US Election: It's a post-TrumpDay world

[lokisnow]

Matt Yglesias points out, as I have, that Democrats are so focused on trying to lose this year's house elections that they are squandering the opportunity to win this year's house elections.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11516550/democrats-house-majority-2016

 

Remember, as of two months ago, they had decided not to run any candidate in six districts that are effectively tossups, demographically, because reasons. and with trump the nominee, that's gifting the republicans those extremely winnable seats. and making it twelve seats harder to win a majority.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

Clinton's negatives were lower before she started running for office, and after the primary is over they'll likely go down again. 

Will the email nonsense impact the election? Sure, maybe, but the real question is, will it significantly impact the election? If things continue as they have, I don't think so. 

I disagree. They won't return to what they were pre-campaign. If anything they'll get worse in the general.

The emails themselves aren't even the main issue. It's her credibility. It's what Trump is going to target, and having her credibility damaged even further will have a negative effect on her presidency, should she win. Two-thirds of Americans do not trust her, and a majority don't like her. That's problematic if something were to go wrong while she's in office.

[Kalbear]

28 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

BR,

I didn't "call you a kindergartner".  And name calling, as I implied above, is quite juvenile.

So is being a sore loser.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

So is being a sore loser.

Huh?

[Swordfish]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I disagree. They won't return to what they were pre-campaign. If anything they'll get worse in the general.

The emails themselves aren't even the main issue. It's her credibility. It's what Trump is going to target, and having her credibility damaged even further will have a negative effect on her presidency, should she win. Two-thirds of Americans do not trust her, and a majority don't like her. That's problematic if something were to go wrong while she's in office.

Or during the remainder of the campaign.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Huh?

Writing in "Bernie Sanders" when he's not running and (presumably) will have endorsed Clinton is being pretty sore losery. 

Which is pretty juvenile. 

[Swordfish]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Writing in "Bernie Sanders" when he's not running and (presumably) will have endorsed Clinton is being pretty sore losery. 

Which is pretty juvenile. 

Totes.  I mean.... Who votes their conscience anymore?  

So passe and childish......

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kalbear,

I've written in my wife for a number of offices particularly when the person running is unopposed.  She has never run for public office.  Is that juvenile?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

15 hours ago, maarsen said:

Canada is the move of choice because  we have ever so much fewer  idiots with guns. 

So you decided to import them from the US? 

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Kalbear,

I've written in my wife for a number of offices particularly when the person running is unopposed.  She has never run for public office.  Is that juvenile?

Was I talking about you?

But if your wife ran in the primaries, got beaten handily, refused to offer support for the other person and then you wrote their name in anyway? Yes, that'd be pretty juvenile.

[aceluby]

There seems to be a weird theme that has emerged over the last month or so.  When Sanders supporters were trying to figure out why minorities were voting against their best interests with Clinton, Clinton supporters (and others) jumped all over them saying it's their vote, and what do they know about their best interests, and heavily implied an air of racism for suggesting Sanders supporters knew what was best for minorities.

Now with Clinton the presumptive nominee, some of those Sanders supporters (millennials) are saying they won't vote for Clinton, or will write in Sanders; and Clinton supporters are doing the exact same thing.  Why would they vote against their own self interests?  Name calling them childish and juvenile for not voting for their preferred candidate.  

Isn't it a bit hypocritical?  Is it not their vote to do with as they see fit?  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

For the most part it's all hypocritical. 

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

8 minutes ago, aceluby said:

There seems to be a weird theme that has emerged over the last month or so.  When Sanders supporters were trying to figure out why minorities were voting against their best interests with Clinton, Clinton supporters (and others) jumped all over them saying it's their vote, and what do they know about their best interests, and heavily implied an air of racism for suggesting Sanders supporters knew what was best for minorities.

Now with Clinton the presumptive nominee, some of those Sanders supporters (millennials) are saying they won't vote for Clinton, or will write in Sanders; and Clinton supporters are doing the exact same thing.  Why would they vote against their own self interests?  Name calling them childish and juvenile for not voting for their preferred candidate.  

