My computer has been sick and is now in the Genius Bar hospital for a day or two, so I’ve been patching things together to get any work done. But I like to work with my tools, not other people’s tools, and it’s been difficult.
Hopefully, my creativity and motivation will return when I get my baby back, but this election is sucking the life out of me. I’ve never been more miserable politically, and the future looks somewhere between crushingly bleak and catastrophically apocalyptic.
And I’m the optimist around here.
What I’m noticing, when I try to examine my own psychology, is that this is different from either Obama election (which turned out right) or either Bush election (which didn’t) — all four of those are in one category, and 2016 is in an entirely different, uncharted territory.
So, even though I still don’t think Trump can possibly win — there are so many deep, unchangable systemic reasons he can’t — it’s depressing and miserable anyway. Because (again, trying to understand my own psychology and project out to other liberals/progressives), it’s not enough for Trump to “just” lose. He must be humiliated; trounced; embarassed; utterly rejected. (Who was it who said he had to lose “all fifty states?” A conservative republican, right?)
So it’s not that I’m afraid of a Trump victory so much as I just get this sinking feeling as the same old goddamned “close” horserace comes together as the last four times, as if this is just another example of that, which it really, really isn’t.
I think we are beyond the humiliation possibility, and now Trump has been normalized.
This is it, this is our present and future. It’s been building for years, and now the alt right is in control of the national dialogue.
.
Thing is, he clearly can win. To look at the polling is to see clear movement in his direction. Personally, I thought it was a huge mistake for Hillary’s campaign to go to a ride-out-the-clock strategy in August. Way too early for that and I was nervous about it when Politico reported it at the end of August. She’s lost weeks, basically, and ceded the floor to Trump and his spurious claims.
What we can hope for is some of the third party learners take a good look at what an Attorney General Giuliani will mean, let alone court appointments made by Trump. These are people who can barely fake an interest in anything Bernie Sanders has to say, let alone Jill Stein.
The problem is not Hillary trying to ride out the clock, the problem is the media is refusing to talk about anything she says. She criticizes Trump – and gets ignored or criticized. She makes major policy proposals – and gets ignored. Having the media controlled by the wealthy is killing us. They want their tax cuts, and they’ll do anything to get them.
The media has done what they can do to sink Trump. They don’t have the power people think they have.
Yeah, I thought August was the Define-Your-Opponent month. RMoney the vicious takeover artist, etc. So with a massive war chest and an already unpopular opponent where was the slew of “Trump the Failed Biznessman” ads and “Trump the Fraudster” ads? They had so many themes possible they could hardly choose one. So it seems they chose none, and did more fundraising.
I’m hoping they have some plan for all the money beyond consultants. The powder is certainly being kept dry, so the battle plan must be a doozy!! It seems to me that our generals must be aware that the 150mm howitzer shells are hitting their lines pretty hard…
I am ashamed. I am ashamed that my party’s candidate runs so poorly with the young. That she is so disliked and not trusted.
But most of all I am ashamed that with a monster staring us in the face, the best our candidate can do is a marginal lead.
It is pathetic. There is no other word to describe it.
For me this is the summer of 1988. It is Dukakis spending a week in August in Nantucket (Clinton has spent two weeks in the Hamptons). It is so badly misdiagnosing what drives voters. It is the sense that every response is weak and ineffective.
How in God’s name did we get here?
I did not see this coming. I still believe we win going away.
I talk every day to people around the world.
I was ashamed when Trump became the nominee.
I am ashamed when people ask me if Trump can really win.
Because in the moment he can.
Perhaps your view of the electorate has been mistaken.
My main takeaway from this election is that many white folks so resent the changing demographics and their perceived loss of status that they are willing to vote for a monster.
That is what shames me.
Or maybe both of you are wrong.
Do monsters see monsters when they look in the mirror?
Perhaps 40%+ of the electorate are monsters who see themselves in Trump, and Trump in themselves.
I know a whole lot of Trump voters. I have had some very frank discussions with them. And you are on the mark with your observation. To them, we are the monsters, and have been for a very long time. I was pretty much told that last month by my very own brother. He said, “I don’t hate you, but I hate what people who believe like you have done to this country”. He calls Trump a flawed messenger, but says that he at least understands that if we don’t save the culture that founded this country, then we are at the end of the line.
