2016 US Election


Off-Topic Discussions

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Fergie wrote:

1) Those polls seemed pretty straight forward to me. I recall you saying that the pundits made a mistake when they ignored the polls showing Trump beating other republicans. Now the polls are nearly meaningless?

Primary polling during the primaries is useful for predicting the nominee. Even during the primary campaigning before the actual voting starts.

Head to head general election polling before the primaries are decided, six months before the actual election, is basically useless. Especially when it's not the front runner

Sovereign Court

thejeff wrote:
Guy Humual wrote:
I'm not sure Bernie got into this race with the actual belief that he could win, he had to go from being an independent to joining the democratic party, but even when he was losing he was forcing Hilary to move to the left. He coincided defeat, he's a man of integrity, but just to be clear he never used the terms "fair and square" that was Wolf Blitzer, Sanders merely agreed with him. Fighting with Clinton at this point would probably create a rift in the party and Sanders is interested in defeating Trump.

I think that first part was true for quite a while into the campaign. Somewhere in the middle of the primaries things changed and I don't quite know why. By that point he was quite clearly losing the pledged delegate race and had little chance to catch up, but rhetoric switched from being policy focused to personal attacks on Clinton's ethics and other not really policy issues. Things that she couldn't fix by shifting left and left her more damaged for the general. I don't know what happened, but somewhere in there he stopped running to move the party left and started running to win, even though he had little chance by then. I don't know if he just got caught up in the race, if it was ego, if he was getting bad advice, lost in the bubble, I don't know. Maybe it was the DNC scandals for all I know, but he made that rift in the party and I lost a lot of respect for him over it.

He's done some work to heal it, but not enough in my opinion.

Mind you, everything he did is basically legitimate politics, and normally I wouldn't object, but it flies in the face of the "man of integrity, not actually expecting to win, but hoping to change the party" narrative.

I think some of what you say is true, certainly when he said Hilary is not fit to be president I think he lost a lot of respect. However campaigns are long, you're on the road a lot, you're not getting much sleep, and so I'm willing to attribute the lack of judgment on fatigue. Once the campaign was over he got back on track. I can understand your continued disappointment but I feel for the most part he ran a pretty decent campaign, certainly by the usual standards, and I think Sanders continues to do what he thinks best for the country.


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Fergie wrote:
Seriously, how can you read about the leaked DNC emails, and still have any respect for these clowns?

Actually I lose all respect because he apparently used "peeps" seriously in a campaign email.


thejeff wrote:
Fergie wrote:

1) Those polls seemed pretty straight forward to me. I recall you saying that the pundits made a mistake when they ignored the polls showing Trump beating other republicans. Now the polls are nearly meaningless?

Primary polling during the primaries is useful for predicting the nominee. Even during the primary campaigning before the actual voting starts.

Head to head general election polling before the primaries are decided, six months before the actual election, is basically useless. Especially when it's not the front runner

... And this is actually well-understood by the professional pollsters; it's not like this is particularly controversial. The people who aren't the front-runners generally don't get the media coverage (positive OR negative), the campaigns aren't spending a lot of time in critical examination of the "also rans," and, perhaps more importantly, people aren't as confident of their answers, so you get much higher rates of respondents just guessing or something equally uninformative.


The DNC also scheduled debates at times when no one would watch.

There were issues with voter registration and closed primaries.

And Debbie Schasserman.


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The DNC also scheduled debates at times when no one would watch.

There were issues with voter registration and closed primaries.

And Debbie Schasserman.

This is actually a really huge issue imho, if the parties are going to use tax-payer funds to run their primaries then they should not be allowed to close them. If the parties wish to have closed primaries then they should be prepared to foot the entire bill for the election.


Guy Humual wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
Guy Humual wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
CrystalSeas wrote:
If only she were a better cheerleader and smiled more.
She's expected to smile more because she's a woman. Of course if she did, then she'd be "too fluffy". It's called a "can't win" scenario.
There's a lot of illegitimate criticisms of Clinton, sadly this will also plague her presidency as well, but I'm not sure Clinton was helped by her advocates when they claimed that Sanders had Bernie bros who were only voting against her because she was female. That's calling wolf and when real sexism pops up people are less likely to believe it.
Which advocates are you talking about, exactly? The analysis I heard described the Sanders voters who didn't switch affiliation after the convention as too extreme to vote for any candidate who doesn't self-identify as a socialist, rather than sexist because they were willing to vote democrat only so long as the candidate was male. Different perspective north of the border?
You didn't hear the term Bernie Bro thrown around during the primaries? Perhaps google that? There are Bernie or Bust folks out there, they are real, but I don't think there was widespread sexism in the democratic primaries despite the narrative spread in the media. Now after the primaries there are plenty of folks who are pissed off at the DNC, Bernie or Bust folks, who didn't like being smeared as sexist, violent, naive, etc. and were outraged by the leaks that showed collusion between the Hilary Campaign and the national party.