Isn't it a bit hypocritical?  Is it not their vote to do with as they see fit?  

The framing is too general to provide any kind of meaningful response.

That said, the difference between Sanders and Clinton in a primary is small compared to the difference between Clinton and Trump in the general.  

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, aceluby said:

There seems to be a weird theme that has emerged over the last month or so.  When Sanders supporters were trying to figure out why minorities were voting against their best interests with Clinton, Clinton supporters (and others) jumped all over them saying it's their vote, and what do they know about their best interests, and heavily implied an air of racism for suggesting Sanders supporters knew what was best for minorities.

Now with Clinton the presumptive nominee, some of those Sanders supporters (millennials) are saying they won't vote for Clinton, or will write in Sanders; and Clinton supporters are doing the exact same thing.  Why would they vote against their own self interests?  Name calling them childish and juvenile for not voting for their preferred candidate.  

Isn't it a bit hypocritical?  Is it not their vote to do with as they see fit?  

Well, for starters being racist isn't the same thing as talking to stupid people. While there have been millenia of oppression of stupid people, the stigma of mocking stupid people isn't quite there. 

I think the other issue is that in this case writing in Sanders' name is being done as a meaningless protest vote that won't even be reported on. Voting for Clinton and saying how stupid it is when there are actual, legitimate reasons why you might do so is a pretty different thing. You're basically equating voting for a legitimate candidate in a legitimate election with writing in a candidate because reasons. Those things aren't the same.

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I disagree. They won't return to what they were pre-campaign. If anything they'll get worse in the general.

The emails themselves aren't even the main issue. It's her credibility. It's what Trump is going to target, and having her credibility damaged even further will have a negative effect on her presidency, should she win. Two-thirds of Americans do not trust her, and a majority don't like her. That's problematic if something were to go wrong while she's in office.

Credibility is in this circumstance like Yoda's cave on Dagobah: what you find there is what you bring with you. Those who are inclined to view Clinton with suspicion will think there is more to the email thing and Benghazi! than has been unearthed, and will likely think that no matter how little evidence endless investigations produce.

If there is one thing this election season has taught me it's that although Americans may vote for Hillary Clinton, they will insist upon distrusting and disliking her no matter what. I suspect that if the Seven were to materialize and declare in stentorian tones that Clinton is entirely innocent of Emailgate (or whatever we're calling it), there are those who would suspect that Clinton bought off the Father.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I wont vote for Clinton or Trump. My conscious will be clear when either of these two idiots has escalated us into the next series of bancrupting, nation building, disasters. I'll pass on supporting either of these warmongers.

[Shryke]

4 hours ago, BloodRider said:

I think I will call him SaNaders from now on.

This seems entirely unfair since Sanders himself, as far as I know, has been at least insistent on beating the GOP, if not necessarily as much on supporting Clinton in the general yet.

It's his supporters who are the "Bernie or Bust" doofuses, not the candidate himself. Sanders is trying his best NOT to be Nader from what I see.

[All-for-Joffrey]

Funny to see the 2008 PUMAs bitching about Bernie or Bust now.

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Indeed, "Lucifer in the flesh" by the reckoning of the previous Speaker of the House.

 

Quoting my own post for a correction. Cruz isn't the devil. Trump's campaign manager is. Or at least a fucking favored servant.

Quote

Manafort actively avoided the spotlight, though he had a knack for garnering unwanted attention. He took on clients and causes that even most of his colleagues on K Street considered outside the usual bounds. Black, Manafort, and Stone hired alumni of the Department of Housing and Urban Development then used those connections to win $43 million in “moderate rehabilitation funds” for a renovation project in Upper Deerfield, New Jersey. Local officials had no interest in the grants, as they considered the shamble of cinder blocks long past the point of repair. The money flowed from HUD regardless, and developers paid Manafort’s firm a $326,000 fee for its handiwork. He later bought a 20 percent share in the project. Two years later, rents doubled without any sign of improvement. Conditions remained, in Mary McGrory’s words, “strictly Third World.” It was such an outrageous scam that congressmen flocked to make a spectacle of it. Manafort calmly took his flaying. “You might call it influence-peddling. I call it lobbying,” he explained in one hearing. “That’s a definitional debate.”