So that’s where we are. We are, at least at this point, in a political civil war, brother pitted against brother. It remains to be seen just when we move to the next level. My fear is that we are now standing in the doorway. All that remains is for us to walk through.
And just exactly what has been done to the country?
Are they talking about income inequality? Jobs being outsourced?
What exactly?
Dudes getting married, darkies running the Justice Dept, a taco stand near ever futbol field.
I think there is a mix of economic and cultural nostalga. I do think people think they have been betrayed economically. But that economic loss in places like Youngstown also had a cultural component – what was once vibrant is now run down and depressed.
I don’t think it is easy to disentangle the two. It is not all about race, but is in part.
I am struck by the race Clinton ran in ’92 and HRC is running. The difference between Arkansas, even if it was Arkansas by way of Yale Law, and from New York seems enormous.
I think you and Martin both hit on parts of it. It is an amalgam of several things. I do think, at least for those Trump supporters I know, that race is at the nucleus for at least a majority of them. And I think that’s a product of being so immersed in an almost completely white culture for their entire lives, that they simply have no conception of anything which is outside what is fed to them from within that bubble. In them, the propaganda machine of the right wing wurlitzer has achieved its goal.
I think the economic side of it is largely like a parasitic attachment to the core issue of race. The economic hardship for many is a reality. And they feel it has largely been something that has unfairly happened and which was beyond their control. So when one feels unfairly victimized, there is a tendency to have a need to lash out and blame someone. Well, we all know that the pump has been regularly primed for generations to blame those lazy and shiftless “others” who have stolen the hard earned treasure that should have duly passed on to the “deserving” class.
The reality is that these people have actually been screwed magnificently by the inherent flaws in the American capitalist system which, unchecked, will always steamroll anyone who is not in the elite economic class. They have been hoodwinked by their masters, but are too blind to see that the masters are to blame, and not their dark-skinned neighbor or the Latino guys who cut the grass in the posh neighborhoods of the bankers, lawyers and CEO’s in their town.
And Donald Trump, like most all of the economic elite, knows exactly how to tweak that portion of the limbic brain which will animate peoples’ emotions and rage in such a way that they will destroy themselves, all the while thinking they are acting for their own self preservation. This kind of human manipulation is the epitome of evil.
Always easier to punch down than to punch up. And we want them to blame themselves first and foremost. Which they often internalize to great fury.
Thank you all for your explanations. Apparently I live in a bubble as well.
MikeInOhio what you describe sounds like people who have lost hope and now feel powerless to save themselves. I guess guns and religion aren’t working anymore.
The people in my bubble are dedicated to making the world a healthier, safer place to live. I always thought if we could make our bubble work in our part of the world and make it available more generally that we might breakout of the whole bubble mentality altogether.
What you all make clear is that the way to reach these folks is via an emotional approach rather than with reason (or policy). This would also explain why Bernie polled better in polls regarding the general election than Clinton.
To me this implies that the policies don’t necessarily need to change but how to package them does.
It’s not that guns and religion aren’t working – it’s that they haven’t been allowed to work. Because of libruuls.
Strongman Trump is using language to send a message to people that if elected, True Americans will be allowed to use those guns and their bibles to…Make America Great Again.
I know a whole lot of Trump voters. I have had some very frank discussions with them. And you are on the mark with your observation. To them, we are the monsters, and have been for a very long time. I was pretty much told that last month by my very own brother. He said, “I don’t hate you, but I hate what people who believe like you have done to this country”. He calls Trump a flawed messenger, but says that he at least understands that if we don’t save the culture that founded this country, then we are at the end of the line.
So that’s where we are. We are, at least at this point, in a political civil war, brother pitted against brother. It remains to be seen just when we move to the next level. My fear is that we are now standing in the doorway. All that remains is for us to walk through.
Around here, we are not considered “monsters”, we are considered as not loving our own white race. It’s time we stopped euphemisms to allow polite white bigots to feel good. Trump has motivated bigotry in service to his campaign–traditional kinds of bigotry, but bigotry none the less.
Racism
Islamophobia
Anti-semitism
Anti-Latino bigotry
Misogyny
Homophobia
Anti-transgender bigotry (a la North Carolina’s legislature)
It is not about white working class anti-establishment sentiments at all, despite the white left and white progressives trying to make that case. He is not about the prosperity of the working man. Trump is a “strike it rich with me” con man. Always has been. Even The Apprentice was the idea of striking it rich. And he netted a black entrepreneurial preacher out of that show.
