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
Whatever he is, Johnson is also seen as not a "true" libertarian, due to him supporting things like food labeling (dude has celiac disease, and I respect his stance on food labeling as I have it too), and driver's licenses. He's not extreme enough.
Rolling Stone had an article on reasons liberals, conservatives, and libertarians wouldn't want to vote for Gary Johnson, listing views he has that go against those groups, divided into category based on what group they go against.
IAT, your argument is getting more incoherent with every attempt to explain. And hey, the post that got thumped was the one I was referring to. "Not acknowledging a change for the worst". What in fuck counts as worse than cutting off public access to the debates? Not everyone gets their news off the internet, you know. You've completely failed to describe your "worst scenario" here. Also, bailiffs have a very different fucking purpose in courts than debate moderators do and as such your comparison falls pretty flat. I mean, seriously, someone who's there to help enforce the law as compared to someone who's basic job is to keep time and ask questions? That's not apples and oranges, that's apples and avocados.
And as for those other complaints: Yeah, so? So candidates try to throw off the opponent, so what? That's not exactly an illegitimate tactic. Candidates can't just say "he's a liar and that's all you need to know" because that's not a substantive argument. Clinton sure as hell hasn't been saying just that, she's been backing up the argument with actual proof. That kind of sound bite simplicity is not only the true waste of time, it's reducing the quality of political discourse.
And, as much as I despite the thought of a Trump presidency, as a candidate he does deserve the time on air to try and persuade people just as much as Clinton does. That's how our system works, and to deny any one candidate that time is going to set a very bad precedent later on that will only damage democracy in the long run. How he chooses to spend that time is up to him, as it is with every other candidate in history. If you have a problem with that, then, well, you disagree with the reason we have presidential debates in the first place and would possibly rather do away with them entirely.
Okay, now I remember the name of the movie with the Trump-esque guy running for president: Bob Roberts.
Now that movie should be run again, preferably around Election Day. It would be totally appropriate, and I'd invite everyone here!
(As we duck under the table and hope that such a situation as depicted in the movie never comes to pass in real life!)
Imagining the Post-Trump GOP: The Trainwreck of 2020
Or the Tea Party crowd. Driven by fury and a sense of betrayal, they rail against government and the congressional leaders of their own party, killing off John Boehner and subjecting Paul Ryan to frequently impotent misery. Such is their nihilism that they would rather shut down the government — forcing the rest of us to live with whatever may follow — than pursue a program which, however conservative, offends their sense of purity. These folks live in a very special world. Most Americans do not.
After reading that cute Washington Post article about that one messed up woman, I must say some of these people are indeed truly out of it. I do wonder, though, how many of them may change their tune if their personal life situation improved. I suspect that a lot of the anger is basically "My life got completely ruined, why aren't you focusing on my issues?", which I think is rather legitimate, honestly.
We would talk at times about why Republicans kept voting against their own economic interests. Well, it's possible that more and more of them won't, and the economic libertarian side of the party is in trouble. Makes me wonder how popular libertarian ideas really even are.
The article talks about Cruz as well as Trump:
I do wonder why the fundamentalists went for Trump, honestly. Maybe many of them don't truly believe in their own religious beliefs as much as they claim to.
Then on to Pence:
Perhaps the cul-de-sac of his mind is a happy place to be. But most Americans don’t live there, and young Americans don’t want to. Pence’s beliefs are not theirs.
My god, does Pence sound like a colossal asshole.
Some thoughts on Paul Ryan being stuck between a rock and a hard place:
(...)
As for substance here, too, Ryan has a real problem. Ryan has long been the preeminent face of conservative economic ideology, including tax cuts for the wealthy and drastic reform of entitlement programs. But in a time of income inequality and economic insecurity, this agenda has not worn well.
In 2016, it was pretty much rejected by Trump’s working-class base. In a general election, one can easily imagine the Democrats portraying Ryan as the weapon of the wealthy in their war against ordinary people. And for those who actually care about a balanced budget, the so-called Ryan budget has never added up.
No doubt Ryan will try to ameliorate these difficulties by soft-peddling entitlement reform and throwing in tax proposals to benefit the middle-class. But he will not easily escape his past support for privatizing Social Security. And while his advocacy of using free market solutions to fight poverty, drawn from his mentor Jack Kemp, will be attractive to moderates, this has little traction among hard-line conservatives. Too many Republicans, as Kemp once privately conceded to a friend of mine, “hate poor people.”
Some positives on John Kasich:
But that’s the problem — how many Republicans are willing to accept his invitation?
