The 2016 US Election (Part IV)

[Flagg]

So now you've back to taking cheap shots at me in posts that don't even have anything to do with me? Yeah, you're totally the mature, reasonable one here.



Just how many of your posts have a positive substance to insult ratio?

But since I'm really not interested in derailing this thread by engaging in yet another one of your sad little pissing contests, that's the last I'll say on it.

Just go tattle to the mods when you think I'm being a bad boy.

[Terralthra]

This makes 4 election threads that various people have managed to shit up by arguing with TRR over stupid things. Sigh.

[Flagg]

This makes 4 election threads that various people have managed to shit up by arguing with TRR over stupid things. Sigh.

It's ridiculous. Who the fuck would have taken what I said literally unless they were that obtuse, or just trying to pick a fight?

[Terralthra]

As the late George Bernard Shaw said, "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

[Civil War Man]

So now you've back to taking cheap shots at me in posts that don't even have anything to do with me? Yeah, you're totally the mature, reasonable one here.



Just how many of your posts have a positive substance to insult ratio?

But since I'm really not interested in derailing this thread by engaging in yet another one of your sad little pissing contests, that's the last I'll say on it.

Just go tattle to the mods when you think I'm being a bad boy.

Seriously, you two. Just fuck already.

Anyway, it looks like Obama calling Trump a whiner for trying to claim that the election's rigged touched a nerve, as trolling Trump always does, because Trump decided to invite Obama's half-brother as one of his guests to the debate. Probably using it to dog-whistle his birtherism again, since this is Obama's Kenyan half-brother from Kenya (did we mention he's from Kenya?).

[Flagg]

So now you've back to taking cheap shots at me in posts that don't even have anything to do with me? Yeah, you're totally the mature, reasonable one here.



Just how many of your posts have a positive substance to insult ratio?

But since I'm really not interested in derailing this thread by engaging in yet another one of your sad little pissing contests, that's the last I'll say on it.

Just go tattle to the mods when you think I'm being a bad boy.

Seriously, you two. Just fuck already.

Sorry, but carding people before sex is awkward.

[Q99]

The GOP is now more of a death cult than a political party, so the odds are slim to none they'll stop going Full Retard. Jim Gilmore would have been perfect for them: a right-winger from a swing state but he couldn't get the time of day. If nothing else, I doubt he or Kasich or Jeb Bush would have been caught on video talking about grabbing women by the pussy.

Heh. As a Virginian, I can say people here are less than impressed with him, plus he was only active a number of years ago, he's not been a player locally for some time. I mean, no Trumpster fire, but he's not gonna save the day.

Conversely, if the Democrats had picked Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown, they'd not only mop up the floor with the Trumpster Fire, they'd have a good shot at winning both the Senate and House.

Oh... no. At least, not significantly more than Hillary, and possibly less.

I like Liz and Sherrod too... and I feel like I should be offering hugs when I say this... putting up someone further to the left is not a guaranteed victory, and doesn't have the huge outreach potential often assumed with it.

Bernie... well, we saw him in action. He did better with young voters. He didn't get huge Obama-esque young voter turnout. He did massively worse with minorities, and minority heavy states are the ones where Hillary is expanding the field. 538 did an analysis that showed that while Bernie does much better with left-leaning independents, he doesn't have an advantage with all independents vs Hillary. Hillary Clinton beat him in the segment of the population Bernie in most suited for, in short, and there's no real sign that he'd be able to crack centrist or right-leaning demographics at all. His socialist stance and some of his past actions related to that... black voters actually have a bad history with socialist candidates promising the moon, then going to "Sure, I'll get around to that once I've done my economists, which I think are really what's important," so there's wariness there, they'll support him but more reluctantly and with lower turnout, and of course in Florida the Cuban vote is out, they're going to stay home. Bernie at the least, is fairly definitely less competitive than Hillary, and we've had that flat-demonstrated. Bernie Sanders has less turnout among the furthest left 1/3rd of the American electorate, and that's not going to cut it. He can still win, but no, he does not have an advantage in this comparison.