Apparently that realization is not making it through because the media, BooMan to the contrary, is putting their finger on the scale while playing the “fairness” game.
We know the things Trump is most sensitive about: his privacy, his exact wealth, the fact that he is less than someone else in anything.
When you attack Donald Trump, you do not apologize. But Hillary Clinton did. And you do not back down. Which is what Hillary Clinton did.
Half of Trump’s base are deplorable bigots. That half is not going to vote for Clinton. Maybe some of the other half who are not deplorable bigots will vote for Clinton. But the Clinton campaign stepped all over that campaign message.
When you unleash something like that, you sit and wait. The first respondent is the dead duck. If in this case it is not Donald Trump, you still wait. If the media have a hissy fit, ask them to stop defending Trump; he needs to speak for himself.
It is time to repeat the exact same statement and point out that the media is deaf because it can’t hear the word “half” and can’t figure out that we are talking about roughly 20% of white folks without identifiying their class. As Trump shows, there are ar lot of rabidly bigoted billionaires who throw money at bigoted causes.
I guess that I am frustrated about this point. When do the Democrats start kicking butt that is not their own?
She didn’t really attack him though. Or rather, she didn’t realize that she was attacking him even as she was doing so. Whatever, her goal at the moment she made that remark was not to go on the offensive against Trump by attacking him at his weakest point, it was to motivate her own supporters at that rally. Insofar as it was an attack, the attack was a side-effect and when she realized what had happened she apologized. She turned it into a gaffe.
She doesn’t fight. She negotiates. She is by training and by temperament an attorney and a politician — both of which, I’ll stipulate for the moment at least, are fine and honorable professions but not what we needed in the situation we’re in.
If bigots are going to vote for him, they better own that bigotry self-consciously.
Politically what is going on with the Trump campaign is setting up to disenfranchise 21 million birthright citizens, send them to a country they’ve never lived in prior to their 18th birthday, and do this because they are Latino immigrants and will be the deciding difference against a racist Republican Party.
But the folks engaging in this political maneuver have all sorts of excuses of law and waiting in line and all sorts of other evasions of what is a pretty straightforward partisan maneuver.
Even if they are my relatives, they know my opinion of this maneuver.
What I hear folks hear saying is that the majority of white voters are, 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement, in all of the states significant to Clinton’s victory in the electoral college or the states signficant to the US House and US Senate–in all of those state — too bigoted to vote for Hillary Clinton and bigoted enough to vote for Donald Trump even when the issue of bigotry is put on the line.
You are afraid that there are 65 million shameless white people instead of just the 20% (26 million) that Hillary Clinton was inadvertently calling out.
How many white people voted for Barack Obama? How many of them will Hillary Clinton gain?
What brought this to my attention is noticing that Clinton’s current firewall (even with Iowa and North Carolina edged over to Trump) is Colorado and Nevada. Given the number of Latino voters in those states, either those voters will have to vote for Trump or they will have to not vote at all for Trump to win.
In case I was not clear, I was agreeing with your previous comment. She should have gone on the attack, and once having started stuck to her guns, for the reasons you mentioned. My point was, that’s not the kind of person she is.
It may be because as a lawyer and a politician she’s not used to doing this. It may be because (to your point here) she looks at the electorate through a filter that valorizes whiteness.
Whatever. She choked.
I felt all along that she should have let the whole thing sink in a bit, allow Trump respond in his usual hyperbolic, Trumpian way, then double down on the comment. I saw a lot of people on the left who said that the partial walk-back was some sort of brilliant, calculated move on her part to get the media to focus on the bigotry of Trump and his followers. I am still not convinced of that, and I see little evidence that the media, at large, is obliging in that way.
I had hopes in the beginning that the campaign might have an inkling of how to try and deal with the Trump campaign style. I know there are a lot of headwinds that are out of their control, but I am also extremely frustrated at this point at how things are playing out, and the methods (or lack of methods) that are being employed. And it certainly doesn’t help that many in the media keep chasing after shiny objects which have absolutely no relevance to anything.
I go back to the polling in May. Bernie ran significantly better than Clinton against Trump.
That tells me there was a way to win a big victory. This is not to say Bernie would have been a better candidate – though to my surprise I now find it difficult to believe he would not have been a better candidate – but to suggest there was a blowout to be had.
