US Elections: CTRL ALT-RIGHT DELETE

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I think the amphetamine is catching up to him...

 

 

What the fuck?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Pony Queen Jace said:

What the fuck?

I know, right? I'm trying to figure out what it's from, but so far I just get links to the Twitter post. Not sure if it's real or not at this point. I kind of hope it's not. This guy could be President.

[Durckad]

12 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I think the amphetamine is catching up to him...

 

 

Man, he's such a straight talker! No political correctness here folks! The librul media and dumbocrats won't talk about the nukuler winter but Trump will! Trump 2016!

[lokisnow]

clinton decided to go full Romney and add 3% to his 47%. I love unforced errors.

And Trump is now claiming it's somehow a bad thing that Clinton could shoot someone in the street and not be arrested, wasn't he saying that was a good thing when he described himself the same way?

***

aside from the media about to attack clinton relentlessly for months for one gaffe while ignoring and excusing everything trump does, or creating a false equivalency between the two here is some news of real importance:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/us/politics/election-results-voting.html

 

Basically, silicon valley wants to wreck the election by launching an app that releases live election results publicly throughout election day, depressing turnout on the west coast, and throughout the country for down ballot races.

I imagine congress will actually bipartisan pass a law to make this illegal within the next week. I can't imagine a story other than the above linked nytimes story generating more mutual panic among both parties, it will probably spur them to act.

 

[Altherion]

2 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

clinton decided to go full Romney and add 3% to his 47%. I love unforced errors.

What she actually said was:

Quote

"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said. "Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it."

Doing a bit of math based on the polls, half of Trump supporters is somewhere between 20% and 25% of Americans. Thus, not quite "full Romney", but definitely reminiscent of his words. Maybe she was trying to prove that Trump is not the only one who can be absurd and offensive?

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

What she actually said was:

Doing a bit of math based on the polls, half of Trump supporters is somewhere between 20% and 25% of Americans. Thus, not quite "full Romney", but definitely reminiscent of his words. Maybe she was trying to prove that Trump is not the only one who can be absurd and offensive?

A political folly, but I find her number wanting. I'd put it closer to about 100%

[Red Hermit]

White nationalists do make up a disturbingly significant amount of Trump's following, but there are less hateful followers.  There are reluctant Republicans who assume that the GOP leadership in congress will prevent Trump from doing anything really stupid. There are the people who will simply vote for whoever they see as the person who is more of an "outsider".  There are people who are primarily military focused and mainly prefer Trump because he wants to give more money to the military.  There are older folks who never adapted to using the internet and get all their information for Fox News and talk radio and will do whatever they say.  There are also poorly educated people that think Trump can actually balance the budget while massively cutting taxes, expanding the military and leaving their government benefits alone or even give them greater benefits.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

5 hours ago, lokisnow said:

clinton decided to go full Romney and add 3% to his 47%. I love unforced errors.

And Trump is now claiming it's somehow a bad thing that Clinton could shoot someone in the street and not be arrested, wasn't he saying that was a good thing when he described himself the same way?

***

aside from the media about to attack clinton relentlessly for months for one gaffe while ignoring and excusing everything trump does, or creating a false equivalency between the two here is some news of real importance:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/us/politics/election-results-voting.html

 

Basically, silicon valley wants to wreck the election by launching an app that releases live election results publicly throughout election day, depressing turnout on the west coast, and throughout the country for down ballot races.

I imagine congress will actually bipartisan pass a law to make this illegal within the next week. I can't imagine a story other than the above linked nytimes story generating more mutual panic among both parties, it will probably spur them to act.

 

Wouldn't that be suppressing political speech by definition?

2 hours ago, Red Hermit said:

White nationalists do make up a disturbingly significant amount of Trump's following, but there are less hateful followers.  There are reluctant Republicans who assume that the GOP leadership in congress will prevent Trump from doing anything really stupid. There are the people who will simply vote for whoever they see as the person who is more of an "outsider".  There are people who are primarily military focused and mainly prefer Trump because he wants to give more money to the military.  There are older folks who never adapted to using the internet and get all their information for Fox News and talk radio and will do whatever they say.  There are also poorly educated people that think Trump can actually balance the budget while massively cutting taxes, expanding the military and leaving their government benefits alone or even give them greater benefits.

They could be in the other 50% of non racist Trump supporters. But I think there's a lot of overlap.

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

2 hours ago, Triskan said:

This must be confusing for Clinton.  She was getting flack for supposedly being dishonest and now she's getting flack for saying a thing that's true.

Right? I'm actually becoming a Hillz fan now that she's giving Drumpf supporters a taste of their own diarrhea-flavored medicine. Her halfhearted apology was also great, the same crap Drumpf himself would say (and does say on the regular) but his camp (and the media in general) passes off as "oh, he's just telling it like it is". Well, guess what, so is she. I would say most of his supporters are a basket of deplorables. I mean, they're deplorable by association, let's be real. 

But the sheer outrage at his supporters finally facing the mirror themselves has been hilarious. You'd think white supremacists would be actually proud of their racism, not acting offended. Who needs trigger warnings and safe spaces right now? 