Now, Liz and Sherrod are better situated than Bernie, but there's no demographic they're going to run away with either. Liz and Hillary's demographics aren't too far apart... and Elizabeth Warren is a former Republican with a share of attack angles that can be used on her that I know of. Not the same level of history as Hillary's, but she's not a scandal-free further left Hillary alternative, she's another politician that'd just be subject to a different set of attacks and there is stuff that I think could do some damage. Sherrod, not too different.

Could those two do better? Quite possibly. But... they don't have the angle for the type of runaway victories you see attributed to the idea of running a leftist candidate here on the left. There's no demographic that's going to leap for a leftie candidate that's not already supporting Hillary, just more enthusiasm in areas where we're already doing well. And that doesn't redraw maps.

In a sense, it's our equivalent to the Republican's "Our problem is we didn't run someone far right enough," expecting once you get a someone who's a good example of these politics, the populace will be impressed and flock behind them. To the general populace, many of these stances are unproven and too far out of their experience. Even if they're good policies in practice, they're not great for swaying the center.

They'll do a bit better on the left, a bit worse on some areas, I could see them winning by more, but they do not redefine the game. The House? A lot of that is reliant on winning states that are further to the center/right than others, so no, they are not a key to winning those.

[Simon_Jester]

I think we have to recognize that the key to changing the political game in the long run isn't about "this candidate versus that candidate." It's about convincing people. Convincing people that the Republican Party as it now exists is useless to them, that a less tight-fisted, tight-minded, smirkingly patriarchal system would be an improvement. That it isn't even about two competing brands anymore, because one of the brands has self-destructed to the point where it no longer knows or cares whether it poisons its own customers.

So we should think in terms of what will convince people.

Running a candidate like Hillary Clinton, who like Obama is going to prove... reassuringly normal... to much of mainstream America while in office, conspicuously not a lunatic, while the top-level Republicans continue to make asses of themselves may well have the desired effect.

[Crossroads Inc.]

To the Democrats credit over the years, they have NOT fallen into the trap of "We did't because we not Liberal ENOUGH" and pull themselves so far the alienate voters in the same way Republicans have. And we see now the long term benefits of that. At the end of the day, surprise surprise, it is PEOPLE who change things, not candidates (well, candidates do, but that only takes you so far)

On another note...

Last night, mostly for "Lulz" I found myself going back and watching videos under the titles of:
"Republicans React to Obama Winning 2012"

And I have to say, I had rather forgot just how insane the Rampant fear mongering on the Right was during that time...
A lot of videos had people openly sobbing, talking about "How could america re-elect a Muslim Terrorist" and of course the ver popular "In 4 years, there won't be an America left!"
You almost feel some of these people you watch, WANT American to "be destroyed" if just to vindicate their own view points. As if they are secretly hoping Obama, or ANY democrat randomly blows up the constitution, installs themselves as a dictator, just so they can go "AHA! We told you so!"

It is those sort of people that I wonder how they will inevitably react to Trump loosing and Hillary being elected.
I mean shoot.
When you firmly believe Hillary Clinton is responsible for:
Covering up (alleged) rapes by Bill Clinton
Having people "assassinated" who got in her way
Taking Bribes from corrupt dictators
Falsified legal reports
Benghazi
and of course the Email thing...

I mean, how can you not help but wonder just how much they will implode when Trump fails to be elected?

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm more worried about some of them exploding than imploding, if you get my meaning.

It doesn't help that Trump is actively encouraging violence.

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, if it started to do for the Tea Party what Timothy McVeigh did for the militia movement, that might be for the best in the long run. In a country like the US, where political violence is not normative... A movement that is as crazy as possible without violence for a long time can do more harm than one which disaffects its own membership by edging over into 'violent' territory.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I'd rather it not come to that.

One way or another, the Republican Party is collapsing, though.

Overdue, and good riddance.