And we are blowing it.
I remember those polls. I remember being told that they were misleading and not representative of political reality.
Now that I think about it, I also remember all the polls during the Republican primaries showing Trump on track to win the nomination. And the Republican bloggers said how they were misleading and not representative of political reality…
Martin, have you changed your forecast about this election?
Well, the required blowout is slipping away, at a minimum.
Anything less will be near hopelessly bleak.
And we’re now in the danger zone where relatively small uncontrollable events can tip this.
But, as to who will win?
Trump isn’t there yet nor do I predict that he’ll get there.
Agreed. For now.
Trump can win this, and all it takes are a few events, coupled with people who are voting for Clinton publicly accusing Clinton of being just slightly less worse than Trump.
And we haven’t even gotten to the promised October event. That last Ohio poll blew me out of the water. I have noticed in my tiny corner of the world that the Trump people, in addition to being superbly obnoxious, behave like a mob and have Hillary criminally convicted of something, not sure what, but something.
At this point if you are still trying to argue that Trump cannot win, or even that he won’t win, you are either cherry-picking data or invoking motivated reasoning to justify your argument.
With the arrival of Aisles in the Trump campaign someone has finally reigned in his worst impulses in terms of twitter and off-the-cuff comments. We no longer have the outrageous-Trump-comment-of-the-day, which is what the media fed on. Instead we have the Clinton-scandal-of-the-day – which usually isn’t even a scandal.
What this means is that in the absence of a daily Trump outrage at least half of the electorate has forgotten about everything that he said or did more than a few days ago and has decided that he’d be okay as President.
Our expectations for our electorate and our press corpse were already extremely low – but they’ve managed to prove they are even worse that we’d imagined. Even if Clinton does win that reality won’t changed. This is the land of stupid people, being “informed” (and I use the term loosely) but equally stupid people.
The reality of a Trump victory is too horrible to contemplate. A Trump victory of course would carry with it a GOP Congress and SCOTUS. Future Democratic victories would have to overcome a wave of newly-enacted voter-blocking schemes. But even if limited to only 4 years the damage will be irreversible.
If thinking long term and for your progeny, find some place with high land somewhere far, far away – somewhere closer to the poles and with a good local food supply.
Interesting that nothing sticks to Trump, but the Hillary Collapsing! video did her in. Pays to follow doctor’s orders, ha-ha (gallows humor) While many seem to think the ship will be righted in the debates, I think they will be like WWB cage matches this time, with the hapless ref being bamboozled as the “good guy” gets stomped. There seems to be no metric by which Der Trumper is thought to perform badly. And when it does seemingly happen (gold star families, mocking disabled,etc etc) it registers only as a momentary blip.
Who exactly thought they were voting for Clinton two weeks ago but now thinks, “the more I see, the more I like Trump?” That’s what we are dealing with, apparently. A thinker that I have trouble believing could exist. Yet, there it is.
Can a month long nationwide blanketing of negative ads vis-a-vis a Trump Supreme Court, Repub control of government and mushroom clouds have any effect? Or a plethora of ads on Trump’s Frauds? Or does it just make the Land of the Stupid even MORE determined that Der Trumper is the savior and the hated “elites” be damned? We certainly know that his status as world class climate denialist is meaningless to the majority of deranged voters.
What can she do? She can never turn the “dishonest” numbers around at this point, that’s her scarlet letter. “Competence” and “Qualifications” are dead letters and ads along these lines are dead ends. Will this be the election that clues us in as to who are those 45% who never vote? Look for high ground indeed…and when do the markets collapse?
How can the ship be righted in the debates when there will not be real moderation because Trump will not allow it (or he will take his debate cards and stay home).
I get it that there are those who know who Trump is and want him. But there are those who think that Trump is not who he is. Who think that he has some good ideas.
Yes, punish the Democrats again; that will teach them to listen. I don’t think so. The Democratic establishment right now seems so stubborn that they cannot see the huge error they have made about Trump’s unlikeability.
There is likely a majority who are deadset on blowing up the establishment — and think that that is what Trump is about.
Running as the establishment tightens up the support of one set of base voter while alienating another set of base voters. Doubling down on Obamacare without a way forward in health care reform for example loses both those against government health care at all and those who expected real health care reform finally. The political shenanigans that Aetna and Anthem have been pulling put a lie to the notion of reform. And Democrats have Evan Bayh and his wife back to make sure that real health care reform remains impossible.