"Thrown around" is a very fair description of how I heard it used. As I said in my earlier post, the analysts on the news outlets I follow didn't conflate the two. I certainly didn't hear it used often enough to say that the Clinton campaign used accusations of sexism to gain voter sympathy. (There was that one time when Trump accused Clinton of playing the Woman Card, and her campaign started selling hot pink Woman Cards instead of campaign buttons, but that only worked in the first place because she hadn't made hay of the typical women's issues.)

It seems to me that it's defensive, frustrated Sanders voters who are claiming that "the media" is out to get them with every criticism that was ever levied against the Sanders campaign, when in actuality he just didn't win the primary.


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Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting? That he's intentionally pandering to the tinfoil-hat electorate but doesn't actually support a lot of the crap he's spouting? (In other words, that he's like pretty much every other candidate ever, in that respect)

I don't for a second doubt he's a racist, imperialistic buffoon with the business sense of a squirrel, but all of the "Trump is much worse than Cthulhu!" stuff is starting to seem maybe a bit overblown.


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Kirth Gersen wrote:
Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting?

Oh, I'm fairly sure of it. The problem is that he continues acting even when it's in his own worst interests, which means that he's genuinely untrustworthy with serious impulse control issues, which in turn means that he's utterly unfit for the presidency.

He's threatening reprisals against his opponents, foreign and domestic, while on the campaign trail. Do you really think he would suddenly stop that habit if he were elected?


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Kirth Gersen wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting? That he's intentionally pandering to the tinfoil-hat electorate but doesn't actually support a lot of the crap he's spouting? (In other words, that he's like pretty much every other candidate ever, in that respect)

I don't for a second doubt he's a racist, imperialistic buffoon with the business sense of a squirrel, but all of the "Trump is much worse than Cthulhu!" stuff is starting to seem maybe a bit overblown.

I don't think Trump's life experience thus far has taught him how to sustain an informed political agenda. That is, I don't think he believes a lot of the crap he's spouting, but I do think he's completely uniformed as to the functions of government. I think calling him imperialistic gives him too much credit for understanding what an empire actually is and how it functions in a global economy.

But otherwise, yeah, right there with you.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
He's threatening reprisals against his opponents, foreign and domestic, while on the campaign trail. Do you really think he would suddenly stop that habit if he were elected?

I'd guess that he's a genuinely vindictive SOB.

I sort of feel that way about HC as well, except that she unconvincingly semi-pretends not to be.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
The problem is that he continues acting even when it's in his own worst interests, which means that he's genuinely untrustworthy with serious impulse control issues, which in turn means that he's utterly unfit for the presidency.

Taken out of context, you could be describing JFK.

EDIT: I'm not saying the two are in any way equivalent as candidates, just that "poor impulse control" and "acting against own best interests" are hardly unique to the Trumpster.


Kirth Gersen wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting? That he's intentionally pandering to the tinfoil-hat electorate but doesn't actually support a lot of the crap he's spouting? (In other words, that he's like pretty much every other candidate ever, in that respect)

I don't for a second doubt he's a racist, imperialistic buffoon with the business sense of a squirrel, but all of the "Trump is much worse than Cthulhu!" stuff is starting to seem maybe a bit overblown.

I genuinely believe that he is unhinged enough to not only believe everything he says, but not understand why everyone doesn't love what he is saying.


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Kirth Gersen wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting? That he's intentionally pandering to the tinfoil-hat electorate but doesn't actually support a lot of the crap he's spouting? (In other words, that he's like pretty much every other candidate ever, in that respect)

I don't for a second doubt he's a racist, imperialistic buffoon with the business sense of a squirrel, but all of the "Trump is much worse than Cthulhu!" stuff is starting to seem maybe a bit overblown.

Sort of?

I've said before he's a bullshitter. Not even a liar. He just says whatever he needs to say to close the deal. Truth value is irrelevant. Use value is all. That's why his lies aren't even consistent. That doesn't matter to him.

That doesn't make it better though and it doesn't make him "like pretty much every other candidate ever" either. There's no end game to this. There's no sense that he's pandering and once he doesn't have to he'll settle down and carry out his real agenda. This is who he is. He can't rein it in for a general election pivot, even when he tries and when gets staff to write speeches for him. A day or two and the real Trump asserts himself again.
He'll be like this in office. Even if he lets Pence handle the day-to-day business (And make no mistake - Pence is a true believer, so that should be scary enough), he'll still be there talking about attacking Iranian boats or using nukes. Imagine being a diplomat under Trump administration with no idea what he's going to say next.
Or what idea he'll latch onto and try to implement next.

Beyond that the racism and sexism definitely go way back: The sexism is visible in his whole life, but the racism goes back to his early white-only landlord days, through the ad he took out against the Central Park Five and that nasty quote about wanting Jews counting his money, definitely not blacks, on to taking up the cause of birtherism, though we might be on to political opportunism by then.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
The problem is that he continues acting even when it's in his own worst interests, which means that he's genuinely untrustworthy with serious impulse control issues, which in turn means that he's utterly unfit for the presidency.
Taken out of context, you could be describing JFK.