[Q99]

The crazy-as-possible-without-violence movement is still shedding people and moving itself to less relevance. I'll take slowly starving itself without violence any day.

I think we have to recognize that the key to changing the political game in the long run isn't about "this candidate versus that candidate." It's about convincing people. Convincing people that the Republican Party as it now exists is useless to them, that a less tight-fisted, tight-minded, smirkingly patriarchal system would be an improvement. That it isn't even about two competing brands anymore, because one of the brands has self-destructed to the point where it no longer knows or cares whether it poisons its own customers.

So we should think in terms of what will convince people.

Running a candidate like Hillary Clinton, who like Obama is going to prove... reassuringly normal... to much of mainstream America while in office, conspicuously not a lunatic, while the top-level Republicans continue to make asses of themselves may well have the desired effect.

Additionally, the best way to get people to like and want people further to our side, is get someone in, and then have them do some policy in that direction, showing that it works by practice, not just words, and that having a taste, they want more of it.

People like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has done far more for liberal and progressive causes than anyone on the far left who decry then as not left enough. Elizabeth Warren has done more than Bernie, who has trouble working with others in pursuit of purity sometimes but can be convinced to make deals, and Bernie has done more in one day of being a Senator (*not* his presidential run, his senate tenure, where he has passed bills and done work on committees) for them than Jill Stein has done in her entire career.

[Simon_Jester]

Well- there's a line, there's a limit, there really is such a thing as "Democrat In Name Only..." There's always a balance to be struck between compromising enough to win elections, and compromising so much that there's no point in winning them at all.

But you're not, at base, wrong about this, Q99. The ability to take meaningful action matters, and building a record of success matters.

[SolarpunkFan]

TRR, please settle down. I say this as a semi-friend, I don't want you to get banned.

After this line comes speculation on my part which may very well be completely wrong. Caveat emptor!

I've heard that at least part of the reason why so many working class/unemployed people are voting for Trump is due to economics. They've essentially been left behind by the current economic changes (and have been among the groups most hurt by the 2007 economic meltdown that started in 2007).

Yes, they are blaming the wrong people (company owners) for the problems they face. But I don't think it's entirely ignorance on their part (though I do think ignorance plays a very big role in it), rather it's brainwashing.

AM talk radio has been muddying the waters insofar as politics since the 1980's, Fox "News" since 1996.

You don't go for that long with such a large amount of media lying to you without people getting those ideas deeply ingrained into them. I guess the fortunate thing is that, for now, more and more people are becoming aware of the bullshit and are dismissing it.

I hope that trend of dismissing right-wing nutjobery continues, but more can be done. Quite frankly I think the Democratic Party shares some of the blame in this. The least we can do to convince others is to come up with a more universally livable economic paradigm than what we have now. Such a paradigm might be radical, or it might be pedestrian.

[FireNexus]

*snip discredited theory*

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the ... s-support/

Trump supporters on average make well above the national median income. They're middle-middle to upper-middle class white folks. The economy argument is bullshit, because actually poor people generally do not support Trump. They are racists who have ceased bothering to camouflage their racism except the naughty bits, and they're still using economic anxiety to cover it such as they are.

[The Romulan Republic]

TRR, please settle down. I say this as a semi-friend, I don't want you to get banned.

If you're referring to that ugliness with Flagg, I backed out of said argument a while ago, aside from this post, and have been trying to ignore Flagg's string of insults since then. I was also (I thought) fairly calm and civil to him to being with until he started insulting me. I simply disagreed with something he said (surely that's permitted on a discussion forum?), and attempted to explain why, and given how many times I've been criticized for using hyperbole, I don't think it is terribly unreasonable to object to his. I certainly cannot imagine anything that I did in said discussion that would be in any way ban-able, though obviously that's not my decision to make.

I'm honestly trying to be reasonable, but I am rather tired of people acting like I am the only one responsible when someone else throws shit at me, and I honestly find your post just a little condescending, however well-meant it may be (and I do appreciate it).