What exactly are the policies we are voting for? Who exactly is behind those policies?
So BooMan’s view is that the citizens of the United States of America finally after years of trying are going to blow up the experiment in democracy and representative government that was put on the skids at the beginning of the Cold War.
Tell me again why voting matters at all. All of that effort to pass on to Millennials the sense of what the Boomer sixties were like for progressives. And now. Sorry kids. You gotta be practical. Maybe, next generation.
We are poorly led. The best I can offer is simply to echo what RachelQ observes below: the line must be held at whatever cost. Else the decisive battle is lost and we are under (likely permanent) occupation.
The fears of the Sanderians are starting to materialize and the ship’s officers are now crying for all hands on deck. It’s always up to the grunts.
Electability? Battle Tested?
Got it.
The way I look at it (and my thinking is strongly influenced by reading you over the years), the point to be depressed was when Trump got the nomination. We knew the republicans had pretty much lost touch with reality, but we didn’t know that they were so far gone to nominate someone who was so transparently an ignorant con man.
Once he got the nom, it was inevitable that the red/blue divide would mean that he got 40-45% of the vote. And it was also inevitable that our press, set up for bothsiderisim, was going to play some version of that script, rather than turning themselves into propaganda organs on the side of sanity. (I’ve been watching CNN a little bit recently, something I never do, and I’ve been struck by how the construction of panels–always “balanced” with people from both sides–leads to normalization of evil when one side is insane.)
I still think that Clinton wins in the end, and perhaps by similar margins as Obama in 2012. But the Trump won’t be repudiated by a landslide loss because the Republicans lost their way a long time ago. But we knew that already, didn’t we?
I would argue that the GOP nominated a transparently ignorant con man in 2000, and he won the presidency twice. The difference between W and Trump is one of degree. Trump is much worse than W and more open about his desire for foreign aggression, his racism and his sexism, but W checked all those boxes as well.
My facebook feed is not the most scientific of surveys, but it’s what I see every day. Months ago I had a daily mix of left wingers making fun of Trump and cheering Bernie, while right wingers made fun of Hillary. Now the left wingers are nearly silent, but I still see daily cartoons about Hillary’s health and emails, with frequent suggestions that she belongs in jail. Since I unfriended anyone posting racist material about Obama years ago, my sample is probably tame compared to some.
None of my friends who volunteered their time and money for Obama in 2008 and 2012 is volunteering again. The Democrats I know who favored Hillary in 2008 are enthusiastic, but they never volunteered their time the way that Obama supporters did, and they still aren’t.
So yes, I think utter disaster is possible, but I’m hoping that Hillary will pull this out after nearly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. She won’t have the coattails to swing Congress, but I never believed that would. It worries me, but I’m not depressed about it. We can muddle on a with a divided government for a while. With every passing year the huge culture change that we’ve experienced becomes more entrenched, and people who grew up in modern America become voters. We’ll be ok in the long run if we can hold the line for now.
Trump is much worse than W and more open about his desire for foreign aggression, his racism and his sexism, but W checked all those boxes as well.
You may be right, but his approach to Russia and China seems much less belligerent than Hillary’s.
He’s barking mad therefore untrustworthy, but to me and many others Hillary’s use of the military is more rabid than Trump’s.
Donald will beef up the military (ridiculous, wasteful and totally unnecessary) so will pull that vote, but obviously people who really care about America’s War-is-Us foreign policy and Climate change won’t be voting for Trump or Hillary. Since Bernie’s gone they’ll probably abstain.
But to suggest that Trump will pull another Iraq is OTT.
Hillary bombing Iran on the other hand?
A distinct possibility.
Both will increase military spending. You can take that to the bank…
The best the Dems can hope for is for Hillary to drop out for health reasons, and invite Bernie back.
Then maybe Booman will stop boosting Hillary from terror of Trump.
Markos too!
It has been depressing seeing progressives descending so into fear-driven lesser-evil-ism.
No wonder Martin is so depressed. Huge amounts of energy spent on two candidates neither of whom should be anywhere near the levers of power. Slamming one and jacking the other is hard work.
Not to mention the months of hectoring Bernie’s supporters for their lack of awareness about politics and lack of pragmatism.
Idealism has its issues for sure, but banishing it from the debate in favor of what seems like pragmatism leads to a very bleak place indeed.
