding path ahead? This will be my seventh cycle working in presidential politics, including previously as a lawyer for the Republican National Committee and then on George W. Bush's, Mitt Romney's and Scott Walker's presidential campaigns. More than any of the other primary seasons I've seen, this is the year to expect the unexpected.

For the candidates, the primary calendar is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. They'll need victories in order to gain credibility, and resources in order to pick up the 1,237 delegates that make for a majority (having the most votes doesn't always mean getting the most delegates). They'll need to decide whether to run statewide campaigns, mostly through TV ads, or use advanced data techniques to target specific places--whether through ads, old-fashioned door-knocking or other techniques.

For the rest of us who are following along, the solution to that jigsaw puzzle may be just as confounding. Beginning in Iowa on February 1, voters will determine whether GOP officials will get their wish of knowing the nominee by March 22, or whether the Law of Unintended Consequences will create an unusually divisive, long and inconclusive primary season that becomes a gift for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

As we prepare for 19 weeks of voting, here's an insider's look at how major calendar moments could bring the nominating process to an end--or carry the chaos over to yet another contested round.