By the evidence of this year, not enough.
U.S. paid P.R. firm $540 million to make fake al-Qaida videos in Iraq propaganda program
: "An explosive new report reveals how the U.S. government paid a British public relations company linked to right-wing politics and repressive regimes more than $500 million from American taxpayers to spearhead a top-secret propaganda campaign in Iraq.
Bell Pottinger, a London-based P.R. firm, created fake videos that appeared to be the work of al-Qaida, the Islamist extremist group formerly headed by Osama bin Laden. It also created news stories that looked as though they were produced by Arab media outlets, and distributed them through Middle Eastern news networks.
The company worked in Camp Victory, the U.S. military base in Baghdad, side-by-side with high-ranking U.S. military officers.
The propaganda videos were personally approved by Gen. David Petraeus — then the commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, who would go on to become the director of the CIA. On some occasions, even the White House signed off on the propaganda materials.
These findings are the result of a major investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a British watchdog organization that is also known for its extensive reporting on the covert U.S. drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia."
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.Romney got through last time and Mc Cain wasn't that extreme until after 08. Trump is an anomaly up to this point although given the trend of the party he could also be a sign of what's to come.
Even now, Mc Cain shows occasional signs of sanity and decency and he might have stayed there if his base didn't shift out from under him. Alas, taking Palin as a running mate was a pretty major part of legitimizing the whackjob side.
edited 6th Oct '16 1:36:04 PM by Elle
This was the autopsy of a prominent conservative thinker, whose story was posted not long ago.
The country's demographics are changing to the point where a candidate who can't bring in black and latin-american voters is not liable to be successful going forward.
Even if they could conceive a party line freed from xenophobia and white nationalism, the GOP's ideology of "the government is the problem" isn't very appealing in this economic climate. People want help, not to be told that they just need to work harder in a situation where they're already doing everything within the realm of possibility to ascend.
Back then, I honestly thought of McCain as a reasonable president and had no problem with the idea of him being president... until he chose his running mate. The message that sent to me is "I'm only pretending to be moderate to get certain votes. But since I need the people who voted for Bush, I'm not really going to be a moderate." My desire to see Obama win suddenly turned into a need to see him win.
Part of me does wonder if Mc Cain being President might have prevented the rise of the Tea Party. He probably wouldn't have passed something like Obamacare or pushed for LGBT rights but he might have prevented the Republicans from entering a spiral into lunacy.
I know that my parents didn't mind Mc Cain all that much (and I'm pretty sure my mom voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004), but they both hated Sarah Palin.
Since then, my mom hasn't voted Republican in a Presidential election (my dad voted for Romney for reasons I don't understand), and both plan on voting for Clinton.
So yeah, while that's obviously only my experiences, I do think that Mc Cain choosing Palin signified a shift in the Republican party (although I doubt it was the cause).
Oh God! Natural light!John Kasich is a goldbug, a firm believer in supply-side, fixed currency economics. I couldn't vote for him in good conscience given that pedigree. Otherwise, his main distinction as a candidate was that he was less awful than the other ones. "I'm John Kasich and I am not a religious zealot, a loony Libertarian, a know-nothing vanity candidate, a dilettante heir to a political dynasty, or a reality TV con man." Good for you, sir.
McCain has always been an odd duck: he veers between what sounds like honest principle and shameless pandering to conservative interests to the point where I (and I suspect he) cannot tell what he is or what he stands for.
Also: Hooray for John Maynard Keynes.
edited 6th Oct '16 1:49:05 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"McCain was willing to stand on stage in front of live TV cameras on the campaign trail and defend Obama's character to a woman insisting Obama was a Muslim. Not fudge, not hedge, outright defend him, unscripted. I like to think that was a better indicator of him at the time. I dunno if I'm right but it's worth also pointing out he hasn't backed Trump either.
edited 6th Oct '16 1:49:24 PM by Elle
I dunno if I buy that Kasich is a goldbug. He's made one or two statements, but it always sounded like pandering to me.
And given how politics, as a politician, isn't about ideology so much as what you can hope to achieve, he'd be pragmatic enough not to ram anything down the throat, looking at how he's run Ohio the last few years.
States do have balance of payments concerns. The federal government doesn't. I would hope Kasich's ideology wouldn't trump pragmatism if he were elected President, but that's not really a reliable barometer when Republicans are concerned.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Jesus. I would move heaven and earth for the shot of having this question asked at a Town Hall on Sunday
New Survey coming this weekend!

Stakes literally couldn't be higher
New Survey coming this weekend!