Quite possibly. JFK is among the more overrated of presidents; the problem, of course, is that he died (and was de-facto canonized) before he had much of a chance to address any long-term issues.

Given a choice between voting for a resurrected JFK and voting for Obama again, I'd probably vote for Obama. But given a choice between JFK and Nixon, which was the actual question on the ballot, I would definitely vote for JFK.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
The problem is that he continues acting even when it's in his own worst interests, which means that he's genuinely untrustworthy with serious impulse control issues, which in turn means that he's utterly unfit for the presidency.

Taken out of context, you could be describing JFK.

EDIT: I'm not saying the two are in any way equivalent as candidates, just that "poor impulse control" and "acting against own best interests" are hardly unique to the Trumpster.

Taken out of context, you could apply that to nearly anything.

Trump's on a different scale.


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Kirth Gersen wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting? That he's intentionally pandering to the tinfoil-hat electorate but doesn't actually support a lot of the crap he's spouting? (In other words, that he's like pretty much every other candidate ever, in that respect)

I don't for a second doubt he's a racist, imperialistic buffoon with the business sense of a squirrel, but all of the "Trump is much worse than Cthulhu!" stuff is starting to seem maybe a bit overblown.

Have we actually had a frontrunner candidate complain about the Geneva Conventions before?

Between that and his "take the oil" crap (and proposing stopping ISIS by killing their "families"*), Trump very much gives the impression of someone who's genuinely looking forward to committing war crimes.

* My understanding is that the typical ISIS "family" is composed of slaves/hostages. So Trump basically proposed fighting ISIS by killing its slaves.

If Trump isn't actually stupid, he's definitely grotesquely ignorant.


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Kirth Gersen wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone in the thread who dimly suspects that any part of Trump's campaign is maybe acting? That he's intentionally pandering to the tinfoil-hat electorate but doesn't actually support a lot of the crap he's spouting? (In other words, that he's like pretty much every other candidate ever, in that respect)

I think that Trump is the embodiment of a Belseraph as described as InNominee, in that he believes every lie he speaks at the time he is speaking it.


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We're already in Syria, though.

Sovereign Court

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Hitdice wrote:

"Thrown around" is a very fair description of how I heard it used. As I said in my earlier post, the analysts on the news outlets I follow didn't conflate the two. I certainly didn't hear it used often enough to say that the Clinton campaign used accusations of sexism to gain voter sympathy.

I wouldn't categorize it as a ploy for sympathy, rather an attempt to dismiss a surging opposition to the nomination. It was a way of saying "these young voters don't know this issues, they're just uninformed misogynists that can't stand the idea of a woman president" and had it ended there it would have been laughable, sad but otherwise not particularly noteworthy. The term was used by the Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times to name a few. I don't have a problem calling out trolls, but when you attach a candidates name to the term, suggest that they represent typical Sanders supporters, well then we have a problem. I don't doubt for a second that someone was making crude and sexist comments to Clinton and her supporters, you can just look at the typical YouTube comments section to realize what people are capable of, but then to lay that toxicity on another candidate, well that's dirty politics.

Now as to the point about Sanders supports being frustrated by the media, the majority of the press around Sanders was negative, but that's hardly surprising, most of the media is owned by very wealthy individuals who would have payed considerably more under a Sanders tax plan. So is it then surprising that the Sanders supporters objected to the negative press?

Sovereign Court

Hitdice wrote:
We're already in Syria, though.

Well, airstrikes, and "advisory" special forces, but I don't think any major deployment of ground forces are there yet? If they are I apologize I don't get american news stations.


Guy,

Last I checked we hadn't dropped tanks or helicopters. Much less ground forces. So...


Guy Humual wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
We're already in Syria, though.
Well, airstrikes, and "advisory" special forces, but I don't think any major deployment of ground forces are there yet? If they are I apologize I don't get american news stations.

Airstrikes and advisory special forces count when it's your government doing the striking and advising.


thejeff wrote:
You know when you have to reach back to before the realignment after the Civil Rights Movement to attack Democrats you've lost, right?

As the Comrade has so aptly pointed out, I only have to reach back to Hillary herself and her husband.


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I'm votin' for Soltysik.


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Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
thejeff wrote:
You know when you have to reach back to before the realignment after the Civil Rights Movement to attack Democrats you've lost, right?
As the Comrade has so aptly pointed out, I only have to reach back to Hillary herself and her husband.

Yeah, well, you've convinced me.

I'm going to go out and whitesplain to all the black folks supporting Clinton that she's the real racist and they shouldn't vote for her.

Or maybe I could trust them to have a better idea where their interests actually lie. Nah.

Sovereign Court

Hitdice wrote:
Guy Humual wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
We're already in Syria, though.
Well, airstrikes, and "advisory" special forces, but I don't think any major deployment of ground forces are there yet? If they are I apologize I don't get american news stations.
Airstrikes and advisory special forces count when it's your government doing the striking and advising.

Well Canada is part of NATO so we've been helping out with the air strikes (in our extremely limited capacity), but I don't really consider that being in Syria so much as flying over it.

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