The New American Politics thread

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by nik-

Whenever I see the Trump name on a product, I immediately think "tacky", and that was long before he was a presidential nominee.

I have a Trump tie that I'm planning to ceremonially light on fire when he's defeated.

And if he wins I can hang myself.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

And if he wins I can hang myself.

The tie would break.

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

I have a Trump tie that I'm planning to ceremonially light on fire when he's defeated.

If Donald wins, I'll eat a 10-year old package of Trump mi-Steaks.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by Red Ice Player

I've put him on ignore and I would strongly suggest that everyone else should too. He is the worst troll I've ever seen on this board,and contributes absolutely nothing to any discussion, seriously.

I'm not saying Buster is anything insidious beyond a Canucks fan

...however, trolling is a technique the Kremlin has used to swing elections in other countries. Insert trolls into discussions to disrupt and confuse the narrative and reduce political traction.

Said techniques could swing votes 1-2% overall...and if you look at Brexit you can see that is all that may be needed.

I'm positive that at least a bit of the insanity in the US election originates from the Kremlin.

[GreenLantern2814]

WTF is this... "You see what’s going on. We’re tied ‘cause Scalia, this was not supposed to happen. Justice Scalia was going to be around for ten more years, at least, and this is what happened."

A 79-year old man serving in what I can only presume was a pretty high stress position was "going to be around for ten more years, at least" until he ####ing died of natural causes.

Someone test the water in Trump Tower for lead.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by Fozzie_DeBear

I'm not saying Buster is anything insidious beyond a Canucks fan

I generally consider people commenting on me personally as some mixture of boring, and comedic.

But I cannot stand by while someone calls me a Canucks fan. That is a step too far.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Itse

Btw, I'm pretty sure the "2nd amendment" thing from Drumpf was just another joke that mostly shows his bad taste and lack of judgment.

In context, yeah it was obviously a joke, and not something scripted either. It just shows that he's impulsive, speaks without thinking and doesn't really think about consequences or implications of what he's doing.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Buster

You find his bombast relevant, but his policies irrelevant.

Not what I said.

I find his personality fair game and I'm not interested in talking about his policies.

What I find strange about this, is that it is exactly how he is gaining his supporters.

Nothing strange about it. The GOP front-runner is going to have about the numbers Trump has pretty much regardless of anything, so Trumps achievement is winning the primary.

Conservatives love to antagonize liberals even more than the other way around. Trump set himself up as the guy that the liberals hate the most. It was a good strategy in the primary, especially against bad competition that didn't really excite anyone. However in the process he alienated large parts of GOP and huge voter blocks that might never bother to listen to him anymore.

What's also interesting is that Clinton didn't start really climbing in the polls relative to Trump until she also stopped talking about policy, and switched to more superficial criticisms. To my ear, it just sounds like people having the political version of a Kim vs Chloe Kardashian argument.

I would simply say that Clinton is looking like the much better campaigner at this point. Being "boring and reasonable" was a winning strategy against Sanders, as his biggest weakness was being seen as unrealistic. She didn't need to charm the Democratic base, they like her just fine as the primary showed.

Plus it set her apart as "the reasonable one" without antagonizing anyone.

Now that the real campaign has started, Clinton has that back-catalog of boring policy speeches that people want to know exist. They might not care about policies, but they want to think a candidate can handle that stuff. Clinton can now focus on being more likeable (or less hateable) than Donald Trump. Trump on the other hand still needs to prove that he's a credible politician AND that he's more likeable than Hillary Clinton. Advantage Clinton, obviously.

(Plus Clinton did a great job in stealing US exceptionalism from Trump.)

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Itse

(Plus Clinton did a great job in stealing US exceptionalism from Drumpf.)

This can't be overstated; it was a masterstroke at the convention. Can't remember which Republican afterwards commented on the messaging, "they're taking all our stuff!" and someone responded, "can you blame them? We were giving it away at blowout prices." Perfect.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

In context, yeah it was obviously a joke, and not something scripted either. It just shows that he's impulsive, speaks without thinking and doesn't really think about consequences or implications of what he's doing.

Which is PRECISELY why policy isn't that important. Trump has shown over Z and over, and over that his policy is simply "yeah, that that guy said" plus walls and no free trade

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I'm going to put you on ignore too if you continue to feel compelled to debate an imbecile.

