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
You would need a good faith effort on the GOP's part to accomplish that, as this is by no way limited to the Democrats.
*glances at Koch Brothers astroturfing, Murdoch and Alex Jones*
Yeah, maybe there's a reason why my idealism for various situations is rather flexible.
And as long as the third parties consistently fail to achieve anything that isn't trying to run for president, they will accomplish nothing.
edited 1st Nov '16 12:43:39 PM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot![]()
![]()
Oh no, I get it. The Trump Machine is a monster that the Republican party created, and they are going to pay back every bit of that, be it in the (probable) results of the Presidential race, in the drop in public confidence, or (most importantly) in House and Senate seats. And we'll definately see changes in the GOP over the next few years to fit that. Don't hold your breath for a sudden drop of all religious issues and a massive push for social progressivism, but the immigration stance might get downplayed to better court the (highly religious and socially conservative) first generation hispanic demographics.
But you have to understand that Trump does not speak to no one. His xenophobic, paranoid, hate mongering populism would not work if these views did not latch on to a significant population that feels betrayed by the government and economy, and cannot find kindred spirit in the urbanized, areligious, minority focused democratic base.
![]()
Trump will try and push his justices, but the Senate will likely push towards Democratic this election (unsure about the state of the House), which will make things that much more difficult. So we'll fuck over future generations, but he'll have a tough time trying to create the immediate results his base wants, which will immensely hurt his support among his base.
edited 1st Nov '16 12:54:11 PM by InAnOdderWay
"But maybe we should be asking ourselves how far we've fucked up in the eyes of the American people, be it through our own sins or through allowing the right wing circlejerk to get this far, that for a little under half of the country Donald Fucking Trump is the only viable salvation."
Because that half of the country is willing to sell the country's soul so that they can give minorities, women, gays, liberals, and intellectuals one big "Fuck you." Well, fuck them. They're worthy only of being shunned and undermined at every level, at every opportunity.
"His xenophobic, paranoid, hate mongering populism would not work if these views did not latch on to a significant population that feels betrayed by the government and economy, and cannot find kindred spirit in the urbanized, areligious, minority focused democratic base."
Let's be honest. When these people had a voice in government, their chosen representatives were a moral, ethical, and philosophical cancer in the heart of America. Progress can only be achieved by their marginalization.
edited 1st Nov '16 12:57:44 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
And there's the inherent problem. You cannot shut them up. At least, without bastardizing democracy, which wouldn't feel very nice if, say, they were to ever gain control of the government you so desperately want to rig against them and use the same restrictions used against them to restrict groups they didn't like. The fact that you can so easily "other" such a broad group of people is, well, it's the reason why Dahnald Jay Traump has gotten so far in the election cycle.
And if you truly believe that everyone that supports Donald Trump is such a terrible person, then you must admit the fact that little under half the nation are terrible, terrible people, and we cannot have a democracy under those conditions so our options would then basically boil down to authoritarianism or resignation. And neither option ends well, for anyone.
Donald Trump is not popular because he hates Muslims and Mexicans. I know, that sounds weird, and wrong, and it almost is, but hear me out here. Donald Trump is popular because he's good at projecting the large fears and concerns of a large percentage of the population onto easily recognizable, easily stoppable forces. He's good at taking the broad, scary world that shows them little kindness, and shaping those forces into easy taglines and quotes. MAGA and so on. He did not spring up from a vacuum. The GOP's been festering this shitfest in its breeches for too long to count. But understand that racism is not a goal in and out of itself, and it never has been. There are issues that Donald Trump seeks to solve that Hillary Clinton, at least from the public persona that she has both made and has had made of her, does not.
And as long as the Dems cannot accept that, and as long as the only acceptable answer to the gaping question of half the country is a big ol' "go fuck yourself", the Trump Machine will never be Stumped. He may lose the election, the GOP may lose the House and Senate, but as long as the issues remain, as long as the fear and uncertainty remain, he will rise again, somewhere, someday, somehow, as someone.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:16:36 PM by InAnOdderWay
I am getting very tired of hearing people trying to insist that Trump voters are anything other than repugnant. They're repugnant. Period.
They may feel left behind by the government. They may be unemployed or underemployed. They may have all sorts of problems. But first and foremost they are repugnant human beings.
Anyone who is willing to embrace a platform as openly bigoted as Trump's is a repugnant human being and I will cheerfully cross the street to avoid speaking to one.
Also, boy do I get sick of this sort of idolization of the leaders of the past. I'll give you Lincoln, but TR's a mixed-bag, with trust busting on the good side and raging imperialism on the other. As for Washington...I know he was the Father of Your Country. I know you've had it ingrained in you that he was the greatest president ever. But he wasn't. Washington made error after error during his presidency (including, but not limited to, blundering through the Northwest Indian War with a frankly staggering level of incompetency) and left it to his successors to clean up.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:21:52 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
![]()
I don't even think it's a little under half, it seemed like it was hoovering around 40% or under. As for whether they're all terrible people; I don't think all of them are, but a great deal of them...yeah, terrible people.
As for whether other people think all Trump voters (not die hard supporters but just anyone considering voting for him) is a terrible person, you should probably have a pretty good read on that by now.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:20:18 PM by LSBK
Yeah, I don't think I'm getting into this discussion again. I sympathize with their plight, but I really don't think voting for Trump is doing them any favors, no matter how you look at it.
Anyway, some good news: The Early Vote In Nevada Suggests Clinton Might Beat Her Polls There
.
I think I got a bit too far into the argument there. What I'm trying to say here is that the DNC needs to begin to look into how it can expand its base and prevent the mistakes the GOP made in radicalizing its existing base. A Hilary presidency could do a lot of good and a lot of bad towards that, and mark my words it will spell the difference between a 1 term and a 2 term presidency.
