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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Also, I expect Trump to do worryingly well in the general election compared to what many here might like. Like how many Democrats are bitterly accepting Clinton as the nominee because the alternative is Trump, many Republicans are bitterly accepting Trump as the nominee because the alternative is Clinton.
edited 6th Jun '16 4:04:10 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyBack during Bill Clinton's administration, I thought that the Clintons were utterly shameless self-serving hucksters. By comparison, Trump makes them (both!) look like paragons of virtue.
Plus, Hillary at least has some inkling of how to run a government. Trump doesn't have a clue.
edited 6th Jun '16 4:10:25 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.There are different degrees of "safe". There's nominally safe, and there's actually safe. When you've gerrymandered so completely that the majority of all voters in a district lean strongly toward one party, the money generally doesn't matter anymore, because the party it leans toward needn't dedicate anything more than an absolute pittance of their funds to it when their built-in advantage is so overwhelmingly large. The same goes for the home districts of national candidates. The underdog party would have to invest a disproportionately huge amount of resources that would better be spent elsewhere in that situation if they want to even try to "run them close". Sadly, all of my own state legislature's districts, and most of my state's federal districts, are of the latter type.
There's also the fact that state-level races take far fewer resources than national-level races in most situations, so it really is all about context. Also, Republican donors have deeper pockets than Democratic donors, so the Repubs need not worry as much about throwing money around.
edited 6th Jun '16 4:13:17 PM by darksidevoid
GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.![]()
As Hillary is someone who operates within the system, even if you believe the worst of her, it simply doesn't benefit her for the country (and the system) to go down in flames.
Trump on the other hand may very well be perfectly content to watch the country burn as long as he gets to take his money (and anything in the US treasury he can grab) and screw off to some questionably democratic country on the other side of the planet where he can live out his days in luxury.
Trump Ally Roger Stone: "Sources" Tell Me Chris Christie Knew About Bridgegate
Keep an eye on Roger Stone. He and Trump are basically best friends, and he is essentially Trump's unofficial character assassin for Trump's political enemies. Also, if anyone tries to turn against Trump, Trump is going to try and drag them down with him.
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Why the hell would he be assassinating someone allied with Trump, then?
Why? Christie sucks. He's a right-wing asshole only hamstrung in the damage he can do by virtue of having to deal with a Democratic state government. And even setting aside his nasty philosophy for government where trauma centers get less funding so millionaires and megacorps don't have to pay as much in taxes, the man is an asshole.
Even if Bridgegate isn't laid at his door, I can scarcely name a more venal, nasty, petty SOB than Chris Christie. Let's also admit something quick: If Trump had not thrown the dogwhistle off a cliff and come out to just go "fuck Mexicans and Muslims" he wouldn't have done as well. Flat out.
He is where the party has been moving for a while in its catering to a hatred of education, racism and ignorance. Something like this was always going to happen after they threw open the doors to the crazies.
edited 6th Jun '16 5:35:59 PM by Lightysnake
Well, we can feel hypothetical sympathy for a bully getting bossed around by a bigger bully.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And keep in mind this is probably what Stone and Trump plan to do to the rest of the GOP:
"You step out of line or try to bail? We're going to lay all your skeletons out to air."
The party's stuck with a lunatic who they can't predict, that they're all terrified of, and who basically has a suicide vest armed with a Deadman's Trigger.
On a less Trump Related Note, I think NY Mag gives a decent look at Hillary and her polling problems:
Basically as an older article pointed out, Hillary's got problems with the press/charisma similar to Nixon. Hillary basically LOATHES talking to the press due to 25+ years of abuse giving her political PTSD, and as a result has created a complete sphere of un-personalization since she doesn't want more abuse from the press corps than she needs to put up with.
Or to put it most simply, she admits she's a bureaucrat first, who hates putting up with the Beltway Horse Race and Pony Show.
edited 6th Jun '16 6:50:25 PM by PotatoesRock
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Any politician in a position of appreciable power faces regular character assassination attempts. While Trump's thus far done everything in his power to make the election untenable for the GOP, I'm still not convinced she's especially good at dealing with scandals; every time it happens, it becomes a huge issue and sticks in the public consciousness for months. Contrast with Obama, where barely anyone remembers the lame attempts made at swiftboating him, despite Clinton claiming in 2008 that she was the safe choice.
People like you make me reflexively want to vote Trump out of spite, but I won't because that's not a rational course of action. You may despise Sanders and everything he stands for, but gloating and belittling is not how you go about getting people to go vote, and like it or not, Clinton won't win if his supporters stay home en masse.
edited 6th Jun '16 7:42:37 PM by CaptainCapsase
@Captain- Fair enough. I also apologize- it is true that Birtherism did originate from some of Clinton's loonier supporters and I misread your post to be indicating a closer to connection to her than that reality. But still, only referring to it in connection with Clinton is kind of unfair since even though it may have first been broached by some of her supporters, it has been enthusiastically supported and dog-whistled by tons of conservatives- in fact IIRC like about 40% of Republicans believe it.
edited 6th Jun '16 7:39:06 PM by Hodor2

I can't remember if it was linked in this thread or not, but Why Trump Was Inevitable
covers the topic pretty well. tldr, as far back as early February (when there were still ten other candidates in the running!), polling data showed that Trump beat all of them in a head-to-head race. In other words, Trump won because voters like Trump more than everyone else in the Republican primary, not just because he managed to play a divided field against itself.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.