Endorsing any candidate who wants to maintain the status quo is a deathwish for either party. If Trump wins it will be because he threatens -or at least convincingly pretends to- upended this present mess.
As much or more than his unrestrained bigotry.
Even if Hillary were honest or in great health, her policies promise nothing new, so she is reduced to trashing Trump as stump strategy.
More incrementalism, more drone wars, more interference in other countries in service of the great golem of globo-cop exceptionalism.
When the choice is between that and someone like Trump, no wonder abstention is popular.
And the vituperation spent on trashing hopes when Bernie was in the running from progressive pundits can be atoned for with full-throated support for the platforms they should have realised were really progressive and pragmatic, and wouldn’t have needed the machivellian machinations of the DNC to try and steal victory.
Disgust for Clintonism goes wide and deep across the political spectrum. Spinning has not changed peoples’ perceptions at all, and has broken a lot of political hearts this last year. Stubbornly touting her in the face of the evidence she would be a disastrous, conniving, mercenary president while smearing Bernie who was the only one who pulled in new voters to the Dems was a terrible decision.
Now we will see what consequences ensue from that dream-killing pragmatism, and why it was always fear rather than faith that was the main driver.
It took guts to believe that faith in a better future could trump bizniz-as-usual (no pun intended).
Sad to see it in such short supply when it would have most counted.
“I’ve never been more miserable politically, and the future looks somewhere between crushingly bleak and catastrophically apocalyptic.”
Me too.
Once again, the media is in the tank to get larger ad revenue.
The billionaire Republicans are going after the US Senate and state legislatures.
And the Clinton campaign is drifting once again without calling in the media.
The important thing to remember about Trump is that he makes W look diligent, so unserious is Trump.
And no one is telling the public that not only does Trump know what he is talking about, he doesn’t care to do the homework. That is journalistic malpractrice as mammoth as the stampede to war in Iraq.
Is anyone doing GOTV? In a serious and intense way to enlarge the base? Or is is the same old high-priced consultant minimalist crap again?
What I hear: fewer volunteers in FL than in 2012. And there were fewer in 2012 than in 2008.
Hangover from DWS unpleasantness?
Nahh – i don’t think it is about DWS.
Obama had a volunteer army. In 2012 no fewer than 5 separate people knocked on my door in the last 10 days.
Be interesting to know from others what they see.
Absolutely nothing at all in California. I live in a town that went 99% for the Dems in 2012, and there isn’t a single Hillary sign or bumpersticker anywhere to be found. Not a one.
Absolutely nothing at all in California. I live in a town that went 99% for the Dems in 2012, and there isn’t a single Hillary sign or bumpersticker anywhere to be found. Not a one.
Milwaukee is… almost silent. Leftists and community groups esp. in Latino neighborhoods are trying and the latter may be getting some traction but in general it’s very spotty. Nowhere near the effort that OFA put out in 2008 and 2012.
Clinton campaign seems to have assumed that she was strong enough here that she could trust the state party to handle the job. She may even be right about the first part; Trump has even less of a presence than she did and he did poorly in the primary vs. Cruz. But to rely on the state party is incredibly risky; the DPW is essentially dying. If this is what she’s doing in other states, God help us.
You can’t buy volunteers, and you can’t hire enough paid staff to GOTV without volunteers.
In NH it is all the Party. I will ask about manpower – but remember NH was a 20+ Sanders state. In FL the party is a disaster and you can’t rely on them for anything.
This would make a very good story.
I don’t want to blow my own horn…I really don’t, because I am very unhappy to have failed even on this fairly small, certainly well-meaning site…but I tried to warn y’all about Trump (and later about HRC and the DNC in general) while you were still sitting on your entitlement-gorged, leftiness asses mocking Trump in mid-July 2015, and I have continued to try right up until today.
The Trump Problem. You Cannot Laugh A Clown Offstage.
With probably 30+ more posts and hundreds upon hundreds of comments and replies.
In the process I have been actively opposed, vilified, downrated in good ol’/ bad ol’ dKos fashion and recently threatened with expulsion for “trolling” by Booman. But I have persisted. Now many people here are…belatedly…realizing the truth of the matter. Now…now that it is basically out of their hands…now the moaning and wailing begins.
What we are facing in November…barring HRC’s retirement from the scene of battle…is a Humphrey/Nixon-style election. A relatively weak, fake lefty centrist vs. a very seriously disturbed, power-mad Republican.