I'm sorry, but what?
You know I'm frankly tired of having to read people read way too deep into Trump support as if they're this "secret" reason liberals are missing if they'd only just stop and think for a minute!
No. Screw that. Trump is popular because a good portion, if not outright majority of the Republican's overwhelmingly white base are goddamn racist authoritarians.
That's it. Had Trump just stuck to the usual dog whistles he would've faded into the background with ease, but since he made it okay to "tell it like it is" or "say what we're all thinking." he shot ahead of the rest of the pack and stayed there.
That's not a coincidence.
New Survey coming this weekend!And...? I should be afraid of that number somehow? Yes, half your country is utterly repugnant. Half the country is a living monument to a misogynistic, white nationalist past that courtesy of the failures of, among other things, your educational system, refuses to die.
Frankly I'm not sure why I'm supposed to act like a meteor will strike me if I admit this. A very sizable portion of the American electorate is made up of people who hold some pretty horrid ideas. This is simply a reality, as reflected in the existence of groups like the Tea Party.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:29:00 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
"I think I got a bit too far into the argument there. What I'm trying to say here is that the DNC needs to begin to look into how it can expand its base and prevent the mistakes the GOP made in radicalizing its existing base. A Hilary presidency could do a lot of good and a lot of bad towards that, and mark my words it will spell the difference between a 1 term and a 2 term presidency."
What utter rot. The Democratic base is huge already. Urbanites, minorities, women, the college educated, sexual minorities, and the under-40 demographic is already most of the electorate. It's why the Republican base has a deficit of like 50 EV compared to the Democratic one. The GOP's sclerotic base is within a decade of dying in droves owing entirely to Father Time. We simply need to prevent their influence from rotting away the following century.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:33:12 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/793544120379768832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We're fucking doomed.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:30:10 PM by ZeroPoint
@Crimson Zephyr
That's the problem—every time people complain about how Democrats have "lost the white working class" or "why can't they reach out to Trump voters" what they are asking for is that people tolerate or worse yet, accommodate, racism, misogyny, et al. That's a nonstarter for me, and a nonstarter for many, many other people.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:35:23 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Again, not all Republicans are bigots directly. They aren't all secretly stashing KKK hoods in their attics, waiting for the moment to burst out and lynch some darkies. However, by holding onto this disdain for liberal politics as "stealing from the successful to give to the undeserving", they directly enable the kind of racism and sexism that lurks just beneath the surface. That's the platform Mitt Romney ran on in 2012, after all.
They've just gotten very good at hiding the underlying hatred beneath pleasant-sounding rhetoric that appeals to the "why can't we just all get along and find points of compromise" folks. But that wasn't winning them the White House, and it certainly wasn't returning any benefits to the meat and potatoes base that wants their perceived share of the pie back. So Trump came along and said what those people were thinking, with no internal censor, and the "moderate Republican" voices were dragged under as surely as were the musicians on the Titanic.
Fundamentally, as strong as the voice of the moneyed elite is in Republican politics, it only commands the attention of their leadership, not their base. The base, by and large, doesn't give a damn about corporate tax rates or "small business owners", and it's really not that interested in the intricacies of foreign policy. The idea that "conservatism" in the sense that Jeb Bush or John Kasich espoused was ever really in the hearts and minds of the demographics that make up the GOP's voter base is just false. It's always been false.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:50:37 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The inherent issue is that those people you're describing legitimately don't see themselves as racist - "I don't hate black people, I just hate lazy people!" Which then leads into their describing themselves and relatives not as lazy, but just "down on their luck", without extending the same presumption of innocence to people they don't know - and that can be directly tied to Ronald Reagan lamenting "welfare queens" back in the '80s.
And to piggyback on another comment regarding the DNC, they rigged the Primary in the same way that Trump managed to win the Republican one - a large number of uninformed voters want to vote for the Winner, not a Loser, and having so many Superdelegates come out in favor of Sanders right off the bat was essentially putting the thumb on the scales. It wouldn't wipe out an overwhelming majority (as proven with Obama vs. Clinton), but when the other person is relatively unknown in early races? Sure thing.
edited 1st Nov '16 2:00:05 PM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
Look, I know that. But it is the proper job of the media, the educational system, Congress, and our other leaders to call them out on that, something that has blatantly failed to happen. Now we reap the reward for our complacency. Our democracy is under direct threat of being killed by the cancer of ignorant hatred, and it's a cancer that we've known existed and ignored because it was convenient.
edited 1st Nov '16 1:53:03 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The world won't end if Trump is elected. The issue isn't what Trump will do, but what Trump won't do, aka run a fucking country. We'll get 4 years of grandstanding, lots of talk, lots of fear of the end of the world on both sides, but in the end we'll have wasted 4 years on hot air. That's why Status Quo is our best and only option.
I do have to send out a special fuck y'all to the DNC. Yes, they can be biased towards Hilary all they want. It is also a massive brutalization of democracy to have one of the primary nominees for the ballot decided by a small upper class group independent from the views of the people. Yes, the DNC is in place to stop Trump 2. But maybe we should be asking ourselves how far we've fucked up in the eyes of the American people, be it through our own sins or through allowing the right wing circlejerk to get this far, that for a little under half of the country Donald Fucking Trump is the only viable salvation. And maybe instead of trying to halt the democratic process we could try and, you know, fix those issues. I get that democracy isn't perfect, hence republicanism and the 2 party system, but this is ridiculous.
edited 1st Nov '16 12:43:41 PM by InAnOdderWay