Now could we please get back to discussing the election, which is surely a much more interesting subject than making this thread a referendum on my personality? A subject that hardly seems relevant here, since I'm not running for office.

As to the rest of your post... I partially agree. I do think economics plays a role, and indoctrination, but I also think a lot of it is just plain assholishness and bigotry. I do agree, though, that the Democrats share some of the blame. In part because we've sometimes been too hesitant to confront the worst aspects of the far Right, and in part, yes, because we need to offer a better alternative economic paradigm. This is a big part of why I think Sanders might have proven a stronger general election candidate (though we shall never know), and part of why I'd like to see the Democratic party adopt a stronger stance on minimum wage, tuition-free college, and public health care.

I hope that in a generation or so, we'll have shifted the political paradigm enough that a guaranteed basic income is a politically viable proposal, but I recognize that, sadly, we're probably not their yet.

[Q99]

*snip discredited theory*

Trump supporters on average make well above the national median income. They're middle-middle to upper-middle class white folks. The economy argument is bullshit, because actually poor people generally do not support Trump. They are racists who have ceased bothering to camouflage their racism except the naughty bits, and they're still using economic anxiety to cover it such as they are.

There is an argument that it's not economy hardship, but loss of economic opportunity that's driving some of them- they don't see their areas as having the same chances in the future that they did and/or they don't see ways to get higher.

I mean, no doubt there is a lot of racism, and even that economic argument is to an extent about entitlement/feeling they're being owed it that way (and sometimes- often- that ties in to racism, 'if I'm not doing well and they are, they must be the problem'), just saying.

Well- there's a line, there's a limit, there really is such a thing as "Democrat In Name Only..." There's always a balance to be struck between compromising enough to win elections, and compromising so much that there's no point in winning them at all.

But you're not, at base, wrong about this, Q99. The ability to take meaningful action matters, and building a record of success matters.

There is a such thing as name-only, but they're largely a dying breed, a lot of them were blue dogs in Republican states who got decimated in the tea party wave (and if we had them, Obama could've gotten more done, so I wouldn't discount Blue Dogs for that matter). And the line of what constitutes name-only (I don't actually like the term Dino ^^ Tossing around Rino is part of what killed the Republicans) seems to move left depending on who you're talking to or how much success the Democrats were having.

I mean, Bill Clinton is way more in the center than any of the current crop- advertised as such, even. But he was still to the left of any of the Republican candidates in his time or after, and Obama and Biden are clearly to the left of him, and Hillary's to the left of *them* (and was a visibly obviously left-pushing force in Bill's administration, Hillarycare and all that).

According to polls on issues, Hillary is... in the middle to somewhat left of middle of the party. She's not even a true centrist, and I think one can be a centrist and a true democrat without much problem for that matter.

Now, there was a notable in-name-only recently who you may remember in the debates, Jim Webb. That is someone that makes you scratch your head and go, "... are you sure you're in the right party?" (really it's because the Republicans have scared 'em off, but they're clearly on our side just because they realize the other side is a disaster and nothing else).

If someone uses the term Dino for Barack or Hillary I consider it to have little meaning coming from them, it means they've defined 'true democrat' around their wing of the party to the exclusion of the majority of democrats (and especially if one is writing out black democrats in doing so, I view it as incredibly naive at best. They're at the core of the party yet you see a surprising number seem to forget they exist- note how many people complain about Hillary's New York and California primary victories on her win as if they decided it and not, y'know, the entire South in devastating margins).

If someone uses the term on Jim Webb types? That I can understand.

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect Solarpunk's description actually does match a certain slice of Trump voters. Just not a very big slice. Remember, Solarpunk, that a disproportionate number of poor Americans are black or Hispanic. Effectively none of them are voting for Trump.

There ARE (white) working-class and underemployed and presumably unemployed people voting Trump, and I suspect nearly all of them are doing so for the reason Solarpunk describes- they blame all that is wrong in modern America on blacks, Hispanics, and liberal government in general, because they've been conditioned to do so for decades.