I wouldn't call it a debate, just talking.

If you feel so aggravated about other people talking, maybe you should try leaving the thread for a while and come back later. I do that sometimes when I get frustrated with the level of discussion. I've done it with this thread many times.

You're not going to miss out, as there's not much else going on right now, and there's a polling thread for the play-by-play.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by Itse

Not what I said.

I find his personality fair game and I'm not interested in talking about his policies.


Nothing strange about it. The GOP front-runner is going to have about the numbers Trump has pretty much regardless of anything, so Trumps achievement is winning the primary.

Conservatives love to antagonize liberals even more than the other way around. Trump set himself up as the guy that the liberals hate the most. It was a good strategy in the primary, especially against bad competition that didn't really excite anyone. However in the process he alienated large parts of GOP and huge voter blocks that might never bother to listen to him anymore.

I would simply say that Clinton is looking like the much better campaigner at this point. Being "boring and reasonable" was a winning strategy against Sanders, as his biggest weakness was being seen as unrealistic. She didn't need to charm the Democratic base, they like her just fine as the primary showed.

Plus it set her apart as "the reasonable one" without antagonizing anyone.

Now that the real campaign has started, Clinton has that back-catalog of boring policy speeches that people want to know exist. They might not care about policies, but they want to think a candidate can handle that stuff. Clinton can now focus on being more likeable (or less hateable) than Donald Trump. Trump on the other hand still needs to prove that he's a credible politician AND that he's more likeable than Hillary Clinton. Advantage Clinton, obviously.

(Plus Clinton did a great job in stealing US exceptionalism from Trump.)

You have an interesting point. The antagonizing (in a Milo Y kind of way) is mostly a right phenomenon. As Milo says - if you want to be "punk" nowadays , you need to be a conservative. There is something to that. The left pundits commentators tends to be the more earnest, dare I say establishment types.

[sun]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I'm going to put you on ignore too if you continue to feel compelled to debate an imbecile.

Originally Posted by Itse

I wouldn't call it a debate, just talking.

If you feel so aggravated about other people talking, maybe you should try leaving the thread for a while and come back later. I do that sometimes when I get frustrated with the level of discussion. I've done it with this thread many times.

You're not going to miss out, as there's not much else going on right now, and there's a polling thread for the play-by-play.

This is a pretty funny conversation if you have tinordi on ignore. Do I have to put Itse on ignore now?

[V]

Yeah, it's stunning that Tinordi thinks he has some sort of high ground when it comes to trolling. The poster is the biggest troll on this board, maybe only barring Psycenet.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by V

Yeah, it's stunning that Tinordi thinks he has some sort of high ground when it comes to trolling. The poster is the biggest troll on this board, maybe only barring Psycenet.

Guess I gotta up my game.

[Itse]

I found this interesting. Take it with a grain of salt as it's from an obviously biased source.

However, seems legit, and in any case it's interesting to see people being able to spot this stuff.

http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/

When Trump wishes the Olympic team good luck, he’s tweeting from his iPhone. When he’s insulting a rival, he’s usually tweeting from an Android. Is this an artifact showing which tweets are Trump’s own and which are by some handler?

Others have explored Trump’s timeline and noticed this tends to hold up- and Trump himself does indeed tweet from a Samsung Galaxy. But how could we examine it quantitatively? I’ve been writing about text mining and sentiment analysis recently, particularly during my development of the tidytext R package with Julia Silge, and this is a great opportunity to apply it again.

My analysis, shown below, concludes that the Android and iPhone tweets are clearly from different people, posting during different times of day and using hashtags, links, and retweets in distinct ways. What’s more, we can see that the Android tweets are angrier and more negative, while the iPhone tweets tend to be benign announcements and pictures. Overall I’d agree with @tvaziri’s analysis: this lets us tell the difference between the campaign’s tweets (iPhone) and Trump’s own (Android).

[Thor]

Makes sense, clearly he's too egotistical to let handlers just run his twitter, which would be the sensible thing to do in a presidential run, but he just can't help himself.

[GGG]

Now does the android have large gaps when the kids take Dads phone away for going off message.

[bubbsy]

Ugh... this whole process has forced me to become a tuneIn radio addict for the fox news station. Listening to their debates and attempts to spin these events in trumps favour are extremely entertaining....

My poor mobile data quota though.

[Thor]

Oooh thats a terrific idea!