I am beginning to wonder if Trump is the beginning or end of this nonsense though. Is he the problem or just a symptom?
What happens next time if a candidate with similar ideals comes along but has slightly more charm? The fact he is polling as high as he is after everything is depressing even if he loses.
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I think you're right. Trump is losing because he's a vile human being who can't stop blurting out stupid bull####. If someone took up his platform who was eloquent, and wasn't a complete asshat, they'd win for sure.
We should have a 'predict the outcome thread'
Who wins, who loses. Electoral count. Swing states, who wins which ones.
Probably a little too early to start it and I will forget...or be too lazy to do it.
Hillary Wins
Hillary Wins all swing states
359 Electoral College Votes
I think you're right. Trump is losing because he's a vile human being who can't stop blurting out stupid bull####. If someone took up his platform who was eloquent, and wasn't a complete asshat, they'd win for sure.
There is something there. If a person took the 3rd debate transcript, didn't change any of his words eliminated the insulting garbage, it's not bad. There is policy here.
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I think the Clinton campaign has been sitting on some piece of oppo they've been waiting to drop. Had Trump spent more than like 48 hours at even or better than Clinton, I think we would have seen it earlier. But now, they're just going to sit on it as long as he keeps immolating himself until like five or six days before the election. Drop it, and then just let the press run with that for the last few days of the campaign.
I am beginning to wonder if Trump is the beginning or end of this nonsense though. Is he the problem or just a symptom?
What happens next time if a candidate with similar ideals comes along but has slightly more charm? The fact he is polling as high as he is after everything is depressing even if he loses.
He's a symptom but he's the mascot for old, white, male boomers who are not only dwindling in relative numbers, they are literally dying. The GOP needs to reinvent themselves or they may never win again and in two cycles they might be irrelevant.
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Last edited by corporatejay; 10-22-2016 at 12:00 AM.
I mentioned this guy was one of the craziest Trump supporters, but he's also totally hilarious too.
Quote:
Bill MitchellVerified account
@mitchellvii
I have 103,000 followers, 50,000 retweets a day and 130 million feed hits a month. Trust me. Trump will win the Presidency.
Bill Mitchell @mitchellvii 10h10 hours ago
Halloween mask sales have predicted every Presidential winner since 1980. Right now, Trump masks lead Hillary by 30%.
I am beginning to wonder if Trump is the beginning or end of this nonsense though. Is he the problem or just a symptom?
What happens next time if a candidate with similar ideals comes along but has slightly more charm? The fact he is polling as high as he is after everything is depressing even if he loses.
Shouldn't we also consider that Clinton has been one of the lowest favorability ratings in a presidential election? So if the dems had run someone at all likable, then this would be a landslide and no one would ever think that continuing with Trump-like candidates was a good idea.
Shouldn't we also consider that Clinton has been one of the lowest favorability ratings in a presidential election? So if the dems had run someone at all likable, then this would be a landslide and no one would ever think that continuing with Trump-like candidates was a good idea.
Shouldn't we also consider that Clinton has been one of the lowest favorability ratings in a presidential election? So if the dems had run someone at all likable, then this would be a landslide and no one would ever think that continuing with Trump-like candidates was a good idea.
I actually wish they'd run someone likable. I want to see a LBJ/Reagan Second term style win in my life to see if it's even still possible in the cable news era.
Shouldn't we also consider that Clinton has been one of the lowest favorability ratings in a presidential election? So if the dems had run someone at all likable, then this would be a landslide and no one would ever think that continuing with Trump-like candidates was a good idea.
If the Republicans are good at one thing, it's character assassination. That, combined with the media intentions of making it appear close to keep viewers tuned, I have no doubt that anyone the Democrats would have ran would have an equally low rating.
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If the Republicans are good at one thing, it's character assassination. That, combined with the media intentions of making it appear close to keep viewers tuned, I have no doubt that anyone the Democrats would have ran would have an equally low rating.
I doubt it. Hillary was historic disliked the day she ran for the primary. Obama who was the subject to the most false character assassination never was close to where Hillary is.
I doubt it. Hillary was historic disliked the day she ran for the primary. Obama who was the subject to the most false character assassination never was close to where Hillary is.
Considering that Rush Limbaugh was becoming incredibly popular during the Clinton Administration (remember "America held Hostage?"). Basically he savaged the Clintons and particularly FLOTUS Hillary every day for 8 years, and seeing as it was Limbaugh, honesty was basically nonexistent. Then there is Fox News. Clinton has her faults, but to deny that the Republicans and their hate radio icons aren't mainly responsible for her reputation is disingenuous. It is very hard to overcome nearly 30 years of hate and vitriol.
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This is an older article, came out this June, but it sums up a lot of what I think about Clinton and why I think most of the dislike of her is rooted in sexism, that she will make a phenomenal President, and why people should vote for her.
It's a long, in depth piece which I think paints a pretty fair picture of Clinton. Both her strengths and weaknesses and how her strengths can cause weaknesses.
Usually I cut out a bunch of excerpts from an article when I post it, but this one, I feel is too long to really do it well. Basically it credits her greatest strength as listening, points out that this is a feminine trait, acknowledges that a political process which has been dominated by men for hundreds of years may not favour someone who's strength is listening instead of talking, and then discusses some of the problems and flaws that result from being a 'listener' and what that could mean for a Clinton White House.