But as FireNexus points out, that's not the backbone of Trump's support.

...

As to TRR's post, I would point out that the bare fact of Sanders' candidacy may have done a lot of good for shifting the Overton window to the left. He suggested things like a guaranteed minimum income and subsidized/free college for all, and people listened. They decided they'd rather go with the more reliable and better-known generic brand instead, but they listened. And Clinton had to publicly stake out some vaguely comparable proposals to keep pace.

The Obama administration was not a great time for progressives, because even if Obama himself had progressive sympathies (unclear), he was in no position to act on them. Even his greatest push for a policy that would go down as a major reform- the ACA- wound up as a compromise piece of legislation that didn't really do the job of bringing us into line with what the rest of the developed world does with healthcare to get better results at half the price. It's... disappointing.

But I suspect the Clinton administration will be a bit more auspicious for that. Because it's been longer. The Republicans are in a more advanced state of disintegration and may lose Congress for some time to come. And whereas Obama had to throw his weight towards the center by pitching himself as a compromise candidate, Clinton has had to throw her weight a little to the left in the primary.

[Q99]

I will note that the stimulus also did a lot to help.

And he had tax plans that were good, just, y'know, didn't get anywhere.

Sure, the timeframe was disappointing... but in turn I'm disappointed by the people who decide to blame it on Obama & other democrats in power and decides what *really* needs to be done is vote them out, rather than look at the obvious reality that without congress it doesn't matter how progressive the democrats are, and a centrist democratic majority would get, again, more progress policy done than a progressive minority.

"Protest votes" or deciding to "not vote for anyone because they aren't progressive enough," really bug me.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh, I certainly don't want to see the Democrats go the party purges, no compromise, ideological purity route that killed the Republican Party.

I think we need to vote for Democrats who have strong Left wing principles, but know how to cut deals when they have to. Clinton, policy-wise, is on the Right end of that spectrum (questions about how genuine her principles are aside), while Sanders is on the Left end.

[Q99]

Oh, I certainly don't want to see the Democrats go the party purges, no compromise, ideological purity route that killed the Republican Party.

I think we need to vote for Democrats who have strong Left wing principles, but know how to cut deals when they have to. Clinton, policy-wise, is on the Right end of that spectrum (questions about how genuine her principles are aside), while Sanders is on the Left end.

Hillary, policy wise, is in the middle-left of the spectrum (of the party, not overall. She's not far from Liz. Article, different article, third article), and votes farther to the left than most.

This is what leads to the ideological purity route. Marching in our heads where the 'middle' actually is further and further over until we're lumping people in the actual middle in with the other side, people leaning to the left as a merely-tolerated middle, and a minority who do not have the numbers to swing the party as if they were the whole party.

There's a lot more air on the centrist side of the Democratic party than gets given credit for, and Hillary and many others don't get credit for being as progressive as they are- and not noticing it is dangerous, strategically speaking. If you don't know who candidates have to gain the support to get things done, that's a good way to underperform. If you don't count actually-pretty-progressive people as progressive, you don't give progressive goals even the support available.

[Flagg]

Honestly, if it started to do for the Tea Party what Timothy McVeigh did for the militia movement, that might be for the best in the long run. In a country like the US, where political violence is not normative... A movement that is as crazy as possible without violence for a long time can do more harm than one which disaffects its own membership by edging over into 'violent' territory.

I think it's hilarious that within 12 hours of TRR having a whine over my obvious hyperbole, he in all seriousness suggests that Republicans will resort to terrorism without any indication that he doesn't believe that it's something that could literally happen without the slightest bit of self awareness.

But remember, he's the poor picked on one.

[FaxModem1]

For those following the debate tonight:

9? Fucking NINE? Jesus, just how disgusting is Trump?

[Flagg]

For those following the debate tonight:

9? Fucking NINE? Jesus, just how disgusting is Trump?

Can you elaborate? I can't look at an open septic tank for 90 minutes.