Strangely, the HUD scandal proved a marketing boon for the firm. An aide to Mobutu Sese Seko told the journalist Art Levine, “That only shows how important they are!” Indeed, Manafort enticed the African dictator to hire the firm. Many of the world’s dictators eventually became his clients. “Name a dictator and Black, Manafort will name the account,” Levine wrote. (Levine’s piece, published in Spy, featured a sidebar ranking the ethical behavior of Washington lobbyists: It found Black, Manafort the worst of the bunch.) The client list included Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos (with a $900,000 yearly contract) and the despots of the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, and Somalia. When the Center for Public Integrity detailed the firm’s work, it titled the report “The Torturers’ Lobby.”

Indeed, the firm was an all-purpose image-buffing operation. As the Washington Posthas reported, Manafort could book his clients on 60 Minutes or Nightline—and coachthem to make their best pitch. He lobbied Congress for foreign aid that flowed to his clients’ coffers. He might even provide a few choice pieces of advice about tamping down domestic critics. Manafort understood the mindset of the dictator wasn’t so different from his corporate clients. According to one proposal unearthed by congressional investigators, the firm boasted of “personal relationships” with administration officials and promised “to upgrade backchannels” to the U.S. government.

This wasn’t empty rhetoric. On a Friday in 1985, Christopher Lehman left his job at the National Security Council. The following Monday, he was flying with Manafort, his new boss, to the bush of Angola to pitch the Chinese-trained guerilla Jonas Savimbi, who wanted covert assistance from the U.S. to bolster his rebellion against Angola’s Marxist government. Savimbi briefly left a battle against Cuban assault forces and signed a $600,000 contract.

The money bought Savimbi a revised reputation. Despite his client’s Maoist background, Manafort reinvented him as a freedom fighter. He knew all the tricks for manipulating right-wing opinion. Savimbi was sent to a seminar at the American Enterprise Institute, hosted by the anticommunist stalwart Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a reception thrown by the Heritage Foundation, and another confab at Freedom House. (Kirkpatrick introduced Savimbi, who conscripted soldiers, burned enemies, and indiscriminately laid land mines, as a “linguist, philosopher, poet, politician, warrior ... one of the few authentic heroes of our time.”)

Manafort’s campaign worked wonders. His lobbying helped convince Congress to send Savimbi hundreds of millions in covert aid. Indeed, every time Angola stood on the precipice of peace talks, Manafort, Black worked to generate a fresh round of arms—shipments that many experts believe extended the conflict. Sen. Bill Bradleywas blunt in assigning blame. “When Gorbachev pulled the plug on Soviet aid to the Angolan government, we had absolutely no reason to persist in aiding Savimbi. But by then he had hired an effective Washington lobbying firm, which successfully obtained further funding.” Or as Art Levine concluded, “So the war lasted another two more years and claimed a few thousand more lives! So what? What counts to a Washington lobbyist is the ability to deliver a tangible victory and spruce up his client’s image.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/paul_manafort_isn_t_a_gop_retread_he_s_made_a_career_of_reinventing_tyrants.html

He took money from the dictator who killed my father. Given his client list, I wouldn't be surprised if there was literally blood on some of his payments.

[TrackerNeil]

34 minutes ago, Shryke said:

It's his supporters who are the "Bernie or Bust" doofuses, not the candidate himself. Sanders is trying his best NOT to be Nader from what I see.

This is my sense as well, and if I can be frank my problem was never, ever with Sanders himself. I haven't always agreed with this stances on the issues (ok, most of the time I did), but I strongly dislike the attitude from some of his followers that if you don't FeeltheBern you are on the take.