Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Actually, the people I talked to were usually people from outside the US who just really wanted to see the country burn and screw any Americans being caught in the crossfire - in their mind Clinton would have just invaded all these countries they like to cheerlead so much, so Trump was the better choice because hey, at least his government's killing Americans.
As I said, it's basically the most malignant form of anti-imperialism I've encountered so far.
Not like accelerationists are any better - armchair revolutionaries usually delude themselves into thinking they'd come out on top if everything breaks down, when often they're one of the first groups facing the bullets.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 16th 2019 at 7:44:33 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyAccelerationists can go fuck themselves. Not all of us are cishet white people who can survive Trump. The sixteen Black trans women who have been murdered this year didn’t survive Trump. Neither did the dozens who died last year. Neither did the people who killed themselves because they were harmed by laws Trump put in place. Neither did the people who have died in concentration camps, or been shot by police.
We are not surviving Trump. People are actively dying because of his leadership.
Everyone makes the Original Position Fallacy at some point, but yes, both Accelerationists and Reactionaries are particularly guilty of it.
With Trump, it isn't that clear cut. My personal take has been that he mostly only cares about the money he makes. Anything he says that will improve the chances of that is fair game. Since he thinks he's got a better chance of it from the far-Right, he panders to them. If he had a better chance from the far-Left, he'd do that too.
There's also people who voted for him over Clinton on the principle of anti-incumbency towards Democrats. They may or may not have had any real animosity towards either candidate.
There's also just political apathy - plenty of people didn't vote in 2016 at all. That's mostly died out, given recent events. At least, that's what I can see. Maybe I'm being optimistic.
I hold the secrets of the machine.I would say that you lack experience, but that means that my hobby is watching crazy people
Watch me destroying my countryThis is clearly wrong, Trump has a long history of racism that predates his time in politics. And he properly entered politics by declaring that the first African-American President wasn't actually American.
Yes, Trump is corrupt and self-interested but it's entirely unfounded to believe that he does not truly believe the racist trash he espouses.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that he would adopt a far-left position if expedient, we see this clearest in his campaign where he ditched traditional GOP positions on economics and healthcare while still being unambiguously racist. And when Trump won he abandoned those populist economic and healthcare positions and stuck with the racism.
There has never been any evidence that Trump would be anything other than far-right.
Indeed, he's a selfish and idiotic piece of shit.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 16th 2019 at 11:21:35 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangMy perfect dream scenario that absolutely will never happen would be Biden and Sanders dropping out of the race to instead try and primary Trump out of the Republican nomination.
Sanders, in particular, has been making great strides with Trump's base. He's doing rounds on conservative networks, adopting some conservative talking points without sacrificing his core message, etc. He went into a FOX News Stupid Libtard Cuck Ambush interview, and he walked out with a standing ovation. I think he'd have a real shot at scoring that Republican nomination.
If the 2020 race was Elizabeth Warren (D) vs. Bernie Sanders (R), I could sleep easy at night.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 16th 2019 at 12:53:44 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Trump won because of voter suppression, full stop. There were more than enough cases in states that he narrowly won to swing the Electoral College. He also won because of James Comey's bizarre and unorthodox decision to announce that more of her emails were under investigation a week before the polls opened.
To suggest that Clinton lost because people thought she was "too liberal" is such a ridiculously fallacious reading of the evidence that I have a hard time taking it seriously. If anything, the overwhelming messaging from Democrats was that she wasn't liberal enough.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 16th 2019 at 2:58:39 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Sanders is doing one, and only one, thing that I agree with: he is trying to win over some of the "economic anxiety" voters who swing Republican because they've drunk the Kool-Aid about that party being fiscally responsible and/or believe that the Democrats are inattentive to the needs of poor whites.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 16th 2019 at 3:01:39 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Not the point. If the argument is that people thought Clinton was too liberal, then there isn't a single other 2016 Democratic candidate who would have been more acceptable under that criterion. It sure as hell wouldn't have been Sanders. Hell, Barack Obama wouldn't have been acceptable to moderate voters under that criterion. Clearly it is not her politics that turned them off.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 16th 2019 at 3:05:01 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Since about 2008. Swaying the independent undecided voter is much less important to winning elections these days than turning out your base — political polarization has gotten bad enough that there just aren't enough independent undecided voters left. What wins elections is making sure the people on your side actually show up to vote. It's less about generating as wide a base of people as possible who think you're the better candidate but aren't really enthused about you, and more about getting the people who already agree with you fired up so that they'll actually vote (and if you're really lucky, pester their friends and family to vote for you as well).
