Opinion of the phrase "would have had to have"

[Ban my account ffs!]

As in..

In order for the Libertarians to seize the moment in 2016, they would have had to have been building momentum well before it became clear the Republican party is going crazy.

[angus]

It doesn't quite give me a full-on erection, but then it doesn't give me a tremendous headache either.

I'm bothered more by the use of momentum in this context.  Momentum is the product of mass and velocity.  Campaigns may have a sort of velocity, if you can define it in terms of "potential supporters gained per unit time" but I cannot think of it as having mass.  Speaking of using mass wrongly, do you remember back in the late 90s when it was all the rage to say "tons of" things?  Even intangible nouns like love and music got measured by the ton, as in "we're going to have tons of fun at the carnival.  Would you like to come?"  Fun cannot be measured by the ton any more than an election campaign can be quantified in units of kilogram-meters-per-second.

[This account no longer in use.]

Grammatically correct phrase.

[CatoMinor]

When I read it my mind automatically contracts it into "would've" and it sounds better

[Ban my account ffs!]

When I read it my mind automatically contracts it into "would've" and it sounds better

well yeah.. I say it like

"would've had to've"

Even better is

"would have had to have had" as in "She would have had to have had the money, so I'm not sure what happened."

[kcguy]

As someone who writes long convoluted sentences, even I find that original sentence to be a little much.  There's just one too many auxiliary verbs for my taste.  I would probably shorten it to "they would have had to be building momentum".

In a different context, the same words might work.  For example, if "have" were the central verb, a person might be able to get away with "they would have had to have better planning".

[angus]

When I read it my mind automatically contracts it into "would've" and it sounds better

well yeah.. I say it like

"would've had to've"

Even better is

"would have had to have had" as in "She would have had to have had the money, so I'm not sure what happened."

both could be replaced with needed.

"She needed to have the money and that's why she prostituted herself"

"If the Libertarians weren't such batshit crazy gun-nuts and stoners, then folks might actually support them and they might actually win some contests, but they needed to have gained some support before the GOP went totally commando and nominated Trump."

[Simfan34]

In order to win, they would have had to have had a stronger grassroots turnout machine.

Though I suppose that could have been simplified to:

In order to win, they would've needed a stronger grassroots turnout machine.

[muon2]

In order to win, they would have had to have had a stronger grassroots turnout machine.

Though I suppose that could have been simplified to:

In order to win, they would've needed a stronger grassroots turnout machine.

Better still:

In order to seize the moment, they needed to build momentum well before the party went crazy.

I like momentum using people as an analog for mass, much like we can talk about either mass flow rates or electron flow rates.

[angus]

using people as an analog for mass

Then doesn't the campaign really want Force?  Momentum with 30% of the delegates won't do.  You need a positive change in the velocity.

[muon2]

using people as an analog for mass

Then doesn't the campaign really want Force?  Momentum with 30% of the delegates won't do.  You need a positive change in the velocity.

Force is used to change momentum (not velocity as is often taught). To (over?)extend the analogy campaigns have momentum in the form of people moving with and supporting a candidate. It's the mass part in the form of people that changes as much as the velocity in their enthusiasm. Campaign momentum is changed by the force of rallies, ads, and debates over a period of time.

[angus]

Force is used to change momentum

exactly.  F_i = dp_i/dt is how the textbook I'm using for kinetics describes it in the first derivation of the ideal gas law (although the substitution of 1/2 kT for each quadratic term, using the Equipartition Theorem, happens with each 1/2 mv_i².  I don't think it's incorrect to substitute mv for p in those cases.)

So campaign wants a force.  One can rely on a third-place finish with constant momentum, but if he wants to be nominated, then he needs a force to change the momentum.  Trump's campaign is a force to be reckoned with.  Clinton's force is winning her delegates.  Force especially works well for those two because it conjures up images of strength and inevitability.  All those other guys just have constant momentum because their campaigns aren't forceful enough to change it.

All those analogies are pretty silly, and now I'm doing it.  I would have had to have been doing that intentionally I suppose.  

Baseball metaphors were all the rage a few years ago.  I liked those better.  Grandstanding, seventh-inning stretches, and home runs were commonly used to describe elections and the political process.  Sanders needs to step up to the plate.  Or maybe Clinton was born on third base.  At least she identified the bank bailouts using taxpayer money as a a backstop.   It hasn't hurt Trump to be flat-footed on stage, nor has his bush-league mistakes hurt him.  Rubio tried, but failed, to knock it out of the park in the most recent debate but it was a swing and a miss.