UH oh!!!
I don’t know what else to say. If we have blown our chance for a decent candidate saying decent things…and meaning to follow through on those things…by supporting a candidate who is quite plainly a part of the problem the U.S. faces today, we deserve whatever fate ensues.
Buck up, folks. Maybe a disastrous Trump presidency (complete with Giuliani and Christie level cabinet members) will be the “WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!” moment that the so-called left has been needing since Bobby Kennedy went down.
I sincerely hope so.
Over and out…
AG
P.S. I repeat my own prescription for success:
This could still happen…there is no hard and fast rule for replacing a candidate who goes down. What happens if Hillary Clinton has to drop out of the race?
Could happen…
No downrates from me.
One of the reasons I continue to post here, despite pretty much disagreement with my positions on things, is that this site tolerates dissent. Of course, nothing is static.
However, the inability to understand and listen to Trump supporters and those to whom Trump speaks is rather discouraging. The “basket of maniacals” or whatever slur Hillary used is the basic view – no attempt to comprehend WHY Trump’s comments about immigration, jobs, etc brought such a huge response.
In 1995-1996, Bill Clinton had any number of speeches in which he reaffirmed support for legal immigration, and re-stated opposition to illegal immigration. These speeches are well known and posted online; they were SOTU addresses. This is the Trump position. If the Democratic Party was still the Party of Bill Clinton of 1995-1996, Trump would never have succeeded.
By abandoning the rule of law and sensible approaches to illegals, the Democrats paved the way for Trump’s success.
You keep saying these things, but you’re regularly disproven with polling data about immigration.
Article is from three days ago.
There are immigrants and there are fucking illegals and if you can’t tell the fucking difference, you really need to get a clue.
I support immigration by legal immigrants. I support the US resettlement of a limited number of Syrians.
I do not support the tidal wave of illegals, who are criminals.
Not sure how to get this clarified, but you seem to have a really hard time with actual facts.
I perfectly understand how you feel. However, this was not about how you feel, but about how this issue supposedly hurts the Democratic Party. So when polling shows overwhelmingly that people do not subscribe to your view on the issue, I’d expect you too not thrust your views onto the voting populace.
The point also is that polls never distinguish, so I don’t have any faith whatsoever in whatever crap they dish out. So, no polls ask the right questions, and I don’t believe any crap they dish out.
I’m sure if the polls throw in a few racial slurs and stereotypes then they’ll point more towards your direction, but I’m not sure how much more direct you want than “15% support for deporting everyone”. The opposition to The Wall is pretty damn explicit, too.
It is real easy to tell whose jobs are under pressure from immigrants, legal or illegal. They blame the worker that gets hired not the boss that sends out the agent to find people to bring in.
Currently, there is one of these agents bringing in Certified Nursing Assistants from African countries into this area. English spoken in African countries is not understandable to those who speak North Carolina English. Many of these CNAs are now filling jobs at Wal-Mart and other similar retailers.
Hmm, one of the most hopeful pieces I have seen on the economic evolution of Dems-at-large in this campaign season. I recommend it highly. I pray it is true.
Mike Konczal is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, which I had heard was conferring with Clinton people on some issues.
The “new liberal economics” is the key to understanding Hillary Clinton’s policies
http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/9/15/12923528/liberal-economics-great-recession-policy-clinton
SMH. This is news to you?
Perhaps if one operates on the assumption that Hillary Clinton is a liar, a fraud, and a cheat, then economic analysis reflected in her platform, and in her campaign literature, will seem to be news.
“this election is sucking the life out of me. I’ve never been more miserable politically”
Booman, I share this feeling, and others I encounter do as well.
I worry about my job as a federal employee if Trump wins. I worry for my child–an Asian adoptee–wondering what kind of hateful crap some people will feel empowered to direct at her. I worry about what sort of sick brownshirt operation the GOP will turn into if Trump wins. I worry about a sociopath with the nuclear codes.
I know that if Hillary Clinton somehow manages to move into the White House on January 20, she’ll face a hostile Congress lead by people determined to destroy her.
Democracy is actually a fragile institution, and We The People are not behaving in a way to strengthen it.
If one’s orientation is to believe that people are basically good, how does one square that belief with the Trump phenomenon?
Trump supporters aren’t “people” in the societal sense of the term.