A big part of this is the various voter suppression efforts that makes voting a long and annoying process. If you have to stand in line for hours in order to cast your ballot, then no one's going to bother unless they're really excited about you as a candidate — and even some of those people won't be able to (because they have to work, have children to take care of, etc, and can't block out half their day just to vote). If there was less cost (in terms of time/annoyance) to voting, then more people would vote, and an enthusiastic base would be less important. But that's not the world we live in anymore.
Edited by NativeJovian on Aug 16th 2019 at 3:09:15 PM
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
This. The myth of the undecided moderate voter that swings elections is just that, a myth, put forth by the centrist media to perpetuate the idea that we are in a contest that can be won by coming together and compromising. They do this because close elections drive up their viewership.
Democrats try to compromise with Republicans. Republicans take those efforts and spit on them. This has been true since at least 1970.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 16th 2019 at 3:13:37 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Incidentally, I was just listening to some polling data from Democrats in Wisconsin and they found that the best attacks against Trump that made people less likely to vote for him were telling voters about his phony populism, and corruption. Trying to taking away Medicare to pay for rich people tax cuts in particular really dropped his potential voters opinions of him. Close behind was telling people that Trump and his family are making money off the presidency.
Native Jovian: Yes, I know that story. But I don't know about whether it has empirical backing or whether it's just speculation (that is probably coloured by confirmation bias, to boot, as it's surely extremely convenient to the more radical sides of a party). This opinion does throw some scepticism to this theory
.
Fighteer, "moderate" voters are one thing but the other thing is that many voters are motivated by their dislike of the other party rather than their like for their own
. So a moderate candidate can not just convince moderate voters but also reduce the turnout of the other side. Thus, if you want to argue that more moderate doesn't help claiming that moderate voters don't exist (which is also false) doesn't help. That same person's opinion on the matter
.
Yeah, I agree with this.
Hell, we had a few people right here in this thread who admitted that they stayed home and didn't vote for Clinton 'cause she "wasn't progressive like Bernie Sanders". I remember the discourse in 2017, and every single time we've gone back and re-evaluated the 2016 election, the anti-Clinton message has been "Bernie Sanders was the Perfect Liberal Unicorn we always wanted, and Hillary Clinton was a corporate shrill Republican in Dem's clothing."
Clinton was blasted for being too moderate and too centrist. I don't know where this idea that she was too liberal is suddenly coming from.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 16th 2019 at 2:12:52 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
Well, she did make a point of calling out Trump's racism a lot and made some positive comments toward Black Lives Matter.
And a lot of people seem to find any anti-racist rhetoric too liberal/extreme.
And this is probably treading into dangerous ground/beating a dead horse, but in light of the above, when Sanders and Buttigeg and others make positive comments about White Working Class (TM) Trump supporters and against "Identity Politics" (TM), they seem to be positioning themselves as more "moderate" than Clinton on this score.
Edited by Hodor2 on Aug 16th 2019 at 3:38:24 AM
Man, I remember when being anti-racism was considered a basic standard of human decency. Now it's a Far Left position?
How far we've fallen.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.To be honest I often got the impression that the biggest reason that Clinton was disliked (among many, of course) was for reasons specific to her person. She's been the victim of the right's resentment for quite a long time and so any faults she may have had were greatly magnified by the general media for several years, which when combined with her perceived "lack of charisma" resulted in a lot of people harboring at least a vague antipathy towards her, if not an outright dislike.
I'm not saying this to discredit people who might have well-considered criticisms of her, but it was very common for me to see people who didn't like her but couldn't actually explain why.
This is why I have always felt that assuming misogyny would tank Warren because of what happened to Clinton is a bit misguided. Not in the sense that misogyny towards female candidates isn't a real and serious issue, but in the sense that Clinton had a bunch of baggage specific to her that Warren does not share. They're two different people entirely.

Everyone who voted for Trump is either racist or ignorant.