[Starkess]

I think it was an ill-considered phrasing, but I think the outrage is ridiculous.

The context of the quote was actually that she was saying that not *all* of Trump's supporters are the deplorables. And she even said it was a generalization. A lot of furor over nothing, IMO. But then again, that's politics... 

Quote

But the other basket—and I know this because I see friends from all over America here—I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas—as well as, you know, New York and California—but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Also, I think "basket of deplorables" is a pretty neat turn of phrase.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Things are getting lulzy...

 

 

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

Needs more Putin.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

18 minutes ago, Lyin' Ned said:

Needs more Putin.

Agreed, but it was made by a Trumper, so I doubt that's likely to happen. Even most of them realize that's a connection you don't want to advertise, even if their Orangy Idol doesn't. 

[Horza]

The Deplorables thing can be true and still be bad politics:

Having the candidate outright say that half the opponent's supporters are white supremacists is the worst possible use of that fact. It's something that the campaign should be using to tie up all the Basket holders, but that's gone now that it's a pithy attack line in the candidate's own words.

Now the Basket is a badge of pride for those in it and a baseless partisan attack line in the minds of the Basket holders that they can now play mock outrage with. It will allow all the Basket holders to change the topic to their outrage at being called Basket people and give a bunch of loosely Basket-adjacent people who otherwise might have drifted away a stronger sense of identity and common cause by virtue of the power of negative identification. It's not going to cost Clinton votes, but it will help the Basket bind more tightly together and endure.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

"50% are deplorable" is extraordinarily generous and a gross understatement. I would guess it's much closer to 80%. The only issue I have with Hillary over this, is that she later said she regretted saying it. I find her walking back an "understatement" to be quite insulting. Very dissapointed, this looks very much like a Dukakis/Gore/Kerry response. If she isnt willing to fight for the Presidency then she should have never accepted the Democratic nomination. Its Bloodsport time and time for Hillary to "stick him with the pointy end" and put this charlatan away for good.

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

20 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

"50% are deplorable" is extraordinarily generous and a gross understatement. I would guess it's much closer to 80%. The only issue I have with Hillary over this, is that she later said she regretted saying it. I find her walking back an "understatement" to be quite insulting. Very dissapointed, this looks very much like a Dukakis/Gore/Kerry response. If she isnt willing to fight for the Presidency then she should have never accepted the Democratic nomination. Its Bloodsport time and time for Hillary to "stick him with the pointy end" and put this charlatan away for good.

IIRC, she said she regretted saying "half" of Drumpf's supporters were deplorable, which to me sounds like a snarky half apology. Plus, just the fact that she uttered the words "I regret" already paints her in a more positive light than He-Who-Must-Not-Apologize. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

I get that conventional wisdom is for her to act as if she's "above the fray" and take the high road. But Hillary is already sitting on these enormously high disaproval ratings, she has nothing to fear over taking the gloves off. If she does lose this election it will be over complacency, not going toe to toe imo. I say let the hounds out now and stay on the attack every day for the next month. It isnt as if Trump is going to suddenly garner some heretofore unknown "pity vote". She needs to go on the offensive yesterday, the polls have tightened to an unacceptable degree with a marginal opponent like Trump. She's not getting out of this without getting her hands dirty.

[Tijgy]

32 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I get that conventional wisdom is for her to act as if she's "above the fray" and take the high road. But Hillary is already sitting on these enormously high disaproval ratings, she has nothing to fear over taking the gloves off. If she does lose this election it will be over complacency, not going toe to toe imo. I say let the hounds out now and stay on the attack every day for the next month. It isnt as if Trump is going to suddenly garner some heretofore unknown "pity vote". She needs to go on the offensive yesterday, the polls have tightened to an unacceptable degree with a marginal opponent like Trump. She's not getting out of this without getting her hands dirty.

Probably. 

But there is a difference between calling a large group of people deplorable (which she did during the speech) and saying part of Trumps' rhetoric resulted in the mainstreaming of white supremacy, racism, .... (which she did in her apology). 

Technically she insulted 50% of the people that doesn't agree with her. Trump does get rightfully scrutinized for saying offensive things about minority populations, ... I think they are both wrong when they do stuff like this. I do think her apology and her correction were right, because she focuses there on certain actions and specific people. 

And I think this was a really stupid idea to do. Because calling people deplorable would not really make them turn to your side. 

[Altherion]

It will be interesting to see what effect (if any) this will have on the polls. Right now, RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight have Clinton at +2.7 and +3.7 respectively. None of the polls used for these averages were taken after Clinton's comments became widely known. We'll have to wait a few days for new polls to filter into the results.

[Horza]

1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I get that conventional wisdom is for her to act as if she's "above the fray" and take the high road. But Hillary is already sitting on these enormously high disaproval ratings, she has nothing to fear over taking the gloves off.

There's not much to fear, but that's because the lines have largely been drawn already. It's also why there's basically nothing to be gained from calling voters deplorable, no matter how deplorable they might be. The way polarisation is playing out, the people so labelled aren't going to change their minds, and the people she's associating with the deplorables will use the fact it comes from Hilary Clinton to deflect the substance. This is why having the candidate make the attack was a mistake.