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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I dunno. I've seen at least one Republican basically declare Putin to be the Hitler of our time. Of course these were the same Tea Partiers who were declaring that gay marriage should be legal about 5 years before it actually happened (or that people should stop using Confederate flags, also 5 years before it happened)
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:38:22 PM by Protagonist506
Leviticus 19:34@Adric: That video goes a long way towards explaining the method to Trump's madness. While he sounds like an absolute dumb-ass to someone with a reasonable education, and honestly that's not far from the truth, whatever else he might be, he's a master at manipulating news media, and through the media public opinion. If he loses (and hopefully he will), it'll be because overplayed his hand in the primaries and built himself a reputation that he won't be able to dispel over the course of the general election campaign.
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:44:58 PM by CaptainCapsase
@Adric:Summarizing the video earlier, the title is overdramatic, but the video is actually very well put-together. Basically this is Hillary's election to lose, and Trump is beating her because she's been reactive to his campaign and has let him define the frame of the debate: instead of countering "We need an outsider!" with "Knowing what you're talking about is good!" , she says, "I'm not an insider because I'm a woman". The woman card is also extremely vulnerable in that it lends itself easily to being spinned as misandry. She has also made extremely weak and ineffectual attempts at beating him at his own name-calling game ("Presumptuous Nominee"? Clever, but hardly catchy, and barely an insult). This election is going to be based mostly on identity and personality, rather than policy, and this even more so than usual.
So, Hillary needs to change tactics, and change fast. Particularly, according to the video maker, she needs to emphasize her competence, cleverness, intelligence, and experience, and stop pushing the woman card so hard.
It's more "Trump will win unless Hillary adapts fast!".
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:48:37 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.![]()
I'm not saying he's going to win, I'm saying that the race is going to be a much bigger challenge for Clinton than most people around here assume it will be. What she needs to do is focus the election on policy rather than Trump's showmanship, and not get dragged down to his level. If she tries to beat him at his own game (the worst possible strategy in my opinion), she is going to lose in a landslide.
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:49:42 PM by CaptainCapsase
Indeed, but, much like during the primaries, Clinton's campaign is weak on social media; in that sphere Sanders was walking all over her. While that's not enough to win the primaries, it's hard to have a general election in the current political climate that isn't a close race, and it's thing's like that that can tip the balance in a close race.
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:52:04 PM by CaptainCapsase
![]()
She's doing fine on sectors of the Internet dominated by millennials. (which is to say most of it) Elsewhere, it's a dumpster fire.
Moreover, that's twitter thing the perfect example of what I meant when I said "don't try to beat him at his own game"; when it comes down to mockery and insults, Trump is in a class of his own, and trying to compete there is not going to end well for Clinton. Incidentally, that's an area where I think Sanders would've been rather strong; as much as people got tired of hearing variations on the same stump speech for the hundredth time, he had a knack for redirected literally any question, statement, or comment back into his core message. Clinton would be wise to follow suit in debates with Trump.
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:58:15 PM by CaptainCapsase
The first thing I see when opening the Hillary website is "Trump is officially the Republican nominee. We can’t let him win." This is a very weak strategy, and draws attention to Trump, when attention needs to be drawn away from him. She's letting herself be defined in relation to him rather than unto herself. Trump, on the other hand, spends a lot of time on how awesome he is; "Crooked Hillary" comes second.
There's the same problem with "LOVE TRUMPS HATE".
edited 22nd Jul '16 1:58:29 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.No it doesn't. Trump may well be spinning it that way and his idiot fanboys may well buy into it, but the mental gymnastics to get them there require they contort themselves into all kinds of interesting shapes. Anybody who thinks the Clinton campaign is pushing any sort of misandrist message is probably still going on about how she murdered the soldiers and Benghazi and ordered Vince Foster's assassinated—in short, they are the kind of person who sees conspiracies everywhere, and will accept any critique that discredits Clinton.
Case in point—I'm in a debate on Facebook with a guy whose hatred of Clinton defies all logic. He's not only recycling the Vince Foster and Benghazi stories, but he's accusing her of "using the IRS as her own personal Gestapo". Which given that she was Secretary of State, not Secretary of the Treasury, is a claim that's even more detached from reality than the others.
Hatred of Clinton knows no logical boundaries.
@Parable: I can almost gurantee you that something is going to come out of the Trump campaign next week in an effort to steal the spotlight from the democrats next week; I suspect, as the video's creator did, that some of Trump's more outrageous statements were deliberate ploys to get the media focused on him.
@Ambar: Don't mistake our worries about Clinton's campaign strategy for anything approaching support or admiration for Trump. I'm merely saying that Clinton needs to step up her game in several areas if she wants to win the election; the keystone of Trump's campaign is his stranglehold on media attention; plenty of people are already acting like Donald Trump is President, since he seems to be the only candidate running based on the amount of media exposure he gets.
edited 22nd Jul '16 2:10:23 PM by CaptainCapsase
I'm hoping that once we get into the later stages of the election (the debates, more ads, etc.) Hillary will get a huge surge. Trump can't debate women well, and Hillary has pulled off some really good slams against him before. Plus, he's got practically no funding for the type of ad campaign she's running.
Trump isn't spending much money because he really doesn't need to at this point; he got over 2 billion dollars of free media coverage during the primaries alone, and last I heard it's not slowing down. The airwaves are clogged with little else beyond the latest antics of Donald Trump and friends, and while it's arguable whether there is truly no such thing as bad publicity, Trump's primary run and the fact that he's doing about as well as expected for a Republican given the demographic map of the election makes a strong case for that. I feel you're seriously underestimating Trump; while his business credentials are dubious at best, I will freely admit he is a master of salesmanship, and that's one of the most important skills for a politician on the campaign trail, despite its limited use in office.
edited 22nd Jul '16 2:18:13 PM by CaptainCapsase

This is fucking tragic.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.