I think, though, it's best summed up by this:
Quote:
Clinton laments how polarizing she is, but the fault lies at least partly with her. Asked at a Democratic debate to name the enemies she’s most proud of making, she replied, “The Republicans.” For all her talk of finding common ground, of reaching out, of respecting each other, she stood up, on national television, and said she’s proud of the enmity she inspires in roughly half the country.
I asked her if she regretted that statement, whether she thinks she’s feeding the negativity, becoming part of the problem. “Not very much,” she said. “I mean, you can go back and look at how I’ve worked with Republicans, and I think I have a very strong base of relationships with them and evidence of that. But, you know, they say terrible things about me, much worse than anything I’ve ever said about them. That just seems to be part of the political back and forth now — to appeal to your base, to appeal to the ideologues who support you. We have become so divided, and we’ve got to try to get people back listening to each other and trying to roll up our sleeves and solve these problems that we face, and I think we can do that.”
It’s a weird answer. Within the space of a couple of sentences, Clinton refuses to apologize for calling Republicans her enemy, says she works well with them, blames them for saying worse about her, laments that this is how politics works now, and then says, “We’ve got to try to get people back to listening to each other.”
I spent a lot of time puzzling over her response and asking people about it, and I’ve come to think that the right interpretation is the one that is also hardest to credit: She believes what she said. She is a master compartmentalizer, and she believes she can cleave who she is on the campaign trail, and who she is in the minds of Republican voters and even some Republican politicians, from who she’ll be as president. And she’ll do it by reaching out constantly, endlessly, relentlessly, and cheerfully.
“A lot of governing is the slow, hard boring of hard boards,” she says. “I don’t think there's anything sexy, exciting, or headline-grabbing about it. I think it is getting up every day, building the relationships, finding whatever sliver of common ground you can occupy, never, ever giving up in continuing to reach out even to people who are sworn political partisan adversaries.”
That particular quote at the end sounds like pablum, but it is followed by a bunch of examples of her doing exactly that. It's a really well written article, and I know vox.com and Ezra Klein are pretty far in the tank for the Democrats, but I think it's a good, balanced write up, which is pretty revealing of her character.
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I am beginning to wonder if Trump is the beginning or end of this nonsense though. Is he the problem or just a symptom?
What happens next time if a candidate with similar ideals comes along but has slightly more charm? The fact he is polling as high as he is after everything is depressing even if he loses.
Trump is a symptom, much like Bernie Sanders was for the Democrats.
There is a growing backlash against establishment politics as the feeling is that the US has been co-opted by corporate interests, which has in part been enabled by the current group of politicians and the 2 party system. That is why Trump in every single debate so far has gone after Hillary essentially saying "what have you done in the last 30 years to change the system".
Over the next few years I predict we will see more of the following:
1) Anti-Establishment
2) Anti-Interventionalism (foreign wars, playing the world police role)
3) Anti-Immigration (not so much anti-immigrants, but more anti towards ones that don't share a common value system with the host country).
4) Anti-Globalization/Anti Free Trade
5) Anti-Corporatism
Considering that Rush Limbaugh was becoming incredibly popular during the Clinton Administration (remember "America held Hostage?"). Basically he savaged the Clintons and particularly FLOTUS Hillary every day for 8 years, and seeing as it was Limbaugh, honesty was basically nonexistent. Then there is Fox News. Clinton has her faults, but to deny that the Republicans and their hate radio icons aren't mainly responsible for her reputation is disingenuous. It is very hard to overcome nearly 30 years of hate and vitriol.
I'm not sure how your response fits with what I said. I support the argument that a generic democrat would have done better against trump than Clinton.
I do agree with you that the republican caricature of her definitely has a significant role in how she is perceived.
To me the root of the disdain for Clinton is that she's always come across as a "the ends justify the means" operator. I think she legitimately wants to do right and help people. I also think she legitimately believes that she's the best person for the job. Reading between the lines it seems like there's a lot of justifying otherwise bad behavior on her part. "Yes, we play dirty but we need to do whatever is necessary to keep the dangerous elements away from our government..." There is an ideological disconnect between Clinton and many progressives who really believe in doing the right thing and the ends don't justify the means. There may be an even bigger disconnect between Clinton and millennials who generally believe in saying what you mean and doing what you say. You could argue that Bill was the same way, and that's probably true. Bill had a lot more natural charm though and, let's face it, was the "right" gender to get away with it. Some say that Clinton is the epitome of the "typical" politician. There's probably something to that. She's been around for so long and so visible that her operating as a typical politician lends itself to many more available examples to criticize than a typical Congressman, Senator or Governor.
Will she be a good President? Who's to say. Bill was pretty successful but at least part of that was due to the booming economy and rapidly growing tech sector. The criticisms that Bill Clinton was too cozy with Wall Street is probably reasonable and had a large part to play in the mortgage crisis a decade later.
There are legitimate issues with Clinton but, for the most part, they are policy related issues. However, most of the criticisms and attacks on Clinton aren't based on policy but rather character and, in many cases, lies.
If Romney was running against Clinton, and he was able to actually run as himself rather than a pushed-to-the-right from the primaries version of himself, I think it's clear he'd be running away with this election and not because he'd necessarily be a better choice than Clinton.
